Maleficent

Maleficent is a major antagonist in the Kingdom Hearts series. She is an evil fairy sorceress who made her first appearance in Disney's . She was first seen in Kingdom Hearts in Hollow Bastion. Unlike most of the other Disney villains, Maleficent's schemes extend past the world of her origin, and resurface throughout the series.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep
Maleficent appears in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, her role downgraded to that of a minor antagonist, only appearing in her home world of Enchanted Dominion. At some point in time, Master Xehanort made contact with her and enlisted her help in luring Terra to darkness and told her about Kingdom Hearts and the seven Princesses of Heart. From this point on, Maleficent became even more power hungry and lusted to gain complete control over all worlds, not knowing she is simply being used by Master Xehanort as part of a much bigger plot that would unfold in the following decade.

At her home world, Enchanted Dominion, she mostly plays out the same role as in the original movie, only this time manipulating the darkness in Terra's heart to force him into stealing Aurora's heart in return for helping him locate Master Xehanort. She offers Terra the opportunity to join her in her quest to rule the worlds, but he flatly refuses. Later, Ventus visits the world and frees Aurora's heart, inciting Maleficent's fury. In the ensuing fight, Ventus defeats Maleficent, who reveals that it was Terra who stole Aurora's heart. Aqua arrives and staunchly denies it, as does Ventus, although he seems unsure as what to believe. After Aqua refuses Maleficent's offer to join her in Terra's place, Maleficent throws her into the castle dungeon with Prince Phillip, who Maleficent had captured earlier to stop him from awakening Aurora. Aqua and Phillip break out of the dungeon with help from Flora, Fauna and Merryweather and make their way towards King Stefan's castle to wake Aurora. Maleficent gives chase and confronts them on the bridge to the castle, transforming into a dragon to battle them directly, but is defeated. Before she can be finished off, Maleficent flees the scene and begins her plans to capture all the seven princesses. Later on in the game, she crosses paths with the imprisoned Pete, and frees him, setting the scene for their alliance.

Between Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts
Sometime after the events of Birth by Sleep and prior to Kingdom Hearts, the Heartless appear and Maleficent decides to use her immense power of darkness to control the creatures and build up a destructive force to aid her in her plans to conquer all worlds. Over time though, her darkness goes beyond her control and the Heartless soon use it to manipulate her for their own ends. She first captures Aurora and destroys her own world, going off to Hollow Bastion to make it her new base of operations.

Kingdom Hearts
With Pete's help, Maleficent soon becomes the mastermind behind a council of Disney villains, composed of Hades, Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, and Captain Hook, assembled by Pete, who is off building an army of Heartless for Maleficent to increase their forces. Acting as a guide, Maleficent warns each of her followers that they should be wary of the darkness, ironic as she herself was perhaps the biggest victim to the darkness. She leads this group in pursuit of ultimate power by controlling the Heartless and unlocking the Keyhole that leads to Kingdom Hearts, the heart of all worlds.

She uses Hollow Bastion, the former home of Ansem the Wise and Xehanort, as a base of operations where she directs the affairs of the group. She uses Ansem's report to help her understand and gain further control of the Heartless and recruits Riku, Terra's successor and Sora's best friend, to her side. Once she sees that Riku can wield a Keyblade, she uses the Darkness in Riku's heart to corrupt him and turn him against his friends.

Maleficent eventually tells Riku her plans to find Kingdom Hearts, involving the Princesses of Heart. Maleficent persuads Riku to go after Kairi, as she is also a Princess. Maleficent lies to Riku and tells him that she will help Kairi regain her heart once she has control of Kingdom Hearts. In the meantime, she convinces Riku to commit sinister actions, such as abducting several of the Princess of Heart, giving him the power to control the Heartless, and even orders him to attempt to murder those who interfere in her plans. Riku, blinded by his jealously of Sora and lust for power, does as he is told and becomes more and more corrupt as his heart begins to sink slowly to the darkness.

While Maleficent's plan seems to be working, her allies fall to Sora. Eventually, she faces Sora personally when he arrives at Hollow Bastion, and loses. However, she is approached by Riku, possessed by Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (actually Xehanort's Heartless), who proceeds to use his own Keyblade to unlock the darkness in her heart, restoring her power and enabling her to transform into her dragon form. Despite becoming a much more powerful and formidable foe, Maleficent again loses to Sora and is destroyed.

According to Jiminy Cricket, Maleficent is personally responsible for the destruction of her world and for the capture of Aurora.

By defeating Maleficent, Sora obtains the fifth page of Ansem's Report, and Donald learns the Cheer ability. Defeating Dragon Maleficent rewards Sora with the Fireglow Gem, which unlocks the ability to summon Mushu if taken to the Fairy Godmother.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
Maleficent appears to Riku as a memory-based illusion in Castle Oblivion. She is one of only two characters, along with Aerith in Sora's story, to realize that she is not real. She mocks her old student, and how he once clung to her and the darkness, before he stands up to her and destroys her. Also, in Sora's story, she is the boss of Hollow Bastion and is revealed to need to steal hearts in order to practice her magic and attempts to use the love found in Belle and Beast's hearts to make herself invincible. When Sora and company attempt to stop her, she turns herself into a dragon and attacks, shooting flames from her mouth, causing earthquakes by stomping, and trying to eat Sora, but she fails and is defeated. Zexion later makes note of this to Lexaeus.

