Ariel

Ariel is the main protagonist of Disney's 1989 animated feature film The Little Mermaid, and its 1992-94 television series, 2000 sequel and 2008 prequel.

The character is based on the protagonist of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" fairy tale, but was developed into a different personality for the 1989 animated film adaptation.

Physical Appearance
As a mermaid, Ariel is strikingly beautiful and attractive; so beautiful in fact that she won an award for most beautiful Disney Heroine. She has an hourglass figure and fair skin. In her childhood, she used to wear a lavender bandeau bikini top. Her lips were the same color as her skin. From the waist down, she has the tail, fins, and reproductive organs of a tropical fish. She has large, deep aqua blue eyes and full red lips. Her most defining feature is her long, red hair that matches the color of her lips. In Little Mermaid's Island, her seashell bra looks more like a strapless top that covers her belly.

When she becomes a human, Ariel's lovely tail is turned into two beautiful, long, slender legs with small feet. At first, the only article of clothing she wore was her seashell bra, but wears an old sail with some rope to keep it closed, fashioned by her friend Scuttle. Being prepared for dinner, she wears a pink-and-white gown with silver barrettes on her hair and pearl white earrings. Getting ready for bedtime, she wears a pink nightgown. After being taken in by Prince Eric, she wears a dress with light blue long sleeves, a dark blue bodice, and a blue (sometimes white) shirt. She also wears a big royal blue bow in her hair and black heels. After she's turned into a human once again, she wears a light blue glittering dress. After she kisses Eric, during their wedding, she wears a white wedding dress with a sparkling golden tiara on her veil. During and after her daughter's christening, she wears a gold and white dress and wears a low ponytail, decorated with a white bow. Ariel also wears a periwinkle gown with an up-do decorated with a golden tiara with green and white gems on her necklace and earrings during her daughter's 12th birthday party, with her hair being shorter due to it being adjusted. Ariel still wears the same up-do with a green peasant dress when she's on her husband's ship and a blue and white dress with light blue earrings in the song "Here on the land and sea" in the second movie. In one of the video games, she wears an aqua-colored gown with a matching flower on the side of her hair.

Personality
Ariel is a bright, spirited mermaid who is also adventurous and stubborn. Her curiosity and love for adventure sometimes gets her into trouble. Usually, however, Ariel overcomes any obstacle she faces like she uses magic to change things. Her best friend is a fish named Flounder and she develops a close relationship with a crab named Sebastian, the court's composer. Ariel is also impulsive, as evidenced by her exploring whilst forgetting about the concert. However, her impulsive nature does not impact her conscience, being portrayed as being extremely reluctant and hesitant to do something she knows or at least suspects is morally wrong to get what she wants, as evidenced by her reluctantly going to Ursula in the film as well as her reluctance to steal her father's trident as part of a dare in the third issue of the Marvel Comics. Ariel is able to risk everything for her love for Eric and for her dreams, even if this might hurt herself. She is also protective of her friends, saving them even when in doing so she endangers herself in the process, this is especially evident when she saved Flounder (who had been knocked out hard enough to render his swim bladder temporarily inoperable and sink to the ocean floor) from Glut the Shark when nearly home free from the shark, nearly getting herself eaten in the process (the only thing preventing Glut from eating them being an anchor in its way that trapped the shark), as well as saving Sebastian from potentially being Grimsby's meal and attempting to tell Eric to leave her behind and save himself just before Ursula emerged as a giant. She was also very forgiving and defended even people who were unable to defend themselves or were considered bad, as evidenced by her protecting Urchin despite the latter stealing from Triton as well as her defending a bad luck creature from both her friends and enemies for its reputation, and her saving Hans Christian Andersen. She was also shown to be compassionate, as evidenced in the fourth issue of Disney Comics where Ariel decided, against Sebastian's statements, to save a human whose submersible was trapped, despite knowing full well that he tried to harm her beforehand.

Like her father, Ariel has a bad temper if ever she is provoked, although Ariel's temper is not as bad as her father's. Although spirited, even she has had some degree of self-doubts about herself, as she actually at one point considered her father might have been correct and that she may have been a freak for having any fascination for humanity. She also had a degree of seeing good in things, as she also doubted that humanity could have been pure evil from their tools and artworks.

Also, despite her usual naivety and impulsiveness, Ariel has shown on many occasions to be serious, careful, and very intelligent and intuitive. She can also be seen as both a femme fatale and a tomboy, due to her alluring appearance and mischievous and feisty personality, and how she is not so concerned for accessories or her appearance most of the time because she was always aware of her unchanging beauty and/or that she was not interested in finding love whatsoever, until she met Prince Eric.

