The Enchanted Rose

"The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year. If he could learn to love another, and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time."

- Narrator

The Enchanted Rose is a mystical flower from the 1991 Disney animated film, Beauty and the Beast. The Enchanted Rose has since become the trademark symbol for Beauty and the Beast.

Background
When the Beast was a human prince, an old beggar woman came to his castle requesting shelter from the bitter cold and offered to him this very rose. The prince sneered at the beautiful gift and turned the old woman away because of her haggard appearance. She warned him not to judge her based on appearance for true beauty was found within. When he did not heed her warning, she shed her false form, revealing herself to be an astonishingly beautiful enchantress.

She saw that there was no love in the prince's heart, and thus punished him by turning him into a Beast, and all who dwelt within the castle into living objects, as well as cursing the castle itself and possibly the surrounding forest. She left him the rose, promising him that it would bloom until his twenty-first year: If he could learn to love and earn love in return before the last petal fell, the spell would be broken. If he failed, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.

Ever since, the Beast kept the rose safe in his chambers, the rose serving as his countdown and a reminder of his selfishness and cruelty.

When the Beast finally turned twenty, his countdown truly began as the rose slowly but surely began to wilt. At the end of the film, the Beast appears to reach the deadline of his twenty-first birthday because the rose completely finishes wilting.

Beauty and the Beast
Aside from the prologue, where the rose is seen on window panels and briefly in the West Wing, the enchanted rose made its first appearance after Beast's failed attempt at convincing Belle to come have dinner with him. After Beast overheard Belle's comment about not wanting to have anything to do with him and being hurt by the remark, a petal fell down. During this scene, it was revealed that at least four petals fell before that one, and Lumière beforehand mentioned that the rose had started wilting months prior.

The rose was later seen again when Belle entered the West Wing without the Beast's permission, where she briefly saw it and then proceeded to remove its glass covering before attempting to touch its petals. However, the Beast caught her and snapped at her for disobeying him. He then yells at her to get out of the West Wing, which she did (although she ended up leaving the Castle as well, necessitating Beast to save her).

The rose appears in the background for the remainder of the film, and is seen one last time as Beast dies and Belle professes her love for him just as the last petal falls. The Beast had succeeded; the spell was broken, restoring him and his servants to their human forms, and the bleak fortress into a shining castle. The Beast-turned-Prince then lived happily ever after with Belle.

In the Special Edition, the rose was also carried by the podium (which is revealed to also be possibly sentient, though whether it was originally human or just an object given life is never revealed) to the main foyer during Cogsworth's briefing, just before the song "Human Again". It is also in this scene that Cogsworth states the amount of time it will take by then before the final petal falls, which is 12 hours, 36 minutes, and 15 seconds, of which the rose is already down to its last petal.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
The enchanted rose, aside from the appearances in the background with the West Wing, also appeared nearing the climax, where Forte, shortly after manipulating the Beast to lock Belle away forever, then proceeded to goad him into "ending his misery" by smashing the rose to bits. Before Beast could do so, however, a petal fell on the present Belle had earlier left for him and caused him to snap out of it and read the present, giving him some renewed hope for making Christmas good. In addition, the rose was nearly destroyed again when Forte, having gone completely insane from fear of being left out once the curse is broken, tried to collapse the castle with his music in a desperate attempt to ensure they can't fall in love. However, after Beast disabled Forte's keyboard by ripping it out, Cogsworth and Lumière managed to place the glass covering properly back on the table in time.

House of Mouse
The rose makes an appearance in "Rent Day".

Once Upon a Time
The rose makes an appearance in the premiere of the fifth season of Once Upon a Time, here labeled as the "Magical Rose". Mother Superior gave it to Belle who had decided to leave to save Emma from the Darkness. Belle was told that it was linked to Rumplestiltskin's life, and when the last petal from the rose falls, he would be dead. While in Camelot, the rose's petals began to slowly fall away. Six weeks later after Belle arrived back in Storybrooke, the petals were almost completely wilted and most of them had fallen. However, after Gold began to wake from his coma, the fallen petals faded away and the wilted rose became complete again.

Beauty and the Beast (Marvel Comics)
The rose appears in several issues as part of the West Wing, although it doesn't have any major roles in the comics. In issue 13, however, in an alternate take on the night of his curse, the prince puts the rose in a vase.

New Adventures of Disney's Beauty and the Beast
The rose appears in both issues of the comic. In the first comic's first story arc, it can be seen briefly, with it still not having bloomed yet, though it had apparently had bloomed by the end of the third arc of the same issue. The second issue shows that two pedals have fallen, and Mrs. Potts implies at one point that it wilting has just happened recently.

Trivia

 * It is implied that if anyone except the Enchantress touches the rose, it could be destroyed easily.
 * Most likely, if its pedals were plucked, the countdown would be accelerated.
 * The rose made a cameo in Enchanted in Giselle's room.
 * The rose was similar to the rose in the original tale, although with several distinctions:
 * The rose was a relatively minor story element, only being present when the Beast encounters Belle's father due to the latter trying to pilfer it for his daughter.
 * Belle's father was the one who tried to touch the rose, not Belle herself.
 * The rose was not enchanted, nor did it have any link to the Beast's cursed state.