Darkest Original Disney Princess Stories
Rapunzel's parents were farmers who got her after exchanging a bit of rapunzel plant (rampion) for a salad with a witch when she was a baby. When she was 12 the witch locked her in a tower that had no doors or stairs and just a window. The only way to get to Rapunzel at the top was to climb her beautiful, long hair. One day, a prince walking by the tower hears her sing, so he goes up the tower. That same night, Rapunzel decides to marry him.
When the prince goes back for her, he climbs up her golden hair but finds the witch in the tower. She throws him out the window, and the prince falls on some spines that enter through his eyes.
He spends months roaming the prairies and woods of the realm, blind, until he hears Rapunzel's voice from afar. When he finds her, she has two children, and her magic tears give him back his sight. Rapunzel and the prince get married and live happily ever after.
In the origional story, Rapunzel isn't a princess! She is just a stupid poor girl...
In the Hans Christian Andersen version, the small print in the agreement is that Ariel's legs will hurt all the time, as if she were walking on knives. Since pain and seduction don't mix, in the end the prince marries another woman and Ariel throws herself into the ocean, where she turns into sea foam.
The Brothers Grimm book paints the evil queen as much more goal-oriented; she straight-up tries to kill Snow White twice before resorting to the poison apple. The Prince, who she eventually marries, takes her away while she's unconscious in a glass coffin (creep alert! ), and it's only a coincidence that she wakes up. At the wedding the evil queen has to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she's dead.
In the Charles Perrault version, when the prince arrives at Cinderella's house, the stepmother orders her two daughters to cut off their toes and put on their slippers. Her plan does not work, and Cinderella gets the prince and a happy ending. To add insult to injury, during the wedding, some pigeons devour the eyes of her already mutilated stepsisters.
In Hua Mulan's poem, China loses the war. The Khan from the enemy lets Mulan live with the condition that she live with him, so Mulan escapes. When she arrives home, she discovers that her father is dead and her mother has remarried. Then she says: "I'm a woman, I survived the war, and I have done enough. Now I want to be with my father." And she kills herself.
The idea is that once the princess kisses the frog, he'll turn into a prince, but the Grimm version's princess is a lot less thrilled about that idea than Tiana is (and that's saying something). To the princess' credit, the frog-ified prince pulled a couple of creepy stunts by trying to crawl up her pillow and eat off her plate with her, but we're not entirely sure that slamming his amphibian body against a wall was an entirely appropriate reaction. At least it got him to change back, right?
In the original story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, Belle convinces the Beast to let her visit her sisters for a week. Upon seeing her covered in jewelry and hearing about the luxurious life she leads, the sisters convince Belle to stay longer, with the intention that her delay will drive the Beast mad and he will devour Belle.
In Victor Hugo's novel, Quasimodo fails to save Esmeralda (in fact, he unwittingly surrenders her to the authorities) and watches as she's hanged. Then Quasimodo goes to her grave, where he stays until he starves. Years later, when her grave is opened, someone finds both their skeletons, but when they try to separate them, they turn to dust.