Beauty and the Beast’s Belle takes on French Revolution in sequel novel

Disney is publishing a sequel novel to its classic movie Beauty and the Beast, with Belle grappling with the French Revolution.

Beauty and the Beast is my FAVORITE Disney movie. Hands down, no doubt about it. Many of us dream of living in a castle, being married to a royal, and living out our days being pampered and spoiled. And while Beauty and the Beast’s titular Disney princess, Belle, gets that eventually, her journey is what we all fell in love with.

This book-loving, outspoken, courageous character won over our hearts with her unwillingness to conform in “her provincial town.” She dared to dream and let us dream with her. Side note: I still aspire to have a bookcase with a ladder on it because of her.

Over the years, I hoped we’d get more of her story and what her life was like in the years following the events of the movie But what I never thought about was putting Beauty and the Beast in a historical context. Well, that’s about to change thanks to Disney Hyperion’s The Queen’s Council series.

This first book in the series, Rebel Rose by Canadian author Emma Theriault, comes out on November 10. The story finds Belle on the cusp of the French Revolution in 1789, just as she takes her place as Queen. If you’re assuming that we’re dealing with a “damsel in distress” story, think again. This sequel novel will dive into themes of loyalty, love, duty, and of course, political turmoil. Not exactly what we’re used to from Disney princesses, right?

With war brewing in Paris, Belle fears the worst as the fight inches closer to their kingdom in the Aveyon province. Of course, the Belle we met in The Beauty and the Beast has come a long way at this point, and in this story, she finds herself torn between the life she once had and the one she’s leading now.

Rebel Rose will find Belle’s looking ahead to the future as a royal amidst a war that threatens to topple the kingdom she is now responsible for. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m loving this twist on classic princess stories.

SYFY Wire spoke to Theriault about crafting Belle’s story. “She is a girl who lives in a castle that was once her prison, being called to rule a kingdom she spent her life longing to leave,” she said. “The landscape of Europe is shifting, and Belle has read enough from enlightenment thinkers to know that the answer doesn’t lie in absolute monarchy.”

"But falling in love doesn’t imbue someone with so much confidence that they will never face doubts again. Destroying a curse that shackled a kingdom doesn’t mean someone will never make a mistake again. I wanted to take Belle’s strengths (her empathy, her intelligence, her stubbornness, her outspokenness) and imagine how they would be tested in a rapidly changing world, one she needs to find her place in."

For those of you who love Disney and are history nerds like myself, Theriault promises Rebel Rose will be right up your alley. If you know the French Revolution, you might even be able to guess where the story will go next as you read.

SYFY Wire also published an excerpt from the book. Take a look (Lio is the Beast in human form, FYI):

"“You aren’t the Beast anymore,” she tried to assure him.“But I am him, Belle, don’t you understand?” His voice was frantic. “I lived as him for so long he will always be a part of me.”Belle couldn’t help but think back to the vision she had been shown in Paris, of the people of Aveyon rising up against them. She had dismissed it as false, but a small part of her wondered what would happen if their people ever discovered the truth of Lio’s ten years as a recluse. An even smaller part of her wondered if it could happen again, if some enchantress could decide that her husband wasn’t doing enough for his kingdom and curse him like one had cursed a child so long ago.But that sort of catastrophizing was anathema to her. She refused to entertain it.Belle knew there was nothing she could say to ease the nightmare from his mind and the feral panic from his bones. He had to come back to her on his own, bit by bit. She twined her fingers in his hair and waited for his pulse to stop beating so forcefully on her skin.They sat in the silent dark, two people adrift in a storm, holding on to each other for dear life, but in time, the fear left him. She knew it was gone when he sat up straight, his spine no longer weighed down by darkness.“You dreamed of the Beast?” she asked, probing as gently as she could manage.He pushed his hair from his face. “Yes,” he whispered, perhaps too frightened to lend the nightmare any more credence than it deserved. “I don’t think it would have been so bad, but I woke up in the middle of it to find you missing.”She ran her fingers through the hair loose around his shoulders. “I was in the library. I couldn’t sleep.”“I know, but logic has no place in my mind during a nightmare.”She tried for levity. “Did you think someone had kidnapped me from my bed and you’d managed to sleep through it?”He cast his eyes down as his cheeks reddened with shame. “Is it worse to admit that my first fear was that you had left of your own volition?”"

The Queen’s Council: Rebel Rose is now available for pre-order through Amazon, and will release on November 10.

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