I love any big, brutish character who gets a little shy around girls, and that’s what the Beast is to me: he’s a teddy bear who can fight wolves and mad hunters, but will cuddle you up in front of a fire. Plus, there are many adorable moments between him and Belle.
There are so many reminders of the Beast’s humanity throughout this story, and it only further endeared me to the character. Luckily, there were people that showed him kindness and fairness, so he learned some of that too, making him a smart and self-aware, if still quick-tempered, individual. Here, we see how his parents treated their subjects during a plague, and you can see how he became who he is. He is mean and course and unrefined and all that, but that’s only because he is angry, scared, and confused. He’s actually one of my favorite characters in all of Disney. The Beast, fortunately, was completely in character, and I definitely appreciated that. You don’t have to give your characters more “dimension” by making them quick to throw cleavers on a kitchen counter. Now, having a little bit of an attitude was part of Belle’s character to begin with, so it’s not completely out of line. Similar to Aurora in Once Upon a Dream, Belle is much quicker to anger than I imagined she could be. Something I’ve noticed about Liz Braswell’s entries in this series is that she likes to make her heroines angry. Thus begins a mystery that Belle, the Beast, and the castle staff try to solve before the curse is complete, and the Beast’s kingdom disappears forever. And she sees a strange vision through this magical object: her long-lost mother was actually the Enchantress that cursed the Beast and his servants. In this twist on the Disney story, Belle actually touches the Enchanted Rose in the West Wing.
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