Ursula (The Little Mermaid)

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Ursula
Ursula with Princess Ariel
First appearance	The Little Mermaid (1989)
Created by	Walt Disney Pictures
Voiced by	Pat Carroll
Characteristics
Notable aliases	Vanessa

Ursula is a villainess who first appeared in the 1989 Disney animated feature film, The Little Mermaid. She was voiced by Pat Carroll in the film, its subsequent TV series and the Kingdom Hearts video games. She is a sea witch who "helps" unfortunate people while achieving her own goals. From her waist up, she has the body of an overweight purple-skinned, white-haired female human (modeled after drag performer Divine), and from the waist down she has the tentacles of a black octopus. In "The Little Mermaid" TV series, her kind was referred to as an Octopan.

Contents 1 The Little Mermaid 2 The Little Mermaid II 3 Fantasmic! 4 Kingdom Hearts series 4.1 Kingdom Hearts 4.2 Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories 4.3 Kingdom Hearts II 5 Trivia

[edit] The Little Mermaid

Ursula the Sea-witch was once a senior member of the court of King Triton, the king of the underwater city of Atlantica. She was originally supposed to be his sister, but the scene mentioning that was deleted, and it is now considered only semi-canon. For her obsession with Dark Magic and treachery against the kingdom, Ursula was banished, and retreated to a secret lair on the outsides of the city with her two moray eel minions, Flotsam and Jetsam. For many years, she watched over the city waiting for her chance to seek revenge on Triton and gain the crown of Atlantica, becoming Queen of the oceans.

Ursula lives in an enormous skeleton of a sea monster or whale, in the middle of a field of underwater lava tubes and fissures. The inside is lined with a garden of writhing, green polyps--which all actually used to be merpeople. They all came to Ursula for help, making deals in exchange for different favors from magic, but then found themselves unable to fulfill their side of the bargain in some way. Although not directly stated, the film implies that the vast majority, if not all, fall into this category. Ursula thus claimed them as her own and added them to her collection. The witch herself lives in a large conch shell beside her cauldron. She spends her time brooding and plotting and occasionally indulges herself by snacking on shrimp.

After Triton punishes his daughter, Princess Ariel, for falling in love with a human, Ursula sends Flotsam and Jetsam to lure Ariel back to the sea witch's lair. Ursula proposes (in the song Poor Unfortunate Souls) that if Ariel gives her renowned singing voice to Ursula, Ursula will swap Ariel's fins for legs and transform her into a human, allowing her to pursue Prince Eric, the human she fell in love with. If Ariel does not succeed in kissing Eric within three days of the transformation, she will become Ursula's forever, being transformed into a little shriveled polyp. Ariel agrees to this, and Ursula magically pulls the mermaid's voice straight from her throat and splits her tail into two legs.

When Ariel comes "too close" to succeeding in her task, though, Ursula takes the form of a beautiful human female with Ariel's voice in order to sabotage the relationship. The form she assumes looks remarkably like Ariel, though she has brunette hair instead of red, and her overall coloring is darker than Ariel's. Taking on the name Vanessa, Ursula lures Prince Eric into agreeing to marry, using Ariel's voice to cast a spell of bewitchment and entrancement upon him, thereby thwarting any chance of Ariel's success. After Ariel and her friends manage to disrupt the wedding at the last minute, Ariel's voice returns to her throat and the spell upon Eric is broken. However, before they can foil Ursula's plot, the sun sets. Both Ursula and Ariel regain their true appearances on the wedding ship, the former in a spectacular lightning-enhanced transformation. Taking Ariel into the depths of the ocean, Ursula meets Triton. She proceeds to wither Ariel down into a polyp, and then gloatingly reveals that there is nothing Triton can do about it. She then begins to turn Ariel into a polyp, but makes Triton an offer--she will release Ariel if Triton takes her place. Triton agrees; Ariel is restored and Triton is withered. The crown and trident are now unowned--and Ursula rapidly claims them.

When Eric comes and attacks Ursula before she can kill Ariel, Ursula turns her attention on him. However, Ariel attacks her, then, causing her aim to go awry. The trident blast intended to destroy Eric instead disintegrates her two eel pets.

Enraged at this, Ursula grows to an enormous size. On the surface, she toys with the two tiny protagonists, creating a giant storm with Triton's magic trident. She then creates a whirlpool that brings a number of shipwrecks to the surface--a move that is a fatal mistake. As she laughingly prepares to kill the helpless Ariel with a bolt of energy, Prince Eric drives one of the ships through Ursula's heart, killing her. She is destroyed into many pieces and is lost forever never seen again, causing Triton and the other bewitched plants to return to their previous merfolk forms.

Ursula appears as a frequent villainess on the Little Mermaid prequel television series. Some of her plans there included her tricking Sebastian to conquer Atlantica, destroying a Bad Luck Creature, recruiting the Octopods against Atlantica and using Ariel's treasures against Atlantica.

[edit] The Little Mermaid II

Ursula doesn't appear in the movie, but she is mentioned various times and is seen in a picture in Morgana's lair. This picture sinks with Morgana when she is turned into a block of ice at the end of the movie.

[edit] Fantasmic!

As the Disney villains congregate in a bid to finally destroy Mickey Mouse, Ursula summons the powers of the oceans for her contribution. Mickey uses the powers of his imagination to destroy the sea-witch, and banish her back to the seas. Fantasmic! debuted in 1992, only a few years after The Little Mermaid premiered, and Ursula was already a very popular Disney character. Originally, a twenty foot Audio-Animatronic Ursula float travelled around her segment in the show on the water, but it was very expensive to maintain so currently Ursula only features in the animation projected onto water screens.