In The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, Ariel matures after becoming a mother. Due to the threat of Morgana, she becomes very overprotective of Melody in the same manner she was treated by King Triton in the first film. She is shown to long for the sea, but keeps this hidden from Melody for the latter's own safety, even though it would've been easier if she explained everything to her, she even points this out in a later scene and at the film's climax. Her most notable trait, however, was her deep love and fascination for humanity, having desired to become human during the events of the first film, even prior to meeting her future husband, Eric. She did not always have this trait, however: Until she was 15 years of age, she expressed a deep fear of humanity similar to Triton's xenophobia of humanity, although her witnessing some humans saving a beached dolphin changed her views on the matter. Ironically, one of the people responsible for saving the dolphin was Eric, although she never knew it.

Similar to Cinderella, although her love for Eric was indeed strong, pursuing him was not her main priority before encountering him, as she initially wanted to simply live among humanity and be among them.

Powers, Abilities, and Weaponry
While she is a Mermaid, Ariel has a few abilities. In the Kingdom Hearts timeline, she also seems to excel at Lightning Magic (presumably due to her father wielding the Trident), Wind Magic (in the form of a protective barrier), and Healing Magic. In addition, as noted above, she also possesses the second wind ability, which allows her to recover quickly from being knocked out.
 * Atlantean Strength: She is known to have at least a very certain degree of Atlantean strength, as she was able to move away an underwater boulder blocking her grotto with relative ease in the original film (which, in real life, an underwater rock blocking an object with an unbalanced volume would result in the rock being immoble and the door being sealed shut, virtually impossible to open, which doesn't even take into account water pressure and other related factors). When discovering Eric's ship due to the fireworks, she is shown effortlessly climbing up the side of the ship with just her arms. When saving Eric, she effortlessly pulls him towards the surface and manages to keep them both afloat while holding him with one arm. Also, according to a slightly alternate version of the ending to the original film, Ariel slams into Ursula damaging her enough to knock the Trident off of her hand. The fact that she can give an Octopid Sea Witch who is at least 300 pounds and far larger than her a degree of damage by bumping into her implies that she has Atlantean strength. Even though, Ariel may not be stronger than Ursula (while she is in her normal form or not amplifying her strength via magic). In Ariel's Beginning, she seemed to be able to knock down a door to free her friends (This is especially telling as Sebastian stated immediately prior that Ariel was "a weak helpless girl"). It's debatable if she ever retained her Atlantean strength by the time she became a human. It is apparent that she might be the physically strongest of the Disney Princesses, while Rapunzel would be the only competition.
 * Alantean Endurance: She may also have Atlantean endurance, as during the final battle with Ursula in the film, Ariel was at one point knocked into a whirlpool that is several miles deep and survived with barely any injuries. Such a feat would kill a normal person if not completely destroy the body of a said person. Like her Atlantean strength, it's debatable if she ever retained her Atlantean endurance when she turned into a human, although her first transformation implied that it was retained as her body was not being crushed while trying to swim for air (in real life, a human who is at that depth would be crushed into oblivion in a matter of seconds due to the immense water pressure). Her Atlantean endurance is also briefly alluded to in Kingdom Hearts, where one of her abilities, second wind, allows her to recover quickly from being knocked out.
 * Underwater Breathing: As a mermaid, she is also able to metabolize oxygen from the water, which negates the need to surface, though she is certainly more than capable of breathing on land.
 * Speed Swimming: Also, she is capable of swimming at a much faster rate than humans or even certain marine creatures in terms of undersea travel, or sea travel as a whole due to her half-marine status. Like dolphins, she is capable of leaping out of water at great heights. For example, she was able to get to Triton's Greenland Palace from Denmark ( the implied location of Eric's kingdom, assuming it isn't the Southern Mediterranean ) in less than a day, as well as getting from Atlantica to Norway in the episode "Metal Fish" in a similar time fashion.
 * Aquapathy: Because of her being a mermaid, she is also capable of speaking with aquatic fauna. She retains her ability even in human form, but whether her abilities of superhuman strength and endurance were retained upon becoming human is debatable.
 * Aquakinesis: Ariel in her mermaid form seemed to possess at least a small degree of aquakinesis, which was evident when a large wave crashed from behind the rock she had been perched on shortly after rescuing Eric right when she sang "World!", even though the ocean itself had been relatively calm. Her having aquakinesis is also supported by the NES/Sega game as well as the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom franchise, which had her using a bubble as an attack/spell. Her actions in the reprise of Part of Your World would suggest that her aquakinesis is linked to her emotions, much like the cryokinesis of Elsa in Frozen.
 * Swordswoman: While in human form, she seems to at least have some knowledge of swordplay, which is evident when she used one to cut the rope of a mast to save Melody from Morgana. In addition, in one of the Marvel comics set before the movie, Ariel had a brief stint as a black knight and utilized swordplay during this time, indicating that she knew swordplay when she was a mermaid.
 * Rapid Adaptability: She also seems to be capable of rapid adaptability. This is especially evident in terms of her becoming a temporary human, where she learned how to stand in a few minutes, and move in presumably the same timespan (whereas the average human seems to need a few months at the very least to learn how to walk), as well as quickly learning about the true human customs and abandoning her original beliefs about how human artifacts work, or at the very least not doing it in public.
 * Thermoendurance: Ariel has (primarily in the video games in which she is featured) demonstrated the ability to endure temperatures far more extreme than would be survivable for a human (especially one of her build). She has swum in icy waters with no ill effects, and in the presence of undersea volcanoes she has only been damaged when coming into immediate contact with burning magma. She also demonstrated this to a lesser extent in the films and TV series, where she went to the arctic with minimal ill effects other than feeling a bit cold, as well as in Return to the Sea, where she traveled to Morgana's lair, which was located inside an iceberg, and when visiting Ursula's lair, which was located in a volcanic region.
 * Magical Voice: Ariel's voice seems to possess magical abilities. In the episode "The Evil Manta" of the TV series, her singing voice seemed to be only weapon that could banish the Manta from Atlantica. Her voice conjured an underwater storm that cast the Manta out of the empire. In another episode she was cursed that if she laughed her laughter would cause Sea-Quakes; however, this curse was removed by the end of the episode. Her voice was also able to awaken an unconscious Prince Eric. Although Ariel herself never used her voice in this manner, her voice can also be used in a far darker way, such as mind control, as evidenced by Ursula, while adopting the identity of Vanessa, using Ariel's voice to brainwash Eric to be her puppet as a means to get him to marry her, and thus ensure Ariel cannot win her end of the bargain. This ability can be further proven for the only way Vanessa's (Ursula's) control over Eric could be broken was if the nautilus containing Ariel's voice was released. If this was Ursula's own magic Ariel's voice wouldn't have been needed to cast the hypnotizing spell. (It should also be noted that the hypnotic quality of Ariel's voice is extremely similar to that of the Sirens from the Greek myths. The Sirens were mystical creatures depicted as having the heads of beautiful women and the bodies of birds (though in more recent years they tend to be portrayed as mermaids); their singing was so sweet and enchanting that anyone who heard it would be hypnotized and irresistibly drawn to them and suffer a watery death by wrecking their ships on the rocky coast of their island. Since Sirens were also portrayed as femme fatales, it could be said that Ursula, as Vanessa, was metaphorically fulfilling the role of a Siren in hypnotizing Eric with her (stolen) voice and attempting to lure him to his doom).

