Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at As Old as Time

Welcome Patrons to this very special, Patreon exclusive article and the first in a multi-part look at the Twisted Tales book series. For those unfamiliar, The Twisted Tales series is essentially the Disney animated canon equivalent of Marvel’s What If. Each book takes the original story and twists it in a unique and interesting way. Sometimes they alter a certain event in the story that drastically alters how things play out, sometimes they create a sequel to the original films with a darker feel than the original and in some cases they just take the source material and do whatever the hell they want with it, but in a good way. I drive a lot for my day job, so I’m always looking for new audiobooks for long drives, which is how I discovered this series in the first place. Today, we’re looking at my favorite offering from this series, As Old As Time, a much darker take on the Disney classic, Beauty & The Beast which asks, what if the mysterious enchantress who cursed the selfish prince with his beastly fate and Belle’s long lost mother were actually one and the same? Warning, there will be heavy spoilers in the article to follow. Since this is a very good book that I feel all of you should read, I'm giving you a chance to turn back now. You have been warned. So what are we looking at in terms of story? Well, long before the events of the film we all know and love, a small kingdom in France was the last free haven for Les Charmantes, which is the local catchall term for those born with magical abilities. Maurice, an inventor looking to make his fortune, arrives in the kingdom and falls for a local enchantress named Rosalind. Rosalind sees Maurice’s kindness and reliability and returns his affections and it's not long before the two are wed. However, as is often the case with anything that one perceives as different, the locals start harassing Les Charmantes. That tension only grows worse when the kingdom is ravaged by an outbreak of black plague, something many feel was caused by the magically gifted individuals. Over time, folks with magical abilities start disappearing one by one. Rosalind pleads with the king and queen to help her people, but she’s callously turned away. Later, the black plague infects the king and queen, who entreat Rosalind for help. Insulted by the request after they turned a blind eye to the suffering of her people, Rosalind refuses their plea and allows the royal couple to parish. Fearing that the young prince may be just as bad as his parents, she arranges a little test for the boy and, well, we all know how that turned out. Getting back to the story we all know, the story pretty much plays out like it does in the film, that is until Belle heads into the forbidden west wing. This time, the Beast is too late to stop Belle from touching the enchanted rose, and Belle accidentally causes the rose to crumble along with any hope of breaking the curse. This also has the side effect of Belle getting a vision that reveals the true identity of the mother she never knew. Once Belle and Beast get past their initial animosities and figure out what’s going on, they agree to work together to find Belle’s mother and hopefully convince her to undo the curse. But their investigation may end up leading our heroes to a much darker and more sinister conspiracy. So, let’s waste no further time, and dive into, As Old as Time.

Main Character:

Belle and Beast in this story are very much the same characters they were in the original film. I have no difficulty believing that these are the same two people who fell in love in the first film and likely would have done so just the same if things had played out like they did before. That said, because Belle and Beast's circumstances are different this time around, so is their dynamic. Remember, Belle didn’t actually know about the curse, or at least didn’t know all the details of how to break it. Here, because of Belle’s vision, everything is now out in the open. Belle knows all about the nature of the curse and feels responsible for hastening its completion and thus vows to help find a way to break the curse. Beast is also changed by these new circumstances. You think Beast would tear Belle apart for what she’s done, and yeah, he’s pretty pissed at first and understandably suspicious once he learns that Belle is the daughter of the woman who cursed him but once the reality of the situation sets in, his feeling is not anger, but resignation. Now that he’s a Beast forever, he no longer sees the point in getting angry about it since that won’t help his situation. By the way, while many versions of the story, including the original 1991 film, were pretty vague on exactly how old the prince was when the enchantress cursed him, this one outright confirms that he was only eleven years old at the time. Yeah, the enchantress cursed an eleven-year-old boy. Sure, he may have been a little shit, but he was still a child. This also means that The Beast really wasn’t allowed to mature like a normal human, so he still thinks like an eleven-year-old would, forcing Belle to almost take on the role of mother to him, though not in a creepy way since they do still eventually fall for one another. I actually rather enjoy the new dynamic between these characters. There’s a greater sense of understanding between the two now that everything is out in the open. Here, neither is aiming to fall in love, but to solve a mystery and find a way to undo the curse. You can tell that even though there’s much at stake, the two are having fun learning more about the strange history of the kingdom and each other. However, there are also some solemn moments, like when Beast takes Belle to visit his parents’ graves and he admits that they weren’t great parents or great rulers, but he still misses them. Overall, this is still the Belle and Beast we know and love, but this time, we approach their relationship from a different and unique angle and in my opinion, it works.

