It's not red.... Calista
They're so cute
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@firephoenix23
It's not red.... Calista
They're so cute
these sofia outfit concepts posted on instagram by phillip light are making me utterly giddy SHE LOOKS JUST LIKE A MAGICAL GIRL!!!!!!! i cant get over the aprons it reminds me of kira kira a la mode AHHHHHHHH AHHHH!!!
I finally finished all the episodes that have come out so far for Royal Magic and I gotta say hands down Camila is my favorite out of Sofia's new friends
I love that she just pops in and scares the hell out of everyone and like just impulsively tries out spells she's never done before because eh why not. And even when she does them wrong she's just so like chill about it. And her Cedric fangirling like same girl
And the best part is none of her friends think she's a bad sorceress or don't believe in her abilities and in fact they never get mad or dismiss her when the spells go wrong. Instead the focus is on the actions of the other characters who asked for her spell like Zane in the Tippty Tap Dance and Amber in Veggie Good Deed
It's so different from the way ya know Cedric was treated all his life. He could do the spells right he just messed up because he got nervous. I have no proof of this but I like to think if The Incident had never happened Cedric might have been similar to Camila. Maybe not as extroverted but like more chill with making mistakes
But no. At least he's finally respected now after 30 FUCKING YEARS
How I thought this interaction would good but I’m glad people are praising him now
I am loving it! Props to the royal magic team
love royal magic’s mlm wlw solidarity representation
Guys it's actually so cute that in the three months leading up to Royal Magic, Cedric basically got to do what he said he always wanted to in the pilot, slaying dragons and battling ogres 😭🥺
In an article by the LA Times, information about Sofia the First: Royal Magic’s main villain has been revealed.
Her name is Zandrya and is played by Eden Espinosa, known for playing Wicked’s Elphaba on Broadway, and Cassandra in Tangled: Before Ever After. She describes the character as “loud, bratty, confident and powerful.”
Creator Craig Gerber says that the character is made to have an entitled air, “as if all of the magic should just be given to her and she shouldn’t even really have to work for it.”
She is a sorceress looking for magical items to make her more powerful, but taking Sofia’s amulet will be a challenge for her due to Sofia’s confidence in her magical abilities growing. Zandrya is also a master of disguise, and takes a different form in each episode her appears in an attempt to fool Sofia and steal her amulet.
Espinosa says that despite this, she believes Zandrya may be a little misunderstood, and that some interactions with Sofia may make her question what she’s doing.
Are you fucking kicking me?! My mind is literally blown!!
And her having a pet owl?! HELLO?!?!?!
Did Craig watch TTS and see Cass’s season 3 villain arc and was like wait that’s a good idea 😅
And her being a master of disguise what if she disguises herself as Cedric and tries to take Sofia’s amulet 🫢
Pictured above: two well-adjusted men who are totally put-together with no issues whatsoever
(btw both have big sister issues and their moms were mostly helpless against their strong-willed fathers😄😃)
(Baileywick I’m so sorry but I’m gonna put u through the blender I love u sm buddy)
This is lowkey so good and your point about Baileywick makes sense
He’s all about taking care of the king and doing what’s best for the kingdom and was probably just doing what he thought was right and maybe what King Roland I told him to do as well
Why I think Cedric is neurodivergent
✨ Hey what’s up Sofia the First fandom and fellow Cedric enthusiasts 🧙♂️🪄
I’ve wanted to make this post for so damn long but I’ve been so busy and a little imitated 👉👈
But with Royal Magic coming out in just 2 weeks I thought well fuck it
I’ve seen a lot of different analyses about the show, about Cedric, his family some of the villains, etc., but I really wanted to throw in my two cents here and do my own analysis on why I think Cedric is unintentionally written as neurodivergent
To my actual shock I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else talk about this. I’ve seen headcanons here and there but that’s it and I’m so surprised because in my honest opinion I’ve never seen a character so obviously neurodivergent in my life (okay maybe not in my life but still)
Now I’m not a psychologist so I can’t like officially diagnose anyone so I’m going to just use the word neurodivergent as a broad term to describe these traits
That being said I do have ADHD and most if not all of my friends are neurodivergent and all across the spectrum so I feel like I have a general idea of what I’m talking about
So to the best of my ability I’m going to go over each symptom that I see from him and use canon examples
There really isn’t any order to how I put all this together. Some symptoms have more information on them than others and a lot of them overlap but I did my best
So buckle up and get comfy this in an ungodly long post you have been warned
Very forgetful
(Or some sort of working memory issue)
For me, this was one thing that I noticed that got me to raise my neurodivergent eyebrow at Cedric because it happens SO often to him
For example in Substitute Cedric his main reasoning for going and teaching Sofia's class was so he could go and get Vex Vine for his potion but by the end of the episode Sofia tells Cedric that he can go to the greenhouse now and he says "Why would I go there?"
The same thing happens in the episode Hexley Hall. He starts off saying to Wormwood how he can't wait to learn more about the amulet but by the end of it he has completely forgotten about that to help Sofia against Grimtrix
Now maybe you're still not sure since there was a lot of shit happening in those episodes but what about in the episode In Cedric We Trust
Wormwood tells Cedric that one of the crowns was made out of elven gold and phoenix feathers, but when Cedric goes up to tell Roland he messes it up and says it made from phoenix gold
Maybe he was nervous to impress Roland but he seemed pretty confident in his answer and even made a pun about Roland’s name before he walked up to him so I think it's more likely that he just forgot what Wormwood told him
Okay so maybe you're still not convinced but get ready for what I think are Cedric’s neurodivergent magnum opus: Cedric Be Good and The Fliegel Has Landed
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I'm going to start with Cedric Be Good because oh my god this episode. Now Cedric does a lot of things in this episode but this is the forgetful section so I will try to stick to him being forgetful. Let’s start from the beginning
So the episode starts off with Cedric making a potion that will let him gain a power from the amulet but he's gotta switch out a fake one that he's made with the real one
So he hides behind a tree, successfully switches them only to then PUT THE AMULET ON HIMSELF
I remember when I watched this episode for the first time I was yelling at the screen like what the fuck are you doing Cedric!? Don't you fucking remember that it curses you when you do something wrong? Maybe he didn’t know stealing was wrong but I think that’s silly
Maybe it's been a few years since he told Sofia about the blessing and curse shit but HE was the one who told her about it. And in the episode Cedric's mom is the one who has to remind him
I don't even know why he put it on in the first place. All he needed to do was hold it in his hand and walk to his tower and dip it in the potion
But he didn't do that he put it on and was surprised that his fingers got sticky and completely forgot about the curse/blessing thing
So obviously you know how this goes if you’ve watched the episode. Cedric goes into town does something good, gets a power, then does something "evil" then loses said power
With some of the powers I do think Elena was fucking with Cedric but with others it genuinely felt like he forgot that the amulet would curse him, especially when he gained a power he thought would be useful enough to take over the kingdom
For example there's at one point he gets like these Elsa ice powers and he gets all excited about how he’s gotta use it to take over the kingdom as if Elena would let him do that please and accidentally he freezes a lake and causes a boat to crash into a dock
He loses his power of course but then says "No matter how hard I try I just cannot be good"
I mean I don't know about everyone else but when he said that my first thought was but okay that wasn’t evil
It just seemed like he in his excitement of gaining a useful power he forgot that the amulet could curse him
And my initial reaction to him forgetting all the amulet's lore was: Why does he keep forgetting this very important detail about the amulet? Why can’t he just remember it?
This is the exact same type of mentality a lot of adults had in my life as I was growing up. I would constantly forget things even if they were important. And taking over the kingdom was really important to Cedric at this time in the show
And yet he just can't remember this one little detail about the amulet even though it’s really important to him
It feels like something else is constantly getting in his way and it's not that he's too "evil" to be good, or a bungler or stupid. It looks like a working memory issue
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The second episode I wanted to talk about was The Fliegel Has Landed because I find what he does in this episode to be so interesting
So in this episode Sofia goes to get Cedric to help her create some cave crystals but it doesn't work.
So he goes to the cave to stop the fleigel himself but instead of blasting her away he creates a bunch of chickens and word-for-word says "I forgot to wipe off the eyeshell powder"
Now I don't know all the lore of the show but I feel like cleaning off your wand before using it for the next spell kind of seems like Wand Care 101
But Cedric didn't do that he straight up said I FORGOT and that's why his spell didn’t work. Not because he was nervous or something affected his wand but because he just simply forgot. I mean I rest my case
He does make a lot of mistakes because he’s nervous but there are also a lot of times he makes mistakes and it's NOT from him being nervous
And I think there are other things getting in the way of him being this big bad Disney villain like him potentially have an…
Executive Dysfunction
Now this was definitely thing where I thought oh god get this man on whatever the STF equivalent of adderall is
Now if you don’t know what executive dysfunction is it’s a symptom that disrupts the brain’s ability to control thoughts and behaviors. Most neurodivergent people have it
There are other things that are associated with it but but I will be mainly talking about Cedric’s lack of ability to plan a coherent “evil” scheme
Right from the start in the pilot he gives Sofia a sleeping spell to put everyone asleep and as a way to get the amulet
It’s a good plan but does he get it? Nope because he didn't realize the sleeping spell would also affect him and fell asleep
Did he forget that would happen? Did he just not stand far enough away and already knew? Did he not realize that it would affect him? We’ll never know but it’s clear Cedric didn’t either and he made the plan
This is just a common theme with Cedric and his "evil" plans. Like in The Big Sleepover, his plan doesn't seem that well thought out
The plan consists of him putting on a puppet show, then ask Sofia to give him her amulet, she'll give it to him, and then take over the kingdom. But just TWO episodes ago she told him that she never takes it off so this would have never worked
In A Royal Mess, Cedric is so hyperfixated on the amulet (more on that later) that being asked to fix the royal mural gives him this idea to use a spell to bring small objects to him but once again we ask the question how was this going to work out? Wouldn't Sofia have seen the amulet floating toward him? How would he explain that to her as it landed in his hand?
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Just like in Cedric Be Good and The Fliegil Has Landed, The Leafsong Festival is Cedric's executive dyfuntion magnum opus. First off he makes up his plan on the spot when Sofia brings Crackle to ask him to get rid of her fire
So with Crackle's fire gone, he covers the whole kingdom in forever frost, which is apparently really slippery, which he knows and says out loud
So what does he do in the next scene? Immediately steps on the ice and slips all over the place....
Why didn’t he put some spikes on his shoes or use a floating spell. And WHY did he take the dragon fire with him?
Anyway if you’ve seen the episode you know how it goes, he slips, the dragon fire falls out of his hand, and in the end Crackle gets her fire back and unfreezes the kingdom
Even if somehow Cedric didn't drop Crackle's fire, how was this plan even gonna go?
March up to Roland and the royal family and say, "Make me king or I won't fix the ice?" Roland would have just probably arrested Cedric on the spot
Cedric isn't stupid or a bungler. All the plans are good in theory, but there really isn't a lot of thought put behind them
It’s a good thing he has Sofia as a friend because he has a serious…
Lack of social skills & friends
I mean this one is basically confirmed in canon at least with the lack of friends. In Mystic Meadows Winifred says “Sofia is the nicest friend you’ve ever had and in fact might be the only friend you’ve ever had”
And ofc with the banger My Evil Dreams where he says "My evil schemes were my friends when I was alone" implying that he really didn't have a lot of friends
We technically don't actually know why Cedric doesn't have any friends. I think it's been inferred by the fandom that it's because of his association with The Incident and Cordelia telling everyone he’s a bad sorcerer
And definitely think that’s one piece of it. He doesn't want to be made fun of or bullied so he stays out of everyone's way but I also think it could be because I don't think he has the best understanding of social situations
Going back to his “evil” plans, a lot of them do fail because he doesn't have the executive functioning skills to complete them but they fail because he doesn’t really take into consideration that other people can’t just talk it out. It’s just he expects people to act exactly as he expects them to
The best examples I can think of is in Princess Butterfly and The Amulet and the Anthem. In both cases he expects Sofia to be in this big huge pickle be backed so far into a corner that she's just gonna have to give him her amulet
But in both cases none of that even comes close to what happens as Sofia just talks to Amber, her friends, and well Princess Belle to sort it out
He's just throwing these half baked plans and doesn’t seem to really understand that other people have their own individual thoughts
It probably also doesn't help that he's very...
Disorganized & Messy
Cedric sooo disorganized and messy. Of course the best example I can give of this is in Cedric's Apprentice when says "I can't find anything in this mess"
And we know he created said mess because a minute later when he’s yapping to Wormwood about taking over the kingdom he drops a vial on the floor and later knocks over the cauldron when singing Cedric the Great
And that's not all of it. One of my favorite subtle moments from that episode is when Sofia goes to clean his spellbook she gives a loud "Ick!" and proceeds to wipe whatever gunk Cedric had on it
It gets even better when she tells him that the spellbook was dirty, he goes "SO?" which I just find so funny
What’s even funnier to me is that he never once thought to clean his spellbook when he was trying to create the invisibility potion
Then of course in The Winter's Gift we get even more of a confirmation that Cedric is messy af
He says "Where is my family wand? It always goes missing when I need it." That's why Sofia's gift was so special to him and why it meant so much to him
He obviously loses his wand enough for Sofia to notice so she made him something to help with his disorganization which is just so 🥹
It's good that Sofia really values his friendship since I'm pretty sure Cedric has...
