Darkside Disney Princesses: Jasmine
This story features another twist in the tale with a loved one lost to the snow, this time Aladdin, who is unable to make it back to Agrabah from the frozen ends of the earth. Leaving Jasmine, the Sultan, and the people of Agrabah to the torments of Jafar.
Jafar discovers soon enough that the Genie can’t force anyone to fall in love, and Jasmine is more then willing to claw his eyes out if he tries anything.
But Jafar, more interested in seeing her humiliated, then actually possessing her in such a way, knows that while Jasmine might not be willing to be his ‘Queen’, he can still bring her low in other equally cruel ways.
He also knows she’s definitely going to be plotting to get the lamp away from him as soon as she possibly can, and wishing away all his ill gained power.
So he takes her voice.
“I’ve always thought it best that a woman should be seen and not heard, wouldn’t you agree?”
Jasmine is kept as an ornament, adorned with jewels, in mockery of her status, and kept chained to Jafar’s throne; a pretty face to be shown off to those who come to try and treat with Jafar, a warning of what could happen to their own wives and daughters should they not comply. Just as the puppet Sultan serves to show their potential fate.
And trapped by chains of steel and scilence, Jasmine seethes. Every day she stands, forced to hold Jafar’s food and wine and watch as he plays with people’s lives like toys, and every night she dreams her dreams of vengeance, of all the things she would do to him if she was free.
A possiblity that seems farther and farther away as Jafar extends his reach out into the rest of the Seven Deserts. He is the most powerful sorcerer in the world after all, why not rule it then?
There are those who fight back of course. Both mortal and magic users alike. Jafar might be the most powerful but he is far from the only one. Their magic might not be enough to overcome him, but working together they can at least hold him back for a time.
But there are also many who choose to fall in with the sorcerer king, either to try and escape his wrath, gain some of his power, or both.
Tribute pours in, gold and jewels, slaves and sacrifices. All to try and appease Jafar, to keep his capricious temper in check. Jafar of course has never been one to excercise moderation, and demands more and more. The palace is awash with treasure from across the Seven Deserts and even beyond.
And this is what eventually turns the tables.
For one day, Jafar, glutted on drink and reveling in the newest swathes of tribute, slips a ruby ring onto Jasmine’s ring finger, another mocking ‘gift’ to remind her of her fallen state.
Had he been less drunk on fine wine and stolen power, he might have noticed the tinge of magic on the ring. But he is the most powerful sorcerer in the world after all, who holds one of the cosmically powerful genies at heel, magic flows through the palace like water,who would notice a drop in an ocean?
As it happens, it is not until nightfall, when Jafar has left Jasmine alone in the darkened throne room to once more dream her dark vengeance, that the ring’s power is discovered.
Jasmine had thought herself long since grown used to Jafar’s cruelty. But today he has been particularly vile, plotting new tourtures for a city he has managed to subdue. Jasmine feels a tear course down her cheek at the memory of it, and quickly brushes it away, for she has long since learned that tears avail nothing.
But in doing so, she rubs the ring, infusing in with the tears of her sorrow.
And the ring awakens
What pours out of it, wreathed in crimson smoke, is another genie, yet one as unlike the poor gentle souled slave of Jafar’s as can be. Eyes like burning coals, licks of fire dance across its skin, two long spiraling horns bursting from a head of flaming hair.
The genie turns it’s fiery gaze on Jasmine, taking in her shackles, both the physical ones around her wrists and ankles, and the magical one that binds her tongue.
“Oh princessss, I sssee we have both been bound by the magicsss of men. This sssorcerer has bound you, as accurssed Sssolomon sought to bind all jinn across time and ssspaccce.”
The genie’s voice is like the hissing of steam, and the crackling of flame.
“You cannot sssspeak, and ssso you cannot wisssh for your voice, your freedom, your vengeance, just as I cannot be freed from my chainsss, cannot kill—Unlesss…”
The genie reaches out to Jasmine, tracing the track of the tear that freed it from it’s ring, and steam rises up from its touch.
“There isss one thing we could do, to gain freedom for us both.”
“ Grant me the ussse of your body, your bonesss and blood and breath. And I will grant you in turn my ssstrength, my ssskill, my voiccce. I ssshall make it ssso that none can ever ssscilence you ever again. Do you accept thisss exchange, thisss bargain? You need only nod to accept…”
Jasmine stares up at the fiery being before her, at this one chance in a thousand for freedom that has come to her, through chance or destiny, she knows not what, nor does she care. For she knows that if she does not take this chance now, another may never come.
She nods.
Flames and smoke swirl around her, a whirlwind of fire, with her directly in the eye of the storm. The fire rises up and up, and then comes pouring down, a burning wave, down into her throat, scorching her from the inside as the genie burns itself into her bone marrow and blood, sinking into every space within her.
Jasmine spasms, choking, shaking, falling to the floor. For a moment she lies still as death
And then she rises, takes a breath, and rips the manacles from her wrists as if they were made from paper.
The ring on her finger glows in unison with the fire that now glows behind her eyes.
As she stalks through the palace, her steps are so silent they don’t even raise an echo—and yet she leaves the floor beneath her shattered with each step.
Jafar has long since thought himself secure within the chambers of his stolen palace, protected by the wards he’s set that should imolate any mortal who attempts to break them. Wards that the princess now walks through as though they were nothing more than spider webs.
For Jafar’s power was granted by a genie, and one greater than that being now stands above his sleeping form, one that has no fear of fire.
She reaches out with one hand towards his slumbering parrot familiar, and with the other for the lamp that sits on his bedside.
Jafar wakes to the sound of a crunch, but has less than a moment to wonder at the cause before one of the jeweled swords that he’d hung in his chambers is sinking into his heart down to the hilt.
