Plot Device
A short Maleficent fic from the perspective of Princess/Queen Leila. One of my frustrations with Maleficent was that, while it gives an opportunity for a more feminist and sympathetic reading of the villain's history, it still uses Aurora's mother as a handy plot device. She has barely any lines of dialogue and I'm not sure her name is used in the film - I had to google it, so if it is, it's a brief mention! She helpfully produces a baby, and dies off to show Stefan's isolation and to ensure, of course, that Aurora is an orphan at the end of the movie. But I felt Leila deserved more than that. So here is my take on who she might have been. There is a potentially queer reading this can be given, but I left it deliberately ambiguous. I'd be interested to hear what you think!
The Queen, they called her. The Queen is tired, the Queen is indisposed, the Queen needs her rest. Ten years a queen, a year an invalid, and Leila was sometimes hard-pressed to remember her own name.
The Queen counted. A nervous habit in youth, it had become a compulsion during her long illness. Her maid had to count the strokes of her hairbrush, and if she forgot they had to start again until they reached a hundred. Seven years left. Seven years, three weeks and two days to be precise, until it was sixteen years and one day since her daughter’s birth. 2580 days until Aurora could come home.
“Two thousand, five hundred and seventy nine, now,” said Leila, hearing the clock of the cathedral strike midnight. She coughed, feeling wetness on her lips, and was glad it was too dark to see whether this time the saliva came away streaked red. She had been a mother for only a month, thirty-one days where she had held Aurora in her arms every morning and rocked her to sleep at night, and the first seven of those days she had been so weak and exhausted she could barely remember them. She hated herself for that now: for her weakness then, and for her weakness three weeks later, when she had let her panicked husband send their only child away. She should have said: we can keep her safe here. She thought of all the ways they could have protected Aurora: wrapped in silk, in rooms free not only of spindles but even of wood or wool, with doors and windows lined with iron. But Leila had been tired and frightened, and in all her nineteen years had never defied the king, whether he was her father or her husband. So the pixies had taken her baby, and not even Stefan knew where. It was safer that way, he insisted, but Leila could not see how a child could be safer away from her mother’s love. And now Stefan would not even visit her sickbed, preferring to stay locked in his chamber.
The servants murmured about how the king talked to himself, sometimes for hours, but the queen knew that was not what he was doing. There was something - someone - to talk to in that room, after all. Years before (ten years and two months before) her father had called her to his deathbed. The room was ripe with the smell of sickness, but beneath that there was something else: a scent of butcher visits to the castle kitchens and of eiderdown scorched by a warming pan. King Henry had shown her the wings, then, and told her that Stefan had protected her; would protect her, Henry said, for the rest of her life. Leila had to be reminded who Stefan was, and when he was pointed out of a crowd of her father’s servants and advisors she felt amazed. This man was all long nose and elbows, not how she had imagined a hero at all.
She came back to the great wings after her father’s death, as craftsmen prepared a cabinet for them at the same time as they built her father’s coffin. The feathers were not black as she had first thought, but like every shade of evening in a dark wood. This sort of fanciful thinking she had been taught to repress: but the princess could not help reaching out a tentative finger to stroke a feather, and she could swear it trembled under her touch.
After the wedding Stefan had the wings locked away in his private chamber, and Leila never saw them again. It was in the first year of their marriage the only point on which he was firm with her; on everything else he was kind, yielding. In their first weeks as man and wife he touched her in bed as if she were made of morning dew or first frost, something that could melt and be lost beneath his fingers. Only once did he show her passion, and that was when she dared at last to ask him what it felt like to take the wings from the evil enchantress. He had shivered and grown pale, and said only one word - “terrible” - with an expression of great guilt. And yet he had taken her to bed then with a kind of roughness she had not expected, and had not expected to enjoy. That was the night, she was quite sure, that her daughter was conceived.
Stefan never gave her such fierce caresses again, and Leila did not know how to ask for them; felt, indeed, that it was wrong to want them. When she next asked about the wings, Stefan said her curiosity on the subject was something monstrous, and he would not hear of it again. Leila obeyed, as she had always done; but alone in her bed, later, she thought of what it would be like to fly, and of how the feather had reacted to her finger, and remembered something else that had been forbidden to her by an angry nurse, who had scrubbed her fingers with soap and ice water until they were raw and red, until she wept and promised not to be wicked again. That night Leila put one hand on her swelling belly, and with the other stroked herself, thinking of how the feather had trembled under her touch. Afterward she wondered if she was a monster, after all, to take pleasure in these forbidden things, and when she walked past her husband’s chamber she averted her eyes.
Two thousand, three hundred and twenty six days before Aurora’s sixteenth-and-one-day birthday, Leila coughed and coughed in the grip of a fever no poultice or balm could relieve. The doctor had bled her repeatedly, to let the hot blood out; but all it did was make her dizzy, bring her dreams from out of sleep into waking hours too.
“I want Stefan,” she said faintly, feeling herself sweat through the linens. She wanted him to face her this last time, and tell her why he had done all he had done. She knew he would say for you, and though that would not be much comfort, it would be something she could understand. But he never came, and in a fit of fury she sent her servants from the room, shouting at them for the first and last time. Alone for the first time in weeks, she found herself surrounded by the smell of feathers, a sick smell like chicken slaughter, and with desperate fingers she tore into her pillows, expecting to find midnight-dark feathers burned by iron.
When the doctor came for his usual morning visit, he found her surrounded by goose down. Her face was as snow white as the feathers, and he touched his fingers to her throat and held them over her mouth, already knowing what he would not find.
