wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has everything?
so i know i already wrote a retold fairytale for the little mermaid, but please consider:
ariel is the youngest of triton’s children – the most treasured, the most coveted and protected.
ariel is triton’s only son, and the heir to the kingdom of the sea.
his mother had given him his name. the healers hadn’t had time to tell her that she had borne a son, not a daughter, before she died.
he is beloved. his eldest sister fawns over him, attina trying her best to be a mother to six children even though she’s barely a teenager. she may be queen on day – no one yet knows who will succeed her father, but she is the eldest, and clever and not a bad hand at magic. she may be queen one day, and if she cannot comfort six mourning children, how will she rule a nation?
they have many nannies, people to make sure they are fed and dressed and bathed. but it is attina they turn to with their nightmares, their cries, and their hurts. it is attina who first forces ariel into their father’s hands. “he’s your son,” she says, desperately.
triton has been as affectionate as always with his girls, has embraced them and kissed their cheeks when they come to him sad and scared at the loss of their mother. but he has not yet picked up the child his wife died to give him. triton looks down at the small babe and says, “he has her hair.”
“and her eyes,” she says, “don’t you want to see mom’s eyes again? look into his, and you will.”
he heaves a great sigh and hold out his hands, something guarded and stony in his features. attina carefully places ari into them, anxiously watching as her baby brother breaks into a huge grin, grabs onto their father’s beard, and tugs.
she wants to scream. why couldn’t he have giggled or smiled or done something else adorable and lovable –
but triton’s whole face softens and he throws back his head and laughs, the first one she’s heard since their mother died. the sadness is still there, but as he gazes down at ariel the first hints of true happiness peak through.
“he’s just like her,” he says, and when he looks up at her, she realizes she’s smiling too. she hadn’t done that since her mother died either.
ari is two years old, sitting in his father’s lap in the middle of a council meeting, when he topples forward and grabs onto the trident for balance.
“no!” triton yells, horrified, pulling him back even though it’s too late, even though one touch is all it takes.
but his son is unharmed. he’s not a pile of ash, he isn’t crying, there are no deep bloody wounds on him. instead he reaches for the trident again, and this time no one tries to stop him. he bites it, liking the feel of cold metal on his sore gums as his teeth start to poke through. all that happens is a little spark of electricity travels up the trident.
the advisors are staring. triton has no choice but to make a public announcement.
prince ariel, the youngest of his children, is the chosen heir to the throne. there is no longer a question of succession.
if this were normal circumstances, then the confirmation ceremony would commence immediately, and ariel would be named a regent.
but this is not normal circumstances. ari is not of age, is a baby who touched the trident by accident, who was named crown prince of the sea by accident. “we do not know how the trident will react to my daughters,” he objects, “perhaps it likes all my children equally, and it is simply ari who touched it first.”
“regardless, he has touched it and been declared worthy,” his councilman says, unimpressed. “let your daughters hold it then, and we shall know for sure.”
there’s a chilling fear up his spine, because if they are not so favored it may kill them. they are of the royal line and magic blood and it will not mean to, but there is a reason he himself did not hold the trident until he was a man.
this must all show on his face, because his councilman softens and says, “we shall move up the timetable from eighteen years old to ten years old. your two eldest daughters will attempt to hold the trident immediately, and each daughter shall attempt the same on her tenth birthday. then, if the trident chooses any or all of them, we shall know for sure who shall be declared regent on the day of their eighteenth birthday.”
it’s a compromise, and one he doesn’t like, but one he must stomach. news of ariel using the trident as a teething toy has already spread even farther than the oceans, is being whispered about by the gods and spirits of the surface and the sky. “very well,” he says, pretending he has a choice in this at all.
attina manages a full five seconds with her hand on the trident before she releases it with a cry of pain, her palm coming away bloody. alana barely places her hand against it before she pulls it back, shrieking, the skin where she touched it gone completely.
triton cleans their hands and heals them, kissing the wounds even as he comforts them. somehow, he’s feels like this is how each of his daughters will fair when the time comes.
ari is slightly less beloved after that. it is unavoidable – he is a treasured, a crown prince when they are only princesses, and even as a child his talent with magic is obvious, his affinity for controlling the power of the ocean plain for all to see.
he spends long hours with tutors, with old men and women who teach him the basics of wielding power, and then even more when his talent and intellect demands it.
“this isn’t fair,” ari pouts, clinging to his sister’s hand as she tries to tug away, “i want to go to!”
“you’re too little,” aquata says, finally shaking him off, “father doesn’t want you leaving the castle.”
he runs to the window and calls out, “when can i leave?”