It's also implied that she was capable of reading advanced literature, as during "Part of Your World", she is seen reading an immense book in the grotto. In one of her episodes, she became a sea-witch and used her magic to grant Sebastian's wish of being bigger but unfortunately, the spell continuously worked, making Sebastian continue to grow to the point where he surfaced while standing, and Ariel's magic was fueled by the light of the full moon. She lost her magic and status as a sea-witch when she wished the whole entire mess never happened, and her magic did just that, erasing the entire event and influencing Ariel so it wouldn't happen in the re-set timeline.

Weaknesses
Ariel is exposed, naked. She doesn't wear any armor, and it is unknown how far her endruance goes.

The Trident:
The trident is shown to have various applications, depending on the will of the user. When its power is activated, it illuminates with a bright, shining golden glow and is heard to make a deep humming sound punctuated with high-pitched melodious tunes.

Most commonly seen is its ability to fire destructive energy bolts. These energy bolts, however, must be fired immediately upon the ready, or they will cause the built up energy to backfire on the user. This is ultimately how Ursula was killed, as she attempted to fire an energy ray at Ariel that was implied to be unavoidable, but was impaled seconds before she could fire by Prince Eric and one of the ships, causing the energy to backfire on her.

Triton has also used it to summon rain storms, and transform his daughter, Ariel, into a human. He is also seen creating a rainbow in the first film, and disintegrating the sea wall in the second film. Ariel uses it herself in one episode of the television show, to thaw dinosaurs that have been trapped in a glacier, and it is revealed that the Trident is activated simply by the will of the user. When the trident is in Ursula's possession, she creates a giant whirlpool in the ocean that has such force that it raises sunken ships from the ocean floor.

Simplified Info
Feats

Defeated sharks, mythical creatures, Ursula, and Gods

Survived an unsurvivable fall

Can endure temperature and physical attacks that would kill most people

Powers and abilities

Ability to cast great Thunder magic Wind magic Healing magic (in Kingdom Heartsonly) Ability to control water Ability to breathe underwater Aquapathy Atlantean swimming speed Atlantean strength and endurance Rapid adaptability Thermoendurance Magical voice Swordswoman

Weapons

Her father's trident and her husband's sword

Weaknesses

She doesn't wear any armor, and it is unknown how far her endruance goes.