Rothbart

**Rothbart** is the canon antagonist in The Swan Princess. This page covers the same character, but reimagined.

He plays a prominent role in the Swan Princess reboot, No More Mr. Nice Guy!, which introduced a backstory and a detailed reason for his villainy.

Artwork was first uploaded at Deviantart on Oktober 5, 2021.

## Original Rothbart

*To read about the original Rothbart and recognize the differences mentioned below, click here.*

## Redesigned Rothbart

Aron Rothbart is the son of a shunned king and queen of a mostly deserted land, located next to King William's domain. After their death, he became the last living member of the Rothbarts, a notorious family of powerful wizards.

Because their numbers and influence had decreased and their bad reputation become a burden, his parents wished to secure for him the hand of a princess from a respected kingdom and made use of William's desperation to have a child.

William's wife sought out the gifted magic users to help them with their fertility issues and agreed to give them what they wanted in return, though did so hoping she'd conceive a son and thus owe them no payment. The Rothbarts took no chances and their potion ensured a girl would be born.

While effective, it was assembled with dark magic; and allowed for the creation of something that could not have existed without it. Having that said, both Odette's parents were infertile and would've never managed to have her if not for the Rothbarts.

As this type of meddling with nature is "cursed", the true price for the potion was death and William's wife did not survive her daughter's birth. The Rothbarts succumbed shortly after making the potion, since they had been active users of dark magic for many years. It's implied they saw it coming, but chose not to inform Aron.

Aron was orphaned at the age of 8 and only had one senile servant left as company. When Odette's birth was announced and William scheduled a celebration in her honour, he showed up with the expectation to get introduced to the crowd as her future husband, but was ignored. Despite William having no proof, he blamed the potion for his wife's death, and with Aron's parents no longer around to possibly force them into submission, treated the deal as invalid.

When he publicly betrothed Odette to someone else, Aron left the event feeling betrayed and entertained the possibility William had his parents assassinated as to flee from the engagement.

Filled with vengeance, but still a child with basic magic skills, he wished to speed up his training by embracing The Forbidden Arts inside his family's secret heirloom, then stage a large-scale attack and kidnap baby Odette to raise alongside him. The noise and lights spawned from his moments of practise were enough to grab the attention of passing travellers, who brought their concerns to King William. Soldiers were sent out and destroyed whatever looked important, whereafter Aron got kicked out of his own home.

As he had already succeeded merging with the item holding The Forbidden Arts, nothing of real use was destroyed and he was gifted with the knowledge necessary to make himself stronger.

He chose to hide away from civilization and eventually settled in an untouched plot of land. He and his servant lived in a simple cottage for a few years, until Aron figured out how to spawn them a new castle.

One of his more developed abilities, shapeshifting, allowed him to turn into animals and random people, and that way infiltrate William's kingdom to keep track of Odette's life. When Prince Derek bonded with another boy and they began bullying her, his disdain for his rival grew even greater and he eventually used his magic to give her small victories over him; like always letting her win at tabletop games.

When she was of proper age and had officially rejected Derek, he saw his chance to swoop in and claim her.

### About the Rothbarts

Rothbart's origin and family were never a topic in the original Swan Princess franchise, therefore the following expansion:

The Rothbarts were a family of unrivalled, powerful sorcerers. They had a shameless interest in dark magic and the first ancestors created what could be described as an ability recording/transferral device, called "The Orb", to help the next generation grow even stronger.

Their speciality was "deception magic", like casting illusions and shapeshifting. These were some of the first abilities to be added to The Orb, though it appeared to be a genetic gift, meaning Rothbarts are born with dark magic. They stood out, as regular sorcerers are unable to cast spells that warp reality and can only obey the rules of nature.

Another recognizable feature this family has is their red hair, which appears to be an extremely dominant gene that causes every child born from a Rothbart to have it.

Because of their skill level and threatening spells, they managed to build a kingdom for themselves and obtain a large, but terrified following back in the day. Their influence diminished when their use of The Forbidden Arts started killing the land and every Rothbart leader turned more arrogant and sociopathic than the last. People did and could not stay, and those who failed to flee were killed.

Rothbart royalty eventually ruled over nothing and family members who had become too dependant on dark magic succumbed to the deadly curse The Orb developed inside itself.

### About The Orb

"The Orb" is a canon object from The Swan Princess franchise, and originally a magic item that could be created by anyone with a knack for alchemy. It houses the power of "The Forbidden Arts", transferable to whoever utters the required words.