Rejection Sensitivity Disorder
I saw this headcanon lurking around on tumblr but I can’t find it anywhere but I am completely subscribed to it
Now I’m pretty sure RSD isn’t an official neurodivergent symptom but I think so many ND people have experienced it that many have accepted it as one
To sum it up briefly RSD means that someone will experience intense emotional pain related to being rejected
This could mean getting embarrassed easily, having low self-esteem, troubling in believing themselves, and turning their feelings inward, which may look like a snap of severe depression
Not only that but a lot of the time people with RSD might even “feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection”
Hmmm sounds really familiar to someone right. There are really three examples I can think of where Cedric kinda of displays this behavior
In Cedric’s Apprentice after Cedric was rejected by Roland he just sits in his workshop staring at nothing as Sofia cleans up around him
In Mystic Meadows after his father doesn’t give him the family wand he sits his family’s couch eating jellybeans while Sofia and Winifred are talking to him
And of course the biggest example I have is how utterly defeated he looked after getting rejected by Roland in The Enchanted Feast. I mean look at how upset he looks in that gif. He’s just laying there on his open spellbook
If Cedric had RSD it would explain why he would get so nervous before performing in front of Roland or really anyone because he’s afraid he’s going to get rejected. Of course, none of this explains how he can be so...
Impulsive
Well I’m going back to Cedric Be Good again because I gotta talk the last scene of this episode
So by the end of the episode he’s finally got his super strength and holds onto to it long enough to tell some servant to get Roland so they he can use his super strength to take over the kingdom even though Elena would have probably taken his power away
And instead of just waiting what does he do? He does some sort of jazz hand thing and says “I can’t wait any longer” and sits down on Roland’s throne and declares himself king
This kind of ties into his forgetfulness and executive dysfunction because ofc he when he declares himself king he says “I’m going to rule with an iron fist.” The amulet glows and he gets once again
If he wasn’t so impulsive or excited he would have waited for Roland to show up and then shown his super strength but he didn’t he just sat right down and lost his power
But that’s not all as Cedric can be very...
Easily distracted
This one really isn’t shown that much but the best example I can give is in the episode The Amulet of Avalor when Cedric completely abandoned the plants he was collecting for his “evil” potions to go chase after the amulet all day
I would even argue that in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric got so distracted about his hatred for the fliegel and her bothering Sofia that he completely forgot to wipe off the eggshell powder and that’s why he’s spell didn’t work
Or maybe he’s just really distracted because he has…
Limerance
So limerence itself is not actually a ND trait but I know a lot of people who are ND relate to it
This is also another headcanon I mean lol aren’t they all that I saw floating around tumblr but i honestly think it really makes sense
Limerence is essentially a way to describe when someone is deeply infatuated with someone else
A lot of people confuse it with falling in love but it’s actually just another form of a hyperfixation but on another person and most of the time it can be very intense
Being very obsessed with someone, thinking about them all the time, getting very anxious about them
Obviously this show is not a romance show but I just can’t explain how Cedric got so obsessed with Sasha in The Enchanted Feast
Now I know this infatuation with Sasha from Cedric is kinda of a hotly debated topic since people are not sure if Cedric was put under a love spell by Miss Nettle or not
But if we’re going, for the sake of the argument, that he wasn’t under a love spell Cedric falls for “Sasha” really quickly and very strongly.
So much so that when Sofia goes up to express her concerns about her he brushes Sofia off and talks about how wonderful Sasha is despite not knowing anything about her
It’s very common for ND people with limerence to ignore any red flags and to ignore any flaws
Which I feel like is strange for Cedric since it seems like he’s always…
Constantly Irritated
Cedric for most of the show is known for being “grumpy” mainly at anyone coming into his workshop and asking for him to do something he doesn’t want to do
And most of the time when they first enter he will immediately ask them “What do you want” and “Why are you here” as if he’s trying to get them out as fast as he can
And while he could be doing that because he’s just an introvert there really rarely is a time that he isn’t annoyed or making a sassy comment so he seems pretty irritated most of the time which is common in ND people
Obviously we’ll never know why Cedric is constantly irritated but maybe it could be because he’s…
Not paying attention
So I have a few examples for this. In When You Wish Upon a Well Sofia gets turned into a cat and goes to Cedric to get him to turn her back into her normal self
But Cedric doesn’t help her and is completely annoyed that she’s flipping through his spellbook since he’s clearly working on something
So she leaves and Wormwood notices that she’s wearing the amulet and tries to get Cedric to notice it too but he doesn’t and kicks him out
The whole time I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see the amulet of Avalor on the purple cat sitting on top of his spellbook but saw a griffin last season like 20 something feet away. I know it was probably just for the plot but still
This also happens in The Fliegel Has Landed. The main reason Sofia and Cedric have to go down into the caves was because Cedric was out of diamond dust which he needed make cave crystals
But he never checked what he put on his wand and did the spell with eggshell powder instead and not diamond dust and the of course later forgot to wipe it off
Interestingly enough he wasn’t even anxious when he failed that spell he just didn’t check the label and only checked AFTER he did it
Maybe he was just excited to do his spell like when he’s…
Stimming
So this headcanon is from this really cute fanfic on Ao3 about Cedric spinning as a stim and after I read it I realized how much Cedric does spin in the show
For example spins and twirls a lot in Cedric be Good when he thinks he’s got a power that’s going to help him over the kingdom. It happens so fast that you really don’t notice when he does it
And of course when Sofia invites Cedric to meet Merlin in Gone with a Wand he literally spins in front of the mirror like I have in the gif
He also paces in Through the Looking Back Glass right before his sister visits. I’m sure there are other examples that I can’t think of but I am pretty confident in the fact the amulet of Avalor was an…
Implied Hyperfixation
Yeah saw this on tumblr as well and I’m fully subscribed to it. I know it was probably just a writing choice from season 1 to season 2 but it’s so interesting how Cedric is constantly thinking about the amulet and always making plans for it but the first time we see him after The Floating Palace he’s helping Sofia and Amber try and catch baby James. He doesn’t mention the amulet once
I thought maybe he would try and do something with the amulet but no he doesn’t. The only times he thinks about it is in The Enchanted Feast and The Curse of Princess Ivy but that’s only because other people were trying to take it. It’s as if he forgot it existed until someone else wanted it
Even he’s only “evil” plan for that season is in The Leafsong Festival which has nothing to do with the amulet.
And I know he’s into the amulet in Cedric be Good but it feels more like a brief interest back into it
I don’t know about everyone else but my hyperfixations fluctuate and most of the time I feel like I can’t really control them.
They just spring up at random points. It’s almost like a ope I guess we’re back into this again me with Sofia the first lowkey
But Cedric isn’t only into the amulet or taking over the kingdom. He’s always making potions which I think is an…
Implied special interest
If you go back and watch any episode that features Cedric I bet you a million dollars that he’s probably making some sort of potion or talking about making potions. And I’m not sure what these potions are
Maybe Roland is assigning him to do these but in one episode he mentions that it’s taken him 12 hours to make a potion that will turn toadstools into tornadoes
Not sure who’s asking for that or how that would be useful in any way. Maybe he made it to try and take over the kingdom? Or maybe he just really likes making potions
From what I’ve got from the show Roland doesn’t really ask him to do much so I assume all the potions he’s making are for fun
Even in the end of Substitute Cedric he’s so excited to teach Sofia and her classmates more sorcery that the first thing he mentions is teaching them how to make potions. Definitely sounds like he likes to do it for fun
And of course how could I not talk about his idol, the one he has a whole catchphrase on, Merlin. I don’t know but I don’t think it’s very neurotypical to have a whole catchphrase based on your favorite celebrity / hero / idol and especially one that you’ve used since you were a child
Not only that but in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric mentions that he has a book called Thursdays with Merlin so I assume he has the other weeks as well
Cedric has a lot of neurodivergent traits but I also think he has some…
Co-morbidity
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize and give their own ideas of what Cedric also might have: anxiety, social anxiety, depression, PSTD, etc
We know for a fact that Cedric gets nervous especially when performing in front of others and especially in front of Roland. He says it in Cedric’s Apprentice and In Cedric We Trust
Now it could be a trauma response from The Incident or for being bullied and teased all his life
It’s not uncommon for neurodivergent people to have multiple other disorders
For example, most adults with ADHD have at least two disorders. 80 to 85% have ADHD and one other disorder and more than half may have three disorders. This could include autism, OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, other learning disabilities, and so many more. And with people with autism it’s just as high around 85%
And this is the modern day. Imagine the 1800s or whatever time period Sofia the First is supposed to take place in
So Cedric having anxiety while potentially being neurodivergent is actually in fact very common
And for Cedric if it wasn’t his anxiety that was going to mess up his spell then it probably would have been one of the symptoms above. It’s like a double edge sword for him
And no matter what people would have seen him as a bungler whether he messed up from being anxious or being neurodivergent
And every mistake he made probably reinforced his own anxiety and everyone's perception of him being a "bungler"
And I think there are a few people to blame for…
Cedric's Life in the Castle
(Aka some people don’t know how to handle someone who’s neurodivergent)
Now I just want to preference that I don’t hate Roland or even Cordelia. I think those two are very interesting characters and have their own issues that they didn’t deal well with and unfortunately lot of it back fired onto how they treated Cedric
That being said… I have a few words about Goodwyn and his “parenting” skills. Let me explain.
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In Mystic Meadows we see that Goodwyn constantly corrects Cedric as he clearly thinks of him as a bungler whether from The Incident or from something else.
By correcting Cedric, Goodwyn thinks that he’s “helping” him become a better sorcerer and fixing whatever he thinks is wrong with him
It feels like Goodwyn wants to him fix Cedric and make him a better sorcerer by fixing what he thinks is wrong with him
And in the end Goodwyn does finally see Cedric as a good sorcerer but this is only because Cedric had to PROVE it to Goodwyn and not because Goodwyn did any self-reflecting on how he’s treated his son all these years. The lesson that Goodwyn learns is that oh I guess Cedric can do magic
And Cedric shouldn’t have had to prove himself to his father. Goodwyn should have been proud of Cedric regardless. But he didn’t he tried correcting him instead and too saw him as a bungler even if he never said it
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While I love Mystic Meadows as an episode I do have a problem with the idea that Cedric could only be a good sorcerer in his father’s eyes if he didn’t fail and Goodwyn only believes in him now because he successfully saved everyone
Especially with the way that Goodwyn is so dismissive of Cedric before he saved everyone it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
I know it’s just a preschool show and this episode came out over what like over a decade ago but it’s still something I saw people pointing out on Tumblr and I agreed with them
So how does this relate to how Cedric was treated in the castle. Well in my opinion the way that Goodwyn treats Cedric, as if he’s different and needs fixing, is very familiar to how a lot of ND people are treated by parents who don’t really understand it
A lot of the time if a parent has a ND kid and they don’t understand them they’ll do everything in their power to either fix them, blame them for things that are out of their control, mock them, get annoyed at their struggles, or think they’re inferior to them
All things Goodwyn does to Cedric. If Cedric was born neurodivergent I’m sure he made a lot of mistakes in front of Goodwyn which might have frustrated him especially if Goodwyn wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
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I do have some potential proof of this. I made another much MUCH smaller post about this months ago but the reaction that the adults have to The Incident is very strange. One sorcerer lady says “Oh he’s a bit of a bungler, isn’t he?”
The “isn’t he” is what gets me. It means that she’s either been told or seen Cedric mess up a spell before and when she saw The Incident it confirmed everything she knew about Cedric
A crazy thing to think about for a child but if this child was known for exhibiting any of the symptoms above and the adults didn't understand what neurodivergency was it unfortunately makes sense why she said what she said plus it being the 1800s doesn’t help bitches today don’t even get it
You know how many times I was told I was lazy or was questioned why I forgot something or why I couldn't remember that tiny detail. Most of the time these things were said to me when I was around Cedric’s age
Obviously it's because I'm neurodivergent and my brain works differently but some of the adults in my life didn’t see it that way because they didn’t understand
If some random ass sorcerer lady was thinking about that about Cedric imagine what the general uppercrust sorcerer bitches we’re thinking, imagine what Goodwyn was thinking
And all of this passed down to Cordelia
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When we first meet her in Gone with a Wand she’s constantly talking over him and not listening to anything he’s trying to say
And in Through the Looking Back Glass the first thing she says to him is to ask him if he’s forgotten how to cast an ironing spell and insulting how he looks, something Goodwyn did when he first saw Cedric in Mystic Meadows
She’s copying what Goodwyn has done to Cedric. This leads me to believe that she learned her behaviors from him, probably after the The Incident, and carried it into adulthood
And I think a lot of that had to do with how they were raised after The Incident.
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In Day of the Sorcerers Cedric tells Roland that everything Roland and Cordelia did was greatest thing but they made mistakes that everyone ignored
Meanwhile, for Cedric, all anyone noticed was when he made a mistake and anything good he did was brushed aside or ignored
I mean it’s very obvious that Cedric is the scapegoat child, Cordelia is the golden child, Goodwyn is a narcissistic parent and Winifred is an enabler. Well at least to me someone get this family in some counseling
And if Roland was also potentially a golden child then perhaps that could have been one of the reasons he sort of stop being friends with Cedric because he too blamed Cedric for The Incident and didn’t understand him
I’m not going to go too crazy into this maybe another time but I do think Roland wants to look perfect in all aspects of his life to be like his great father. Having a friend be labeled as a bungler doesn’t make you perfect
Plus we know in Through the Looking Back Glass Cordelia would tell Roland how terrible of a sorcerer Cedric was plus adding onto the fact that Cedric is already nervous to perform in front of Roland it was just a recipe for disaster
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So bringing it all together if Cedric was born neurodivergent that probably meant that as he was growing up he was already a lot different from Cordelia
If he displayed any of the symptoms from above Goodwyn might have already been frustrated or disappointed in Cedric if he wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
But it didn’t seem to stop any of Cedric’s confidence as he successfully performed the smoke spell in front of Cordelia before The Incident
It seems that Winifred’s love, Cordelia’s inseparable bond, and Roland’s friendship was enough for Cedric at the time
But when the Incident happened and with the event being so public, two of the three people who might have supported him, abandoned him and in some cases became antagonistic towards him
And with The Incident, Cedric became Goodwyn’s scapegoat child and Cordelia the golden child which caused Cedric to have a lot of self-esteem issues and to be anxious performing in front of others including Roland
Which made Roland think that Cedric was a bad sorcerer even though Roland, as he wanted to look perfect, was part of the problem. He could have made his own opinions about Cedric but didn’t because he valued the approval and opinions of other monarchs and sorcerers more than his friend
And if Cedric was nervous along with the added on neurodivergence he could have been making a lot of mistakes, like some of the ones I pointed out in the show, which would make him look like a “bad” sorcerer even though he’s not
But in the end despite everything working against him and a villain arc based on pure revenge, he made it out because of the patience and kindness of Sofia, along with Winifred and Calista’s support
I hope that every neurodivergent has a Sofia in their lives
God damn do we all need one
Conclusion
Oh my god my brain is fried but god damn if you made it all the way down here you’re a real one for sure
Obviously was so much more that I wanted to say but this post is so fucking long already and I had to cut shit out
I hope someone had as much fun reading this as I did making this. Until May 25th everyone, see you then 👑 🪄
@tookishcombeferre
THANK YOU.
