Maleficent

**Maleficent** is the main antagonist of Disney's 1959 animated feature film *Sleeping Beauty*. An evil fairy, Maleficent is an incarnation of pure evil, and is responsible for all misfortune in King Stefan's kingdom. Taking offense at not being invited to the christening of Aurora by King Stefan and his wife, Queen Leah, Maleficent cursed the princess. She also appears to be particularly disdainful of Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, her benevolent rivals. She is frequently accompanied by her pet raven, Diablo.

With her dark, elegant design, dramatic and flamboyant animation, and an unlimited arsenal of magic powers at her command, Maleficent is one of the most popular and recognizable Disney Villains, in addition to being one of the primary members of the official franchise. She is currently voiced by Susanne Blakeslee, who also voices the Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine and Madame Leota after Eleanor Audley's death.

## Appearance

Maleficent is a tall, slender, pale green-skinned (although some appearances of her depict her with gray skin) woman with a narrow face and a prominent chin. She is also darkly beautiful and icily elegant. Her tall demeanor is such that she dwarfs the entire cast, as evidenced by her debut scene, with King Stefan only being able to stand eye-to-eye with her while atop the throne steps. She also has yellow eyes and black horns (it is unknown if those are *her* horns or a headdress), symbolic of her dark magic. She is clad in a black-and-purple robe with bat wing-like edges; underneath her robe, she wears a dress with the same color pallet but with some red instead of purple and wears a gold ring with a large mysterious circular black stone in it. Both the horned headdress and bat wing-like robe represent and foreshadow her dragon form. She carries a staff with a glowing green orb at the tip through which she casts her spells.

Maleficent is capable of shapeshifting at will into numerous forms, including a floating hypnotic light resembling a will-o'-the-wisp and a massive, monstrous black-and-purple dragon. Her dragon form is largely black, with her underbelly starting from just below her jaw up to the tip of her tail being purple-colored and ribbed. Her ears are webbed and her eyes are a pupilless green, while her tongue and the interior of her mouth is colored yellow. Her claws and teeth are also colored black, and she possesses spines across her back, some of which form a three-pronged tip at her tail, bearing a faint similarity to the Chauve-souris. Her wings are fairly tiny especially compared to her overall size, although they still seem to allow her to fly to some degree.

## Personality

Maleficent represents pure evil. She is ruthless, dark, and devious, and will do whatever it takes to achieve her evil goals. Additionally, she is very sinister, which is shown when she taunts Prince Phillip after she captures him. Her most famous quote ("*You poor simple fools, thinking you could defeat me. ME!? The mistress of all evil?*") indicates that she thinks herself above everyone, even calling her closest allies "her pets" in a pseudo-affectionate manner. Other than herself, the only entity that she seems to have a genuine care for is her pet raven, Diablo. This is especially evident in her horror at seeing the aftermath of Diablo getting turned to stone. Maleficent also seems to have some emotional instability. This is especially evident in her reaction to the discovery that her goons spent the previous 16 years looking for a baby, where she pitched a nearly truly evil laughing fit before reacting violently towards her goons. She is also shown to be very sadistic, which is especially evident when she proceeded to psychologically torture Phillip simply for her own amusement late in the film.

Maleficent, on top of her deviousness, is very misleading in her personality. But underneath the mask of stoicism, she unleashes the full brunt of her wrath with a smile, which shows how she relishes in the pain of others. This is displayed during her first appearance during Aurora's birthday ceremony. When Merryweather states bluntly, "*You weren't wanted*," Maleficent pretends to be shocked and hurt, remarking, "*In that event, I'd best be on my way*." But then she turned around and cast a curse upon Aurora, cackling while taking in the sweet revenge she had attained. Owing to her misleading personality, she also expresses sarcasm, which is especially evident during her psychological torture of Prince Phillip, where Maleficent states that when he leaves, he will be "up on his noble steed, straight and tall" despite the vision making very obvious that he and his steed were barely even able to leave due to being near-death.