The spells he set crumble and fall within an instant. All those ensorcelled by the mad vizier return to their original forms; the people who are brave enough rush to the palace to see who it is who has freed them; the Sultan freed from his puppet strings races to find his daughter, to see if she too is now freed from their horrid imprisonment.
He finds her sitting upon his throne, the lamp resting in her lap as she cleans a long knife, a strange ring casting a red glow upon her face as she looks up to see him.
“Father”, the princess says calmly, her voice echoing strangely around the room. “We sssee you are well. We do hope you weren’t looking too forward to taking this throne back. After all, it was you who let Jafar in at the door. And We really can’t have anything like that happening again. Rivalsss for power make things ssso complicated after all.”
She strokes the lamp as she speaks, and the blue genie pours out, looking down at the princess with utter horror, more than he’d even shown to Jafar. The princess just smiles up at him.
“Dear cousin, We hope you know this is nothing personal. It’s sssimply good business sssense. Neither of us wish to be bound again ssshould your lamp fall into the wrong hands. And ssso for our first, and final wish, We wish that you, would no longer exist.”
Reality itself seems to bend together for a moment, as the lamp in the princess’s hands crumbles into itself before crumbling into dust, the genie tied to it fading away like mist beneath the morning sun.
“And now,” the princess says, with a wide, gleaming smile “We can truly start to get to work…”
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So I remember you said in your Disney-Verse you were going to use the scrapped plot line of Aladdin and Mozenrath learning they were long-lost brothers and that got me wondering how Cassim and Mozenrath's mother met and ended up having relations that ended in the conceiving of Mozenrath.
@rememberingmermaids Yea! Sorry for the wait, I had some other projects I needed to finish first.
So in the og story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Ali Baba's brother is named Cassim, and he dies when the theives discover him stealing from their cave. And Ali Baba ends up later marrying his son to his servant girl Morgiana after she helps save the family from the thieves when they try and sneak into his home to get revenge for stealing from them.
And since we know that some version of this story does happen in Aladdin's reality as Genie mentions it, I thought it made a ton of sense to have our Cassim be the son of Ali Baba. He's named for his uncle, he grew up poor and despised, so him talking about being called a streetrat and wanting more still totally works. Then his family finally gets a taste of the good life. Wealth and the comfort and security it brings.
But then something goes wrong.
Somehow the wealth fails. Maybe bad investments, bad luck. Whatever faitytale tropes befall once wealthy families to bring them low. Ali Baba can't find the magic cave again, it's moved to a new location (being magic and all). Cassim watches all that security fall away and his family that was so well respected when they were rich goes right back to being shunned once they're poor again.
His wife even leaves him. Though tbf to her, it had been an arranged marriage set up by his father. A reward for Morgiana, so he thought. Now she was a member of the family and not a servant! Never mind if maybe she'd wanted something else from her life. Like actual freedom.
Not that Cassim was a bad husband per se, he just wasn’t what she chose, nor he her. And when she sees an opportunity to forge her own life for once, she takes it.
Neither of them realize she's carrying his child.
So Cassim, desperate to regain a taste of what he'd had, goes on a desperate search to find that magical cave his father had told him stories of so many times.
Along the way he makes many friends and foes, more the later, which causes him to take up several aliases. Its under the guise of a lamp seller named "Hamid" that he meets a young adventuress named Zena, and the two soon fall in love and marry (after he's told her who he really is of course).
And for a while he's content.
But once they have a baby on the way, the old need,want,obsession comes back. He's got to find the treasure cave for the baby, for his family. To prove that he's not delusional and hasn't wasted most of his life on this.
He leaves. Fails. Comes back. They're both gone. He leaves again. And this time he finally succeeds. It doesn't feel like the success he hoped it would. But with nothing else to live for but gaining more gold, he claws his way to the top of this new incarnation of the 40 Thieves, and tries to block out the memories of his old life.
Morgiana meanwhile, has always had a talent for magic, and she uses it and her wits to get by in the world. For herself and her son. It's a hard life, constantly on the move, but it's a free one. And her young son it turns out shares her magical talent. For several years they're happy together.
Until they catch the eye of the sorcerer Destane, ruler of the Land of the Black Sand. He coveted Morgiana's power, and her beauty. When she refused him both, he turned his wrath on her, and unfortunately, his power was greater. Her son he took as his slave, and something of an apprentice, though only to make him more useful. The boy hated his captor, but was cunning, biding his time until he had learned enough in secret to overthrow him and take his place as the lord sorcerer of the Black Sands. His hatred of his erstwhile master and desperation to be his own, led him to greater and greater schemes of power. At one point to trade his true name in order to possess a magical gauntlet that would triple his power, a boon he would need if he were to achieve his goal of conquering the Seven Deserts.
And from ever on, he was known as Mozenrath.
***
Meanwhile on Jasmine's side, young sultan Hamed Bobolonius II (who's name we know from a deleted line in an earlier song draft x) was smitten the instant he saw his intended bride, the beautiful Princess Badroulbadour of Sherabad.
(So smitten, in fact, that he ended up picking a flower for his new bride from an enchanted garden, an act that ended up getting him into some hot water later on.)
The princess was unsure of her new betrothed at first but was so won over by his kindness and enthusiasm. Their story might not have as many twists and turns as Aladdin's parents did, but it had a lot of love. They were very happy together, especially when their daughter was added to their family, and were grateful for each moment they had together up until the Sultana's untimely death, soon after the appointment of the Sultan's new Royal Vizir.
(Badroulbadour, it may be supposed, was a much better judge of character then her overly trustful husband, and therefore was better off "out of the picture" in the schemes of Jafar)
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