The curse that Maleficent placed on Princess Aurora at her christening wasn't to torment Aurora. It wasn't even to torment Stefan about his daughter's fate. It was about spinning wheels.
To protect his only child from the curse, King Stefan ordered all spinning wheels in the kingdom confiscated and burned, thus setting in motion a calamity that a thief who conned his way onto the throne, and as such had no functional knowledge of economics, could ever anticipate. For the humble spinning wheel was far more important to the economy of a medieval society than Stefan realized.
For starters, spinning thread was primary source of income for most unmarried women (This is why women who never marry are sometimes referred to as spinsters). All of these women one day find soldiers seizing and destroying the tools of their trade, stripping them of their livelihoods. Then there were the farmers and shepherds. With nobody spinning thread, the bottom abruptly dropped out of the wool and flax markets for anyone who didn't live close enough to the border to make it possible to affordably sell it in another country, bankrupting those whose incomes depended on those goods. Then the skilled craftsmen started to feel the consequences.
Without spinning wheels, there is no thread. Without thread, the weavers cannot make cloth, the tailors cannot make clothing, and the cobblers cannot make shoes and boots. With the domestic production of thread cut to zero, those craftsmen who cannot afford to import thread from neighboring countries go out of business, and those that can must increase their prices to cover the added expense, making clothing more expensive than many people can afford, especially since many farmers, shepherds and spinsters just got forced out of business themselves. Within a year or two, the kingdom's textile industry has completely collapsed.
And the effective ban on producing thread goes on for years. The average citizen becomes less and less able to mend, patch or replace damaged or worn out clothing. Stefan's kingdom becomes known as the 'Threadbare Moors', a nation that cannot afford to clothe itself.
Eventually, the people decide they've had enough. They're tired of wearing outgrown, worn out clothing for the sake of a princess that nobody has seen since shortly before her birth. Far too many of their own children have frozen to death because they couldn't afford new blankets because of the King's idiotic decree.
By the time Aurora reaches her sixteenth birthday, she might not be a princess anymore.
To protect his only child from the curse, King Stefan ordered all spinning wheels in the kingdom confiscated and burned, thus setting in motion a calamity that a thief who conned his way onto the throne, and as such had no functional knowledge of economics, could ever anticipate. For the humble spinning wheel was far more important to the economy of a medieval society than Stefan realized.
For starters, spinning thread was primary source of income for most unmarried women (This is why women who never marry are sometimes referred to as spinsters). All of these women one day find soldiers seizing and destroying the tools of their trade, stripping them of their livelihoods. Then there were the farmers and shepherds. With nobody spinning thread, the bottom abruptly dropped out of the wool and flax markets for anyone who didn't live close enough to the border to make it possible to affordably sell it in another country, bankrupting those whose incomes depended on those goods. Then the skilled craftsmen started to feel the consequences.
Without spinning wheels, there is no thread. Without thread, the weavers cannot make cloth, the tailors cannot make clothing, and the cobblers cannot make shoes and boots. With the domestic production of thread cut to zero, those craftsmen who cannot afford to import thread from neighboring countries go out of business, and those that can must increase their prices to cover the added expense, making clothing more expensive than many people can afford, especially since many farmers, shepherds and spinsters just got forced out of business themselves. Within a year or two, the kingdom's textile industry has completely collapsed.
And the effective ban on producing thread goes on for years. The average citizen becomes less and less able to mend, patch or replace damaged or worn out clothing. Stefan's kingdom becomes known as the 'Threadbare Moors', a nation that cannot afford to clothe itself.
Eventually, the people decide they've had enough. They're tired of wearing outgrown, worn out clothing for the sake of a princess that nobody has seen since shortly before her birth. Far too many of their own children have frozen to death because they couldn't afford new blankets because of the King's idiotic decree.
By the time Aurora reaches her sixteenth birthday, she might not be a princess anymore.