Maleficent is soft-spoken, proper, and elegant and has two possible motivations for her crimes, either out of pride, considering she curses Aurora because Stefan didn't invite her to the christening, or she is simply a monster who enjoys being evil. The latter is further suggested by her admitting that she's not offended by them not inviting her before cursing Aurora.

Fauna indicated that Maleficent has no knowledge of love, or kindness, or joy that comes from helping others. However, her later capture of Prince Phillip, taunts toward Phillip regarding his role in undoing the curse, and later her attempts at preventing Phillip from reaching the castle implied that she knew enough about love to realize it was a massive threat to her curse on Aurora.

Maleficent is a scheming, manipulative and highly cunning sorceress, who seems utterly determined to take over the dominion of Kingdom Hearts. She is mostly seen in a cool, calculated manner, easily manipulating Riku into helping her aims, whilst she pretends to care for helping him find Kairi. In *Kingdom Hearts II*, she is highly vengeful towards Sora, because of him having destroyed her in *Kingdom Hearts*. She doesn't tolerate failure, as shown when she berates Pete for his attempt to take over Kingdom Hearts without her, saying to him "Mark my words, there'll be no place for you when our time comes. Useless imbecile!".

Despite this, she seems to tolerate the incompetent Pete as her helper. She is not without scruples, however, and has aided Sora on some occasions, yet, for her own evil reasons, saying to him at one point "Do not misunderstand me, I shall have revenge on you yet": indeed, by the time of *Kingdom Hearts coded*, she appears to have reverted to her evil self and is once again attempting to destroy Sora, albeit a digital version of him, but after she is rescued by Data-Riku, she stops her attempts to kill him (at least for the time being), telling Sora that they are "now even".

Another important aspect of her character, like most Disney villains, but exceptionally notable in her case, is her superiority complex. This is readily apparent in nearly every instance in *Kingdom Hearts II* whenever the subject of Nobodies and Organization XIII are brought up and when facing them personally, and this view of herself extends to any Heartless she commands, despite the all-too obvious difference in power and capabilities of Nobodies in general over the Heartless.

However her superiority complex is not entirely unfounded as she is easily one of the most powerful characters in the series, her magic rivaled only by Master Xehanort's. Thus, her views of the Organization as insignificant could be, to her, quite true. Ironically, the Organization seems to view her the same way that she views them; as a relatively insignificant threat, shown when Saïx calmly summons some Nobodies to destroy Maleficent's Heartless and smugly calls her a fool. In contrast to Pete, she possesses extreme and completely legitimate confidence, while her minion is a coward and doubts of their chances of winning.

## Powers and Abilities

Maleficent is one of the most powerful villains in Disney history. She describes her own skills as "all the powers of hell". Her powers are magic-based, and it is also implied during the christening ceremony that her magic was far more powerful than even that of the Three Good Fairies, at least individually, as they admitted they could not outright remove Maleficent's curse but rather alter it. Using her staff, she can conjure up her spells, for example, lightning projection, divination, and teleportation. Merryweather also implied that she was capable of summoning frost storms. She can even cast powerful dark magic spells like her forest of thorns. She was capable of hypnosis, as she demonstrated on Aurora to make her prick her finger. She also conjured the spinning wheel and spindle, which she used to prick Aurora's finger, which shows she is capable of conjuration. She also implied that the sleeping curse's effects, even when not at full power, were sufficient to effectively halt aging so long as the curse was in effect. Maleficent was also capable of flying by conjuring energy from her staff, similar to a galaxy or a helicopter rotor. This was presumably used as an act of desperation, given the events that had her use it. She is also shown to be particularly skilled at pyrokinetic-related spells, as her teleportation sometimes has flames being involved, such as during the christening ceremony and just before confronting Prince Phillip for the final time. Her flames are always colored emerald green.

