10 Dark Storylines That Disney Movies Left Out
8. Sleeping Beauty’s jealous Queen tries to cook and feed her children to the King
The story of Aurora and her sleeping curse from a bitter old fairy who was excluded from her christening has had many different narratives over the years. Surprisingly, this time, the Grimm version was not the darkest. The first published version was by an Italian poet named Giambattista Basile in 1634, called The Sun, the Moon and Talia, where Aurora was known as Talia.
Basile’s version starts in a similar way to the Disney story, except the princess is sent into her sleep by a splinter of flax rather than a spindle. Many years later she is discovered by a passing King, who sees her naked and unconscious, so naturally has sex with her before leaving and heading back to his kingdom. She goes on to give birth to twins and one of them sucks the flax out of her finger which awakens her.
The King revisits her and discovers he is the father of twins. He explains what happened and she is surprisingly not horrified, and they bond. Unfortunately, the Queen finds out what happened and asks to see the twins.
She tells the cook to kill them and feed them to the King, but luckily, he is a bit nicer and serves lamb instead, pretending it is the children. The King finds out what the Queen did and burns her alive, choosing to marry Talia instead.