Once there was a beautiful young woman who lived under the sea. She had precious long, white, curly hair that everyone wanted and a shell that she wore around her neck. She was loved by all mermaids and mermen across the sea, just as much as they loved the royals which didn’t go down very well with the prince, Triton, who had a tendency to be very controlling and always got his own way. The woman was ravishing inside and out, she helped the less fortunate and even took part in the annual royal parties. When she entered a room, all the attention was on her, which she never took notice of. She loved her life and her friends and the sea until one day when the king got so ill that he would never recover.

Everyone attended the funeral and looked to her for guidance in times of such heartbreak as the king cherished her dearly, just as much as his own son. But Triton felt betrayed by this and with such anger he used his powers to take away everything he possibly could from the woman, just as he thought she did to him. He destroyed her precious hair, her silky voice and her magically mermaid tail, leaving her nearly unrecognisable. With so much resentment inside her, she started to change once again. Not her hair, not her voice, not her tail but her skin. Her skin went from a havenly pastel pink to a miserable purple. The only way to identify her now was by the shell she wore around her neck.

Triton locked the woman up but when people started to make enquiries to where she was, his anger started to come back although this time it was joined with fright. He was afraid that they would take his crown from him, so he justified it by putting the blame on her. Triton told the whole kingdom that she had been using dark magic to take the crown and destroy the kingdom however something went wrong and she changed into this horrfiying creature. Everyone believed him and ordered her to be banished from there and never be able to return. She tried to plead with him, warned him she had no where to go. In spite of that his only response was “Poor unfortunate soul.” She knew then that there was no point in trying to bargain with him, she wasn’t being heard. Her looks had been ripped away from her and no one trusted her without them. She wished that all of the things would come back to her, to no avail. When she thought that all hope was lost she painted her nails, put lip stick on and even decorated her eyes but nothing would work. She was indeed a horrifying creature.

“A women doesn’t know how powerful her voice is until she has been silenced.” Was the last thing she ever said to Triton and to this day it’s one of the things he remembers so vividly as well as her name, Ursula.