YES. ALL OF THIS. I agree with every word. You have no idea how much I've thought of this.
And you presented it so well.
As someone who is auADHD, has a learning disability, and suffers anxiety and low self-esteem after the way others have treated me for my mistakes, Cedric is a very important character for me. I relate to him so, so much.
This was brilliantly written!
Oh! My favorite stim of his is from 'Sofia the Second', right after Joy agrees to give him the amulet in return for Clover. It's both verbal and physical, and I remember ages ago that was the moment that made me think he might be ND!
For example, most adults with ADHD have at least two disorders. 80 to 85% have ADHD and one other disorder and more than half may have three disorders. This could include autism, OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, other learning disabilities, and so many more. And with people with autism it’s just as high around 85%
This is a stat that has *always* fascinated me.
It deeply influenced the way I began drafting Cedric in my fanfictions and currently write him.
I grinned *a lot* when I saw it your analysis.
You put into analysis words a lot of what existed/exists in my own head when I crafted him in my creative work.
Thank you for validating the work I've been pouring into *how* I've been writing him for the last ~year and a half.
I find him very relatable.
I'm now wondering if part of the reason he and Roland clash is because Cedric is AuDHD combo pack and Roland is ADHD and they just have a lot of competing needs?
... to ponder ...
Thank you so much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it 💖
And you know I never thought about Roland having ADHD but I can kind of see it. With the way both their fathers treated them I wouldn’t be surprised 🙄
You know I was rewatching the shorts for RM because I can’t believe we are one week away but I totally forgot that Princess Camila wants to be a sorceress queen?!?
The fact that she says it in what I assume is Cedric’s classroom and is really enthusiastic about magic but keeps messing up her spell idk I’m sensing a parallel between her and Cedric
I mean think about it with everything Cedric learned maybe he can personally mentor her on how to prepare her to be a good sorceress queen because ya know he tried to be an evil sorcerer king
I don’t know maybe I’m wrong but I really hope I’m right 🤞
Why I think Cedric is neurodivergent
✨ Hey what’s up Sofia the First fandom and fellow Cedric enthusiasts 🧙♂️🪄
I’ve wanted to make this post for so damn long but I’ve been so busy and a little imitated 👉👈
But with Royal Magic coming out in just 2 weeks I thought well fuck it
I’ve seen a lot of different analyses about the show, about Cedric, his family some of the villains, etc., but I really wanted to throw in my two cents here and do my own analysis on why I think Cedric is unintentionally written as neurodivergent
To my actual shock I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else talk about this. I’ve seen headcanons here and there but that’s it and I’m so surprised because in my honest opinion I’ve never seen a character so obviously neurodivergent in my life (okay maybe not in my life but still)
Now I’m not a psychologist so I can’t like officially diagnose anyone so I’m going to just use the word neurodivergent as a broad term to describe these traits
That being said I do have ADHD and most if not all of my friends are neurodivergent and all across the spectrum so I feel like I have a general idea of what I’m talking about
So to the best of my ability I’m going to go over each symptom that I see from him and use canon examples
There really isn’t any order to how I put all this together. Some symptoms have more information on them than others and a lot of them overlap but I did my best
So buckle up and get comfy this in an ungodly long post you have been warned
Very forgetful
(Or some sort of working memory issue)
For me, this was one thing that I noticed that got me to raise my neurodivergent eyebrow at Cedric because it happens SO often to him
For example in Substitute Cedric his main reasoning for going and teaching Sofia's class was so he could go and get Vex Vine for his potion but by the end of the episode Sofia tells Cedric that he can go to the greenhouse now and he says "Why would I go there?"
The same thing happens in the episode Hexley Hall. He starts off saying to Wormwood how he can't wait to learn more about the amulet but by the end of it he has completely forgotten about that to help Sofia against Grimtrix
Now maybe you're still not sure since there was a lot of shit happening in those episodes but what about in the episode In Cedric We Trust
Wormwood tells Cedric that one of the crowns was made out of elven gold and phoenix feathers, but when Cedric goes up to tell Roland he messes it up and says it made from phoenix gold
Maybe he was nervous to impress Roland but he seemed pretty confident in his answer and even made a pun about Roland’s name before he walked up to him so I think it's more likely that he just forgot what Wormwood told him
Okay so maybe you're still not convinced but get ready for what I think are Cedric’s neurodivergent magnum opus: Cedric Be Good and The Fliegel Has Landed
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I'm going to start with Cedric Be Good because oh my god this episode. Now Cedric does a lot of things in this episode but this is the forgetful section so I will try to stick to him being forgetful. Let’s start from the beginning
So the episode starts off with Cedric making a potion that will let him gain a power from the amulet but he's gotta switch out a fake one that he's made with the real one
So he hides behind a tree, successfully switches them only to then PUT THE AMULET ON HIMSELF
I remember when I watched this episode for the first time I was yelling at the screen like what the fuck are you doing Cedric!? Don't you fucking remember that it curses you when you do something wrong? Maybe he didn’t know stealing was wrong but I think that’s silly
Maybe it's been a few years since he told Sofia about the blessing and curse shit but HE was the one who told her about it. And in the episode Cedric's mom is the one who has to remind him
I don't even know why he put it on in the first place. All he needed to do was hold it in his hand and walk to his tower and dip it in the potion
But he didn't do that he put it on and was surprised that his fingers got sticky and completely forgot about the curse/blessing thing
So obviously you know how this goes if you’ve watched the episode. Cedric goes into town does something good, gets a power, then does something "evil" then loses said power
With some of the powers I do think Elena was fucking with Cedric but with others it genuinely felt like he forgot that the amulet would curse him, especially when he gained a power he thought would be useful enough to take over the kingdom
For example there's at one point he gets like these Elsa ice powers and he gets all excited about how he’s gotta use it to take over the kingdom as if Elena would let him do that please and accidentally he freezes a lake and causes a boat to crash into a dock
He loses his power of course but then says "No matter how hard I try I just cannot be good"
I mean I don't know about everyone else but when he said that my first thought was but okay that wasn’t evil
It just seemed like he in his excitement of gaining a useful power he forgot that the amulet could curse him
And my initial reaction to him forgetting all the amulet's lore was: Why does he keep forgetting this very important detail about the amulet? Why can’t he just remember it?
This is the exact same type of mentality a lot of adults had in my life as I was growing up. I would constantly forget things even if they were important. And taking over the kingdom was really important to Cedric at this time in the show
And yet he just can't remember this one little detail about the amulet even though it’s really important to him
It feels like something else is constantly getting in his way and it's not that he's too "evil" to be good, or a bungler or stupid. It looks like a working memory issue
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The second episode I wanted to talk about was The Fliegel Has Landed because I find what he does in this episode to be so interesting
So in this episode Sofia goes to get Cedric to help her create some cave crystals but it doesn't work.
So he goes to the cave to stop the fleigel himself but instead of blasting her away he creates a bunch of chickens and word-for-word says "I forgot to wipe off the eyeshell powder"
Now I don't know all the lore of the show but I feel like cleaning off your wand before using it for the next spell kind of seems like Wand Care 101
But Cedric didn't do that he straight up said I FORGOT and that's why his spell didn’t work. Not because he was nervous or something affected his wand but because he just simply forgot. I mean I rest my case
He does make a lot of mistakes because he’s nervous but there are also a lot of times he makes mistakes and it's NOT from him being nervous
And I think there are other things getting in the way of him being this big bad Disney villain like him potentially have an…
Executive Dysfunction
Now this was definitely thing where I thought oh god get this man on whatever the STF equivalent of adderall is
Now if you don’t know what executive dysfunction is it’s a symptom that disrupts the brain’s ability to control thoughts and behaviors. Most neurodivergent people have it
There are other things that are associated with it but but I will be mainly talking about Cedric’s lack of ability to plan a coherent “evil” scheme
Right from the start in the pilot he gives Sofia a sleeping spell to put everyone asleep and as a way to get the amulet
It’s a good plan but does he get it? Nope because he didn't realize the sleeping spell would also affect him and fell asleep
Did he forget that would happen? Did he just not stand far enough away and already knew? Did he not realize that it would affect him? We’ll never know but it’s clear Cedric didn’t either and he made the plan
This is just a common theme with Cedric and his "evil" plans. Like in The Big Sleepover, his plan doesn't seem that well thought out
The plan consists of him putting on a puppet show, then ask Sofia to give him her amulet, she'll give it to him, and then take over the kingdom. But just TWO episodes ago she told him that she never takes it off so this would have never worked
In A Royal Mess, Cedric is so hyperfixated on the amulet (more on that later) that being asked to fix the royal mural gives him this idea to use a spell to bring small objects to him but once again we ask the question how was this going to work out? Wouldn't Sofia have seen the amulet floating toward him? How would he explain that to her as it landed in his hand?
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Just like in Cedric Be Good and The Fliegil Has Landed, The Leafsong Festival is Cedric's executive dyfuntion magnum opus. First off he makes up his plan on the spot when Sofia brings Crackle to ask him to get rid of her fire
So with Crackle's fire gone, he covers the whole kingdom in forever frost, which is apparently really slippery, which he knows and says out loud
So what does he do in the next scene? Immediately steps on the ice and slips all over the place....
Why didn’t he put some spikes on his shoes or use a floating spell. And WHY did he take the dragon fire with him?
Anyway if you’ve seen the episode you know how it goes, he slips, the dragon fire falls out of his hand, and in the end Crackle gets her fire back and unfreezes the kingdom
Even if somehow Cedric didn't drop Crackle's fire, how was this plan even gonna go?
March up to Roland and the royal family and say, "Make me king or I won't fix the ice?" Roland would have just probably arrested Cedric on the spot
Cedric isn't stupid or a bungler. All the plans are good in theory, but there really isn't a lot of thought put behind them
It’s a good thing he has Sofia as a friend because he has a serious…
Lack of social skills & friends
I mean this one is basically confirmed in canon at least with the lack of friends. In Mystic Meadows Winifred says “Sofia is the nicest friend you’ve ever had and in fact might be the only friend you’ve ever had”
And ofc with the banger My Evil Dreams where he says "My evil schemes were my friends when I was alone" implying that he really didn't have a lot of friends
We technically don't actually know why Cedric doesn't have any friends. I think it's been inferred by the fandom that it's because of his association with The Incident and Cordelia telling everyone he’s a bad sorcerer
And definitely think that’s one piece of it. He doesn't want to be made fun of or bullied so he stays out of everyone's way but I also think it could be because I don't think he has the best understanding of social situations
Going back to his “evil” plans, a lot of them do fail because he doesn't have the executive functioning skills to complete them but they fail because he doesn’t really take into consideration that other people can’t just talk it out. It’s just he expects people to act exactly as he expects them to
The best examples I can think of is in Princess Butterfly and The Amulet and the Anthem. In both cases he expects Sofia to be in this big huge pickle be backed so far into a corner that she's just gonna have to give him her amulet
But in both cases none of that even comes close to what happens as Sofia just talks to Amber, her friends, and well Princess Belle to sort it out
He's just throwing these half baked plans and doesn’t seem to really understand that other people have their own individual thoughts
It probably also doesn't help that he's very...
Disorganized & Messy
Cedric sooo disorganized and messy. Of course the best example I can give of this is in Cedric's Apprentice when says "I can't find anything in this mess"
And we know he created said mess because a minute later when he’s yapping to Wormwood about taking over the kingdom he drops a vial on the floor and later knocks over the cauldron when singing Cedric the Great
And that's not all of it. One of my favorite subtle moments from that episode is when Sofia goes to clean his spellbook she gives a loud "Ick!" and proceeds to wipe whatever gunk Cedric had on it
It gets even better when she tells him that the spellbook was dirty, he goes "SO?" which I just find so funny
What’s even funnier to me is that he never once thought to clean his spellbook when he was trying to create the invisibility potion
Then of course in The Winter's Gift we get even more of a confirmation that Cedric is messy af
He says "Where is my family wand? It always goes missing when I need it." That's why Sofia's gift was so special to him and why it meant so much to him
He obviously loses his wand enough for Sofia to notice so she made him something to help with his disorganization which is just so 🥹
It's good that Sofia really values his friendship since I'm pretty sure Cedric has...
Rejection Sensitivity Disorder
I saw this headcanon lurking around on tumblr but I can’t find it anywhere but I am completely subscribed to it
Now I’m pretty sure RSD isn’t an official neurodivergent symptom but I think so many ND people have experienced it that many have accepted it as one
To sum it up briefly RSD means that someone will experience intense emotional pain related to being rejected
This could mean getting embarrassed easily, having low self-esteem, troubling in believing themselves, and turning their feelings inward, which may look like a snap of severe depression
Not only that but a lot of the time people with RSD might even “feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection”
Hmmm sounds really familiar to someone right. There are really three examples I can think of where Cedric kinda of displays this behavior
In Cedric’s Apprentice after Cedric was rejected by Roland he just sits in his workshop staring at nothing as Sofia cleans up around him
In Mystic Meadows after his father doesn’t give him the family wand he sits his family’s couch eating jellybeans while Sofia and Winifred are talking to him
And of course the biggest example I have is how utterly defeated he looked after getting rejected by Roland in The Enchanted Feast. I mean look at how upset he looks in that gif. He’s just laying there on his open spellbook
If Cedric had RSD it would explain why he would get so nervous before performing in front of Roland or really anyone because he’s afraid he’s going to get rejected. Of course, none of this explains how he can be so...