In No More Mr. Nice Guy!, only one orb exists and is exclusively a Rothbart family heirloom that can't be used by anyone else. It was gradually assembled by every Rothbart over the course of many generations and holds many powerful spells, including ones uniquely created by its users.

The Orb can only be used by one person at a time and requires merging your soul with it after going through proper sorcery training. To actually access its powers takes additional training and can take multiple years. The person holding The Orb can extend its powers to one other ally, but only if they too are magic users and their feelings for them far exceeds that of a casual friendship. As such, it's usually shared with a spouse.

When a user dies, The Orb rematerializes inside of an enchanted cauldron, which is the key item in possession of the Rothbart family, and gives easy access to the next generation inheriting it. Those not related will perceive the cauldron to be empty, thus not be suspicious of it.

Since the power inside The Orb is a crime against nature, it comes with a curse that greatly depletes one's life expectancy whenever its magic is used.

### About The Forbidden Arts

"The Forbidden Arts" is a canon term from The Swan Princess franchise, and originally represented three forbidden powers a sorcerer could obtain for themselves: **creation**, **transformation**, and the **power of destruction**. It's nearly synonymous with The Orb, though eventually "The Forbidden Arts" was described to be a living entity who recruited powerful sorcerers to get rid of the prophesied princess who would stand in the way of his global takeover.

In No More Mr. Nice Guy!, The Forbidden Arts is synonymous with "dark magic" and a general term for spells that are considered unnatural, unsafe, or deadly. Some of the abilities in this category are lethal curses, teleportation, the meddling with one's biology, mass destruction spells, and the creation of non-existent beasts.

## Personality

Aron is a relatively patient man, but enjoys being passive-aggressive and almost purposely makes himself seem untrustworthy and intimidating, which is likely ingrained in him as the descendant of less approachable Rothbarts. Nevertheless, he has a good sense of humor and is surprisingly optimistic; traits that managed to charm Odette in more casual settings.

He's an extremely talented sorcerer, though prefers show over effectiveness. Instead of locking Odette up in a cell, he chose to apply a transformation spell and have her deal with the simple restrictions of being an animal, though his affection for her is also a factor in his choice to not seriously restrain her.

He favours shapeshifting over destruction spells or weaponry in battle, meaning he enjoys a physical fight, but primarily in the form of something greater than himself as to instill more fear into his targets.

Having had no friends as a child and with his parents dying early made him grow up especially lonely, and his eventual union with Odette was the only thing he looked forward to. He was protective of her and felt slighted whenever he witnessed her getting bullied by Derek or experiencing some other set-back. Even so, he meddled little and knew not to get involved with situations that would compromise his disguise or put her in danger, since his powers were not considered safe to use at the time.

Abducting Odette is a remnant of his childhood plan and the fact he stuck with it -instead of using his disguises to attempt building a gradual relationship with her in secret- proves vengeance tends to blind him and he's not quick to re-examine his choices. He's confident and mostly unapologetic in his actions, if only because he doesn't respect most other people.

Though he qualifies as an introvert and prefers being alone, he likes to be the center of attention when given the opportunity and conducts himself like a typical social butterfly.

## Appearance

Aron's clothes and face are identical to the original Rothbart's, though he has no wrinkles or a moustache, and shorter sideburns and eyebrows. He's tall and has a similar body shape as well, but with thicker, more defined legs as a young man of 26 years old.

Because he never learned to cut his own hair and doesn't trust his servant with scissors, it reaches his ankles and is unruly.

## Trivia

* Rothbart, in the movie and the original Swan Lake play, canonically has no first name;
	+ The name "Aron" was chosen for sounding similar to the social status of baron the Swan Lake version has.
* Aron's "Great Animal" transformation is depicted to be larger than the original.
* Aron hates Christmas, a loose reference to the Christmas special;
	+ His reason is solely that other people enjoy it and he never got to celebrate it.
* Aron hates small animals and dubs them all "critters" and "rodents";
	+ He dislikes birds the most, yet is intrigued by their ability to fly;
	+ His implementation of wings in his monster form is thanks to this intrigue, though he still chose the design of a bat.
* In No More Mr. Nice Guy!, Aron presented Odette a series of questions she should know about a person, two returning ones being someone's favourite colour and biggest fear;
	+ His favourite colour is red, though only after Odette reminded him black not to be a colour.
	+ His biggest fear is letting himself become driven to suicide.