#belleast

It’s such an iconic and memorable scene that’s it’s easy to overlook how it started, and misremember it. Recently I remembered it as them coming down the stairs together and heading straight for the ballroom, as if their night together was always going to be the dance, but no. They head to the dining hall together to have dinner and it’s Belle who grabs the Beast and makes him dance with her.

And it’s the way he’s genuinely surprised by this, and has to slowly ease himself into the dance because he hasn’t done it in forever, and Belle doesn’t notice and just rests her head on his chest like oh man…

After seeing everyone else's works during the countdown to Valentine's day, I thought that I would pitch in by making a ship collage on one of my favourite Disney couples. Belle and Beast (aka Prince Adam). Instead of focusing on the original 1991 Beauty and the Beast film, I decided to include the other films and Disney related franchises they have appeared in.

Fandom: Beauty and the Beast

Sample Size: 1,124 stories

One year he’s sulking by a slowly decaying rose, that mocks him with it’s allure and glow.

The next year he’s in a candlelit ballroom, dressed in his best clothes (that still fit), dancing with a woman he loves with all his heart.

The ballroom hasn’t been used let alone cleaned in the past ten years, yet here it is, brand new and grand. Most of his servants who haven’t done much for the last few years all helped put this together. They helped groom and style him to look his best. They helped clean the ballroom. They helped with the romantic candles, and the music, and everything else that had made the castle environments more inviting.

So the Beast is one of the most fleshed out Disney Princes and for good reason, since the entire story is about his redemption and learning to love and all that. The story is fundamentally about him falling in love and getting Belle to love him back, which is interesting for a Disney Princess film since they typically have the characters fall in love at first sight. At first, he instantly knows he should keep her around because she is his one chance at breaking his curse, but he doesn't really love her. He sees her as a means to an end and keeps her locked up and doesn't really try to make her comfortable or happy at all. Then she wanders into his room, and starts snooping around, and he yells at her. From Belle's perspective, she didn't know this was his room, nor does she even know he's cursed. For all she knows, he just is a weird beast-thing, so when she's investigating the West Wing and sees a torn up painting of a man, she probably connects the dots but before she can fully realise this, he yells at her and lashes out so violently he sounds like a feral animal. In a way, this could be viewed as Belle trying to learn more about him and him feeling threatened by this intrusion, since he has never really loved before.

It's also very fitting that the worst thing he does in the entire film, leads to Belle literally leaving. She was never imprisoned, so she just chooses to leave and nobody can really stop her. The fact that the Beast saves her when the wolves attack her, means that he was following her out into the woods, but he also didn't appear until Belle was in danger, which meant he was likely watching her to make sure she was alright and wasn't intending on forcing her back to the castle, which is a good starting point for his later redemption. Then after this, he never, EVER yells at her again. He never lashes out in front of her, he never mistreats her and he is instead nice to her. I truly believe if he had ever done anything like he had in the West Wing again, Belle would've left him. But he doesn't. Instead he spends time with her, gives her meaningful and thoughtful gifts and it's at this point that he has genuinely fallen for her, and not just because he has to. He loves Belle and would do anything for her, but Belle still sees him just as a friend at this point. Then there's the iconic dance. We don't see what sparks this dance, or what conversation was had, we just see both of them getting ready to look their best for each other, and then dancing together. It's such a cute and romantic scene, and his genuine joy and giddy when Belle nuzzles her head on his chest is so sweet. I genuinely think by this point, Belle did love him back and I'm just gonna assume the curse included her having to verbally say she loved him, since the curse only lifts after she says it, lmao. Anyway, it's clear from both of their body language and expressions that they are both very happy and very much in love, which must've been a huge relief for the Beast since that night just so happens to be his birthday and also the last day he has to break the curse. To him, he thought he finally did it and finally had redeemed himself enough to deserve somebody as good as Belle, so when she learns her father is lost in the snow, it's so fucking heartbreaking watching him let her go. To Belle, she'll be able to see him again and she doesn't want to leave him behind, she just has to go save her father first and then she'll come back. To the Beast, he's never going to see her again, and even if he did, he's only got a few hours left before his curse is permanent, and he can't imagine Belle being stuck with a monster like him forever.

So he lets her go and then he sulks in his room, basically just waiting for the rose to die so he can give up entirely. Then he sees villagers storming the castle a few hours later, and boasting about killing a beast, and I can only imagine he'd assumed the worst and believed Belle told her village about him and had sent them. Despite this, he doesn't move at all, he just sits there, still waiting, still sulking in his own silence, barely even reacting when Gaston walks in with an arrow pointed at him. Even after being shot in the back, the Beast doesn't fight back at all, and basically just lets Gaston slowly beat him to death. He would've died here had Gaston decided not to draw out his death, and just shot him in the head. Instead, he sees Belle has returned and instantly gets the strength and motivation to fight back. It's really obvious by what Gaston is saying that Belle is clearly the woman that Gaston most desires, and it's not too far fetched to assume that the Beast had an inkling that Gaston would've forced Belle into an unhappy marriage had he lost this fight, so he fights back, both for himself and Belle. Then he has the chance to kill him, and refuses it, because he has never killed anybody before and doesn't want to cross that line, even for somebody as horrible as Gaston. So he lets him go, and ignores him entirely for Belle. After Gaston dies, and he slowly bleeds out from his various injuries, not only is he fine with dying because at least Belle came back for him, but he literally says "it's better this way" as if him being dead would benefit Belle. He's so filled with self-loathing and self-doubt that he genuinely thinks Belle would live a happier life without him in it, my poor guy.

Like sure, he looks so weird when he turns around initially, but he looks fine for the rest of the film, and the insistence on basically erasing him to only focus on the Beast version kinda makes me sad. Whenever he's in any Disney media, he's always Beast form, including the direct-to-DVD "sequels", any crossover media (Once upon a Studio), and in the film itself he's only shown for two minutes. The most of Human Beast it feels like I'm ever gonna get is fucking Descendants, and not only do I hate Descendants but even if I liked that series, Belle and the Beast are completely different characters, that is NOT them lmao.

In the Twisted Tales? Beast the whole time. In the Disney Villain series? It's a prequel, so he's human but he's pre-redemption arc. Kingdom Hearts? He's a Beast the entire game except for a split second during the credits. I fuck with Beast Beast, but my god I just want some love for his human form too. It's probably because I'm way too emotionally invested in him, and seeing him only ever represented as a Beast makes me sad in ways I can't even begin to describe, since it's almost like nobody cares that he got to be happy in the end.