Impulsive
Well I’m going back to Cedric Be Good again because I gotta talk the last scene of this episode
So by the end of the episode he’s finally got his super strength and holds onto to it long enough to tell some servant to get Roland so they he can use his super strength to take over the kingdom even though Elena would have probably taken his power away
And instead of just waiting what does he do? He does some sort of jazz hand thing and says “I can’t wait any longer” and sits down on Roland’s throne and declares himself king
This kind of ties into his forgetfulness and executive dysfunction because ofc he when he declares himself king he says “I’m going to rule with an iron fist.” The amulet glows and he gets once again
If he wasn’t so impulsive or excited he would have waited for Roland to show up and then shown his super strength but he didn’t he just sat right down and lost his power
But that’s not all as Cedric can be very...
Easily distracted
This one really isn’t shown that much but the best example I can give is in the episode The Amulet of Avalor when Cedric completely abandoned the plants he was collecting for his “evil” potions to go chase after the amulet all day
I would even argue that in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric got so distracted about his hatred for the fliegel and her bothering Sofia that he completely forgot to wipe off the eggshell powder and that’s why he’s spell didn’t work
Or maybe he’s just really distracted because he has…
Limerance
So limerence itself is not actually a ND trait but I know a lot of people who are ND relate to it
This is also another headcanon I mean lol aren’t they all that I saw floating around tumblr but i honestly think it really makes sense
Limerence is essentially a way to describe when someone is deeply infatuated with someone else
A lot of people confuse it with falling in love but it’s actually just another form of a hyperfixation but on another person and most of the time it can be very intense
Being very obsessed with someone, thinking about them all the time, getting very anxious about them
Obviously this show is not a romance show but I just can’t explain how Cedric got so obsessed with Sasha in The Enchanted Feast
Now I know this infatuation with Sasha from Cedric is kinda of a hotly debated topic since people are not sure if Cedric was put under a love spell by Miss Nettle or not
But if we’re going, for the sake of the argument, that he wasn’t under a love spell Cedric falls for “Sasha” really quickly and very strongly.
So much so that when Sofia goes up to express her concerns about her he brushes Sofia off and talks about how wonderful Sasha is despite not knowing anything about her
It’s very common for ND people with limerence to ignore any red flags and to ignore any flaws
Which I feel like is strange for Cedric since it seems like he’s always…
Constantly Irritated
Cedric for most of the show is known for being “grumpy” mainly at anyone coming into his workshop and asking for him to do something he doesn’t want to do
And most of the time when they first enter he will immediately ask them “What do you want” and “Why are you here” as if he’s trying to get them out as fast as he can
And while he could be doing that because he’s just an introvert there really rarely is a time that he isn’t annoyed or making a sassy comment so he seems pretty irritated most of the time which is common in ND people
Obviously we’ll never know why Cedric is constantly irritated but maybe it could be because he’s…
Not paying attention
So I have a few examples for this. In When You Wish Upon a Well Sofia gets turned into a cat and goes to Cedric to get him to turn her back into her normal self
But Cedric doesn’t help her and is completely annoyed that she’s flipping through his spellbook since he’s clearly working on something
So she leaves and Wormwood notices that she’s wearing the amulet and tries to get Cedric to notice it too but he doesn’t and kicks him out
The whole time I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see the amulet of Avalor on the purple cat sitting on top of his spellbook but saw a griffin last season like 20 something feet away. I know it was probably just for the plot but still
This also happens in The Fliegel Has Landed. The main reason Sofia and Cedric have to go down into the caves was because Cedric was out of diamond dust which he needed make cave crystals
But he never checked what he put on his wand and did the spell with eggshell powder instead and not diamond dust and the of course later forgot to wipe it off
Interestingly enough he wasn’t even anxious when he failed that spell he just didn’t check the label and only checked AFTER he did it
Maybe he was just excited to do his spell like when he’s…
Stimming
So this headcanon is from this really cute fanfic on Ao3 about Cedric spinning as a stim and after I read it I realized how much Cedric does spin in the show
For example spins and twirls a lot in Cedric be Good when he thinks he’s got a power that’s going to help him over the kingdom. It happens so fast that you really don’t notice when he does it
And of course when Sofia invites Cedric to meet Merlin in Gone with a Wand he literally spins in front of the mirror like I have in the gif
He also paces in Through the Looking Back Glass right before his sister visits. I’m sure there are other examples that I can’t think of but I am pretty confident in the fact the amulet of Avalor was an…
Implied Hyperfixation
Yeah saw this on tumblr as well and I’m fully subscribed to it. I know it was probably just a writing choice from season 1 to season 2 but it’s so interesting how Cedric is constantly thinking about the amulet and always making plans for it but the first time we see him after The Floating Palace he’s helping Sofia and Amber try and catch baby James. He doesn’t mention the amulet once
I thought maybe he would try and do something with the amulet but no he doesn’t. The only times he thinks about it is in The Enchanted Feast and The Curse of Princess Ivy but that’s only because other people were trying to take it. It’s as if he forgot it existed until someone else wanted it
Even he’s only “evil” plan for that season is in The Leafsong Festival which has nothing to do with the amulet.
And I know he’s into the amulet in Cedric be Good but it feels more like a brief interest back into it
I don’t know about everyone else but my hyperfixations fluctuate and most of the time I feel like I can’t really control them.
They just spring up at random points. It’s almost like a ope I guess we’re back into this again me with Sofia the first lowkey
But Cedric isn’t only into the amulet or taking over the kingdom. He’s always making potions which I think is an…
Implied special interest
If you go back and watch any episode that features Cedric I bet you a million dollars that he’s probably making some sort of potion or talking about making potions. And I’m not sure what these potions are
Maybe Roland is assigning him to do these but in one episode he mentions that it’s taken him 12 hours to make a potion that will turn toadstools into tornadoes
Not sure who’s asking for that or how that would be useful in any way. Maybe he made it to try and take over the kingdom? Or maybe he just really likes making potions
From what I’ve got from the show Roland doesn’t really ask him to do much so I assume all the potions he’s making are for fun
Even in the end of Substitute Cedric he’s so excited to teach Sofia and her classmates more sorcery that the first thing he mentions is teaching them how to make potions. Definitely sounds like he likes to do it for fun
And of course how could I not talk about his idol, the one he has a whole catchphrase on, Merlin. I don’t know but I don’t think it’s very neurotypical to have a whole catchphrase based on your favorite celebrity / hero / idol and especially one that you’ve used since you were a child
Not only that but in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric mentions that he has a book called Thursdays with Merlin so I assume he has the other weeks as well
Cedric has a lot of neurodivergent traits but I also think he has some…
Co-morbidity
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize and give their own ideas of what Cedric also might have: anxiety, social anxiety, depression, PSTD, etc
We know for a fact that Cedric gets nervous especially when performing in front of others and especially in front of Roland. He says it in Cedric’s Apprentice and In Cedric We Trust
Now it could be a trauma response from The Incident or for being bullied and teased all his life
It’s not uncommon for neurodivergent people to have multiple other disorders
For example, most adults with ADHD have at least two disorders. 80 to 85% have ADHD and one other disorder and more than half may have three disorders. This could include autism, OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, other learning disabilities, and so many more. And with people with autism it’s just as high around 85%
And this is the modern day. Imagine the 1800s or whatever time period Sofia the First is supposed to take place in
So Cedric having anxiety while potentially being neurodivergent is actually in fact very common
And for Cedric if it wasn’t his anxiety that was going to mess up his spell then it probably would have been one of the symptoms above. It’s like a double edge sword for him
And no matter what people would have seen him as a bungler whether he messed up from being anxious or being neurodivergent
And every mistake he made probably reinforced his own anxiety and everyone's perception of him being a "bungler"
And I think there are a few people to blame for…
Cedric's Life in the Castle
(Aka some people don’t know how to handle someone who’s neurodivergent)
Now I just want to preference that I don’t hate Roland or even Cordelia. I think those two are very interesting characters and have their own issues that they didn’t deal well with and unfortunately lot of it back fired onto how they treated Cedric
That being said… I have a few words about Goodwyn and his “parenting” skills. Let me explain.
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In Mystic Meadows we see that Goodwyn constantly corrects Cedric as he clearly thinks of him as a bungler whether from The Incident or from something else.
By correcting Cedric, Goodwyn thinks that he’s “helping” him become a better sorcerer and fixing whatever he thinks is wrong with him
It feels like Goodwyn wants to him fix Cedric and make him a better sorcerer by fixing what he thinks is wrong with him
And in the end Goodwyn does finally see Cedric as a good sorcerer but this is only because Cedric had to PROVE it to Goodwyn and not because Goodwyn did any self-reflecting on how he’s treated his son all these years. The lesson that Goodwyn learns is that oh I guess Cedric can do magic
And Cedric shouldn’t have had to prove himself to his father. Goodwyn should have been proud of Cedric regardless. But he didn’t he tried correcting him instead and too saw him as a bungler even if he never said it
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While I love Mystic Meadows as an episode I do have a problem with the idea that Cedric could only be a good sorcerer in his father’s eyes if he didn’t fail and Goodwyn only believes in him now because he successfully saved everyone
Especially with the way that Goodwyn is so dismissive of Cedric before he saved everyone it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
I know it’s just a preschool show and this episode came out over what like over a decade ago but it’s still something I saw people pointing out on Tumblr and I agreed with them
So how does this relate to how Cedric was treated in the castle. Well in my opinion the way that Goodwyn treats Cedric, as if he’s different and needs fixing, is very familiar to how a lot of ND people are treated by parents who don’t really understand it
A lot of the time if a parent has a ND kid and they don’t understand them they’ll do everything in their power to either fix them, blame them for things that are out of their control, mock them, get annoyed at their struggles, or think they’re inferior to them
All things Goodwyn does to Cedric. If Cedric was born neurodivergent I’m sure he made a lot of mistakes in front of Goodwyn which might have frustrated him especially if Goodwyn wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
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I do have some potential proof of this. I made another much MUCH smaller post about this months ago but the reaction that the adults have to The Incident is very strange. One sorcerer lady says “Oh he’s a bit of a bungler, isn’t he?”
The “isn’t he” is what gets me. It means that she’s either been told or seen Cedric mess up a spell before and when she saw The Incident it confirmed everything she knew about Cedric
A crazy thing to think about for a child but if this child was known for exhibiting any of the symptoms above and the adults didn't understand what neurodivergency was it unfortunately makes sense why she said what she said plus it being the 1800s doesn’t help bitches today don’t even get it
You know how many times I was told I was lazy or was questioned why I forgot something or why I couldn't remember that tiny detail. Most of the time these things were said to me when I was around Cedric’s age
Obviously it's because I'm neurodivergent and my brain works differently but some of the adults in my life didn’t see it that way because they didn’t understand
If some random ass sorcerer lady was thinking about that about Cedric imagine what the general uppercrust sorcerer bitches we’re thinking, imagine what Goodwyn was thinking
And all of this passed down to Cordelia
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When we first meet her in Gone with a Wand she’s constantly talking over him and not listening to anything he’s trying to say
And in Through the Looking Back Glass the first thing she says to him is to ask him if he’s forgotten how to cast an ironing spell and insulting how he looks, something Goodwyn did when he first saw Cedric in Mystic Meadows
She’s copying what Goodwyn has done to Cedric. This leads me to believe that she learned her behaviors from him, probably after the The Incident, and carried it into adulthood
And I think a lot of that had to do with how they were raised after The Incident.
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In Day of the Sorcerers Cedric tells Roland that everything Roland and Cordelia did was greatest thing but they made mistakes that everyone ignored
Meanwhile, for Cedric, all anyone noticed was when he made a mistake and anything good he did was brushed aside or ignored
I mean it’s very obvious that Cedric is the scapegoat child, Cordelia is the golden child, Goodwyn is a narcissistic parent and Winifred is an enabler. Well at least to me someone get this family in some counseling
And if Roland was also potentially a golden child then perhaps that could have been one of the reasons he sort of stop being friends with Cedric because he too blamed Cedric for The Incident and didn’t understand him
I’m not going to go too crazy into this maybe another time but I do think Roland wants to look perfect in all aspects of his life to be like his great father. Having a friend be labeled as a bungler doesn’t make you perfect
Plus we know in Through the Looking Back Glass Cordelia would tell Roland how terrible of a sorcerer Cedric was plus adding onto the fact that Cedric is already nervous to perform in front of Roland it was just a recipe for disaster
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So bringing it all together if Cedric was born neurodivergent that probably meant that as he was growing up he was already a lot different from Cordelia
If he displayed any of the symptoms from above Goodwyn might have already been frustrated or disappointed in Cedric if he wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
But it didn’t seem to stop any of Cedric’s confidence as he successfully performed the smoke spell in front of Cordelia before The Incident
It seems that Winifred’s love, Cordelia’s inseparable bond, and Roland’s friendship was enough for Cedric at the time
But when the Incident happened and with the event being so public, two of the three people who might have supported him, abandoned him and in some cases became antagonistic towards him
And with The Incident, Cedric became Goodwyn’s scapegoat child and Cordelia the golden child which caused Cedric to have a lot of self-esteem issues and to be anxious performing in front of others including Roland
Which made Roland think that Cedric was a bad sorcerer even though Roland, as he wanted to look perfect, was part of the problem. He could have made his own opinions about Cedric but didn’t because he valued the approval and opinions of other monarchs and sorcerers more than his friend
And if Cedric was nervous along with the added on neurodivergence he could have been making a lot of mistakes, like some of the ones I pointed out in the show, which would make him look like a “bad” sorcerer even though he’s not
But in the end despite everything working against him and a villain arc based on pure revenge, he made it out because of the patience and kindness of Sofia, along with Winifred and Calista’s support
I hope that every neurodivergent has a Sofia in their lives
God damn do we all need one
Conclusion
Oh my god my brain is fried but god damn if you made it all the way down here you’re a real one for sure
Obviously was so much more that I wanted to say but this post is so fucking long already and I had to cut shit out
I hope someone had as much fun reading this as I did making this. Until May 25th everyone, see you then 👑 🪄
@tookishcombeferre
THANK YOU.