One of her most powerful abilities is to transform into a massive fire breathing dragon, with the flame blasts being strong enough to effortlessly knock away Phillip's Shield of Virtue, and her hide in this form was apparently strong enough to even withstand the Sword of Truth barring significant enchantments on the Three Good Fairies part. In addition, her fangs in this form were shown to be venomous in *Maleficent Returns*, which ironically also led to her second defeat.

She also possessed some degree of divination and telepathy, as demonstrated when she was taunting Prince Phillip near the end of the film with the revelation that Briar Rose and Princess Aurora were one and the same. In the storybook sequel, she also was capable of petrifying people, which she demonstrated on Aurora's kingdom, including Phillip, her husband, shortly after her revival, and also attempted to do so on Aurora at the latter's request to save the kingdom, although her protection charm by the three good fairies prevented this from happening.

Next to Master Xehanort and his counterparts, Maleficent, as the mistress of all evil, is arguably one of the most (if not the most) powerful antagonists seen in the entire series. Although she is strong, she is known to avoid physical attacks, using sorcery instead. She may wish for others to fight under her command instead, taking on the form of a monstrous dragon when situations look bleakest. It is her great rage and the powers of darkness that grants her this ability.

Some of her other natural powers include creating thorns, turning into a will-o'-the-wisp, creating lightning, and teleportation. She has also been shown to be able to create walls of green flame and orbs of the same flame to seek and attack opponents, She is shown to be able to levitate objects and summon 'meteors' of dark energy, and transform herself into a pinwheel like vortex similar in appearance to her will-o'-the-wisp that damages with dark magic. Maleficent also tends to hit opponents with her staff, when close enough.

## Role in Sora’s Adventures

Maleficent is one of the main antagonists once again, along with Pete and Master Xehanort. She was revived in Enchanted Dominion by Pete and Zexion during the events of Sora's Adventures in Nottingham, and was ironically killed there in Kairi's Adventures in Enchanted Dominion due to being betrayed by her own daughter, Mal. Maleficent was later once again resurrected by Luxu (who was still in Xigbar's body at that time) in Sora and Friends' Super Spooky-Ooky Halloween in Halloween Town, she meets Winifred, Madam Mim Madam Medusa in Sora’s Adventures with The Rescue Rangers, Sora's Magical Adventures in Camelot, and Sora's Adventures in Devil's Bayou, but she got fired by her boss in Sora's Adventures in Saint Canard for her number of her failures of her missions, the final nail in her coffin being failure to retrieve the Black Book from the Forbidden Library because of Morgana Macawber. She now served as an anti-hero and either helped or hurt our heroes until Sora's Last Stand, where she took a fatal blow from Luxu's Keyblade intended for Sora.

## Trivia

* She is often referenced as both a witch/sorceress, and a dark fairy. Both of these are different types of supernatural beings. These phrases may be labels rather than true to what she is, as she has been confirmed to be an evil witch.
	+ Despite being an evil witch, she is still viewed as a witch by other franchises. One rerelease trailer for the film, released during the 1990s, even referred to her as an evil witch.
	+ In *Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance*, Xehanort refers to Maleficent as "The Dark Fairy."
		- *Birth by Sleep* and *Kingdom Hearts III* likewise do so.
		- *Kingdom Hearts* and *Kingdom Hearts II* do not. She is referred to as a witch and sorceress.
* Maleficent is like Fairy Witch Hybrid.
* Organization XIII rarely refers to her by name, instead calling her things like "the old hag" and "the witch."
* Similar to Captain Jake and his crew, Maleficent is one of LeAnn Holsclaw's "creator's pets," being shoehorned into a good chunk of the episodes (mostly in ones involving Disney villains that are members of the villains' council) when she isn't necessary for those particular ones, and even having a couple dedicated to her. However, unlike the pirates, she is not flanderized and is still likeable, and Carl Cooper decided to delve into her past after she and Pete were fired.