Despite not having any official information, there are theories that explain why Ariel is the only Disney princess who has an heiress.
Not everyone may remember, but Ariel has a daughter! In “The Little Mermaid II: Returning to the Sea”, a film released in 2000, we meet Melody, who despite loving the sea very much, cannot enter it for her own good. The problem is that she doesn’t know that her parents are protecting her from Morgana, Ursula’s sister.
In addition to presenting something unprecedented, since, until then, no princess had had a child, the film made many Disney fans wonder why the princess was the only one in the studio to have an heiress. There is no official information from the company about this, but there are some theories that point out why no more princesses have children in any animation.
One of the theories is based on the fact that Disney always creates an animated movie based on a story that already exists. Among the examples, we can mention other princesses, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, which were based on the tales of the brothers Grimm. And, in order not to escape this logic, Mickey Mouse’s house would have been based on one of the myths involving mermaids around the world.
The studio would be inspired by the first concept of the mermaid that emerged in the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia. Within the culture of the Mesopotamian people, there was a myth about a goddess called Atargatis, who decided to turn into a mermaid to meet a pirate. After several trysts, she became pregnant and decided to have her daughter at the bottom of the sea. The child was born half fish, half human, and from there began a long line of mermaids.
Following this logic, Ariel is the only princess with children, as there is a tale on which Disney can base itself to create a new adventure for the princess. Despite being a genius theory, it is not one that fits with the reality of the studio at the time the feature was made.
During the 1990s and 2000s, Disney made clear its desire to expand its existing universes. The studio made numerous sequels to its most successful films, such as “The Lion King” and “Cinderella”, so that the public would like the characters and the whole concept even more. Everything was a big marketing campaign for the company to continue exploring, somehow, the animations that generated a good profit.
However, things began to unravel with the release of “The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea”. The sequence of Ariel’s story was a failure among Disney fans, which made this idea that every studio classic would win a continuation be discarded. Thus, the company made a new planning for its launches.
But why did the sequel to “The Little Mermaid” fail?
Theories point out two reasons why the story of Ariel’s heiress has not pleased the public so much. The first would be the fact that the studio’s fans can’t stand more sequels, and want new stories. The second reason would be that the audience did not like the way Melody was developed in the animation, in addition to not approving the idea of seeing one of the classic princesses being a mother.
In this way, Disney decided that it would not invest in the idea of the other princesses having children in possible sequels, since fans did not like the proposal on the first try.
There is still a very abstract theory, which says that, in fact, all princesses had children, but that only the continuation of “The Little Mermaid” showed this. The idea is based on the famous line that ends fairy tales, “and they lived happily ever after”. Some people interpret that the “they” can refer both to the couple that stayed together in the end, and to the future family that they can build.
Source: Recreio