Villain:

Before we get to the actual main villain of the piece, there’s a fair bit of housekeeping to do. First, an odd trend I’ve noticed in reimagined versions of Beauty & The Beast is that Gaston often gets pushed to the sidelines to let a new main villain take control. Don’t get me wrong, Gaston is still an active presence in the story and has a vital part to play which we’ll swing back around to in a minute, but he’s not the actual main antagonist this time. Still, Gaston is still very much the over-the-top mascot for toxic masculinity we hate to love and love to hate.

I’ll give a brief mention of The Beast’s parents, the king and queen because they are a couple of serious pieces of work. Rosalind goes to them in the hopes that they'll intervene in the atrocities being committed against Les Charmantes, and they callously turn her away and decide to turn a blind eye to her people’s suffering. Years later, Rosalind and Maurice leave the Kingdom, and Rosalind finds herself summoned by the King and Queen again and they have the gall to demand Rosalind cure them of the Black Plague in exchange for forgiveness for the “crime” of leaving the kingdom. How do you like that, these two fuckers tell Rosalind’s people they’re on their own, and they’re surprised when she tells them to go fuck themselves? Oh, and did I mention that when the stable master, Allaric, goes missing, they tell their son it was his fault because he was too nice to him? What the Hell? Let’s just say we can see why the Prince grew up the way he did.

Now, on to the main event, and what a disturbing main event it is. Remember the asylum keeper from the original movie who Gaston tried to bribe into having Maurice committed? You know, the guy voiced by Frollo? Well, we go deep into the backstory of said asylum keeper, whose name is Frederique D’arque, this time around. Turns out that Frederique was born one of Les Charmantes, gifted with minor precognitive abilities, a gift he viewed as a curse. While he came to think of Rosalind and Maurice as friends, he made it no secret that he saw all of Les Charmantes, including himself, as an affront to the natural order and a disgusting parody of real humanity. What Rosalind never realized was the extent of his hatred of Les Charmantes. Turns out that Frederique, using some generous funding from the king and queen who saw the magical beings as a threat, built his Asylum as a means to experiment on Les Charmantes, which also means that he was responsible for many of the mysterious disappearances over the years. He even murders his friend, Allaric, in cold blood when he learns that he’s been helping Les Charmantes escape persecution. The night that Rosalind cast the curse, she didn’t even get an opportunity to regret it as she was kidnapped by Frederique’s goons and brought to the asylum where D’arque would spend the next decade slowly torturing the magic out of her. Such forms of torture include injecting iron into her blood, filling her stomach with loadstones and many other disturbing experiments, all of which he claims are for the good of humanity. It’s heavily implied that an experimental procedure he developed to remove the magical abilities from his own brain caused him to go mad, but given how long the disappearances were said to be happening, it’s clear that he was pretty sick from the get go. Without a doubt, Frederique D’arque is a monster, a twisted mad man who commits countless atrocities against innocent people just because they’re different. Even some X-Men villains would be creeped out by this guy. Before we move on, let’s discuss Gaston one more time. D’arque ultimately meets his end at Gaston’s hands. Gaston believes that by vanquishing the foul villain, he’ll be praised as a great hero. Wrong! Gaston butchers D’arque like an animal and the scene is so gruesome that most of the angry mob that’s been assembled by that point is deeply disturbed by the brutality of it all. Sure, D’arque may have been a monster, but many would have preferred he stand trial for his crimes and be made to rot in prison. This, this only managed to expose Gaston’s true savage nature, causing the village to no longer see him as a hero.

