(bear with me on this one as i keep thinking)

disney’s the beauty and the beast, is a bit of a twilight situation, in terms of the age difference between belle and the beast.

the beast is a prince whose entire castle was put in a magical time-freeze and was eventually forgotten by the townsfolk. we know that it’s the 18th century when the movie opens, as you can tell by the costumes, the post-revolutionary instinct to form lynch mobs on notice and lastly, the relative prosperity of this provincial life.

so already the beast is a few hundred years older than belle. which while icky, makes me think there’s more things that have been left unexplained:

• now that the beast is a handsome blonde stud with a castle full of staff (but no furniture?), how does this now work in this napoleonic, civil constitution-y era?
• yea he’s humble for a prince, but does he realise how lucky he’s been actually? he’s been sulking about some extra fur while all hell was breaking loose in the country.
• do the once-furniture, now staff join the citizenry or stay in loyal servitude to a prince with no privileges or income?

ok it’s stupid to ask all that from a cartoon fairy-tale. but what really does bug me is that unnecessary floaty rose sub-plot. it looks pristine up until belle moved in. and then starts mad shedding of petals. after years of serene floaty-ness why now does it start dying in a clearly inconsistent rate. what is the unit conversion of petal to time exactly? 

so much. to think. about.