Kingdom Hearts II
Maleficent is revived in Kingdom Hearts II, in which she poses as a secondary villain but still plots against Sora and the others. Her raven, Diablo, brings her empty robe to Yen Sid's tower, and the memories of Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather accidentally bring her back to life.

In Kingdom Hearts Another Report, it is hinted that Organization XIII is inadvertently responsible for her return. Xemnas once sent Axel and Roxas to Hollow Bastion to wipe out Heartless and release a raven from a cage suspended from the ceiling. It is heavily suggested that this raven is Diablo and was released to revive Maleficent. The Organization may have planned to use her to create more Heartless for their plans. Like in Kingdom Hearts, she attempts to control the Heartless to locate Kingdom Hearts. However, she now competes with Organization XIII for supreme power and considers the group and Nobodies in general as vastly inferior to her and her Heartless, even as far as calling them "white husks".

Maleficent, with the help of her only loyal follower remaining, Pete, goes from world to world reviving her other followers and building an army of Heartless. Although only Oogie Boogie is witnessed being revived, it may be guessed that she is also responsible for the return of Ursula and for Barbossa, Scar, Hades, and Jafar using Heartless. Indeed, when she first meets up with Pete again, she asks about "the others," suggesting she was supposed to be holding a meeting with "them" like she did in the original game. Pete, however claims that "they must have had something better to do," perhaps meaning he was busy with his own endeavors. This infuriated her, and she demanded from Pete what could be more important than her return.

Maleficent reveals herself to Sora and his friends at Disney Castle when she tries to fill the Hall of the Cornerstone with Darkness in order to take over the Castle and make her new base of operations, worrying Queen Minnie. Maleficent is defeated however by Sora when he and his friends go back in time and stop Pete from destroying the Cornerstone of Light. Maleficent appears in Halloween Town and tries to destroy Christmas town by resurrecting Oogie Boogie but his memory loss causes him to drive her away and Sora defeats Oogie Boogie. She then appears in Hollow Bastion during its invasion by Heartless. The Gullwings were apparently hired by her until she did not show up to see them like she said she would. At the climax of the battle she holds off the Nobodies so that Sora may escape and devise a way to defeat Organization XIII. Although she still harbors bitter feelings towards Sora, she realizes that she cannot defeat Organization XIII herself, since they can easily defeat her Heartless and even wrested control of them from her, and thus decides to aid Sora for the time being. She flees a battle against Saïx, escaping with her life, bringing Sora to the Realm of Darkness.

She last appears in The World That Never Was in one more attempt to acquire a suitable headquarters, aiding Sora once more by fending off an immense wave of Heartless with the help of Pete while Sora goes on to defeat Xemnas, though she claims that she will take the castle for her own afterwards. The outcome of this venture is unknown.

Kingdom Hearts coded
Having apparently survived the destruction of The Castle that Never Was, Maleficent was at a loss with her plans with the Heartless gone, her control over the darkness weakened, all her allies save for Pete defeated, and still without a base of operations. Desperate to make yet another comeback, the sorceress sent Pete to Disney Castle to spy on the king and bring her up to date on events. Pete eventually entered the journal world when Mickey turned the journal into a Data World to find answers to unsolved questions. Maleficent was summoned into the data world by Pete when he was sent there.

Together they decided that they could use the data world to forward Maleficent's original plans to find Kingdom Hearts and fill the worlds with darkness. The pair planned to build up a huge army of Heartless under their complete control by using the Journal's data on the creatures and then send them into the real world to conquer Disney Castle and the rest of the worlds. Maleficent planned to either destroy Mickey or simply leave him trapped in the Journal's data world.

She reappears in person in the data version of Agrabah. At the entrance to the Cave of Wonders, she strikes down the data version of Sora and destroys his data Keyblade. After, she gloats and summons Shadows. Data-Sora later fights and defeats her in her Dragon form. Later, when the debugging of the journal is complete and the Data World is being deleted, Jiminy Cricket remembers that Pete and Maleficent never left the Data World. Data-Sora rushes back to the Data Hollow Bastion to save them, and finds them fighting the corrupted version of Sora's Heartless, who is completely immune to their attacks. The Data-Sora attempts to save them, but they are both deleted before he can do anything.

However, after the battle, Data-Sora and King Mickey walk outside to find them alive, standing next to Data-Riku, who explains that there was a "rift in the data" where he was able to rescue them. Maleficent points out that this makes them even, referring to when she helped them in Kingdom Hearts II. Data-Riku then escorts Pete and Maleficent out of the Data World. A digital version of both later appear when Data-Sora goes to Castle Oblivion and attack him before leaving.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Maleficent returns to Disney Castle with Pete and the two take Queen Minnie hostage, sending Diablo with a note and Minnie's crown to Mickey, Donald and Goofy in the Mysterious Tower. Maleficent explains her first meeting with Master Xehanort to Mickey and demands access into the Data Worlds, but Mickey refuses. Maleficent attacks, but Lea arrives in time and blocks the attack with his chakram, using the other to help Minnie escape from Pete. Her leverage gone, Maleficent merely leaves, with Pete following.