Side Characters:

The denizens of Beasts castle are pretty much the same as they’ve always been, save for a few minor changes, including the fact that it’s implied that none of them have faces in this version. That’s fucking creepy! Anywho, the one big change is with Mrs. Potts, given the first name of Beatrice in this version, the same one she got in the 2017 remake. Since this book was released only a year previous, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection. In any case, at some point, Mrs. Potts learns of the grim fate of Mr. Potts, the previously mentioned Allaric, and she’s devastated. When asked about him, she loses it, enraged that The Beast never bothered to ask in the ten years since he disappeared. It’s one of the only times we see one of the servants stand up to The Beast in any version of the story. Very interesting. Also, we learn that Chip’s full name is actually Charlamagne Potts and if the curse hadn’t stopped his mind from aging, he’d only be a year or two younger than Belle.

That leads us to Allaric Potts himself. Allaric was a great friend of Maurice, Rosalind and Frederique before he got a job as the royal stable master and married the head housekeeper. He was shown to be a good-hearted man with a strong sense of morality, making his death all the more tragic. While the prince was raised by his parents to think of his servants as possessions, he always had a soft spot for Allaric, considering him his favorite servant.

Monsieur Levi, the bookstore owner, gets a slightly expanded role. Turns out he was also a friend of Belle's family and, though she didn't know it, is actually Belle's godfather and also a couple hundred years old. It was through his own magical abilities that the iconic magic mirror that served as beasts window to the world was created.

But, let’s talk about the big draw here, Rosalind, Belle’s mother and the enchantress responsible for the curse. Rosalind is one of the most powerful Enchantresses in the world and is not one to suffer fools, especially if they’re harassing her people. She is also very willful and impulsive, something that makes her formidable, but also gets her into trouble. Once she sees Maurice stand up for an innocent child being harassed by a bunch of bullies, she more or less decides that she’s going marry him on the spot and Maurice just sort of rolls with it. She usually only uses her magic for benevolent or harmless purposes, but when someone pisses her off, she won’t hesitate to turn them into a pig or something else nasty. She does not regret her decision to leave the king and queen to her fate, but she does have the good sense to cast a spell that will spare the prince and the other children in the castle at least. However, she worries that the prince will turn out like his awful mother and father, so arranges a test for him, a test he fails. She also casts a spell that causes the kingdom and surrounding villages, including her husband and daughter, to forget Les Charmantes in order to protect them. However, after ten years of torture in the asylum, she begins to greatly reject her actions, believing that she took her anger out on the wrong person. In short, Rosalind is a complicated character. She isn’t evil or sadistic, but she is far from a paragon of virtue. Instead, she tends to act purely on emotion and instinct, even if those actions have long term consequences. Sounds a bit like the sort of person who would, I don’t know, agree to a lifetime of imprisonment to save a loved one? Like mother like daughter I suppose.

Memorable Scenes:

I really like this one scene where Belle teaches Beast how to cook a meal for himself, something he's never had to do in his life. It's nowhere near the quality of something his servants could have made, but he does end up enjoying the lesson. It actually reminds me of a similar scene between Tiana and Naveen from The Princess & The Frog, but not so much that it doesn't still feel like Belle and Beast.

