In medieval culture, an event like a royal christening is not a private party; it’s the public social event of the year. To not invite any person of rank to such an event is a deadly insult.
Maleficent is certainly someone you wouldn’t want at a party, but she’s also someone powerful enough that only a fool would ever dare treat her with such blatant disrespect. The only way the King and Queen could possibly have gotten away with not inviting Maleficent was to not invite any of the fairies at all; inviting the other fairies and excluding her is explicitly taking sides in the conflict between the fairy factions.
Which means they made themselves her sworn enemies, and she responded by treating them as such from then on. If you actually get into analyzing the social dynamics of the scene, it’s very clear that Maleficent was willing to show mercy at first by giving the King and Queen a chance to apologize for their disrespect to her. She doesn’t curse Aurora until after she gives them that chance and they throw it back in her face with further disrespect.
And yeah, if the King and Queen had done the properly respectful thing and invited her, Maleficent would have given Aurora a scary awesome present. Moreover so would the other fairies, because at that point both sides would be using it as an opportunity to show off and one-up each other. What they gave her before Maleficent showed up was basically just trivial party favors by fairy standards.
How do you know so much about the social dynamics of medieval fairies
How don’t you
Not just that, Maleficent is a fairy. Whilst Flora, Fauna and Merryweather represent the Victorian revision of fairies as kind, helpful and friendly to humans, Maleficent is the Fair Folk from traditional folklore: unpredictable, dangerous, vicious, primal and very much operating on a moral code very different to that of humans. Cursing a baby for the passive aggressive rich people behaviour of her parents, and then “punishing” the girl’s betrothed to boot is very much typical behaviour of the Fair Folk: we are talking about the creatures that stole babies and replaced them with changelings in the dead of night, controlled the forces of nature and are capable of catastrophic acts of retribution for a slight, real or imagined. Even the few humans they take a liking to are not safe: folklore fairies are distinctly non-sentimental, and decades of charity and faithful service can be undone and earn fury fairy wrath with one simple act of breaking a fairy bargain or personal standard, unthinking or otherwise. If a fairy says you are not to leave any eggshells lying out under a full moon after showering you with riches, you better do as they fucking say or you will be very, very, very sorry. In fairy code, you can be punished for a loved one’s act of “transgression”, as Aurora and Philip found out.
I would have loved Maleficent to not do the stupid blah blah Wicked ripoff crap and focus on her lore as a fairy witch: one way i would do that is focus on the traditional weakness to iron (that’s why steel types are strong against fairy types folks): the very touch of iron is painful to a fairy and the slightest wound with the substance is deadly to them. One way I would show this is when Flora and friends present Philip with the Sword of Truth, they are very careful not to touch it with their bare hands, and usually keep it wrapped up (and even then they get a very uncomfortable prickling feel when they touch it through the fabric) and an iron sword straight through Melly’s evil heart is the only way to do the bitch in.
OHHH I LOVE THIS BITCH
This has just made me so much more excited for that Maleficent movie.
(Source: britta-perry)
