Mother Gothel

**Mother Gothel** is the main antagonist of *Thomas and Twilight Sparkle Gets Tangled.* She is a wicked crone who retained youth for hundreds of years through the healing properties of a magic, golden flower. When the flower's powers are transferred to the hair of Rapunzel, Gothel kidnapped the princess and locked her away in a secluded tower, where she hoarded Rapunzel's healing magic. To keep the princess under her control, Gothel posed as Rapunzel's loving, albeit overprotective mother with a mission to protect her daughter from the “cruelty” of the outside world.

## Background

### Personality

Gothel presents herself with a theatrical flair, often flaunting her beauty and curvaceous appearance with much enthusiasm and dramatics. This ties into the fact that she is a phenomenal actress, dangerous manipulator, and is very intelligent, while it also indicates that in her actual life-time before discovering the flower, she was indeed an *actual stage actress and performer* before she retired to due to her aging. Aside from the magic golden flower Gothel selfishly uses to prolong her life, and her life alone, she lacks magical attributes, relying solely on her intellect to achieve her ambitions. She is also very possessive and selfish, evidenced by the fact that she had been hoarding the magical flower for hundreds of years all to herself which could have instead been a gift to share with other ailing beings of the world.

Gothel was also lazy, as evidenced by her forcing her four-year old daughter Cassandra to do all household chores in their cottage by herself while Gothel spent all her time looking at herself at her magic mirrors and talking about the compliments she got by men, which also demostrates her vanity.

Gothel was also negligent to her biological daughter, often leaving her alone in their cottage to restore her youth with the flower, and giving her gifts only to keep her away from her, rather than by motherly affection, much like she did with Rapunzel, and finally abandoning Cassandra, leaving her in the hands of the palace guards to escape with Rapunzel.

Throughout the story, Gothel's goal is to keep Rapunzel in a hidden tower in order to take advantage of the healing powers within the lost princess's hair. To do so, she cleverly poses as a kind, yet overprotective mother figure, that simply hopes to keep her daughter away from the outside world which, according to her, is filled with people who would abuse Rapunzel's power (which makes her somewhat hypocritical since she is *one of those people* who is doing just that). However, she is still extremely abusive despite her caring façade; she constantly insults Rapunzel, purposely lowers her self-esteem, avoids familial contact with the princess, and riles up her anxiety with warnings of exaggerated dangers she could run into if she'd ever leave, all for her own selfish gain. Gothel is also known to victimize herself, blaming Rapunzel for any sort of conflict or unfortunate event that befalls their lives and relationship, be it an argument or even someone's death.

Despite all of this, Gothel has several methods of furthering Rapunzel's dependence and loyalty to her; these include making her favorite meals, gifting her with paint and other luxuries to keep her occupied within the tower, and most notably, posing as Rapunzel's only protector in a vicious and unforgiving world. This is all for a deeply selfish reason, however, and comes at the expense of Rapunzel's happiness and dreams of experiencing life outside the confines of her tower. The illustrations even state she implanted scary and corrupted views of Christmas in the girl.

Gothel's burning desire to retain her youth for all eternity has notably driven the woman to complete madness, to the point where she was more than willing to force Rapunzel into slavery for the rest of her years, as opposed to taking the role of Rapunzel's mother, which would have avoided conflict for the most part. Not only that, she was also driven to a murderous state, evidenced by her immediate decision to kill Flynn Rider, upon deducing he somehow led to Rapunzel's eventual leave from the tower.

She seems to be a misanthrope and has true hate for people because they took away the magic flower she wanted all to herself, even though it could help the sickness of others. She even advises Rapunzel to hate people, saying; "the world is dark, and selfish, and cruel. If it finds even the tiniest bit of sunlight, it destroys it".

## Trivia

* Apart from the opening narration, Mother Gothel is never referred to or addressed by her name in the film.
* Mother Gothel appears in *Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's Adventures of Tangled: The Series* in dreams, flashbacks and sometimes mentioned by Rapunzel and the heroes. She will be resurrected by The Black Cauldron to get her revenge on Thomas, Twilight and their friends in the near future.

* Gothel acts as a foil to Flynn Rider, as they both have known Rapunzel, as Flynn reluctantly helped Rapunzel escape from tower to see floating lanterns while Gothel keeps Rapunzel imprisoned in her tower so she can use her hair to become young forever. However, Flynn does care for Rapunzel (such as accompanying Rapunzel in a journey to see floating lanterns, become protective to Rapunzel, and sacrificing himself to save Rapunzel from Mother Gothel). On the other hand, Gothel refuses to change her ways out of her obsessive behavior and prefers to tie Rapunzel up in a chain to keep her imprisoned in her tower forever, making her hatred over Flynn Rider increase. Gothel serves as an example of what Flynn Rider would become if he had never been there with Rapunzel.

* In the series, it is implied that Gothel was the third follower of Zhan Tiri (alongside with Sugracha the Eternal and Tromus), who betrayed her original master, Lord Demanitus. In "Lost and Found", when Demanitus tells Rapunzel and Eugene about the betrayal of his pupils, there are three silhouettes seen, with two of them obviously being Sugracha and Tromus, while the third one bears quite a big resemblance to Gothel. In "A Tale of Two Sisters", when Cassandra and Rapunzel discover the secret room under Gothel's old cottage, they find her notes on the Sun Drop, the healing incantation and the Moonstone, that appears to be a copy of Demanitus Scroll, indicating Gothel's possible background as a former pupil of Demanitus. Also, in the same episode, when one of Gothel's chemicals accidentally catches fire, the flames (and chemical itself) have the same sickly green color, that is associated with Zhan Tiri and his followers. This idea never gets any confirmation from characters throughout the series, though director Chris Sonnenburg, confirms this in an interview.

* Gothel bears similarities to Judge Claude Frollo from *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*, seeing as Frollo attempted to keep Quasimodo inside by claiming the world is a cruel and dark place, while putting on a kind and caring personality to hide his own dark self. However, it should be noted that, while Gothel simply lied to Rapunzel that the world is cruel and dark, Frollo genuinely believed that the world, aside from himself, was indeed cruel.
	+ These similarities were acknowledged by Alan Menken (composer/co-songwriter of both *Tangled* and *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*).

* While Gothel's age is never revealed in the film or series, it is hinted in the film, due to her appearance, that she is at least 1000 years old. This is later hinted again in the series during a flashback where Gothel appears to have been a pupil of Lord Demanitus, who lived 100 years ago before the series was set.

## Gallery

Gothel with RapunzelGothel with MaximusGothel with The Stabbington BrothersMother Gothel stabbing EugeneMother Gothel shows her true age.Mother Gothel's deathMother Gothel in Tangled: The SeriesGothel with her daughter CassandraGothel's "ghost"