[Mother of Fears] The Search for True Love in Maleficent

Welcome to Mother of Fears – a monthly column that will explore the various roles that mothers play within the horror genre. Mothers are a staple feature in horror movies, and yet, their stories, motivations, representations, and relationships with their children are so varied and complex that we never feel like we’re watching the same story twice. Every month I will take a look at a different mother from the world of horror, explore their story, and look at how they fit into the broader representation of women in horror.

Maleficent (2014) may be a live-action Disney movie, but it also has the makings of an ideal gateway horror movie. There are creepy-looking creatures, a powerful dark fairy, death curses, and a boyfriend so terrible he would easily be at home with these horror lovers. And unlike the classic cartoon version from 1959, Maleficent places the titular fairy in the role of mother and caregiver to the princess which she has cursed to die. 

In Sleeping Beauty (1959), we’re never given much of a background to Maleficent and her evil ways. She rocks up on the day of Princess Aurora’s christening and seemingly just because she wasn’t invited to the event, curses the princess to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a sleep-like death before her 16th birthday. 

In this newer version of the tale, we see Maleficent as a child, living in the Moors, a forest which is home to a whole host of magical creatures that borders the human kingdom. Maleficent may be a little bit scary to look at, but she is kind to the other creatures, loves nature, and wants to protect the Moors from the men who are insistent on claiming it for their own. 

One day, Maleficent comes across a young boy named Stefan, who is stealing from the Moors and has been caught by one of its protectors. Curious, Maleficent frees Stefan and tries to teach him about the importance of the Moors and the nature within. The two become friends and eventually fall in love, with Stefan gifting Maleficent what he calls true love’s kiss for her 16th birthday. 

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However, Stefan has always wanted to be king one day, and the lure of the kingdom and the life that would come with it are too much for him. After King Henry tries and fails to capture the Moors, mainly due to Maleficent kicking his ass, he puts a bounty on her head and says that whoever kills her will become his successor. 

Due to all the time that Stefan and Maleficent spent together in their youth, he knows a little bit more about the fairy than most, and he knows that iron can hurt fairies. Stefan appears at the border of the Moors, and it turns out Maleficent still trusts him enough to welcome him in. While he claims he’s trying to protect her, he actually drugs her with the intention of killing her. However, he cannot bring himself to do it, and instead, cuts off her wings. While this doesn’t take away her powers completely, it was her wings and her ability to fly that gave her the edge in her first battle with King Henry. Stefan knows that he is robbing her of a part of herself, and uses her wings to prove her death to King Henry and secure his place on the throne.

Maleficent is understandably pissed off. She cannot understand Stefan’s obsession with the ugly side of the human world or his need to be in charge. She also feels incredibly betrayed. She trusted Stefan enough to welcome him into a place where humans never get to go, and he used his inside knowledge of her world to injure her and strip her of one of the things which made her so special. Her hatred and bitterness spread, not only affecting herself but also turning the Moors into a dark and twisted place. The humans were scared of the Moors before, but through Stefan’s actions, the place has become the terrifying and mysterious place that everyone worried it was.

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Now that he is king, Stefan marries and is soon father to baby Aurora. While Maleficent stews in her anger out in the Moors, Stefan is getting everything he wanted. This is yet another reminder to Maleficent that he never truly cared about her, and only used her and his access to the Moors to his advantage. 

And so, Maleficent decides to turn up at Aurora’s christening, with this scene playing out pretty much exactly the same as the one from Sleeping Beauty. Only this time around we have far more context on why Maleficent is the way she is, and why she would want to hurt Stefan so terribly. After Stefan begs her for mercy, Maleficent says that the curse can be broken by true love’s kiss. Instead of another fairytale cliche, this time around Maleficent is mocking her and Stefan’s relationship. Because of the way Stefan treated her, he doesn't believe that true love’s kiss even exists. His words and his actions have come back to bite him in the worst possible way, and Maleficent wants him to know she’ll never forget the way he betrayed her.

You may question why Maleficent would choose to curse a defenceless baby instead of using her powers to hurt Stefan directly, but the slow-burning nature of her curse is designed to drive Stefan slowly insane as he waits for it to claim his only heir. Even though he rids the kingdom of spinning wheels, he sits alone panicking over the situation, unsure of what to do to change the ending. He even misses his wife dying because he is so distracted. 

Maleficent doesn’t just want to hurt Stefan, she wants to rip his life apart in the slowest and most painful way possible, and it seems like her plan has worked perfectly. Stefan decides to send Aurora to live with three pixie fairies until the day after her 16th birthday so she can be kept safe. He is willing to give up the first 16 years of her life to try and protect her, leaving him bitter and alone in his castle. 

