As Drizella and Anastasia craned their necks to get a better look at this mysterious beauty, Lady Tremaine followed the dancing couple to the edge of the dance floor. She pretended she was also curious about the dazzling young woman with whom the prince was so smitten. As she clutched her brooch, she felt her heart grow cold and hard. And she knew what she had to do. She would make sure Cinderella would never marry the prince. If she and her daughters were going to be forced into a miserable life, then she would make sure Cinderella would, too. The girl would suffer for dashing all her dreams.

Chapter XVIII: The Unhappily Ever After

It had been many years since that fateful ball where the prince fell in love with Cinderella. The memory of that night still filled Lady Tremaine with rage. She would never forget the day Cinderella slipped her foot into the glass slipper and was spirited away to the castle to marry her prince as the entire kingdom rejoiced in celebration. Everyone, that is, except the Tremaines.

They never did escape the Many Kingdoms. As the château decayed over the years, so did Lady Tremaine’s mind. We watched from our magic mirror, wishing there was something we could do to help the lady and her daughters, but the Fairy Godmother’s magic kept us from interfering. It’s not often an antagonist in a fairy tale story lives to see the end of the princess’s story, and we knew it must have been a misery for Lady Tremaine to know Cinderella was living a glorious life as the fair and kind queen she became.

We had hoped in those early days that we would find a way to help the lady and her daughters, but magic took us down new and unexpected paths. Like everyone else, we forgot about Lady Tremaine, tucked away as she was in a prison fashioned by fairies, locked in Cinderella’s childhood home. Doomed to become crueler and more gruesome as the years passed, and how could it be otherwise? She had watched her life slip between her fingers. She had moved to another world to be with a man she thought was in love with her, only to find he was using her for her money and would trap her in her own home and make her fear for her life and for the lives of her daughters. Her whirlwind romance had turned into a nightmare.

As the years passed Lady Tremaine’s mind began to warp in its bitterness and rage. Her singular focus was getting at least one of her daughters married, all to raise them out of the squalor they had been subjected to for more years than she could recollect.