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Yuri, Andrey, Alexander, maybe know, maybe you don’t, Donald Duck lives with his triplets, Huey, Dewey and Louie. It seems that everything is fine, but there is one big difference, Donald is not their father, but their uncle!
How did this happen? Good question, in the cartoon, where those same three boys first appeared, they were sent to Donald by their mother Dumbella. Why you may ask? Because these pranksters set their father's ass afire.
And what came out of it? Huey, Dewey and Louie have been living with their uncle for almost 90 years and have no intention of moving out. So why did Donald have them in the first place? To the animators and cartoonists, they were funny pranksters who fuck with Donald on a regular basis, and to artist and comic book writer Carl Barks, they were a way of showing Donald as a grown man with obligations. That is, in fact, their father. But a single father, apparently in the 40s in the United States, looked rather indecent. There were no plans to show Della, and why? With Donald and Scrooge they had already enough adventures!
But in 1993 there was a sensation! Artist and author Don Rosa, with advice from Barks, drew a Duck family tree! Only a Duck one? All the family! Ducks and Coots and McDucks and even the Ganders! Although some things there, of course, were invented by Rosa, no big problems arise from this. Well, on a branch, next to Donald, you could see a certain duck, from which three little ducklings departed and this duck was Della Duck! The father was hidden behind a bird that accidentally landed there. In future exhibitions, Rosa will write YOUR name in the free box under the father, thus making you the father of the triplets! In 1994, chapter 11 of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Don Rosa's Magnum Opus, get's published. On page 24 we see two little ducklings holding each other's hands. One of them is Donald and the other one, well who might that be? It's Della. She doesn't say anything there, but nontheless Della Duck was born. Kinda.
I know that I exaggerated this sensation with Della too much, nothing interesting happened, and she herself was only in three panels. Well, in "Letter from Home", also from Rosa, she also appears in a flashback.
And for 10 years, nothing happened to her. But! In 2014, the dutch story "80 ist prachtig" is published. In it, the triplets ask Donald what happened to their mother, Donald explains to them that when they were still little ducklings, his sister left them with him for the weekend, and she herself flew into space and in the end did not return. At the end of the story, the ducklings can talk to their mother, who reveals to them that she has only been flying for 15 minutes so far. The sons impersonate other boys, as they want to continue to live with Donald even longer, while confirming the Rosa theorem. The story itself is pretty dumb, as it touches on the fact that in Duckburg no one ever gets older and Donald is essentially 80 years old. It ends with a big banquet where almost all the Disney characters take part. Well that's nonsense, isn't it?
What is the Rosa theorem? Rosa's theorem is that Rosa once wanted to write a story about how Donald's nephews meet their parents. But he had a problem, what next? After all, the nephews are already living fuck knows how many years with Donald, he is essentially their father! He could kill their parents, parents die often in Disney cartoons, but for some reason this is forbidden in comics. He had the option of reuniting and Huey, Dewey and Louie with their parents, who would go on to live with them. But then Donald would lose his sons, the ones who were with him in almost every story, the ones he raised all his life. The last idea was to let them live with Donald, but somehow it doesn't make sense to live with your uncle while your parents are still alive. And so he stated his theorem that Donald, and the triplets cannot exist at the same time, and if so, then this would be the last story according to the canon, or only in the distant future, where the three brothers are already adults.
Back in 2017, Della appeared as a little duckling or a teenager in one-page comics, where there is no particular plot, but just a joke, always with Donald, since they are twins.
We go back two years. In 2015, Disney announced a reboot of DuckTales, which is due out in 2017. On August 12, 2017, it premiered, at the end of the first episode, we see Dewey find a slightly damaged painting, which depicts Donald, Scrooge and, well, you probably already guessed it, Della.
