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Once upon a time, there lived two queens. One was called Maleficent, and she was magnificent, with hair the color of midnight and skin the shade of the forest. She was not cruel, but she did not suffer fools gladly—and to many, that was enough to make her cruel.
For as long as humankind could remember, Maleficent held sovereign power over the mortal realm, including the lands occupied by human kingdoms. Although she was indifferent to the affairs of humans, rarely caring enough to intervene, she refused to tolerate their ruckus—or the racket made by human warfare, demolishing entire armies with a sweep of her arm. With Maleficent reigning over them, the kingdoms existed in an uneasy truce, wearily watching each other. They knew that their true enemy was the one residing in the high mountains, her castle built on jagged peaks few men were foolish enough to climb. They knew that—but didn't like it.
Humanity cowered before her, and few were more powerful than her. Even fewer could sway her judgment, or spare the victims of her wicked ways—save the other queen, Aurora.
Queen Aurora was as her namesake: the dawning of a new light after centuries of darkness. For it was Aurora who intercepted with Maleficent on humanity’s behalf when a crop season turned, or a blight spread throughout a kingdom. Aurora, with her sunshine hair and nightingale voice, her smile sweet enough to coax rare spells and wild enchantments out from the dark queen. It was this influence that led towns and kingdoms to thrive like never before: people across the lands began prospering, learning the joys of full bellies and good health.
In the time since Queen Aurora’s coming, humanity experienced a golden age unlike any in recorded history, all owning to her gracious sacrifice. Even if she had not been a princess by birthright, people throughout the lands would still bow down to her, their tragic savior, the princess who gave up a lifetime of true love to protect humanity from the mistress of evil.
*
Every summer solstice, the people of Aurora’s realm—for though it was Maleficent who welded power, it was Aurora who was worshipped throughout the lands—would stay up all night, re-enacting the legend of the tragic princess Aurora, the sole heir of King Stephen and Queen Leah, the baby who had been cursed to fall asleep on her sixteenth birthday and never wake up.
For even an innocent baby could not escape the vile wrath of Maleficent, angered when her favorite tree was cut down to build the child’s cradle. But in her vindictive rage, Maleficent had made a grave error.
It was true that her spell called for the princess to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. However, her enchantment also spoke of the princess growing in grace and beauty, beloved by all—including Maleficent herself.
So when the day came, on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Maleficent appeared in the bed chamber of the slumbering princess, ready to collect on her curse. But as she gazed upon Aurora’s sleeping form, she realized she could no more kill Aurora than kill herself. At that moment, she understood: she needed Aurora, the light to her darkness.
Instead of killing her, Maleficent absconded with her into the night, abducting the princess and hiding her away deep in a castle on top of the high mountains, a height beyond where humans could reach. There, she declared, the two of them would live in harmonious balance, light and dark.
It mattered not that she snatched the only child of King Stephan and Queen Leah, the light of their lives, the center of their worlds.
To describe the royal couple's grief as devastating would be too mild. The queen’s despair was so great that she succumbed to an unknown illness within days, leaving her weak and weary, confined to bed rest.
And King Stephen, although a loving and doting father, was neither a loving nor doting king. He ravaged and ransacked his entire kingdom, tearing it apart to conscript every able body into his army. Futilely, he ordered every capable soldier up the mountain, demanding they recapture his precious little girl.
Of the thousands he sent, none returned.
People across his land—those he didn’t send to die—starved, helpless as he beggared the royal treasury, bankrupting the country in his quest for mercenaries capable of taking on Maleficent. But all the gold in the kingdom was not enough, for even emptying it did not return Aurora by his side.
Then, things all changed one midsummer’s eve, when the second son of a neighboring ruler sought an audience with the king.
Kneeling on the floor of the once-great halls, Prince Phillip swore upon his kingdom that he would return Princess Aurora, guaranteeing her safety. He was unwavering in his confidence, for his family heirloom included a secret weapon: the Sword of Truth, made from ancient fae magic, a kind even older than Maleficent's.