YES. ALL OF THIS. I agree with every word. You have no idea how much I've thought of this.
And you presented it so well.
As someone who is auADHD, has a learning disability, and suffers anxiety and low self-esteem after the way others have treated me for my mistakes, Cedric is a very important character for me. I relate to him so, so much.
This was brilliantly written!
Oh! My favorite stim of his is from 'Sofia the Second', right after Joy agrees to give him the amulet in return for Clover. It's both verbal and physical, and I remember ages ago that was the moment that made me think he might be ND!
Oh my god thank you so much I'm so glad you liked! 🥰
I totally forgot about the like little happy noise or whatever you would call it when Joy is about to give him the amulet
I hope they still keep his little ND quirks in RM because I think it could be really meaningful to have a character like Cedric who still has his little quirks but is also still loved, respected, and admired
Why I think Cedric is neurodivergent
✨ Hey what’s up Sofia the First fandom and fellow Cedric enthusiasts 🧙♂️🪄
I’ve wanted to make this post for so damn long but I’ve been so busy and a little imitated 👉👈
But with Royal Magic coming out in just 2 weeks I thought well fuck it
I’ve seen a lot of different analyses about the show, about Cedric, his family some of the villains, etc., but I really wanted to throw in my two cents here and do my own analysis on why I think Cedric is unintentionally written as neurodivergent
To my actual shock I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else talk about this. I’ve seen headcanons here and there but that’s it and I’m so surprised because in my honest opinion I’ve never seen a character so obviously neurodivergent in my life (okay maybe not in my life but still)
Now I’m not a psychologist so I can’t like officially diagnose anyone so I’m going to just use the word neurodivergent as a broad term to describe these traits
That being said I do have ADHD and most if not all of my friends are neurodivergent and all across the spectrum so I feel like I have a general idea of what I’m talking about
So to the best of my ability I’m going to go over each symptom that I see from him and use canon examples
There really isn’t any order to how I put all this together. Some symptoms have more information on them than others and a lot of them overlap but I did my best
So buckle up and get comfy this in an ungodly long post you have been warned
Very forgetful
(Or some sort of working memory issue)
For me, this was one thing that I noticed that got me to raise my neurodivergent eyebrow at Cedric because it happens SO often to him
For example in Substitute Cedric his main reasoning for going and teaching Sofia's class was so he could go and get Vex Vine for his potion but by the end of the episode Sofia tells Cedric that he can go to the greenhouse now and he says "Why would I go there?"
The same thing happens in the episode Hexley Hall. He starts off saying to Wormwood how he can't wait to learn more about the amulet but by the end of it he has completely forgotten about that to help Sofia against Grimtrix
Now maybe you're still not sure since there was a lot of shit happening in those episodes but what about in the episode In Cedric We Trust
Wormwood tells Cedric that one of the crowns was made out of elven gold and phoenix feathers, but when Cedric goes up to tell Roland he messes it up and says it made from phoenix gold
Maybe he was nervous to impress Roland but he seemed pretty confident in his answer and even made a pun about Roland’s name before he walked up to him so I think it's more likely that he just forgot what Wormwood told him
Okay so maybe you're still not convinced but get ready for what I think are Cedric’s neurodivergent magnum opus: Cedric Be Good and The Fliegel Has Landed
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I'm going to start with Cedric Be Good because oh my god this episode. Now Cedric does a lot of things in this episode but this is the forgetful section so I will try to stick to him being forgetful. Let’s start from the beginning
So the episode starts off with Cedric making a potion that will let him gain a power from the amulet but he's gotta switch out a fake one that he's made with the real one
So he hides behind a tree, successfully switches them only to then PUT THE AMULET ON HIMSELF
I remember when I watched this episode for the first time I was yelling at the screen like what the fuck are you doing Cedric!? Don't you fucking remember that it curses you when you do something wrong? Maybe he didn’t know stealing was wrong but I think that’s silly
Maybe it's been a few years since he told Sofia about the blessing and curse shit but HE was the one who told her about it. And in the episode Cedric's mom is the one who has to remind him
I don't even know why he put it on in the first place. All he needed to do was hold it in his hand and walk to his tower and dip it in the potion
But he didn't do that he put it on and was surprised that his fingers got sticky and completely forgot about the curse/blessing thing
So obviously you know how this goes if you’ve watched the episode. Cedric goes into town does something good, gets a power, then does something "evil" then loses said power
With some of the powers I do think Elena was fucking with Cedric but with others it genuinely felt like he forgot that the amulet would curse him, especially when he gained a power he thought would be useful enough to take over the kingdom
For example there's at one point he gets like these Elsa ice powers and he gets all excited about how he’s gotta use it to take over the kingdom as if Elena would let him do that please and accidentally he freezes a lake and causes a boat to crash into a dock
He loses his power of course but then says "No matter how hard I try I just cannot be good"
I mean I don't know about everyone else but when he said that my first thought was but okay that wasn’t evil
It just seemed like he in his excitement of gaining a useful power he forgot that the amulet could curse him
And my initial reaction to him forgetting all the amulet's lore was: Why does he keep forgetting this very important detail about the amulet? Why can’t he just remember it?
This is the exact same type of mentality a lot of adults had in my life as I was growing up. I would constantly forget things even if they were important. And taking over the kingdom was really important to Cedric at this time in the show
And yet he just can't remember this one little detail about the amulet even though it’s really important to him
It feels like something else is constantly getting in his way and it's not that he's too "evil" to be good, or a bungler or stupid. It looks like a working memory issue
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The second episode I wanted to talk about was The Fliegel Has Landed because I find what he does in this episode to be so interesting
So in this episode Sofia goes to get Cedric to help her create some cave crystals but it doesn't work.
So he goes to the cave to stop the fleigel himself but instead of blasting her away he creates a bunch of chickens and word-for-word says "I forgot to wipe off the eyeshell powder"
Now I don't know all the lore of the show but I feel like cleaning off your wand before using it for the next spell kind of seems like Wand Care 101
But Cedric didn't do that he straight up said I FORGOT and that's why his spell didn’t work. Not because he was nervous or something affected his wand but because he just simply forgot. I mean I rest my case
He does make a lot of mistakes because he’s nervous but there are also a lot of times he makes mistakes and it's NOT from him being nervous
And I think there are other things getting in the way of him being this big bad Disney villain like him potentially have an…
Executive Dysfunction
Now this was definitely thing where I thought oh god get this man on whatever the STF equivalent of adderall is
Now if you don’t know what executive dysfunction is it’s a symptom that disrupts the brain’s ability to control thoughts and behaviors. Most neurodivergent people have it
There are other things that are associated with it but but I will be mainly talking about Cedric’s lack of ability to plan a coherent “evil” scheme
Right from the start in the pilot he gives Sofia a sleeping spell to put everyone asleep and as a way to get the amulet
It’s a good plan but does he get it? Nope because he didn't realize the sleeping spell would also affect him and fell asleep
Did he forget that would happen? Did he just not stand far enough away and already knew? Did he not realize that it would affect him? We’ll never know but it’s clear Cedric didn’t either and he made the plan
This is just a common theme with Cedric and his "evil" plans. Like in The Big Sleepover, his plan doesn't seem that well thought out
The plan consists of him putting on a puppet show, then ask Sofia to give him her amulet, she'll give it to him, and then take over the kingdom. But just TWO episodes ago she told him that she never takes it off so this would have never worked
In A Royal Mess, Cedric is so hyperfixated on the amulet (more on that later) that being asked to fix the royal mural gives him this idea to use a spell to bring small objects to him but once again we ask the question how was this going to work out? Wouldn't Sofia have seen the amulet floating toward him? How would he explain that to her as it landed in his hand?
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Just like in Cedric Be Good and The Fliegil Has Landed, The Leafsong Festival is Cedric's executive dyfuntion magnum opus. First off he makes up his plan on the spot when Sofia brings Crackle to ask him to get rid of her fire
So with Crackle's fire gone, he covers the whole kingdom in forever frost, which is apparently really slippery, which he knows and says out loud
So what does he do in the next scene? Immediately steps on the ice and slips all over the place....
Why didn’t he put some spikes on his shoes or use a floating spell. And WHY did he take the dragon fire with him?
Anyway if you’ve seen the episode you know how it goes, he slips, the dragon fire falls out of his hand, and in the end Crackle gets her fire back and unfreezes the kingdom
Even if somehow Cedric didn't drop Crackle's fire, how was this plan even gonna go?
March up to Roland and the royal family and say, "Make me king or I won't fix the ice?" Roland would have just probably arrested Cedric on the spot
Cedric isn't stupid or a bungler. All the plans are good in theory, but there really isn't a lot of thought put behind them
It’s a good thing he has Sofia as a friend because he has a serious…
Lack of social skills & friends
I mean this one is basically confirmed in canon at least with the lack of friends. In Mystic Meadows Winifred says “Sofia is the nicest friend you’ve ever had and in fact might be the only friend you’ve ever had”
And ofc with the banger My Evil Dreams where he says "My evil schemes were my friends when I was alone" implying that he really didn't have a lot of friends
We technically don't actually know why Cedric doesn't have any friends. I think it's been inferred by the fandom that it's because of his association with The Incident and Cordelia telling everyone he’s a bad sorcerer
And definitely think that’s one piece of it. He doesn't want to be made fun of or bullied so he stays out of everyone's way but I also think it could be because I don't think he has the best understanding of social situations
Going back to his “evil” plans, a lot of them do fail because he doesn't have the executive functioning skills to complete them but they fail because he doesn’t really take into consideration that other people can’t just talk it out. It’s just he expects people to act exactly as he expects them to
The best examples I can think of is in Princess Butterfly and The Amulet and the Anthem. In both cases he expects Sofia to be in this big huge pickle be backed so far into a corner that she's just gonna have to give him her amulet
But in both cases none of that even comes close to what happens as Sofia just talks to Amber, her friends, and well Princess Belle to sort it out
He's just throwing these half baked plans and doesn’t seem to really understand that other people have their own individual thoughts
It probably also doesn't help that he's very...
Disorganized & Messy
Cedric sooo disorganized and messy. Of course the best example I can give of this is in Cedric's Apprentice when says "I can't find anything in this mess"
And we know he created said mess because a minute later when he’s yapping to Wormwood about taking over the kingdom he drops a vial on the floor and later knocks over the cauldron when singing Cedric the Great
And that's not all of it. One of my favorite subtle moments from that episode is when Sofia goes to clean his spellbook she gives a loud "Ick!" and proceeds to wipe whatever gunk Cedric had on it
It gets even better when she tells him that the spellbook was dirty, he goes "SO?" which I just find so funny
What’s even funnier to me is that he never once thought to clean his spellbook when he was trying to create the invisibility potion
Then of course in The Winter's Gift we get even more of a confirmation that Cedric is messy af
He says "Where is my family wand? It always goes missing when I need it." That's why Sofia's gift was so special to him and why it meant so much to him
He obviously loses his wand enough for Sofia to notice so she made him something to help with his disorganization which is just so 🥹
It's good that Sofia really values his friendship since I'm pretty sure Cedric has...
Rejection Sensitivity Disorder
I saw this headcanon lurking around on tumblr but I can’t find it anywhere but I am completely subscribed to it
Now I’m pretty sure RSD isn’t an official neurodivergent symptom but I think so many ND people have experienced it that many have accepted it as one
To sum it up briefly RSD means that someone will experience intense emotional pain related to being rejected
This could mean getting embarrassed easily, having low self-esteem, troubling in believing themselves, and turning their feelings inward, which may look like a snap of severe depression
Not only that but a lot of the time people with RSD might even “feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection”
Hmmm sounds really familiar to someone right. There are really three examples I can think of where Cedric kinda of displays this behavior
In Cedric’s Apprentice after Cedric was rejected by Roland he just sits in his workshop staring at nothing as Sofia cleans up around him
In Mystic Meadows after his father doesn’t give him the family wand he sits his family’s couch eating jellybeans while Sofia and Winifred are talking to him
And of course the biggest example I have is how utterly defeated he looked after getting rejected by Roland in The Enchanted Feast. I mean look at how upset he looks in that gif. He’s just laying there on his open spellbook
If Cedric had RSD it would explain why he would get so nervous before performing in front of Roland or really anyone because he’s afraid he’s going to get rejected. Of course, none of this explains how he can be so...
Impulsive
Well I’m going back to Cedric Be Good again because I gotta talk the last scene of this episode
So by the end of the episode he’s finally got his super strength and holds onto to it long enough to tell some servant to get Roland so they he can use his super strength to take over the kingdom even though Elena would have probably taken his power away
And instead of just waiting what does he do? He does some sort of jazz hand thing and says “I can’t wait any longer” and sits down on Roland’s throne and declares himself king
This kind of ties into his forgetfulness and executive dysfunction because ofc he when he declares himself king he says “I’m going to rule with an iron fist.” The amulet glows and he gets once again
If he wasn’t so impulsive or excited he would have waited for Roland to show up and then shown his super strength but he didn’t he just sat right down and lost his power
But that’s not all as Cedric can be very...