And now has begun the beginning of the end. Who is Della in this reincarnation? Here we have Della performing in a bomber jacket, a pilot's hat and an iron leg, but the latter only after her return. She has an impulsive adventurer personality to contrast with Donald, who was stripped of all of these traits(in the comics he is still that adventurer). She loves adventure and needs an adrenaline rush! In short, Della is a stereotypical, strong female character from Western cartoons of the 2010s. She is much better and cooler than her dumb and boring brother Donald, she is fearless, she can easily surpass any obstacle! Her iron leg, which she receives in the future, is not a hindrance to her! She uses it as a weapon! What a cool lady! She celebrated her premiere on March 9, 2019, the American Disney channel rolled out a whole campaign with promo videos and announcements, shouting: "Della Duck is coming back NOW!" Like it's the biggest thing ever. Her story is that before the triplets hatched, Della got a rocket from Scrooge, but that was a secret. When Della somehow found out about this, she wanted to try it now, for one last adventure! Donald tried to dissuade her, well, what's wrong? "Nothing can stop Della Duck!" is her motto! Della is caught in a space storm, where she then crashes onto the moon, loses signal to the ground, and stays there for the next 10 years. Well, Donald had to raise his nephews for the next 10 years, since their mother is a complete motherfucker. But Dell is not afraid of the moon! Even though her leg was cut off there, it is not a hindrance to her! She survives there, befriends the aliens, repairs her rocket to get back to earth. But the writers have already begun to realize that problems will soon begin, because Donald is still there. "Easy!", the writers said. And sent him to the moon for the next half of the season. There he sticks out until the end of the season, while not affecting the plot in any way when he returns. Donald, having already appeared in only half of the episodes of the first season, began to appear even less frequently. 12 episodes in the first, 10 in the second and 9 in the third. At the same time, his sister has a stable 12 in the second and third. Without hesitation, you can guess that Della is a cool replacement for the boring Donald, since the scriptwriters stopped giving a fuck about him after the very first episode.
What is the relationship between twins? We don't know. We really don't know. They have absolutely no chemistry. Now, if you take two separate scenes from DuckTales with Donald and Della, would you guess that they are brother and sister? Me neither. Here Donald has a grunted voice, he quacks like a duck while talking at the same time. The million dollar question, why does Della have a normal voice? They're twins, they should be pretty similar to each other. But perhaps this would interfere with the popularity of the sister. Unlike one-pagers where they arrange pranks together. Here it is rather Della all the time trying to put Donald in the shadows.
Oh yes, about the shadow, Della is better than Donald, have I already mentioned? So, in the accompanying comics that came out with the series, we are given a chance to see the adventures of Scrooge, Donald and Della. But here's the thing, in the old comics, Scrooge bullied Donald, like in one story where he runs 2 million volts through him in the electric chair. Here, in fact, this should not work, purely ethically, or Scrooge will bully them both at the same time. But life is not easy for Donald Duck! In the accompanying comics, Donald has to carry all the gear for them, fight a mad chicken, become a small man, be frozen in a cube for several hours and baked in a cookie, and all this is on the initiative of Scrooge, sometimes even Della. Here we also have favoritism, and Scrooge is essentially a paternal figure to them! Then Scrooge still says the words, "Well, thank God she's at least a little like me," and that's it.
How are we doing with Huey, Dewey and Louie? You have to start with the fact that she is a terrible mother and did not grow up at all, leaving her children to ride on a rocket. Then he comes back 10 years later and everything magically gets better again. I also forgot to note that they tried to promote her coolness in this way, she wanted to name the boys Jet, Turbo and Rebel, but now they have other names. Why this happened is never explained. Her appearance confirms the Rosa theorem, Donald and the boys stop interacting at all, despite the fact that he raised them for 10 years. Della never ever tries to take responsibility, she lives in Scrooge's mansion and does not even try to find a job. Scrooge from the comics would throw her out in a week. The whole story ends with Donald transferring his nephews to her on a permanent basis (why?) and at the same time he, May, June and Daisy fuck off to the other side of the world (what the fuck?). The writers simply didn't listen to Rosa.
There is also another small inconsistency. Della's iron leg is presented more as a plus than a minus, saying that this is not an obstacle to her, but rather helps. Donald's incomprehensible speech is only ridiculed. Draw your own conclusions. I would like to mention one failed project of the creators. They wanted to make her a Lesbian. Thank God Disney said no! God save the censors! It can be said that she has no place among the Ducks. She doesn't have a clear role, and the one she does is partly already played by Dickie and Donald.
In the end, you can say that she is a typical strong female character that the West is delighted with. Her character himself may not be bad, but his only existence, that's the problem. Thank you.