In the MGM Studios version, however, she has a much smaller role, her only speaking role being "Yes, it's so exciting! I'm happy!". However, the footage of her in the Florida version is the same as that (ks) in California's.

[edit] Kingdom Hearts series

[edit] Kingdom Hearts

In the video game Kingdom Hearts, for the Playstation 2, Ursula appears as one of Maleficent's co-conspirators, using the power of the Heartless to attack Atlantica and thus gain power. Taking advantage of Ariel's desire to see another world, Ursula tricks Ariel into giving her Triton's trident. In the game's first boss fight against her in her lair, Ursula gets some help from Flotsam and Jetsam, using her cauldron to grow in power, but she escapes. In the second battle against her, Ursula uses the trident to grow to massive size as she did in the film, but she is still defeated and apparently dies, though her reappearance in the sequel suggests that she survived.

[edit] Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

A facsimile created from Sora's memories in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, for the Game Boy Advance, Ursula takes Flounder hostage to force Ariel into giving her Triton's trident (she tells Ariel that Flounder has been taken to the "human world" and she needs the trident to rescue him). In the fight against Ursula, she uses the trident to shrink Sora and company, and attacks with electric breath, bubbles, and other attacks, but they again defeat her.

[edit] Kingdom Hearts II

Ursula recreates her movie role loosely in Kingdom Hearts II, again for the Playstation 2. She, Floatsam, and Jetsam appear to a despondent Ariel (strangely, she and the others do not seem to remember her and her previous efforts). She offers the young mermaid a deal: Ariel gives up her voice in order to gain human form, so that she may win over Prince Eric. However, if she fails to kiss Eric in three days, specifically by the sunset of the final day, she will belong to Ursula. Ursula then disappears, leaving Sora and his friends to search for her, to no avail. But she eventually makes her appearance on the third day, in the guise of Vanessa, using Ariel's voice to place a spell on Eric. But Sora uses the Keyblade to destroy the pendant Ursula was using, forcing her to kidnap Ariel. With Ariel's time up, Ursula threatens to turn Ariel into a polyp, but coerces King Triton to offer himself up in Ariel's place. Ursula then takes Triton's trident, growing to massive proportions, but Sora manages to knock the trident out of Ursula's hand, allowing Eric to kill her with it.

[edit] Trivia

• Ursula's original design was not that of an octopus. It was thought that she would be another sea creature, such as a rockfish. The production team, however, saw a documentary about octopuses, and decided that their multiple arms and overall imposing appearance would be perfect for the character they were creating.
• Although Ursula was modeled after an octopus, she is drawn with only 6 legs, due to the studio's budget.
• Ursula's lair is set inside a large skeleton of a seemingly ancient fish. Ursula's lair, including its own cauldron and a short "hallway" with her shriveled victims looking on helplessly, was actually noted as being the Leviathan in a few sources. In the video game Kingdom Hearts when you begin to enter the area where Ursula's lair is in, the subtitle says "The Leviathan". A Little Mermaid Disney comic revealed the origins of the creature: it was kept in a labyrinth by a race of eel-men, where it was used to train their warriors. When the creature escaped, it had to be killed so it wouldn't cause any serious damage. Ursula then acquired the carcass after making a deal with the eel-men.
• In the song "Poor Unfortunate Souls", Ursula recites the spell for taking Ariel's voice as:

Beluga, Sevruga

Come winds of the Caspian Sea

Larynxes, glossitis

Et Max Laryngitis

La voce to me

• In the up and coming Broadway musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid, Ursula not only sings Poor Unfortunate Souls but has several other numbers including Wasting Away, detailing her fall from grace, a reprise of Poor Unfortunate Souls and a song called All Good Things Must End which is presumably sung as Vanessa due to the lyric "see you in church, doll."
• In an interview with Disney Magazine, Pat Caroll claimed to have based Ursula on a combination of Uriah Heep, a used car salesman, and a Shakespearean actor.
• In the 2006 DVD of the film, deleted scenes have Ursula as King Triton's sister, making her Ariel's aunt. (This is also indicated in the book Disney Villains: The Top Secret Files.) This fact is also mentioned in the DVD guide. It is not clear if this is meant to be a fact of the finished film (with no indication) or an abandoned story concept. It may be noted that in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, Ursula's sister Morgana is unable to remove King Triton's trident from it's place in the palace, because only Triton's relatives can do so. If Ursula were Triton's sister, it could be assumed that Morgana would be as well, so she should have been able to remove the trident. It can be concluded, then, that Ursula's family relationship with King Triton is an abandoned story concept; their relationship may be clearly defined in The Little Mermaid III.
• According to Ursula in The Little Mermaid's entry in the Disney Princesses: My Side of the Story books, Ursula's actions for most of the film are actually the fault of a dark alter-ego she calls "Bad Ursula". In this book, she also harbors romantic attraction to King Triton, making their brother-sister relationship unlikely (or making the book non-canonical if Ursula and King Triton are siblings)
• The first song written for Ursula and the only one not used in the movie titled "Silence is Golden" was not liked and quickly "thrown away"
• The body text that is quickly flashed across the screen when Ursula offers Ariel the contract says: "I hereby grant unto Ursula, the witch of the sea... , one voice, in exchange for byon once high, Dinu*gihn thon Mueo serr on Puur-qurr I rehd moisn petn r m uenre urpti m srerp monk guaki ,Ch rich noy ri imm ro mund for all eternity. signed,"