Easily distracted
This one really isn’t shown that much but the best example I can give is in the episode The Amulet of Avalor when Cedric completely abandoned the plants he was collecting for his “evil” potions to go chase after the amulet all day
I would even argue that in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric got so distracted about his hatred for the fliegel and her bothering Sofia that he completely forgot to wipe off the eggshell powder and that’s why he’s spell didn’t work
Or maybe he’s just really distracted because he has…
Limerance
So limerence itself is not actually a ND trait but I know a lot of people who are ND relate to it
This is also another headcanon I mean lol aren’t they all that I saw floating around tumblr but i honestly think it really makes sense
Limerence is essentially a way to describe when someone is deeply infatuated with someone else
A lot of people confuse it with falling in love but it’s actually just another form of a hyperfixation but on another person and most of the time it can be very intense
Being very obsessed with someone, thinking about them all the time, getting very anxious about them
Obviously this show is not a romance show but I just can’t explain how Cedric got so obsessed with Sasha in The Enchanted Feast
Now I know this infatuation with Sasha from Cedric is kinda of a hotly debated topic since people are not sure if Cedric was put under a love spell by Miss Nettle or not
But if we’re going, for the sake of the argument, that he wasn’t under a love spell Cedric falls for “Sasha” really quickly and very strongly.
So much so that when Sofia goes up to express her concerns about her he brushes Sofia off and talks about how wonderful Sasha is despite not knowing anything about her
It’s very common for ND people with limerence to ignore any red flags and to ignore any flaws
Which I feel like is strange for Cedric since it seems like he’s always…
Constantly Irritated
Cedric for most of the show is known for being “grumpy” mainly at anyone coming into his workshop and asking for him to do something he doesn’t want to do
And most of the time when they first enter he will immediately ask them “What do you want” and “Why are you here” as if he’s trying to get them out as fast as he can
And while he could be doing that because he’s just an introvert there really rarely is a time that he isn’t annoyed or making a sassy comment so he seems pretty irritated most of the time which is common in ND people
Obviously we’ll never know why Cedric is constantly irritated but maybe it could be because he’s…
Not paying attention
So I have a few examples for this. In When You Wish Upon a Well Sofia gets turned into a cat and goes to Cedric to get him to turn her back into her normal self
But Cedric doesn’t help her and is completely annoyed that she’s flipping through his spellbook since he’s clearly working on something
So she leaves and Wormwood notices that she’s wearing the amulet and tries to get Cedric to notice it too but he doesn’t and kicks him out
The whole time I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see the amulet of Avalor on the purple cat sitting on top of his spellbook but saw a griffin last season like 20 something feet away. I know it was probably just for the plot but still
This also happens in The Fliegel Has Landed. The main reason Sofia and Cedric have to go down into the caves was because Cedric was out of diamond dust which he needed make cave crystals
But he never checked what he put on his wand and did the spell with eggshell powder instead and not diamond dust and the of course later forgot to wipe it off
Interestingly enough he wasn’t even anxious when he failed that spell he just didn’t check the label and only checked AFTER he did it
Maybe he was just excited to do his spell like when he’s…
Stimming
So this headcanon is from this really cute fanfic on Ao3 about Cedric spinning as a stim and after I read it I realized how much Cedric does spin in the show
For example spins and twirls a lot in Cedric be Good when he thinks he’s got a power that’s going to help him over the kingdom. It happens so fast that you really don’t notice when he does it
And of course when Sofia invites Cedric to meet Merlin in Gone with a Wand he literally spins in front of the mirror like I have in the gif
He also paces in Through the Looking Back Glass right before his sister visits. I’m sure there are other examples that I can’t think of but I am pretty confident in the fact the amulet of Avalor was an…
Implied Hyperfixation
Yeah saw this on tumblr as well and I’m fully subscribed to it. I know it was probably just a writing choice from season 1 to season 2 but it’s so interesting how Cedric is constantly thinking about the amulet and always making plans for it but the first time we see him after The Floating Palace he’s helping Sofia and Amber try and catch baby James. He doesn’t mention the amulet once
I thought maybe he would try and do something with the amulet but no he doesn’t. The only times he thinks about it is in The Enchanted Feast and The Curse of Princess Ivy but that’s only because other people were trying to take it. It’s as if he forgot it existed until someone else wanted it
Even he’s only “evil” plan for that season is in The Leafsong Festival which has nothing to do with the amulet.
And I know he’s into the amulet in Cedric be Good but it feels more like a brief interest back into it
I don’t know about everyone else but my hyperfixations fluctuate and most of the time I feel like I can’t really control them.
They just spring up at random points. It’s almost like a ope I guess we’re back into this again me with Sofia the first lowkey
But Cedric isn’t only into the amulet or taking over the kingdom. He’s always making potions which I think is an…
Implied special interest
If you go back and watch any episode that features Cedric I bet you a million dollars that he’s probably making some sort of potion or talking about making potions. And I’m not sure what these potions are
Maybe Roland is assigning him to do these but in one episode he mentions that it’s taken him 12 hours to make a potion that will turn toadstools into tornadoes
Not sure who’s asking for that or how that would be useful in any way. Maybe he made it to try and take over the kingdom? Or maybe he just really likes making potions
From what I’ve got from the show Roland doesn’t really ask him to do much so I assume all the potions he’s making are for fun
Even in the end of Substitute Cedric he’s so excited to teach Sofia and her classmates more sorcery that the first thing he mentions is teaching them how to make potions. Definitely sounds like he likes to do it for fun
And of course how could I not talk about his idol, the one he has a whole catchphrase on, Merlin. I don’t know but I don’t think it’s very neurotypical to have a whole catchphrase based on your favorite celebrity / hero / idol and especially one that you’ve used since you were a child
Not only that but in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric mentions that he has a book called Thursdays with Merlin so I assume he has the other weeks as well
Cedric has a lot of neurodivergent traits but I also think he has some…
Co-morbidity
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize and give their own ideas of what Cedric also might have: anxiety, social anxiety, depression, PSTD, etc
We know for a fact that Cedric gets nervous especially when performing in front of others and especially in front of Roland. He says it in Cedric’s Apprentice and In Cedric We Trust
Now it could be a trauma response from The Incident or for being bullied and teased all his life
It’s not uncommon for neurodivergent people to have multiple other disorders
For example, most adults with ADHD have at least two disorders. 80 to 85% have ADHD and one other disorder and more than half may have three disorders. This could include autism, OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, other learning disabilities, and so many more. And with people with autism it’s just as high around 85%
And this is the modern day. Imagine the 1800s or whatever time period Sofia the First is supposed to take place in
So Cedric having anxiety while potentially being neurodivergent is actually in fact very common
And for Cedric if it wasn’t his anxiety that was going to mess up his spell then it probably would have been one of the symptoms above. It’s like a double edge sword for him
And no matter what people would have seen him as a bungler whether he messed up from being anxious or being neurodivergent
And every mistake he made probably reinforced his own anxiety and everyone's perception of him being a "bungler"
And I think there are a few people to blame for…
Cedric's Life in the Castle
(Aka some people don’t know how to handle someone who’s neurodivergent)
Now I just want to preference that I don’t hate Roland or even Cordelia. I think those two are very interesting characters and have their own issues that they didn’t deal well with and unfortunately lot of it back fired onto how they treated Cedric
That being said… I have a few words about Goodwyn and his “parenting” skills. Let me explain.
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In Mystic Meadows we see that Goodwyn constantly corrects Cedric as he clearly thinks of him as a bungler whether from The Incident or from something else.
By correcting Cedric, Goodwyn thinks that he’s “helping” him become a better sorcerer and fixing whatever he thinks is wrong with him
It feels like Goodwyn wants to him fix Cedric and make him a better sorcerer by fixing what he thinks is wrong with him
And in the end Goodwyn does finally see Cedric as a good sorcerer but this is only because Cedric had to PROVE it to Goodwyn and not because Goodwyn did any self-reflecting on how he’s treated his son all these years. The lesson that Goodwyn learns is that oh I guess Cedric can do magic
And Cedric shouldn’t have had to prove himself to his father. Goodwyn should have been proud of Cedric regardless. But he didn’t he tried correcting him instead and too saw him as a bungler even if he never said it
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While I love Mystic Meadows as an episode I do have a problem with the idea that Cedric could only be a good sorcerer in his father’s eyes if he didn’t fail and Goodwyn only believes in him now because he successfully saved everyone
Especially with the way that Goodwyn is so dismissive of Cedric before he saved everyone it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
I know it’s just a preschool show and this episode came out over what like over a decade ago but it’s still something I saw people pointing out on Tumblr and I agreed with them
So how does this relate to how Cedric was treated in the castle. Well in my opinion the way that Goodwyn treats Cedric, as if he’s different and needs fixing, is very familiar to how a lot of ND people are treated by parents who don’t really understand it
A lot of the time if a parent has a ND kid and they don’t understand them they’ll do everything in their power to either fix them, blame them for things that are out of their control, mock them, get annoyed at their struggles, or think they’re inferior to them
All things Goodwyn does to Cedric. If Cedric was born neurodivergent I’m sure he made a lot of mistakes in front of Goodwyn which might have frustrated him especially if Goodwyn wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
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I do have some potential proof of this. I made another much MUCH smaller post about this months ago but the reaction that the adults have to The Incident is very strange. One sorcerer lady says “Oh he’s a bit of a bungler, isn’t he?”
The “isn’t he” is what gets me. It means that she’s either been told or seen Cedric mess up a spell before and when she saw The Incident it confirmed everything she knew about Cedric
A crazy thing to think about for a child but if this child was known for exhibiting any of the symptoms above and the adults didn't understand what neurodivergency was it unfortunately makes sense why she said what she said plus it being the 1800s doesn’t help bitches today don’t even get it
You know how many times I was told I was lazy or was questioned why I forgot something or why I couldn't remember that tiny detail. Most of the time these things were said to me when I was around Cedric’s age
Obviously it's because I'm neurodivergent and my brain works differently but some of the adults in my life didn’t see it that way because they didn’t understand
If some random ass sorcerer lady was thinking about that about Cedric imagine what the general uppercrust sorcerer bitches we’re thinking, imagine what Goodwyn was thinking
And all of this passed down to Cordelia
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When we first meet her in Gone with a Wand she’s constantly talking over him and not listening to anything he’s trying to say
And in Through the Looking Back Glass the first thing she says to him is to ask him if he’s forgotten how to cast an ironing spell and insulting how he looks, something Goodwyn did when he first saw Cedric in Mystic Meadows
She’s copying what Goodwyn has done to Cedric. This leads me to believe that she learned her behaviors from him, probably after the The Incident, and carried it into adulthood
And I think a lot of that had to do with how they were raised after The Incident.
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In Day of the Sorcerers Cedric tells Roland that everything Roland and Cordelia did was greatest thing but they made mistakes that everyone ignored
Meanwhile, for Cedric, all anyone noticed was when he made a mistake and anything good he did was brushed aside or ignored
I mean it’s very obvious that Cedric is the scapegoat child, Cordelia is the golden child, Goodwyn is a narcissistic parent and Winifred is an enabler. Well at least to me someone get this family in some counseling
And if Roland was also potentially a golden child then perhaps that could have been one of the reasons he sort of stop being friends with Cedric because he too blamed Cedric for The Incident and didn’t understand him
I’m not going to go too crazy into this maybe another time but I do think Roland wants to look perfect in all aspects of his life to be like his great father. Having a friend be labeled as a bungler doesn’t make you perfect
Plus we know in Through the Looking Back Glass Cordelia would tell Roland how terrible of a sorcerer Cedric was plus adding onto the fact that Cedric is already nervous to perform in front of Roland it was just a recipe for disaster
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So bringing it all together if Cedric was born neurodivergent that probably meant that as he was growing up he was already a lot different from Cordelia
If he displayed any of the symptoms from above Goodwyn might have already been frustrated or disappointed in Cedric if he wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
But it didn’t seem to stop any of Cedric’s confidence as he successfully performed the smoke spell in front of Cordelia before The Incident
It seems that Winifred’s love, Cordelia’s inseparable bond, and Roland’s friendship was enough for Cedric at the time
But when the Incident happened and with the event being so public, two of the three people who might have supported him, abandoned him and in some cases became antagonistic towards him
And with The Incident, Cedric became Goodwyn’s scapegoat child and Cordelia the golden child which caused Cedric to have a lot of self-esteem issues and to be anxious performing in front of others including Roland
Which made Roland think that Cedric was a bad sorcerer even though Roland, as he wanted to look perfect, was part of the problem. He could have made his own opinions about Cedric but didn’t because he valued the approval and opinions of other monarchs and sorcerers more than his friend
And if Cedric was nervous along with the added on neurodivergence he could have been making a lot of mistakes, like some of the ones I pointed out in the show, which would make him look like a “bad” sorcerer even though he’s not
But in the end despite everything working against him and a villain arc based on pure revenge, he made it out because of the patience and kindness of Sofia, along with Winifred and Calista’s support
I hope that every neurodivergent has a Sofia in their lives
God damn do we all need one
Conclusion
Oh my god my brain is fried but god damn if you made it all the way down here you’re a real one for sure
Obviously was so much more that I wanted to say but this post is so fucking long already and I had to cut shit out
I hope someone had as much fun reading this as I did making this. Until May 25th everyone, see you then 👑 🪄
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. As someone who is Autistic, I fully support the idea that Cedric is neurodivergent, and I think you brought up some really good points to this.
To add on to what you said, I like to believe that his "Merlin's Mushrooms" thing is a vocal stim of his. Also, and this is a trait that is common with ND people, is the lack of emotion to certain things. What I mean is, for example, in "Mystic Meadows", while we did see Cedric get happy about his father finally recognizing his talents, he didn't seem to get overly emotional or excited. All I remember is him just giving out simple "Thank yous" and that's it. I know that's something that happens with me, is sometimes I barely react to something that most people would react strongly to.
