“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 her 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 Disney's 1991 animated film, Beauty and the Beast. It has since become the trademark symbol for the film.
When the Beast was a human prince, an old beggar woman came to his castle requesting shelter from the bitter cold and offered 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 her appearance for true beauty was found within. When he dismissed her again, she shed her false form, revealing herself to be an astonishingly beautiful enchantress who was testing his heart.
The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late, for she saw that there was no true love in his heart. As his punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast, and all who dwelt within the castle into living objects, as well as cursing the castle itself and the surrounding forest (filling it with vicious wolves and bats as well). She left him the rose, promising him that it would bloom until his twenty-first year (or many years, in the Broadway version). If he could learn to love another, and earn their 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 and his castle, servants, and forest would likewise remain cursed forever.
Ever since the Beast kept the rose safe in his chambers (The West Wing), the rose serving as his enchanted hourglass and a reminder of his selfishness and cruelty.
When the Beast finally turned 21, 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, but the spell was still broken due to Belle confessing her love for him mere seconds before the last petal fell.
Aside from the prologue, where the rose is seen on window panels and briefly in the West Wing, it made its first appearance after the Beast's failed attempt at convincing Belle to come have dinner with him. After the Beast overheard Belle's comment about not wanting to have anything to do with him and being hurt by the remark, the fifth petal fell off; feeling that any chances of breaking the spell at that point were almost slim to none. During this scene, it was revealed that at least four petals fell before that one, and Lumiere 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 happened to come across it and then proceeded to remove its glass covering before attempting to touch its petals. However, the Beast was afraid that Belle would make the petals fall off the rose before it is time and thus cost him his humanity, so he caught her, placed the glass covering back on, 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 the Beast to save her from wolves). He then realizes he must control his temper if he is to ever break the spell.
The rose appears in the background for the remainder of the film, and is seen one last time as the Beast dies after getting stabbed by Gaston (which led to him falling to his death) and Belle tearfully professes her love for him, mere seconds before the final petal falls. Against all odds, he had succeeded; the spell was broken, restoring him and his servants to their human forms, the bleak, menacing fortress into a shining, gorgeous castle, and the surrounding forest to its former beauty. He 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 he 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 it.
The enchanted rose, aside from the appearances in the background with the West Wing, also appeared near 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 the Beast could do so, however, a petal fell on the storybook Belle had earlier left for him as a Christmas present, and caused him to snap out of it and read the book, 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 the Beast disabled Forte's keyboard by ripping it out, Lumiere and Cogsworth managed to place the glass covering properly back on the table in time.
The rose appears in several episodes of the fifth season of Once Upon a Time, here labeled as the "Magical Rose".[1]Mother Superior creates it for 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.
The rose makes a couple of cameos in the film, with the first at the dress shop next to a yellow dress resembling that of Belle's and the second in one of Malvina Monroe's cabinets during Badder musical number, with the glass case in the latter scene resembling how it was in the 2017 live-action remake. Additionally, there was a nod to the rose when the Scroll ask Giselle if she seen "a flower dropping petals" as her clock.
The rose appears in the live-action remake, serving the same purpose as the original animated film, but with one major difference. Not only does it serve as the Beast's countdown to how long he has left to break the curse, but every time a petal falls, the castle will crumble slightly to warn everyone in it. The Enchanted Objects will also slowly start to lose sense of humanity for every petal that falls, becoming more inanimate like their cursed forms. When the final petal falls, not only will the Beast remain cursed forever, but the Enchanted Objects will permanently fade away and become motionless knickknacks.
In live-action, the rose's bell jar is much wider and has visible rose detailing along the edges of the glass. When a petal falls, it instantly wilts when it hits the table.
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.
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.
It is unknown whether or not the rose was always enchanted, or if it was once an ordinary rose that the enchantress picked, then enchanted with her powers.
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 Maurice, due to the latter trying to pilfer it for Belle.
Maurice 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.
The role of the rose in the musical becomes anthropomorphic in the Disney+ original series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. During the second season, East High produces their version of Beauty and the Beast. In the storyline, the rose is portrayed by Nini (Olivia Rodrigo) in which the character is given a solo called "The Rose Song", written by Rodrigo herself and her counterpart in the series.