There’s also this great moment towards the end of the book. At this point, Belle has been kidnapped by D’arque’s goons and has been brought to the asylum. In addition, the curse is starting to take hold and solidify, meaning that the Beast’s animal instincts are slowly taking over. His every instinct is telling him to storm the asylum and rip everyone he finds apart until he reaches Belle, but his remaining humanity tells him that as powerful as he may be, there’s no way he can save Belle without help. That leads him to do something he really doesn’t want to do, ask for help from Gaston of all people. Beast is struggling to keep his Beastly urges at bay as he entreats Gaston and the other tavern patrons for help. Gaston says that The Beast cannot be trusted and even tries to get people to believe that he and D’arque are working together, mostly to distract from the fact that he had been dealing with D’arque himself. Every one of Beast’s instincts are telling him to tear Gaston limb from limb because, well… he’s Gaston, but Beast holds back for the sake of Belle and tells everyone that they can do whatever they want with him as long as they help save the person he's grown to love. It’s actually very interesting to see The Beast win the crowd to his side. This also gives us a rather amusing line from LeFou, “D’arque Took my Aunt Fou-Fou, and she was only a little crazy.”

Story:

Despite being based on the original Beauty & The Beast, the stories are actually drastically different. The original was a love story, and a damn good one at that. While Belle and Beast still form a romance of sorts in this version, this feels more like a mystery novel with our two leads working together to uncover a great conspiracy. It's fascinating seeing these two in a new situation and how they deal with it while still remaining the characters we all know. That having been said, the theme of the original is absolutely intact here. No one is perfect, but what matters is putting forth the effort to be better. Beast knows that he was a rotten kid who probably would have made a lousy ruler had he continued to as the person he was before the curse. He even intentionally sheds his old name, knowing that even if he did become human again, he wouldn’t be that person anymore. And over the course of his time with Belle, even though it plays out much differently that the original, he still puts forth that effort, his growth as a man coming to a head when he learns that Rosalind only has enough power left to either restore his humanity or undo the curse placed upon the servants. Without hesitation, Beast chooses his servants, knowing that he may now remain a beast forever.

There’s also this running theme of how magic always comes back on itself, which I think means that even the most well intentioned actions can have unintended consequences and one must not act rashly. We must think before we act and consider the ripple effect that our actions can have, something that Rosalind did not do when she chose to curse the prince.

The Dark Disney Factor:

Since the Twisted Tales series is aimed at an older audience, they have the freedom to go quite a bit darker than their film counterparts, and this book certainly takes full advantage of that. I already mentioned the fact that the servants do not have faces in this version, making their hellish existence all the more unsettling. Also, when Belle completes the curse, the castle is slowly engulfed in this spider-web like substance that is nearly indestructible. There’s also this really creepy moment where Belle and Beast find Allaric’s corpse buried in the stables. And then there's the bit where Beast returns to the castle to find that his servants have all succumb to the curse and are now nothing more than lifeless inanimate objects, another thing I wonder if the remake borrowed. Things take a turn for the especially fucked up when we’re brought to the asylum and learn what’s really going on there, how D’arque is slowly extracting the magic from Les Charmantes through horrific torture. Belle has to fight her way out of the asylum and each room seems more nightmarish than the last and each described in disturbing detail. They really go the extra mile to make this asylum feel like hell on earth and they certainly succeed because this place makes Arkham sound like a day-care center. We already discussed Gaston’s brutal butchering of D’arque, but before that, Beast attacks the asylum keeper, the monster within now fully in control. Seeing the Beast, who has fought so hard to keep his monstrous nature at bay all this time, now fully surrender to it, is extremely unsettling.

Final Thoughts: This book was amazing. It takes the story of Beauty and the Beast and makes something entirely new out of it. Is it better than the original? That's debatable since they are very different, but I certainly enjoyed this new, darker interpretation. I don't think this is something the twisted tales series goes in for, but I actually think there's enough material for a possible sequel since at the end Belle and Beast decide to travel the world together in search of powerful magic users in the hopes of restoring Beast's humanity. There's a lot of story telling potential there. Maybe if one of you signs up at the Xanatos level on Patreon, I can give it a whirl myself, but for now, this book was a blast to read and I highly recommend it to all. Next time, it's my 100th article, and as such, it's time to finally return to Neverland for a very special look at, Hook.