Kingdom Hearts V CAST
Maleficent appears in the non-canonical Kingdom Hearts V CAST. She is yet again a villain and serves as the main antagonist, her lair being the game's final level and featuring the toughest Heartless in the game.

Personality
Maleficent is a scheming, manipulative and highly cunning sorceress, who seems utterly determined to take over the dominion of Kingdom Hearts. She is mostly seen in a cool, calculated manner, easily manipulating Riku into helping her aims, whilst she pretends to care for helping him find Kairi. In Kingdom Hearts II, she is highly vengeful towards Sora, because of him having destroyed her in Kingdom Hearts. She doesn't tolerate failure, as shown when she berates Pete for his attempt to take over Kingdom Hearts without her, saying to him "Mark my words, there'll be no place for you when our time comes. Useless imbecile!"

Despite this, she seems to tolerate the incompetent Pete as her helper. She is not without scruples, however, and has aided Sora on some occasions, yet, for her own evil reasons, saying to him at one point "Do not misunderstand me, I shall have revenge on you yet": indeed, by the time of Kingdom Hearts coded, she appears to have reverted to her evil self and is once again attempting to destroy Sora, albeit a digital version of him, but after she is rescued by Data-Riku, she stops her attempts to kill him (at least for the time being), telling Sora that they are "now even".

Another important aspect of her character, like most Disney villains, but exceptionally notable in her case, is her superiority complex. This is readily apparent in nearly every instance in Kingdom Hearts II whenever the subject of Nobodies and Organization XIII are brought up and when facing them personally, and this view of herself extends to any Heartless she commands, despite the all-too obvious difference in power and capabilities of Nobodies in general over the Heartless.

However her superiority complex is not entirely unfounded as she is easily one of the most powerful characters in the series, her magic rivaled only by Master Xehanort's. Thus, her views of the Organization as insignificant could be, to her, quite true. Ironically, the Organization seems to view her the same way that she views them; as a relatively insignificant threat, shown when Saïx calmly summons some Nobodies to destroy Maleficent's Heartless and smugly calls her a fool. In contrast to Pete, she possesses extreme and completely legitimate confidence, while her minion is a coward and doubts of their chances of winning.

Appearance
Fair and green-skinned, Maleficent's shining, yellow eyes are heavily shadowed with violet make-up, and her lips are painted red. Her head is topped with a black-horned headdress. Maleficent wears a long, tattered black robe with a purple trim and maroon edges which flare out. She carries a staff with a glowing green orb at the tip through which she casts her spells. In Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Maleficent wears a golden ring with a circular black stone in it. This was in her original design in Sleeping Beauty, but was absent in Kingdom Hearts.

Origin
Maleficent made her film debut in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Appearing unexpectedly at Princess Aurora's birth ceremony, she was greatly angered upon not receiving an invitation to the occasion. Hiding this behind a calm demeanor, she then proceeds to give the infant a "gift" in the form of a curse, saying that she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday and die. King Stefan attempting to seize her at that moment, she escapes through her mastery over dark magic. Fearful for his daughter's life despite the fact that Merryweather's gift for the child will cause Aurora not to die but sleep should she prick her finger, King Stefan then issues a decree that all spinning wheels in the kingdom are to be burned. In a last attempt to delay Maleficent's curse and prevent Aurora from pricking her finger, the Three Good Fairies decide to take her into the woods to live and be raised as a peasant in an abandoned cottage once belonging to a woodcutter until after the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday. The fairies succeed in keeping the girl's location and identity a secret, and an enraged Maleficent sends her loyal raven Diablo to search for the girl, after her Goon minions fail her.

Diablo discovers Aurora's whereabouts, and Maleficent then lures the girl to a spinning wheel upon her return to King Stefan's castle. Aurora pricks her finger, and then Maleficent departs for the old woodcutter's cottage, aiming to capture the princess's betrothed, Prince Phillip, who intends to meet the peasant girl that was Aurora there. Capturing the prince, Maleficent then places him in her dungeon, intending to keep him there for 100 years. However, Prince Phillip escapes Maleficent's clutches with the help of Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, while the witch attempts to stop him from reaching Aurora's sleeping form and King Stefan's castle with a forest of thorns. As Phillip cuts through them, a desperate Maleficent appears before him. Transforming into a mighty dragon, she then engages the prince in a climatic battle. In the end, Maleficent is stabbed in the heart by the Sword of Truth, with Prince Phillip going on to awaken and marry Aurora.

Abilities


The most powerful of the Disney Villains, Maleficent is known to avoid physical attacks, using sorcery instead. She may wish for others to fight under her command instead, taking on the form of a monstrous dragon when situations look bleakest. It is her great rage and lust for power that grants her this ability.

D-Link
In Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Maleficent becomes a Dimension Link for Terra. While using her Terra can use powerful dark magic attacks similar to Maleficent's. Maleficent's finishing attacks allow Terra to summon powerful lightning and fire magic to attack his enemies.

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