Maleficent 🔮

“*You poor, simple fools; thinking that you could defeat me! ME, the Mistress of All Evil!*”
―Maleficent to Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather
**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. Using the pretense of taking offense at not being invited to the christening of Aurora by King Stefan and his wife, Queen Leah, she 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.

## Background

### Development

The style for *Sleeping Beauty* was based on the art of Eyvind Earle, who claimed to have a 'Pre-Renaissance' style, with strong vertical lines and gothic elegance. Earle was involved with the design of all the characters and designed and painted most of the backgrounds in the film. Though early sketches depict a hag-like witch, it was decided that Maleficent's final, elegant design suited Earle's backgrounds. Davis' decision to make Maleficent a powerful witch rather than an old crone may also have been influenced by Eleanor Audley's voice, which he recalled suggested a very powerful character.

The design for Maleficent's clothes occurred to Davis when he was looking through a book on Medieval art; one of the manuscript images featured a religious figure with long robes, the ends of which resembled flames. Davis incorporated this into Maleficent's final design. He based the sides of her headdress on bat wings, and the top of her headdress on the horns of the devil.

### Animation

After Eleanor Audley's vocal and live-action performances for Lady Tremaine, Walt Disney personally suggested that she be considered for the voice and live-action reference for Maleficent. Davis praised Eleanor Audley's live-action performance for the character, claiming that she created many of Maleficent's expressions and mannerisms that were ultimately used in the animation. The animators were more limited to how their characters could move against the detailed backgrounds. The manner in which Maleficent moved, perhaps limited by her costume, later inspired Andreas Deja to take a similar route when animating Jafar for *Aladdin*.

### 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 at all by them not inviting her just prior to 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 at least knew enough about love to realize it was a massive threat to her curse on Aurora.

### Physical 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), which is 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.

### Powers and Abilities

“*Now shall you deal with me, O Prince, and all the powers of HELL!*”
―Maleficent to Phillip
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 enough to effectively halt aging so long as the curse was in effect. Maleficent was also capable of flying by conjuring energy from her staff similarly to a galaxy or a helicopter rotor. This was presumably used as an act of desperation, given the events that had her use it.

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.

## Appearances

### Sleeping Beauty

At the christening of the newly born Princess Aurora, announced by the herald, the Three Good Fairies come to bestow three gifts on the child. Before Merryweather has a chance to give the child a final gift, Maleficent appears with Diablo, perched on her. She then sarcastically addresses the gathered attendees and explains she must have not gotten an invitation until Merriwether bluntly told her she wasn't invited in the first place. Maleficent, while feigning being hurt by the remark, offered to leave. Leah then asked if Maleficent was offended, with Maleficent admitting she wasn't, and in fact intended to bear a gift of her own to Aurora. She then promptly curses the child, decreeing that before the sun sets on Aurora's sixteenth birthday, the child shall die by pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. Before the guards can get to her, she disappears, laughing wickedly, leaving everyone in despair and filled with worry. Though she is unable to undo the entire curse herself, Merryweather softens it so that Aurora will not die, but will merely enter a deep sleep that will only last until true love's kiss. As Aurora's sixteenth birthday draws near, Maleficent punishes her Goons after finding out that they have stupidly been searching for a baby for sixteen years. After angrily calling the goons idiots and imbeciles and intimidating them into running away by conjuring dark lightning bolts with her staff, she sends her raven Diablo to search for the princess. After managing to find the hiding location of Aurora and the fairies, Diablo flies back to Maleficent to inform her of Aurora's whereabouts. With this new knowledge, Maleficent plans her next move.

