Mother Gothel

**Mother Gothel** is the main antagonist of the 2010 Disney film, *Tangled*.

## Background

### Appearance

Without the healing and age-reversing power of the Golden Flower, Mother Gothel is a very elderly woman. Her sagging skin is covered in multiple wrinkles and marks, noticeably on her hands, arms, and face, and she bears many signs of old age. Her thinning hair, while still possessing curls, is dull and has lost its volume, a combination of white and pale gray. Gothel's veins are especially prominent in her hands and wrists, like most elderly people, and she has several bumps and other marks on her face. Her nails are thin and look far from healthy-looking, and her face and body overall do not look full, like younger people. In her very first scene, she wore a black dress and red cloak, probably because black is a more suitable color for older people.

With the flower's power in effect, Mother Gothel reverts to her youthful appearance. She is rather voluptuous with a curvaceous figure, and she is a tall, slender woman. Her skin is flawless, smooth, and a shade of very pale ivory. She has large gray eyes, and her eyelids have brown eye shadow. Her cheeks are dusted with blush, probably to warm up her pale skin tone. Her curly, black hair falls past her shoulders, and is rather thick and glossy, with three curls hanging over her forehead.

She wears a flattering although outdated, crimson-red Renaissance-era dress with a faintly dappled pattern, gold trim, elbow length sleeves with extended hems, a hem-line that reaches her feet, brown high-heel boots, and a matching belt-like sash with a gold buckle, along with gold, diamond-shaped earrings. Whenever she leaves the tower, she brings a dark green hooded cloak, especially to hide her face when the hair's power is low.

The effects of the magic that keep Mother Gothel young wears off in short time, so she needs to replenish it very often, otherwise, her aging will return, shown when her hair starts turning gray, and she forms dark eye bags and wrinkles. The aging returns daily, it appears - she left the tower on Rapunzel's birthday, with the magic in full effect, based on her entirely youthful look. However, less than a day later, in the "Mother Knows Best (Reprise)", her black hair already possesses gray streaks, and her skin isn't as smooth as before. When Rapunzel's hair is cut off, its healing powers are gone, and when she touches the cut hair, all the centuries rush back into Gothel at once, rendering her to nothing but dust within a minute.

### 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. Also, she never keeps her word when striking bargains, as proven with her when she made a deal with the Stabbington Brothers to give them the chance of getting revenge on Flynn Rider and Rapunzel's gift to make themselves rich, only to betray them without keeping the latter half of her promise as she no longer needed them.

Gothel was a lazy mother, as evidenced by her treating her four-year-old daughter, Cassandra, as a maid by forcing her 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 demonstrates her vanity.

Gothel was also negligent to her biological daughter, presumably having been an unintended result of an affair with an unknown man. Gothel often left her alone in their cottage to restore her youth with the flower, and gave her gifts only to keep her away from her, rather than by motherly affection, much like she later does with Rapunzel, and finally abandoning Cassandra to escape with the baby princess, not caring about leaving her in the hands of the palace guards.

Throughout the story, Gothel's goal is to keep Rapunzel in a hidden tower forever 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".

## Role in the Ed-Chronicles

### Ed, Edd n Eddy: All Tangled Up

Gothel appears as the main antagonist in Ed, Edd n Eddy: All Tangled Up.