In medieval culture, an event like a royal christening is not a private party; it’s the public social event of the year. To not invite any person of rank to such an event is a deadly insult.
Maleficent is certainly someone you wouldn’t want at a party, but she’s also someone powerful enough that only a fool would ever dare treat her with such blatant disrespect. The only way the King and Queen could possibly have gotten away with not inviting Maleficent was to not invite any of the fairies at all; inviting the other fairies and excluding her is explicitly taking sides in the conflict between the fairy factions.
Which means they made themselves her sworn enemies, and she responded by treating them as such from then on. If you actually get into analyzing the social dynamics of the scene, it’s very clear that Maleficent was willing to show mercy at first by giving the King and Queen a chance to apologize for their disrespect to her. She doesn’t curse Aurora until after she gives them that chance and they throw it back in her face with further disrespect.
And yeah, if the King and Queen had done the properly respectful thing and invited her, Maleficent would have given Aurora a scary awesome present. Moreover so would the other fairies, because at that point both sides would be using it as an opportunity to show off and one-up each other. What they gave her before Maleficent showed up was basically just trivial party favors by fairy standards.
How do you know so much about the social dynamics of medieval fairies
YEP. In the original versions, the only difference between the three “good” fairies and the “bad” fairy (who I don’t think even had names?) was that the bad one wasn’t invited – in other words, she wasn’t any more good or evil, she just got (accidentally, I believe) excluded from the festivities and in a fit of pique cursed the baby.
From the medieval perspective, those four fairies were all exactly alike – the blue or pink ones would’ve cursed the baby just the same if they hadn’t been invited.
But yeah, sign me up for the AU where they did invite Maleficent and she not only gives Aurora an awesome present but becomes a mentor and they end up ruling all the land with an iron fist.
Or something.
This is beautiful! It makes me so happy. I get so upset when people say Maleficent was just evil or in a snit for not being invited.
As I recall, the reason she wasn’t invited was because the Royal Family had run out of golden dishes for honoured guests. Rather than embarrass themselves by having an honoured guest eat off a less-fancy plate, and thus putting into place a hierarchy of honoured guests, for some level of political sense, it was better to have someone just not asked to come instead of having one honoured guest being treated lower in station than the others. Of course, if said uninvited guest found out, she would not be happy, but still… King and Queen made a bad call based on dishes, and did something even more insulting than offer her a tin plate.