How Can The Ariel Villain'S Backstory Create Sympathy And Depth?

"Cry, Mermaid!" a sharp lash sliced into my back, forcing a yelp from my lips. Screams and sobs surrounded me on all sides, but no one would save me. Strong hands caught me beneath my arms and yanked me from the water. It was time for Tail Cut. The operation lasted hours. I felt every last slice of their blades, every new tendon sewn into my muscles and nail hammered into my bones. I screamed. I begged. I begged for them to stop, for them to kill me, just ended the pain. --- I have a secret, I am a mermaid. I should live in the ocean, but my tail was cut and I only owned legs. After escaping to Asterion, I hid my identity. I thought I could finally live a peaceful life, until that day I met the famous bad boy, the future Alpha, Caspian. --- I felt a strange prickling on the back of my neck. I spun around just in time to see Caspian prowling towards me through the darkened wings, his blue eyes positively glowing. Sharp white teeth flashed as Caspian's lips unfurled into a lethal grin, "Hello Mate."

When I learned that the villain was a merman who dropped pearls whenever he cried, I took out the discarded pregnancy test stick from the trash can and headed toward the rooftop. "Well, how many babies do you merfolk have in one pregnancy? Do they eat fish food or baby formula?" Theo Atwater, who was attempting suicide, slipped and almost fell from the 18th floor. I shook my head with a sigh. "Forget it. I'll just throw the baby into the sea after giving birth." Later, when the baby was born, Theo was too scared to sleep, fearing that I would release the baby into the sea. When the female lead, Melody Carlisle, and the male lead, Reagan York, were arguing and came to see us, he was looking at our baby’s swimming results and roaring, "You're one of us merfolk. How could you be afraid of water?"

To save the merfolk from slaughter, I seduced the vampire lord himself-Lazarus. He still loved me after all. For three days and three nights, he drowned himself in my body, unwilling to let me out of his arms for even a second. I roused from the haze of fleeting bliss, only to have a searing, corrosive liquid poured mercilessly over my head. "You with eternal healing can taste the sting of agony？" "Yet your trivial suffering pales in comparison to the loss of my kin you brought upon me. It is nothing at all!" "This is merely the beginning. Refuse to reveal where my parents lie hidden, and you shall never break free from this castle." He was convinced that I alone had destroyed everything he held dear. Holding the entire merfolk’s lives hostage, he confined me within the castle. Time and again, he tore open my chest by force, wrenching out my pearl of the mer, feeding its essence to Isolde to mend her frail flesh. He condemned me to sleepless nights, forcing me to cleanse the filth he left behind. Barefoot, I was made to dance the mermaid’s lament upon razor-sharp silver blades, writhing in pain to lull Isolde into slumber. Later, Isolde feigned a pregnancy. Driven by false tenderness for her, Lazarus took to slicing chunks of my immortal mermaid flesh with cold blades, brewing them into nourishing potions for her. Hatred for me burned deep in his bones, yet whenever I was on the brink of death, he would still force his own blood down my throat to keep me alive. "You presume too much on my lingering love for you, choosing silence over the truth, do you not? Aurora… tell me, what became of my parents?" I endured in silence, bearing witness to his love torn between hatred and longing. Soon, I would no longer need to guard that fatal secret. For a mermaid who dwells on land for three years shall wither and perish, severed from the sea that gives her life. Only three days remained until my final breath.

The dagger goes in before she understands her consort is the one holding it. ——— My consort is the one holding the blade. I fall into the Forbidden Zone with his voice in my ear — *You were never going to be the queen this kingdom needed, Rose is everything you are not* — and every stroke downward the Hollow drinks my color, my voice, my breath. As I sink through the dark I understand, in a rising tide of memory I can no longer outrun, what I refused to see: my cousin Rose has been his lover for three years. My uncle Rick has been my father's killer for seven months. I hit the Hollow's floor among the skeletons of seven women who came before me. I should die there. A black pearl pulses in the dark and asks me one question. I say yes. What rises from the Forbidden Zone is not the princess they pushed. My scales burn blood-red shot through with molten gold and piercing teal, edged in obsidian. My voice shatters coral when I choose. I can drain a merfolk's power until their scales grey to driftwood, and I can shift any being between human and merfolk form. But the pearl hungers. Black veins creep across my chest with every life I take. And the throne I want back? It was never the prize. It was the trap. ——— Will Irene become the villainess her kingdom fears? Or will she remember the girl they buried long enough to choose what kind of queen to be? And the older sister who has been waiting two hundred years to use her — what happens when Irene decides the family she was born into is not the one worth dying for?

Merida was a certified black sheep of the family. She loves to hear her grandmother's story about fairies, dragons, pirates and princesses and her favorite was the tale about the legendary pirate named Escarial, and a Princess called Athalia. Listening to her grandma’s folktales was her routine all throughout her eighteen years of existence. That’s why when her grandmother died without having at least a last talk with her, she turned badly depressed. She didn’t go to school at all, and just stayed in her grandmother’s room to lock herself away from the rest of the world. Three days after her grandmother’s funeral, strange things happened in her room. The painting her old woman often gazed on suddenly moved and glowed. She succumbed to it, helpless, and had nothing to do to save herself because of the force that was beyond overwhelming. The next thing she knew, she was in North Sonnenfield. What’s more shocking to her was the name she’s called as by her servants; Princess Athalia—the heir of the throne, and the only daughter of King Eldar of North Sonnenfield. She was in awe, because she remembered that King Eldar was the character in the story. The palace where she found herself lost was the same place where the brave princess who ventured the dangerous sea had lived. She loves being in a Sonnenfield. However, she knew to herself that the day will come when she would wake up from a dream. But life always has a twist because Captain Escarial came to the scene. She expects that he will be gentleman just like pirate captain in the book. But to her horror, this Captain Escarial is snobbish, rude and proud. Oh, how she hates him!

In the 1980's in a small, not too well known town, a young Black girl named Ariel Smith in a mostly white school juggles her studies to get into college, and deal with a murderer committing multiple hate crimes, so you'd think she wouldn't have time for romance until she saved a young white boy named Ernest Rivers from drowning, literally. "Dangerous? He looks so peaceful here. Angelic almost. How could someone so beautiful be dangerous?" Satan was once an angel. Warning: depictions of sexual assault, racism and murder throughout the story. If any of these topics are triggering for you, I do not recommend reading. Thank you.