When the three fairies return the princess to the castle and leave her alone for a while, Maleficent uses a hypnotic apparition resembling a will-o-the-wisp to lure Aurora to a spinning wheel conjured by Maleficent. Though Aurora is momentarily snapped out of the trance by the fairies' voices (who call after her to not touch anything), Maleficent orders Aurora to touch the spindle while the fairies try stop Aurora from touching the spindle with her finger. But before the fairies can reach Aurora, she pricks her finger in the process and subsequently falls to the floor, motionless, having fulfilled Maleficent's curse bestowed on her when she was a baby. When the fairies arrive too late to save Aurora, they were horrified to see Maleficent, who briefly mocks her arch enemies of their efforts to defeat her. She uncovers the fallen princess before their eyes and vanishes, cackling maniacally, leaving the fairies to weep over Aurora’s fate. Following this, Maleficent recruits her goons and they capture Aurora's true love (who turned out to be Prince Phillip, rather than a peasant). On Maleficent's orders, Phillip is taken to Maleficent's domain in the Forbidden Mountain. When the fairies arrive at the cottage in search of Phillip, all they find is the prince's hat, allowing them to deduce that Maleficent has captured him. At the Forbidden Mountain, Maleficent visits the imprisoned Phillip in the dungeon. She taunts him with the knowledge that Briar Rose is actually Princess Aurora, and ridicules the notion that "true love conquers all". She then reveals her intent to keep Philip imprisoned until he grows elderly, then let him go to seek out Aurora, who won't have aged a day since.

Maleficent then leaves the dungeon to sleep saying she shall sleep well for the first time in sixteen years. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather infiltrate Phillip's cell and arm him with the Shield of Virtue and the Sword of Truth. As they make their escape, they are confronted by Diablo, who fetches the Goons. As the prince and fairies dodge the Goons and make their escape, Diablo flies to warn Maleficent of Phillip's escape, with Merryweather in pursuit. Diablo reaches outside Maleficent's tower, where Merryweather finally turns the raven into a stone statue with a satisfied scowl before rejoining Flora, Fauna, and Philip. Awakened by Diablo's constant cawing, Maleficent emerges from her tower where she finds Diablo's petrified form. Shocked by Diablo's state and enraged at the sight of Phillip escaping to reach Aurora, Maleficent attempts to strike him down with lightning. As he continues, she summons a forest of thorns to surround Stefan's castle as a blockade. With the help from the Good Fairies, however, Phillip manages to hack through the thorns and towards the castle. Infuriated, Maleficent transports herself to Stefan's castle to appear before Phillip personally. As a final attempt to kill the prince, Maleficent summons all the power of Hell to transform herself into an enormous dragon.

Phillip charges at the dragon, who drives him backward with her blasts of flame. As Phillip retreats, Maleficent chases him up onto a high cliff and corners him at the ledge. With another powerful flame blast, she blows his shield off. As she bursts out laughing and prepares to finish off the now defenseless Phillip off, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather magically empower the Sword of Truth, and Phillip immediately throws the sword at the dragon's heart. Maleficent screams in pain and collapses onto the ledge, attempting to devour Phillip for the last time, but he dodges. Her enormous weight, upon impact, causes the ledge to crumble, sending Maleficent tumbling down to her demise below, into her own dragon flames and dissolves into a purple coloring dark smoke. Phillip looks down to see what remains of Maleficent, to see nothing more than her shredded cloak on the ground, plus the Sword of Truth, still embedded in the cloak, turning black, its enchantment having worn off. With Maleficent finally destroyed, Prince Philip reaches Aurora in her tower and kisses her which successfully breaks Maleficent's curse.

### House of Mouse

Maleficent made frequent cameos as one of the guests on *House of Mouse*. Notably in one episode, "Halloween With Hades", centered on Hades trying to woo her. Maleficent initially rejects Hades, so Mickey tries to help him by teaching Hades how to be good. The technique fails and Hades becomes so mad he tries to kill the mouse. Maleficent likes the *evil*in Hades and agrees to go out with him. Later in the episode, they're seen dining together. However, her later appearances suggest that she broke up with him some time afterward.

In "Mickey and Minnie's Big Vacation", Maleficent in her dragon form, alongside Mushu, Madam Mim, Elliott, and the Reluctant Dragon, cause a fire in the club, with Mushu accusing her of this.

Maleficent has been approached by other villains who have tried to win her over, and in return, she rejects them by zapping them with a wave of her staff. Captain Hook tried to charm her, only to be zapped away leaving behind his hook. Jafar also tried to woo her while they sat together, only to end up being literally burnt.

Maleficent also appears alongside the villains as part of their song in *Mickey's House of Villains*.

### Other Appearances

A dragon resembling Maleficent's dragon form made a brief cameo in the *Timon & Pumbaa* episode "Guatemala Malarkey" in a pit of fire as one of the cursed temple's booby traps.

Her dragon form also appeared in *The Little Mermaid* series episode "Heroes" as a sea dragon.