Philip rode to battle with his noble steed, cutting down each minion Maleficent threw in his path. When it was time to face her, he swung his sword swiftly and surely, plunging it deep into the wicked queen’s black heart.
And when he finally found the princess, deep in the dungeon—it was said that from the moment their eyes met, they fell in love at first sight. By the time he brought Aurora back to her father, Phillip was ready to ask for her hand in marriage.
*
But happily ever after Phillip and Aurora did not live, for mere hours before Phillip defeated Maleficent, Aurora had pricked her finger on Maleficent’s spindle, spilling six fresh drops of blood across her white dress.
Having spilled her blood in Maleficent’s realm, Aurora was now bound to it forever, cursed to spend half the year in the wicked queen’s realm. Not only this, her blood had bounded her life force to Maleficent’s—and by the time half a year passed, Maleficent had already reformed, in time to greet Aurora upon her return to the high mountains for the remainder of the year.
Thusly, Princess Aurora lived, split between two worlds, only able to sit by her father or dote on her mother half as often as she’d like.
But Maleficent, ever greedy, was still not content with the half of Aurora’s life she already owned, and soon, her curse crept into the other half of her beloved's life. Their bound life forces meant that Aurora did not age so long as Maleficent did not. No, instead, Aurora would forever stay in the budding bloom of her life, as Phillip ascended into kinghood, as his hair greyed and the furrows in his brow became permanent. As those around her gradually aged away into nothingness.
From here, the legends differed, depending on where the story was told.
Some said that King Phillip sent the princess away himself, not wanting a bride who was forever young. Others argued it was because he did not want her to see him like this, wanting his beloved to remember him in his prime.
Some described her as leaving by her own volition, after she realized Maleficent left her barren, unable to produce an heir. She left, knowing what her kingdom needed but unable to sit by as her true love sired children with other mothers.
Still, others sang praises to the decades of wedded bliss King Phillip and Queen Aurora shared, Aurora leaving only after the king passed through death's gate at a ripe old age in his sleep, holding onto his dear wife's hand. (In other versions of this, Maleficent had been the one to kill the king, poisoning him once she grew impatient with the length of his natural lifespan.)
Regardless of which version was told, all the legends ended the same, with Queen Aurora eventually departing her castle – and the human realm – forever. Instead, the golden-haired queen now whiled away her days in Maleficent’s domain year-round. There, she sat on the throne side by side with Maleficent, forever tempering the mistress of evil with her goodness, intervening on humanity’s behalf with the dark queen.
The humans called her Queen Aurora, but really, she was their goddess.
*
That was how the story went throughout most of the human realm, told by the rulers and passed on by their priests.
But in the dark corners of each kingdom, there were pockets where whispers could be heard, hushed questions of whether, between the two queens, if Aurora might not be the more frightening of the two.
If the princess had perhaps prickled her finger on purpose?
If she wanted to leave the human realm, uninterested in living a half-life, or watching her loved ones die?
If she wanted to return to Maleficent’s side?
If she wanted to be Maleficent’s plaything? (For there were those stories too, about the exact nature of Maleficent’s interest in the beautiful Aurora, secrets exchanged between schoolgirls, half giggling and half curious, about the sorts of sensual pleasures shared between women. Stories that some women carried with them, a secret fire in their hearts and between their legs.)
Occasionally, there would be the stray human who asked, what if Aurora was drawn to Maleficent’s darkness, as Maleficent was to her light? (What if some small part of the princess liked all of that unrestrained power at her disposal? Liked using Maleficent’s affections to perform favors for human rulers, favors she would not hesitate to collect on? What if she called on Maleficent’s magic in exchange for their worship, leveraging power for herself with each of the human kingdoms?)
But those sorts of questions were quickly and easily dismissed as the ravings of intoxicated madmen. Only pity was to be spared on those individuals, who came up with such absurd conspiracies.
It was only a coincidence, of course, that the people who asked these sorts of questions frequently disappeared, their bodies found weeks and months later, distorted into gruesome beings, barely recognizable by their loved ones.
Still, all the same, anyone who heard these questions knew better than to repeat them.