“when you’re older!” andrina answers, laughing. he watches his sisters’ tails create a rainbow as they all swim away from him.
andrina is only a year older than him. this doesn’t seem fair.
he is five years old when he realizes he’s not just jealous of his sisters’ freedom. but even that young, he knows he can’t have what he wants, so he says nothing.
ari has big blue eyes and hair a brighter red than anything else in the ocean. he looks like their mother, or so everyone tells him, and he wonders if that’s part of the reason their father doesn’t let him stray.
he grows his hair long, and it raises a few eyebrows, but not too many. triton has long hair, even if it’s not the current style. ari’s is different, though, and he knows it. he spends longer than his sisters combing it each day, and loves it’s softness and it’s shine.
alana grabs him one day and shoves him into their room. he loves his sisters’ room. as the only boy and crown prince, he has his own quarters, away from them. he wishes he didn’t.
it’s bright and glittering, littered with jewelry and hair ornaments, with sparkly shell tops that he loves to touch. he wears his hair in a long braid down his back because it gets in the way when he’s reading, when he struggles to summon the power his father uses so easily, and memorize spells and languages no one else in the kingdom will ever know.
there are other magic users in the kingdom, of course, but the extent to which they can utilize their power and effect the world, and the extent to which the ruler of the sea can do such things, are so far apart as to be laughable.
“sit still and let me practice on you,” alana commands, undoing his braid with impersonal, practiced motions.
arista sits by them, “wow, his hair is the longest of us all. trying to look like a girl, ari?”
he freezes, a cold lump at the bottom of his throat. is she – do they know – is he so obvious?
“be nice,” attina says absently, head buried in a book. “you’re just jealous because your hair keeps breaking midway down your back.”
arista scoffs, but takes one of his hands, “here, brother, you should have the nails to match.”
for the next hour arista polishes and shapes his nails before painting them the same shade as his tail. alana twists his mass of red hair into several styles, before deciding on a complicated updo dotted through with pearls and abalone shells carved into floral shapes.
“this looks fun,” adella decides, and takes her own spot in front of ari. she brings over a set of pots and a couple delicate brushes. she swipes on eyeliner and paints his lips red, then grabs some of the expensive glittery green powder from that attina’s vanity.
attina rolls her eyes but doesn’t move to stop her, “that’s only for special occasions.”
“be quiet, it’s perfect,” adella says, using delicate fingers to smudge the powder onto his eyelids.
finished, they all lean back to look at him. his other sisters crowd in close, and even attina looks up from her book. “huh,” arista says, “it was meant to be funny, but – you look really pretty ari.”
heart in his throat, he turns and finally allows himself to look into one of mirrors. he raises a hand to his reflection, then lowers it. it’s so close to perfect that he wants to cry. “guess it’s time to take it all off,” he says, but doesn’t move to do so, only keeps staring at himself.
no one says anything until attina snorts, “they spent so long making you look pretty, ari. you should at least keep it all on for the rest of the day.”
he snaps his neck around to look at her, but she’s already focused back on her book. “okay,” he says, and the wave of relief is pathetic.
“you might as well keep the pearls,” alana says, trying for nonchalant and failing miserably, “they look better on you than me.”
“i don’t know how to put them in,” he says, and winces. he should have said that he didn’t need them because he was a boy, and boys didn’t wear pearls in their hair.
“well,” alana says, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, “i guess i’ll just have to teach you then.”
“when can i use the trident for my spells?” he asks hungrily, the dizzying power of having it so close crackling up his spine.
triton sighs, “only when you have progressed to the point where you do not need it.”
what’s the point of being able to handle and use the trident if his father won’t let him? what’s the point of spending so much time cooped up in the castle, reading and learning and practicing, if he can neither explore with his sisters nor fully explore his magic?
“you have more important thing to do than your sisters,” triton tells him, “you will be king one day, and you must study your magic. on your eighteenth birthday, you will be tasked with proving your claim to the throne, and you must also be able to wield the trident.”
ari holds out a hand, and his father willingly passes him the trident. if anyone lacking great power attempts to hold it, if anyone deemed unworthy of being the ruler of the sea tried to use it, they would be killed.
that ari is able to hold it with nothing more than a spark of static electricity on his fingertips is the only sign of his rank and status of heir that matters. his sisters have all tried to hold it more than once, and it left angry, blistering welts on their hands. it did not kill them, but neither will the trident allow them to wield it.
it is ari, and ari alone, who will one day wield the trident of the seven seas.
ari is five years old when he figure out that he’s not a boy. he’s a girl. and he wants to say something, to go to his father and demand he use the power of the trident to make him look like his sisters, to tell everyone to only call him the name of his birth, to wear pretty things in his hair and seashell tops.
but he doesn’t. not as a child, and certainly not as he grows older. he knows what’s at stake.
he can’t be a girl. if he’s a girl, the trident will reject him just as it rejects his sisters.
