A Peggy Lee number and an irregular Lindy hop; a Dean Martin song danced playfully cheek to cheek, Margarethe humming in Lucy's ear, though she does have to stoop. The countdown brings them to a halt for more drinks, Margarethe throwing the curtains aside so they can see the fireworks from the factory in the hills, turning to look at Lucy, and seeing her look--as she always does--incredibly tempting. The devil had to have put those huge eyes in that elfin face.

What can a woman do? Seven, six, five...

magic and the supernatural technically exist in margarethe's original canon, given the intervention of a fairy godmother in ella's life, the magical transformation of various animals, and so forth. that said, she is very stubbornly non-magical as a positive attribute. that is, it's not simply that she doesn't have magic nor does anyone magical intervene in her own life, it's that she more or less rejects it on some level that goes beyond the rational element of her mind saying "magic doesn't exist", to the point where i consider this a characteristic of her having something that is a quality of non-magic, versus simply the negative of not having magic herself.

the reason i have this hc is because of a few moments in the 2015 movie. one of the problems with the 2015 adaptation is that it tries to over-rationalize the story, adding padding and explanations in order to explain away some of the "cinema sins" elements of the original fairy tale. it's not great from a storytelling standpoint, but for me, it gives me some useful information about marg and her relative position in the magical world she technically inhabits.

in the 2015 movie, the writers attempt to solve the problem of ella going to the ball without being recognized by her stepfamily by having the fairy godmother cast an additional spell that makes her unrecognizable to them. she explicitly says, "don't worry, i'll make sure they don't recognize you," before casting the spell here (the sparkles surrounding ella in the second image).

and indeed at first it seems like no one knows it's her. marg goes snooping around the ball, leading to her first encounter with the grand duke, but there's no hint at first that she knows it's her. but when they get home and are sitting with ella in the kitchen (their equivalent of "a lovely night", more or less), marg is watching ella like this as she's telling the story about the "vulgar young hussy" who "threw herself at the prince":

then, she tells anastasia and drisella after they complete the story, "it doesn't matter, girls. the ball was a mere diversion. the prince is not free to marry for love. he's promised to the princess chelina of zaragosa." and when she says that, she's staring at ella like this:

i think it's extremely clear at this point that she knows ella is the mystery princess. it's the only way that the events that follow--margarethe hearing the royal proclamation, then going to unearth the glass slipper and confront ella about the ball and her relationship with kit--make even a little bit of sense. i might talk about her reasons for holding onto this info and waiting in a follow-up post, but for now, the point i want to make is:

the fairy godmother is a powerful being (following later cinderella cartoon canon, her wand alone is so powerful that when lady tremaine steals it, she can use it to alter time itself). i can only imagine that her spell made ella look completely unrecognizable, hence why even ana and dris don't figure it out until the end of the movie (i will note that they are pretty unobservant and don't see ella dancing/swaying with herself, so they are missing that clue). but given that all it took for 1950 lady tremaine to recognize ella as the mystery princess was that dancing... the added wrinkle of the magic spell implies something about 2015 tremaine; it says something about her and her perception.