This Near Pure Evil was headlined on December 2021.
NOTE: For her counterpart in the 2023 live action adaptation, see here.
“
Yes, hurry home, princess. We wouldn't want to miss old daddy's celebration now, would we? Huh! Celebration indeed! Oh, bah! In my day, we had fantastical feasts when I lived in the palace. And now, look at me–wasted away to practically nothing. Banished and exiled and practically starving! While he and his flimsy fish-folk celebrate. Well, I'll give 'em something to celebrate soon enough. Flotsam! Jetsam! I want you to keep an extra close watch on this pretty little daughter of his. She may be the key to Triton's undoing!
„
~ Ursula seeking revenge against King Triton.
“
(chuckles evilly) SO MUCH... FOR TRUE LOVE!!!
„
~ Ursula's last words before she gets impaled by Prince Eric.noicon
She is Ariel, Eric and Triton's arch-nemesis and is loosely based on the sea witch in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Little Mermaid. Her fervent confidence, flamboyance and theatrics have made her one of the most popular and iconic of all of the Disney villains and she quickly became one of the franchise's primary members following her debut.
In all of her appearances, she was voiced by the late Pat Carroll, while her human form, Vanessa is played by Jodi Benson.
While her getting banished by King Triton sometime before the events of the franchise could be seen as a bit tragic, it is never played for sympathy nor does it justify her actions in any way, as she simply wants to overthrow him and take control of Atlantica herself, which is probably why she was banished in the first place.
She made deals with a bunch of merfolk from King Triton's kingdom and presumably made sure they failed, before transforming them into polyps who would still be alive but unable to do anything, trapping them in a fate worse than death, which she has done to dozens to hundreds of Merfolk allowing her to pass the in-story heinous standards.
In the animated TV series, she attempts to take over Atlantica in several different ways, including attempting to kill a sea creature, attempting to transform Ariel and her friends into sea worms, trying to use an army to dominate the kingdom and enchanting the human items in Princess Ariel's grotto in an attempt to wreak havoc on Atlantica, putting the entire kingdom in danger.
She casually ate a bunch of anthropomorphic fish and later uses some of the polyps as ingredients to make a spell.
She makes a deal with Ariel, who was distraught due to her forbidden crush on Prince Eric from the surface world and wished to be human like him, where she transformed her into a human, but with the condition she had to kiss Prince Eric and surrender her voice to her as payment. Even if she succeeded in the deal, Ariel would never have seen her family again and would have stayed mute for the rest of her life, even though she would be able to marry Eric. If she didn't succeed in the deal, Ariel would belong to her for all eternity.
She sends her henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam to sabotage Ariel just as she and Eric were about to kiss while sailing through a lake, all to prevent Ariel from fulfilling the deal with success so she can get what she wants.
She casts a spell to pose as a human named Vanessa with Ariel's voice to make Eric fall in love with her and force him to marry her, just to make sure Ariel fails in the deal. For added insult to the injury, Ursula even makes Eric celebrate their wedding in a boat, inviting everyone except Ariel.
She tries to strangle Scuttle the Seagull when he and several marine creatures crash the wedding to prevent her marriage to Eric.
She laughs at Ariel's failure in fulfilling her deal and reveals herself, scaring all the guests and taking Ariel back to the sea.
She uses her deal to get Triton to take Ariel’s place as one of her polyps, trapping him in a fate worse than death so she can steal his trident and use its magic to take over the kingdom.
She orders Flotsam and Jetsam to drag Eric into the depths so he can drown for hurting her with an harpoon.
She then tries to kill Eric by shooting him with the trident, only for Ariel to mess with her hair by pulling it down and leading her to kill her own henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam.
She tries to kill Ariel and Eric after they tried to stop her from taking over the kingdom, summoning sunken ships to crush Eric with them and knocking Ariel into a whirlwind to shoot her with the trident's rays. While she was also angry at them for making her kill her own henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam, that was an accident on their part and even then, she wanted Eric dead anyways.
While she has some comedic moments, she's still played completely seriously in-universe, so much so that characters such as Flounder and Sebastian even outright fear her, as the two are always seen in fear whenever they appear in a scene involving her.
Though she receives a horrifying death by being impaled in the stomach by Eric's ship, it's not played for sympathy and she completely deserves it for all the horrible things she did to the entirety of Atlantica, Ariel, Eric, their friends, and their families.
After her demise, she is indirectly responsible for her younger sister Morgana to have her revenge on Ariel and her family in the second film.
While her mother favored her over Morgana, she never mentions either of her family members, so it's left vague if she even cares for them.
Ursula's usurping actions, petty backstory, and sincere belief that the last thing men want is for women to conversate with them, combined with keeping souls in her backyard to suffer for her amusement, if anything all makes her a living photocopy of the Devil straight up.
What Prevents Her from Being Pure Evil?[]
She genuinely cares for Flotsam and Jetsam, as she treats them with support, praises them whenever they get their tasks done for her, and mourns their deaths when she accidentally kills them with the trident due to Ariel pulling her hair and messing up her aim; even briefly (yet deliberately) dropping the trident to hold what's left of the eels' remains in sorrow before targeting her rage towards Ariel and Eric since they were the ones who caused her to kill them in the first place and is played for sympathy.
Trivia[]
She is the third icon of the Near Pure Evil wiki as the first two (being Randall Boggs, and then Aku) were both approved as Pure Evil.
One of the originally proposed endings for The Little Mermaid would have had Ursula accidentally killing Flotsam and Jetsam like in the finished version, but not mourning or even minding their deaths after killing them. Had this been kept in the finished film, this could have qualified Ursula as Pure Evil, making her crueler.
She is one of the few Disney villains to show actual care for her minions, since other Disney villains often treats theirs like tools and have no absolute care for them whatsoever.
She and Zira are the only Disney animated feature film female Near Pure Evils to not be from a computer-animated film and only ones to be the main antagonists.
She and Hades are the only two Disney Renaissance main villains neither to be Pure Evil nor Villainous Benchmarks and the only one from that category to be female.
She and Amos Slade are the only two main antagonists of a 1980s Walt Disney Animation Studios film not to be Pure Evil and the only one from that category to be female.
In the novel Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch by Serena Valentino, Ursula started out as the adopted daughter of a human fisherman, and that she grew up unaware of her powers and her true lineage. When the townspeople attempted to burn Ursula at the stake after finding out about her powers, her adoptive father was murdered when he tried to help her, which drove an enraged Ursula to destroy the village in revenge for her adoptive father's death. Eventually, Triton appeared and took Ursula over to Atlantica by revealing their true lineage to each other as siblings. However, Ursula learns out too late that Triton only summoned her as a means of gaining the throne of Atlantica by proving that she is either dead or unworthy, which drove her to vow revenge on Triton after she is exiled. Had this story been labeled canon, Ursula would have qualified as Inconsistently Heinous as it would make her too tragic.
She is the only Disney Near Pure Evil to part of the Disney Villain Councils.
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Near Pure Evils