if the trident rejects him, there will no longer be a clear heir to the throne, and the kingdom will weaken. triton’s rule is peaceful, but not uncontested. there are sea gods who seek to claim the oceans for their own, water spirits who would snatch it away at even the hint of opportunity.
if atlantica loses its crown prince, if there are signs of unrest in the kingdom, it will be as good as inviting war onto their doorstep.
when’s he’s fourteen, he masters illusions.
he leaves a double in his bed, and sneaks out past the palace grounds for the first time in his life. he’d feel guilty about sneaking out from his father’s watchful eyes, except –
he doesn’t know how anyone can expect him to rule a world that he does not know.
ari does this, night after night. he explores, visiting all the places his sisters talked about and he could never go. he goes down caverns and takes naps on the back of blue whales. he rides rip currents and plays tag with tiger sharks.
at night he has all the freedom that’s denied to him during the day.
but even at night, he refuses to think of himself as a girl, because he’s worried if he thinks it too loud the trident will know, and the next time he goes to pick it up it will sense it and reject him.
ari doesn’t have friends. he has his sisters, and he has servants. those are the two types of people that are in the castle, besides stuffy advisors and dignitaries.
he meets a boy one night at the edge of atlantica, a boy with bright yellow hair and electric blue eyes. he’s an orphan, and too-thin, but he teaches ari to pick locks and steal food from the cook first thing in the morning.
his name is flounder. ari starts to bring food with him to all his nighttime adventures, and flounder doesn’t steal so much. “what’s it like being the prince?” flounder asks one day, both of them lounging on a rock on the surface under starlight. triton would be furious if he knew ari went to the surface, that he went not just once but nearly every night.
ari frowns and doesn’t look over at his friend, “lonely.”
flounder rolls over and pokes him in the shoulder, “you’re not lonely now, are you?”
“i’m not a prince when i’m with you,” he says, smiling. he can’t be lonely around flounder, who knows him better than anyone else in the sea.
flounder rolls his eyes, “you are a prince always, no matter where you are. that doesn’t change.”
“i suppose,” he says, but won’t say anything more than that.
ari is sixteen when flounder grabs his wrist and says, “you know you can tell me anything, right?”
“obviously,” he says, tearing his eyes from the shipwreck they were so close to exploring. he loves ships, and all the things they contain, all the things from the surface. sometimes he worries he’ll never be satisfied by the world he was born in, but will instead always be searching for something more. “why?”
“why doesn’t anyone call you ariel?” flounder asks, and suddenly all of ari’s attention is on his friend and not on the ship.
he crosses his arms, “don’t be ridiculous. my mom gave me that name because she thought she was having a girl.”
“she did have a girl,” flounder says, “didn’t she?”
his skin’s hot and too tight, and he wants to cry. “why are you doing this? i thought we were friends.”
“we are!” flounder darts forward and takes his hands in his own, “we are friends! and – and i’m a boy, and i would get really upset if my friends treated me like a girl, because i’m not one. i’m a boy. but – so – if, i mean, i think you’re a girl. and if you’re a girl, and my friend, then i should call you a girl and treat one like one, if that’s what you are. because you’re my friend.”
he’s definitely crying now. “i can’t be a girl. i can’t.”
“i don’t think that’s the type of thing you can control,” flounder says gently, “look, how about – how about if i treat you like a girl, and call you ariel, okay? because you look sad so much, and i think this might be why. i mean, what do i know, i’m just an orphan street urchin and you’re the crown prince – crown princess – but i think that – that we should call people what they are. and you are a girl.”
“i can’t be a girl,” he repeats, shoulders hitching.
flounder’s face screws into determination and he darts to the sea floor and then back up, a smooth round rock in his hand. “this is a shell.”
“it’s a rock,” ari says, confused, trying to regain control over himself.
“it’s a shell,” he says, rubbing a layer of caked on mud to reveal a pale orange layer below. “maybe some people would think it’s a rock, and say it looks like a rock, maybe everyone would call it a rock and treat it like a rock. but it’s not. it’s a shell. and no amount of calling it a rock will change that.” he places the muddy shell in ari’s hand, “just because everyone calls you a boy and thinks you look like a boy doesn’t mean you are one. if you don’t want to correct them, i’m not going to try and make you. but – it’s okay if you’re a girl, ari. it’s okay.”
they stare at each other for long moments, the silence stretching out to the point of being uncomfortable, flounder not sure if he’s crossed a line that he can’t come back from, not sure if he should apologize or just leave or what. then his friend breaks the silence with an almost hysterical laugh.
“call me ariel,” she bawls, throwing her arms around flounder’s neck and clinging to him. “i’m a girl!”
“i know,” he says, nearly weak with relief as his arms encircle ariel’s waist. “i know.”
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