“The Queen is dead,” he said gravely, and went to tell the King. When Stefan heard the news, he stood very still for a long time; and then he dismissed the doctor and went to the cabinet.
“This is your fault,” he said to the wings that were still and silent behind glass. And since they could give no reply, Stefan could be sure he was in the right.
The Queen, they called her. The Queen is tired, the Queen is indisposed, the Queen needs her rest. Ten years a queen, a year an invalid, and Leila was sometimes hard-pressed to remember her own name.
The Queen counted. A nervous habit in youth, it had become a compulsion during her long illness. Her maid had to count the strokes of her hairbrush, and if she forgot they had to start again until they reached a hundred. Seven years left. Seven years, three weeks and two days to be precise, until it was sixteen years and one day since her daughter’s birth. 2580 days until Aurora could come home.
“Two thousand, five hundred and seventy nine, now,” said Leila, hearing the clock of the cathedral strike midnight. She coughed, feeling wetness on her lips, and was glad it was too dark to see whether this time the saliva came away streaked red. She had been a mother for only a month, thirty-one days where she had held Aurora in her arms every morning and rocked her to sleep at night, and the first seven of those days she had been so weak and exhausted she could barely remember them. She hated herself for that now: for her weakness then, and for her weakness three weeks later, when she had let her panicked husband send their only child away. She should have said: we can keep her safe here. She thought of all the ways they could have protected Aurora: wrapped in silk, in rooms free not only of spindles but even of wood or wool, with doors and windows lined with iron. But Leila had been tired and frightened, and in all her nineteen years had never defied the king, whether he was her father or her husband. So the pixies had taken her baby, and not even Stefan knew where. It was safer that way, he insisted, but Leila could not see how a child could be safer away from her mother’s love. And now Stefan would not even visit her sickbed, preferring to stay locked in his chamber.
The servants murmured about how the king talked to himself, sometimes for hours, but the queen knew that was not what he was doing. There was something - someone - to talk to in that room, after all. Years before (ten years and two months before) her father had called her to his deathbed. The room was ripe with the smell of sickness, but beneath that there was something else: a scent of butcher visits to the castle kitchens and of eiderdown scorched by a warming pan. King Henry had shown her the wings, then, and told her that Stefan had protected her; would protect her, Henry said, for the rest of her life. Leila had to be reminded who Stefan was, and when he was pointed out of a crowd of her father’s servants and advisors she felt amazed. This man was all long nose and elbows, not how she had imagined a hero at all.
She came back to the great wings after her father’s death, as craftsmen prepared a cabinet for them at the same time as they built her father’s coffin. The feathers were not black as she had first thought, but like every shade of evening in a dark wood. This sort of fanciful thinking she had been taught to repress: but the princess could not help reaching out a tentative finger to stroke a feather, and she could swear it trembled under her touch.
After the wedding Stefan had the wings locked away in his private chamber, and Leila never saw them again. It was in the first year of their marriage the only point on which he was firm with her; on everything else he was kind, yielding. In their first weeks as man and wife he touched her in bed as if she were made of morning dew or first frost, something that could melt and be lost beneath his fingers. Only once did he show her passion, and that was when she dared at last to ask him what it felt like to take the wings from the evil enchantress. He had shivered and grown pale, and said only one word - “terrible” - with an expression of great guilt. And yet he had taken her to bed then with a kind of roughness she had not expected, and had not expected to enjoy. That was the night, she was quite sure, that her daughter was conceived.
Stefan never gave her such fierce caresses again, and Leila did not know how to ask for them; felt, indeed, that it was wrong to want them. When she next asked about the wings, Stefan said her curiosity on the subject was something monstrous, and he would not hear of it again. Leila obeyed, as she had always done; but alone in her bed, later, she thought of what it would be like to fly, and of how the feather had reacted to her finger, and remembered something else that had been forbidden to her by an angry nurse, who had scrubbed her fingers with soap and ice water until they were raw and red, until she wept and promised not to be wicked again. That night Leila put one hand on her swelling belly, and with the other stroked herself, thinking of how the feather had trembled under her touch. Afterward she wondered if she was a monster, after all, to take pleasure in these forbidden things, and when she walked past her husband’s chamber she averted her eyes.
Two thousand, three hundred and twenty six days before Aurora’s sixteenth-and-one-day birthday, Leila coughed and coughed in the grip of a fever no poultice or balm could relieve. The doctor had bled her repeatedly, to let the hot blood out; but all it did was make her dizzy, bring her dreams from out of sleep into waking hours too.
“I want Stefan,” she said faintly, feeling herself sweat through the linens. She wanted him to face her this last time, and tell her why he had done all he had done. She knew he would say for you, and though that would not be much comfort, it would be something she could understand. But he never came, and in a fit of fury she sent her servants from the room, shouting at them for the first and last time. Alone for the first time in weeks, she found herself surrounded by the smell of feathers, a sick smell like chicken slaughter, and with desperate fingers she tore into her pillows, expecting to find midnight-dark feathers burned by iron.
When the doctor came for his usual morning visit, he found her surrounded by goose down. Her face was as snow white as the feathers, and he touched his fingers to her throat and held them over her mouth, already knowing what he would not find.
“The Queen is dead,” he said gravely, and went to tell the King. When Stefan heard the news, he stood very still for a long time; and then he dismissed the doctor and went to the cabinet.
“This is your fault,” he said to the wings that were still and silent behind glass. And since they could give no reply, Stefan could be sure he was in the right.