And then in other instances, he is strongly emotional to other things. Like with the whole RSD thing, it looked like he was about to cry (his bottom lip was quivering) when the first attempt to get on Roland's good side failed in "In Cedric We Trust."
Him wearing the same outfit all the time could be an indicator he's neurodivergent too, and I like to think the reason he doesn't wear other outfits is because he gets anxious about change, and sensory issues. I know it's probably because he isn't treated that well and likely didn't have much of a wardrobe, but he still probably could've conjured other outfits if he wanted to.
I did indeed have a lot of fun reading this, and you are right that not a lot of people have brought this up. I did see a few people briefly say he is neurodivergent-coded, but that's basically it. So once again, thank you so much for this post, I have been needing more Cedric content in the fandom hehe.
Oh my god these are such good points! I just remembered one as I was reading what you said but I think in Mystic Meadows if I remember correctly Winifred goes up to hug him but he doesn't even hug her back he just stays there. Like that's the thing there are so many examples it's hard to keep track
Why I think Cedric is neurodivergent
✨ Hey what’s up Sofia the First fandom and fellow Cedric enthusiasts 🧙♂️🪄
I’ve wanted to make this post for so damn long but I’ve been so busy and a little imitated 👉👈
But with Royal Magic coming out in just 2 weeks I thought well fuck it
I’ve seen a lot of different analyses about the show, about Cedric, his family some of the villains, etc., but I really wanted to throw in my two cents here and do my own analysis on why I think Cedric is unintentionally written as neurodivergent
To my actual shock I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else talk about this. I’ve seen headcanons here and there but that’s it and I’m so surprised because in my honest opinion I’ve never seen a character so obviously neurodivergent in my life (okay maybe not in my life but still)
Now I’m not a psychologist so I can’t like officially diagnose anyone so I’m going to just use the word neurodivergent as a broad term to describe these traits
That being said I do have ADHD and most if not all of my friends are neurodivergent and all across the spectrum so I feel like I have a general idea of what I’m talking about
So to the best of my ability I’m going to go over each symptom that I see from him and use canon examples
There really isn’t any order to how I put all this together. Some symptoms have more information on them than others and a lot of them overlap but I did my best
So buckle up and get comfy this in an ungodly long post you have been warned
Very forgetful
(Or some sort of working memory issue)
For me, this was one thing that I noticed that got me to raise my neurodivergent eyebrow at Cedric because it happens SO often to him
For example in Substitute Cedric his main reasoning for going and teaching Sofia's class was so he could go and get Vex Vine for his potion but by the end of the episode Sofia tells Cedric that he can go to the greenhouse now and he says "Why would I go there?"
The same thing happens in the episode Hexley Hall. He starts off saying to Wormwood how he can't wait to learn more about the amulet but by the end of it he has completely forgotten about that to help Sofia against Grimtrix
Now maybe you're still not sure since there was a lot of shit happening in those episodes but what about in the episode In Cedric We Trust
Wormwood tells Cedric that one of the crowns was made out of elven gold and phoenix feathers, but when Cedric goes up to tell Roland he messes it up and says it made from phoenix gold
Maybe he was nervous to impress Roland but he seemed pretty confident in his answer and even made a pun about Roland’s name before he walked up to him so I think it's more likely that he just forgot what Wormwood told him
Okay so maybe you're still not convinced but get ready for what I think are Cedric’s neurodivergent magnum opus: Cedric Be Good and The Fliegel Has Landed
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I'm going to start with Cedric Be Good because oh my god this episode. Now Cedric does a lot of things in this episode but this is the forgetful section so I will try to stick to him being forgetful. Let’s start from the beginning
So the episode starts off with Cedric making a potion that will let him gain a power from the amulet but he's gotta switch out a fake one that he's made with the real one
So he hides behind a tree, successfully switches them only to then PUT THE AMULET ON HIMSELF
I remember when I watched this episode for the first time I was yelling at the screen like what the fuck are you doing Cedric!? Don't you fucking remember that it curses you when you do something wrong? Maybe he didn’t know stealing was wrong but I think that’s silly
Maybe it's been a few years since he told Sofia about the blessing and curse shit but HE was the one who told her about it. And in the episode Cedric's mom is the one who has to remind him
I don't even know why he put it on in the first place. All he needed to do was hold it in his hand and walk to his tower and dip it in the potion
But he didn't do that he put it on and was surprised that his fingers got sticky and completely forgot about the curse/blessing thing
So obviously you know how this goes if you’ve watched the episode. Cedric goes into town does something good, gets a power, then does something "evil" then loses said power
With some of the powers I do think Elena was fucking with Cedric but with others it genuinely felt like he forgot that the amulet would curse him, especially when he gained a power he thought would be useful enough to take over the kingdom
For example there's at one point he gets like these Elsa ice powers and he gets all excited about how he’s gotta use it to take over the kingdom as if Elena would let him do that please and accidentally he freezes a lake and causes a boat to crash into a dock
He loses his power of course but then says "No matter how hard I try I just cannot be good"
I mean I don't know about everyone else but when he said that my first thought was but okay that wasn’t evil
It just seemed like he in his excitement of gaining a useful power he forgot that the amulet could curse him
And my initial reaction to him forgetting all the amulet's lore was: Why does he keep forgetting this very important detail about the amulet? Why can’t he just remember it?
This is the exact same type of mentality a lot of adults had in my life as I was growing up. I would constantly forget things even if they were important. And taking over the kingdom was really important to Cedric at this time in the show
And yet he just can't remember this one little detail about the amulet even though it’s really important to him
It feels like something else is constantly getting in his way and it's not that he's too "evil" to be good, or a bungler or stupid. It looks like a working memory issue
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The second episode I wanted to talk about was The Fliegel Has Landed because I find what he does in this episode to be so interesting
So in this episode Sofia goes to get Cedric to help her create some cave crystals but it doesn't work.
So he goes to the cave to stop the fleigel himself but instead of blasting her away he creates a bunch of chickens and word-for-word says "I forgot to wipe off the eyeshell powder"
Now I don't know all the lore of the show but I feel like cleaning off your wand before using it for the next spell kind of seems like Wand Care 101
But Cedric didn't do that he straight up said I FORGOT and that's why his spell didn’t work. Not because he was nervous or something affected his wand but because he just simply forgot. I mean I rest my case
He does make a lot of mistakes because he’s nervous but there are also a lot of times he makes mistakes and it's NOT from him being nervous
And I think there are other things getting in the way of him being this big bad Disney villain like him potentially have an…
Executive Dysfunction
Now this was definitely thing where I thought oh god get this man on whatever the STF equivalent of adderall is
Now if you don’t know what executive dysfunction is it’s a symptom that disrupts the brain’s ability to control thoughts and behaviors. Most neurodivergent people have it
There are other things that are associated with it but but I will be mainly talking about Cedric’s lack of ability to plan a coherent “evil” scheme
Right from the start in the pilot he gives Sofia a sleeping spell to put everyone asleep and as a way to get the amulet
It’s a good plan but does he get it? Nope because he didn't realize the sleeping spell would also affect him and fell asleep
Did he forget that would happen? Did he just not stand far enough away and already knew? Did he not realize that it would affect him? We’ll never know but it’s clear Cedric didn’t either and he made the plan
This is just a common theme with Cedric and his "evil" plans. Like in The Big Sleepover, his plan doesn't seem that well thought out
The plan consists of him putting on a puppet show, then ask Sofia to give him her amulet, she'll give it to him, and then take over the kingdom. But just TWO episodes ago she told him that she never takes it off so this would have never worked
In A Royal Mess, Cedric is so hyperfixated on the amulet (more on that later) that being asked to fix the royal mural gives him this idea to use a spell to bring small objects to him but once again we ask the question how was this going to work out? Wouldn't Sofia have seen the amulet floating toward him? How would he explain that to her as it landed in his hand?
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Just like in Cedric Be Good and The Fliegil Has Landed, The Leafsong Festival is Cedric's executive dyfuntion magnum opus. First off he makes up his plan on the spot when Sofia brings Crackle to ask him to get rid of her fire
So with Crackle's fire gone, he covers the whole kingdom in forever frost, which is apparently really slippery, which he knows and says out loud
So what does he do in the next scene? Immediately steps on the ice and slips all over the place....
Why didn’t he put some spikes on his shoes or use a floating spell. And WHY did he take the dragon fire with him?
Anyway if you’ve seen the episode you know how it goes, he slips, the dragon fire falls out of his hand, and in the end Crackle gets her fire back and unfreezes the kingdom
Even if somehow Cedric didn't drop Crackle's fire, how was this plan even gonna go?
March up to Roland and the royal family and say, "Make me king or I won't fix the ice?" Roland would have just probably arrested Cedric on the spot
Cedric isn't stupid or a bungler. All the plans are good in theory, but there really isn't a lot of thought put behind them
It’s a good thing he has Sofia as a friend because he has a serious…
Lack of social skills & friends
I mean this one is basically confirmed in canon at least with the lack of friends. In Mystic Meadows Winifred says “Sofia is the nicest friend you’ve ever had and in fact might be the only friend you’ve ever had”
And ofc with the banger My Evil Dreams where he says "My evil schemes were my friends when I was alone" implying that he really didn't have a lot of friends
We technically don't actually know why Cedric doesn't have any friends. I think it's been inferred by the fandom that it's because of his association with The Incident and Cordelia telling everyone he’s a bad sorcerer
And definitely think that’s one piece of it. He doesn't want to be made fun of or bullied so he stays out of everyone's way but I also think it could be because I don't think he has the best understanding of social situations
Going back to his “evil” plans, a lot of them do fail because he doesn't have the executive functioning skills to complete them but they fail because he doesn’t really take into consideration that other people can’t just talk it out. It’s just he expects people to act exactly as he expects them to
The best examples I can think of is in Princess Butterfly and The Amulet and the Anthem. In both cases he expects Sofia to be in this big huge pickle be backed so far into a corner that she's just gonna have to give him her amulet
But in both cases none of that even comes close to what happens as Sofia just talks to Amber, her friends, and well Princess Belle to sort it out
He's just throwing these half baked plans and doesn’t seem to really understand that other people have their own individual thoughts
It probably also doesn't help that he's very...
Disorganized & Messy
Cedric sooo disorganized and messy. Of course the best example I can give of this is in Cedric's Apprentice when says "I can't find anything in this mess"
And we know he created said mess because a minute later when he’s yapping to Wormwood about taking over the kingdom he drops a vial on the floor and later knocks over the cauldron when singing Cedric the Great
And that's not all of it. One of my favorite subtle moments from that episode is when Sofia goes to clean his spellbook she gives a loud "Ick!" and proceeds to wipe whatever gunk Cedric had on it
It gets even better when she tells him that the spellbook was dirty, he goes "SO?" which I just find so funny
What’s even funnier to me is that he never once thought to clean his spellbook when he was trying to create the invisibility potion
Then of course in The Winter's Gift we get even more of a confirmation that Cedric is messy af
He says "Where is my family wand? It always goes missing when I need it." That's why Sofia's gift was so special to him and why it meant so much to him
He obviously loses his wand enough for Sofia to notice so she made him something to help with his disorganization which is just so 🥹
It's good that Sofia really values his friendship since I'm pretty sure Cedric has...
Rejection Sensitivity Disorder
I saw this headcanon lurking around on tumblr but I can’t find it anywhere but I am completely subscribed to it
Now I’m pretty sure RSD isn’t an official neurodivergent symptom but I think so many ND people have experienced it that many have accepted it as one
To sum it up briefly RSD means that someone will experience intense emotional pain related to being rejected
This could mean getting embarrassed easily, having low self-esteem, troubling in believing themselves, and turning their feelings inward, which may look like a snap of severe depression
Not only that but a lot of the time people with RSD might even “feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection”
Hmmm sounds really familiar to someone right. There are really three examples I can think of where Cedric kinda of displays this behavior
In Cedric’s Apprentice after Cedric was rejected by Roland he just sits in his workshop staring at nothing as Sofia cleans up around him
In Mystic Meadows after his father doesn’t give him the family wand he sits his family’s couch eating jellybeans while Sofia and Winifred are talking to him
And of course the biggest example I have is how utterly defeated he looked after getting rejected by Roland in The Enchanted Feast. I mean look at how upset he looks in that gif. He’s just laying there on his open spellbook
If Cedric had RSD it would explain why he would get so nervous before performing in front of Roland or really anyone because he’s afraid he’s going to get rejected. Of course, none of this explains how he can be so...
Impulsive
Well I’m going back to Cedric Be Good again because I gotta talk the last scene of this episode
So by the end of the episode he’s finally got his super strength and holds onto to it long enough to tell some servant to get Roland so they he can use his super strength to take over the kingdom even though Elena would have probably taken his power away
And instead of just waiting what does he do? He does some sort of jazz hand thing and says “I can’t wait any longer” and sits down on Roland’s throne and declares himself king
This kind of ties into his forgetfulness and executive dysfunction because ofc he when he declares himself king he says “I’m going to rule with an iron fist.” The amulet glows and he gets once again
If he wasn’t so impulsive or excited he would have waited for Roland to show up and then shown his super strength but he didn’t he just sat right down and lost his power
But that’s not all as Cedric can be very...