However, it turns out the pixie fairies, Flittle, Knotgrass, and Thistlewit, are terrible caregivers. They don’t know how to feed the princess and spend so much of their time arguing that they don’t see the various near-death situations that young Aurora manages to get herself into. 

But it turns out Maleficent has known right from day one where Aurora is, and rather than kill her or harm her in any way, she chooses to watch over the child, even intervening when she’s in need of help. This is because Maleficent doesn’t really want to hurt Aurora. She wants to rip Stefan apart, but killing baby Aurora wouldn’t cause the kind of pain she’s looking for. And so she does her part to keep the baby alive. 

Eventually, young Aurora comes across Maleficent in the woods, and unlike most humans, she isn’t scared of her. In fact, Aurora is drawn to Maleficent and the Moors. She shares the fairy’s love of nature and the other magical creatures. Despite the fact that Stefan turned out to be trash, Maleficent does still have a longing for a relationship with the human world. And the mother/child relationship she has formed with Aurora seems like a safer option than a romantic relationship.

Realising that her revenge on Stefan is not worth Aurora’s life, Maleficent tries to lift the curse. But her hatred and her spell were so strong that she is unable to remove it herself. Instead, Maleficent welcomes Aurora to live in the Moors with her, hoping that she can keep her safe.

Unfortunately, this invitation comes on the day before Aurora’s 16th birthday, and so when she tells the pixie fairies of her plan, they reveal the truth about the curse and Maleficent. Feeling betrayed by her closest friend and ‘fairy godmother’, Aurora flees back to the castle, where she is magically drawn to the room full of broken spinning wheels, and promptly pricks her finger. 

Maleficent realises that she is the only one who can put together a plan to save Aurora, and she decides to take a young prince who has a crush on Aurora to the castle in the hope that his kiss will break the curse. At this point, Maleficent doesn’t believe that true love’s kiss is even a thing, but she’s out of options and needs to try whatever she can so that she’s not responsible for Aurora’s death. 

However, the prince’s kiss does not work, probably because they’ve only met once, and it seems like Aurora may be asleep forever. Trapped in the castle with the person she hates most, Maleficent has nothing left to try and knows the odds of her making it out safely are pretty slim. She apologises to Aurora for ever involving her in the curse and kisses her on the forehead.

And just like magic, Aurora awakens. Maleficent may have stopped believing in romantic love, but there’s no denying how much she cared for Aurora as she watched over her for sixteen years. Maleficent is the only mother Aurora has ever known, and though she never imagined herself having a child, Maleficent has cared for the princess better than anyone, including her vengeful father. The curse was designed to pull Stefan apart, but the main thing it did was push Aurora and Maleficent together. 

Even though Aurora has been brought back to life, Stefan is still intent on killing Maleficent. He once again uses his insider knowledge of the fairy world to ensure all his soldiers are armed with iron, so Maleficent is left quite defenceless. She tells Aurora to get to safety, which leads to the princess discovering Maleficent’s severed wings. Aurora knew that Maleficent had lost her wings at some point, and how emotional she had been about the whole situation. However, it’s not until now that she realises it must have been her father who removed them. 

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Aurora releases the wings from their cage, which not only restores Maleficent to her former glory but also removes the last hold which Stefan has over her. Stefan dies in the battle, and with the fight now over, Maleficent restores the Moors to what they once were. She also crowns Aurora queen of the Moors, meaning the human kingdom and the magical kingdom have been united under one ruler. 

Aurora manages to achieve what her father always dreamed of through kindness and building a truly loving bond with Maleficent instead of just using her under the belief that power would make him happy. Instead, the power he craved pulled him apart from the inside, and the curse that drove him to madness pushed Maleficent and Aurora together in a way that was able to heal Maleficent both mentally and physically with the return of her wings. 

Aurora has a lot of different mother figures in her life, from her birth mother and the three pixie fairies, but the moment Aurora is brought into the woods, Maleficent provides everything she needs. It would be so easy for her to let her hatred for Stefan leak into her bond with Aurora, but she is able to put all that aside to make sure that Aurora is cared for. It is this ability that allows her love for the princess to grow. Maleficent probably thought she wasn’t capable of love again after what Stefan did to her, but her relationship with Aurora shows that he hasn’t broken her after all. She is still able to care for others and learn to be happy in herself. And Maleficent and Aurora can now look after the Moors together, knowing that nothing can come between them or the love they have for each other.

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