Marguerite

**Marguerite** was one of the two main antagonists in Richard Purdum's original 1988 screenplay of Disney's 30th full-length animated feature film *Beauty and the Beast*. She was to be the aunt of Belle and Clarice as well as the sister of Maurice who planned to marry off Belle with Marquis Gaston to get riches. However, Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered Purdum's story to be scrapped, as he felt that the screenplay was "took dark and dramatic" and that it didn't look like a Disney film.

She was intended to be voiced by Mickie McGowan.

## Biography

In the original 1989 screenplay, Belle had an aunt named Marguerite who lived with and her younger sister Clarice and her poor father Maurice, an inventor, in a cottage after moving there when Maurice inexplicably loses his fortune at the sea in 1709. When Marguerite arrives in her carriage, she tells her footman to unload her belongings around the back of the house before insulting him for tripping when the carriage starts moving after she prods her horse with her parasol. Marguerite then tells her brother why she has come. Some days later, Belle celebrates her seventeen birthday and Maurice gives Belle her mother's music box as a gift.

However, when Maurice is warned by two soldiers that he will lose his house if he doesn't pay his overdue taxes, Marguerite suggests him to either pay the taxes with her sister-in-law's music box or marry Belle off to someone rich. Of course, Maurice chooses the former and goes to sell the box yet Marguerite invites Marquis Gaston to tea so he can persuade Belle to accept his previously rejected marriage proposal. Belle promises to think about it but that she needs time first, so Marguerite flatters Gaston by complimenting him on his new wig, dismissing that Belle is shy and that she will think about it with more time. After a reluctant Gaston leaves unlikely to return next day, Marguerite tells Belle and Clarice that their father deserves being lost in the current storm because he ran off and left them with her.

When Maurice arrives to the Beast's castle, he is threatened by the Beast with death for trying to steal one of his roses as a replacement birthday gift for Belle. While the Beast offers to spare him in exchange of Belle, Maurice refuses and agrees to die but asks for one night to return to his home and say goodbye to his family. The Beast accepts Maurice's petition. While Marguerite will possibly dismiss her brother's fate and accepts that he is doomed, Belle opts to go on her father's place despite his refusal and sneaks aboard the enchanted flying sedan chair that brought Maurice back to his home later that night.

Little is known about how the story developed from this point, but taking into account the previous scripts and some concept art from the film's climax, it seems that Gaston allies himself with Marguerite to take over the Beast's castle to get his riches. Likely on Marguerite's orders, Gaston steals the sedan chair and proceeds to fight off several of the enchanted objects of the castle before dueling the Beast, a duel which concludes with the Beast knocking Gaston over a wall. It's unknown what would have happened with Marguerite, but it's likely that the Enchantress would have taken care of her or at least she would have been disowned from the family.

## Trivia

* By the 1988 screenplay for *Beauty and the Beast*, Marguerite filled the role which originally belonged to Belle's Sisters in the previous 1988 screenplay for the film. While Belle does have a sister in the 1989 screenplay, she wasn't an antagonist like Marguerite and loved her dearly.
* One of the reasons for which the 1989 screenplay for *Beauty and the Beast* was dropped was because it had some similarities with *Cinderella*. In particular, Marguerite was too similar to Lady Tremaine, Cinderella's wicked stepmother.
	+ Ironically, the 1988 screenplay for *Beauty and the Beast* had Belle's Sisters as the main antagonists but their inclusion was dropped due being too similar to Anastasia and Drizella Tremaine, the secondary antagonists of *Cinderella*.
* Had Richard Purdum's 1989 screenplay for *Beauty and the Beast* been produced, Marguerite would have been the first Disney villain to be biologically related to the protagonist. Instead, the first Disney villain related to the protagonist ended up being Scar of *The Lion King* (who went through some changes).