Easily distracted
This one really isn’t shown that much but the best example I can give is in the episode The Amulet of Avalor when Cedric completely abandoned the plants he was collecting for his “evil” potions to go chase after the amulet all day
I would even argue that in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric got so distracted about his hatred for the fliegel and her bothering Sofia that he completely forgot to wipe off the eggshell powder and that’s why he’s spell didn’t work
Or maybe he’s just really distracted because he has…
Limerance
So limerence itself is not actually a ND trait but I know a lot of people who are ND relate to it
This is also another headcanon I mean lol aren’t they all that I saw floating around tumblr but i honestly think it really makes sense
Limerence is essentially a way to describe when someone is deeply infatuated with someone else
A lot of people confuse it with falling in love but it’s actually just another form of a hyperfixation but on another person and most of the time it can be very intense
Being very obsessed with someone, thinking about them all the time, getting very anxious about them
Obviously this show is not a romance show but I just can’t explain how Cedric got so obsessed with Sasha in The Enchanted Feast
Now I know this infatuation with Sasha from Cedric is kinda of a hotly debated topic since people are not sure if Cedric was put under a love spell by Miss Nettle or not
But if we’re going, for the sake of the argument, that he wasn’t under a love spell Cedric falls for “Sasha” really quickly and very strongly.
So much so that when Sofia goes up to express her concerns about her he brushes Sofia off and talks about how wonderful Sasha is despite not knowing anything about her
It’s very common for ND people with limerence to ignore any red flags and to ignore any flaws
Which I feel like is strange for Cedric since it seems like he’s always…
Constantly Irritated
Cedric for most of the show is known for being “grumpy” mainly at anyone coming into his workshop and asking for him to do something he doesn’t want to do
And most of the time when they first enter he will immediately ask them “What do you want” and “Why are you here” as if he’s trying to get them out as fast as he can
And while he could be doing that because he’s just an introvert there really rarely is a time that he isn’t annoyed or making a sassy comment so he seems pretty irritated most of the time which is common in ND people
Obviously we’ll never know why Cedric is constantly irritated but maybe it could be because he’s…
Not paying attention
So I have a few examples for this. In When You Wish Upon a Well Sofia gets turned into a cat and goes to Cedric to get him to turn her back into her normal self
But Cedric doesn’t help her and is completely annoyed that she’s flipping through his spellbook since he’s clearly working on something
So she leaves and Wormwood notices that she’s wearing the amulet and tries to get Cedric to notice it too but he doesn’t and kicks him out
The whole time I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see the amulet of Avalor on the purple cat sitting on top of his spellbook but saw a griffin last season like 20 something feet away. I know it was probably just for the plot but still
This also happens in The Fliegel Has Landed. The main reason Sofia and Cedric have to go down into the caves was because Cedric was out of diamond dust which he needed make cave crystals
But he never checked what he put on his wand and did the spell with eggshell powder instead and not diamond dust and the of course later forgot to wipe it off
Interestingly enough he wasn’t even anxious when he failed that spell he just didn’t check the label and only checked AFTER he did it
Maybe he was just excited to do his spell like when he’s…
Stimming
So this headcanon is from this really cute fanfic on Ao3 about Cedric spinning as a stim and after I read it I realized how much Cedric does spin in the show
For example spins and twirls a lot in Cedric be Good when he thinks he’s got a power that’s going to help him over the kingdom. It happens so fast that you really don’t notice when he does it
And of course when Sofia invites Cedric to meet Merlin in Gone with a Wand he literally spins in front of the mirror like I have in the gif
He also paces in Through the Looking Back Glass right before his sister visits. I’m sure there are other examples that I can’t think of but I am pretty confident in the fact the amulet of Avalor was an…
Implied Hyperfixation
Yeah saw this on tumblr as well and I’m fully subscribed to it. I know it was probably just a writing choice from season 1 to season 2 but it’s so interesting how Cedric is constantly thinking about the amulet and always making plans for it but the first time we see him after The Floating Palace he’s helping Sofia and Amber try and catch baby James. He doesn’t mention the amulet once
I thought maybe he would try and do something with the amulet but no he doesn’t. The only times he thinks about it is in The Enchanted Feast and The Curse of Princess Ivy but that’s only because other people were trying to take it. It’s as if he forgot it existed until someone else wanted it
Even he’s only “evil” plan for that season is in The Leafsong Festival which has nothing to do with the amulet.
And I know he’s into the amulet in Cedric be Good but it feels more like a brief interest back into it
I don’t know about everyone else but my hyperfixations fluctuate and most of the time I feel like I can’t really control them.
They just spring up at random points. It’s almost like a ope I guess we’re back into this again me with Sofia the first lowkey
But Cedric isn’t only into the amulet or taking over the kingdom. He’s always making potions which I think is an…
Implied special interest
If you go back and watch any episode that features Cedric I bet you a million dollars that he’s probably making some sort of potion or talking about making potions. And I’m not sure what these potions are
Maybe Roland is assigning him to do these but in one episode he mentions that it’s taken him 12 hours to make a potion that will turn toadstools into tornadoes
Not sure who’s asking for that or how that would be useful in any way. Maybe he made it to try and take over the kingdom? Or maybe he just really likes making potions
From what I’ve got from the show Roland doesn’t really ask him to do much so I assume all the potions he’s making are for fun
Even in the end of Substitute Cedric he’s so excited to teach Sofia and her classmates more sorcery that the first thing he mentions is teaching them how to make potions. Definitely sounds like he likes to do it for fun
And of course how could I not talk about his idol, the one he has a whole catchphrase on, Merlin. I don’t know but I don’t think it’s very neurotypical to have a whole catchphrase based on your favorite celebrity / hero / idol and especially one that you’ve used since you were a child
Not only that but in The Fliegel Has Landed Cedric mentions that he has a book called Thursdays with Merlin so I assume he has the other weeks as well
Cedric has a lot of neurodivergent traits but I also think he has some…
Co-morbidity
I’ve seen a lot of people theorize and give their own ideas of what Cedric also might have: anxiety, social anxiety, depression, PSTD, etc
We know for a fact that Cedric gets nervous especially when performing in front of others and especially in front of Roland. He says it in Cedric’s Apprentice and In Cedric We Trust
Now it could be a trauma response from The Incident or for being bullied and teased all his life
It’s not uncommon for neurodivergent people to have multiple other disorders
For example, most adults with ADHD have at least two disorders. 80 to 85% have ADHD and one other disorder and more than half may have three disorders. This could include autism, OCD, anxiety disorders, depression, other learning disabilities, and so many more. And with people with autism it’s just as high around 85%
And this is the modern day. Imagine the 1800s or whatever time period Sofia the First is supposed to take place in
So Cedric having anxiety while potentially being neurodivergent is actually in fact very common
And for Cedric if it wasn’t his anxiety that was going to mess up his spell then it probably would have been one of the symptoms above. It’s like a double edge sword for him
And no matter what people would have seen him as a bungler whether he messed up from being anxious or being neurodivergent
And every mistake he made probably reinforced his own anxiety and everyone's perception of him being a "bungler"
And I think there are a few people to blame for…
Cedric's Life in the Castle
(Aka some people don’t know how to handle someone who’s neurodivergent)
Now I just want to preference that I don’t hate Roland or even Cordelia. I think those two are very interesting characters and have their own issues that they didn’t deal well with and unfortunately lot of it back fired onto how they treated Cedric
That being said… I have a few words about Goodwyn and his “parenting” skills. Let me explain.
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In Mystic Meadows we see that Goodwyn constantly corrects Cedric as he clearly thinks of him as a bungler whether from The Incident or from something else.
By correcting Cedric, Goodwyn thinks that he’s “helping” him become a better sorcerer and fixing whatever he thinks is wrong with him
And in the end Goodwyn does finally see Cedric as a good sorcerer but this is only because Cedric had to PROVE it to Goodwyn and not because Goodwyn did any self-reflecting on how he’s treated his son all these years. The lesson that Goodwyn learns is that oh I guess Cedric can do magic
And Cedric shouldn’t have had to prove himself to his father. Goodwyn should have been proud of Cedric regardless. But he didn’t he tried correcting him instead and too saw him as a bungler even if he never said it
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While I love Mystic Meadows as an episode I do have a problem with the idea that Cedric could only be a good sorcerer in his father’s eyes if he didn’t fail and Goodwyn only believes in him now because he successfully saved everyone
Especially with the way that Goodwyn is so dismissive of Cedric before he saved everyone it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth
I know it’s just a preschool show and this episode came out over what like over a decade ago but it’s still something I saw people pointing out on Tumblr and I agreed with them
So how does this relate to how Cedric was treated in the castle. Well in my opinion the way that Goodwyn treats Cedric, as if he’s different and needs fixing, is very familiar to how a lot of ND people are treated by parents who don’t really understand it
A lot of the time if a parent has a ND kid and they don’t understand them they’ll do everything in their power to either fix them, blame them for things that are out of their control, mock them, get annoyed at their struggles, or think they’re inferior to them
All things Goodwyn does to Cedric. If Cedric was born neurodivergent I’m sure he made a lot of mistakes in front of Goodwyn which might have frustrated him especially if Goodwyn wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
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I do have some potential proof of this. I made another much MUCH smaller post about this months ago but the reaction that the adults have to The Incident is very strange. One sorcerer lady says “Oh he’s a bit of a bungler, isn’t he?”
The “isn’t he” is what gets me. It means that she’s either been told or seen Cedric mess up a spell before and when she saw The Incident it confirmed everything she knew about Cedric
A crazy thing to think about for a child but if this child was known for exhibiting any of the symptoms above and the adults didn't understand what neurodivergency was it unfortunately makes sense why she said what she said plus it being the 1800s doesn’t help bitches today don’t even get it
You know how many times I was told I was lazy or was questioned why I forgot something or why I couldn't remember that tiny detail. Most of the time these things were said to me when I was around Cedric’s age
Obviously it's because I'm neurodivergent and my brain works differently but some of the adults in my life didn’t see it that way because they didn’t understand
If some random ass sorcerer lady was thinking about that about Cedric imagine what the general uppercrust sorcerer bitches we’re thinking, imagine what Goodwyn was thinking
And all of this passed down to Cordelia
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When we first meet her in Gone with a Wand she’s constantly talking over him and not listening to anything he’s trying to say
And in Through the Looking Back Glass the first thing she says to him is to ask him if he’s forgotten how to cast an ironing spell and insulting how he looks, something Goodwyn did when he first saw Cedric in Mystic Meadows
She’s copying what Goodwyn has done to Cedric. This leads me to believe that she learned her behaviors from him, probably after the The Incident, and carried it into adulthood
And I think a lot of that had to do with how they were raised after The Incident.
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In Day of the Sorcerers Cedric tells Roland that everything Roland and Cordelia did was greatest thing but they made mistakes that everyone ignored
Meanwhile, for Cedric, all anyone noticed was when he made a mistake and anything good he did was brushed aside or ignored
I mean it’s very obvious that Cedric is the scapegoat child, Cordelia is the golden child, Goodwyn is a narcissistic parent and Winifred is an enabler. Well at least to me someone get this family in some counseling
And if Roland was also potentially a golden child then perhaps that could have been one of the reasons he sort of stop being friends with Cedric because he too blamed Cedric for The Incident and didn’t understand him
I’m not going to go too crazy into this maybe another time but I do think Roland wants to look perfect in all aspects of his life to be like his great father. Having a friend be labeled as a bungler doesn’t make you perfect
Plus we know in Through the Looking Back Glass Cordelia would tell Roland how terrible of a sorcerer Cedric was plus adding onto the fact that Cedric is already nervous to perform in front of Roland it was just a recipe for disaster
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So bringing it all together if Cedric was born neurodivergent that probably meant that as he was growing up he was already a lot different from Cordelia
If he displayed any of the symptoms from above Goodwyn might have already been frustrated or disappointed in Cedric if he wanted Cedric to replace him as the royal sorcerer
But it didn’t seem to stop any of Cedric’s confidence as he successfully performed the smoke spell in front of Cordelia before The Incident
It seems that Winifred’s love, Cordelia’s inseparable bond, and Roland’s friendship was enough for Cedric at the time
But when the Incident happened and with the event being so public, two of the three people who might have supported him, abandoned him and in some cases became antagonistic towards him
And with The Incident, Cedric became Goodwyn’s scapegoat child and Cordelia the golden child which caused Cedric to have a lot of self-esteem issues and to be anxious performing in front of others including Roland
Which made Roland think that Cedric was a bad sorcerer even though Roland, as he wanted to look perfect, was part of the problem. He could have made his own opinions about Cedric but didn’t because he valued the approval and opinions of other monarchs and sorcerers more than his friend
And if Cedric was nervous along with the added on neurodivergence he could have been making a lot of mistakes, like some of the ones I pointed out in the show, which would make him look like a “bad” sorcerer even though he’s not
But in the end despite everything working against him and a villain arc based on pure revenge, he made it out because of the patience and kindness of Sofia, along with Winifred and Calista’s support
I hope that every neurodivergent has a Sofia in their lives
God damn do we all need one
Conclusion
Oh my god my brain is fried but god damn if you made it all the way down here you’re a real one for sure
Obviously was so much more that I wanted to say but this post is so fucking long already and I had to cut shit out
I hope someone had as much fun reading this as I did making this. Until May 25th everyone, see you then 👑 🪄
The newest Sofia the First: Royal Magic trailer shows Rapunzel in the new shows style. She says that Sofia must master magic to keep her family, friends, and all of the kingdom safe.
My delulu mind wants this to be a reference to Tangled: the Series ya know considering that’s what Rapunzel had to do in her show to save Corona from Zhan Tiri and shit
And now she’s giving advice to Sofia to help her probably with her new powers from the amulet
I know it’s not but let a girl dream 😫
Sofia the first trailer spoiler ⚠️
Bro I would have never ever ever EVER guessed in my wildest dreams that they would have made Cedric not only a teacher at Charmswell but gave him is OWN classroom where he’s teaching Sofia and her friends magic
Like everyone wanted him to be a teacher but I was like no way he’s not going to be but I can’t believe they actually did it I’m so happy 🥹
Spoliers.. from the Disney junior Germany YouTube Channel
I thought this was so cute of Sofia and Cedric hugging 🥺
And Miranda looks so good 💕
Sound the alarm Sofia is hugging Cedric and he’s hugging her back!!!!!!!!! 🫢🥺