A Study in Auradon: The Trials of Notre Dame

Prologue

Once upon a time, during a time after all the happily-ever-afters, and perhaps even after the ever-afters after that, all the evil villains of the world were banished from the United Kingdom of Auradon and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. There, underneath a protective dome that kept all manner of enchantment out of their clutches, the terrible, the treacherous, the truly awful, and the severely sinister were cursed to live without the power of magic.

King Adam declared the villains exiled forever.

Forever, as it turns out, is quite a long time. Longer than an enchanted princess can sleep. Longer, even, than an imprisoned maiden's tower of golden hair. Longer than a week of being turned into a frog, and certainly much longer than waiting for a prince to finally get around to placing that glass slipper on your foot already.

Yes, forever is a long, long, long time.

Ten years, to be specific. Ten years that these legendary villains have been trapped on a floating prison of rock and rubble.

Okay, so you might say ten years isn't such a long time, considering; but for these conjurers and witches, viziers and sorcerers, evil queens and dark fairies, to live without magic was a sentence worse than death.

(And some of them were brought back from death, only to be placed on this island-so, um, they should know.)

Without their awesome powers to dominate and hypnotize, terrorize and threaten, create thunderclouds and lightning storms, transform and disguise their features, or lie and manipulate their way into getting exactly what they wanted, they were reduced to hardscrabble lives, earning a living selling and eating slop, scaring no one but their own minions, and stealing from each other. It was hard even for them to imagine they once had been great and powerful, these poisoners of forest apples and thieves of undersea voices, these usurpers of royal powers and owners of petulant mirrors.

Now, their lives were anything but powerful. Now, they were ordinary.

Dare it be said? Dull.

That isn't to say the citizens of the Isle were boring. They had ways they were able to combat the dull repetitiveness of their mundane lives.

Like now, for example. It was with great excitement and no small fanfare that the island gathered for a one-of-a-kind event: a six-year-old princess's wickedly wonderful birthday party. Wicked being something of a relative term under a dome that houses a bunch of powerless former villains.

In any event, a party it was.

It was the most magnificent celebration the isolated island and its banished citizens had ever seen, and tales of its gothic grandeur and obnoxious opulence would be told for years to come. The party to end all parties, this lavish occasion transformed the ramshackle bazaar and its rotting storefronts in the middle of the island into a spookily spectacular playground, full of ghostly lanterns and flickering candles.

Weeks before, a flock of vultures had circled the land, dropping invitations on every shabby doorstep and hovel so that every grubby little urchin from every corner of the island would be able to partake in this enchanting and extraordinary event.

Every little urchin on the island, that is, except for one malicious little fairy.

But this is not their story. Well, it is, but theirs' is not the story we will be focusing on. For while a blue-haired princess laughed in delight at the marvels before her and the purple-haired fae child's heart grew cold, the raven-haired daughter of an ex-Vizier and a Roma woman was forced to watch her mother die.

But this is not when our story begins, either. Our story begins ten years later, when an up-and-rising new royal makes his first official proclamation.