The story of Tangled begins with a drop of sunlight falling into an island and it grew into a magical flower capable of healing anyone. Mother Gothel discovers this and uses the flower to keep herself young. When the kingdom’s queen became ill, the flower was taken by soldiers and made it into a potion (or was it a soup?) which healed their pregnant queen. As an effect of the magical flower, the baby Rapunzel’s hair gained the same magical properties.

When I first saw the movie two years ago, I remarked that I sympathized with Mother Gothel since she was the one who discovered the flower first. She didn’t pluck it or do anything to it, she used its magical properties to make herself young but so what? The exact term eludes me right now but she’s basically living green. She didn’t take the flower or turned it into tea. Then comes these soldiers who just took the flower because their queen was sick. How is the queen’s life worth more than a common person?

However, on my second viewing last night courtesy of the Disney channel, I seemed to have missed that part about Mother Gothel keeping the flower to herself and not sharing it to anyone. So my opinion has changed. Had she shared her knowledge freely the soldiers wouldn’t have made the barbaric decision of destroying the flower. I don’t know how she figured out that singing to the flower activates its healing powers but had they gone that route instead, then she wouldn’t need to kidnap Rapunzel right? They could have brought the sick queen to that island, or maybe bring the flower to the queen, heal her, then bring the flower back to its original location.

But what if the king decides to keep the flower for the royal family? Then Mother Gothel would have stolen the flower instead of kidnapping Rapunzel. Perfect right? Everybody wins and we have a happy ending.