Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch
Centuries before Rapunzel is ever locked in a tower, there is a girl named Gothel, one of three sisters growing up in an enchanted thicket with a mother who cannot be trusted. When that mother abandons her, Gothel is taken in by a coven of witches who teach her the uses of dark magic, and the lessons she learns there shape everything she becomes.
Working behind the events of Tangled, and threaded through with the influence of the mysterious Odd Sisters who move through the whole Villains series, Mother Knows Best traces the losses, betrayals, and small cruelties that turn a grieving girl into the old witch who will one day steal a child and lock her away for her hair.
Fifth in Serena Valentino's Villains series, this is a sympathetic, often melancholy look at how Disney's most possessive mother figure came to believe that keeping someone forever was the same thing as loving them.
The witch later known as Rapunzel's captor, shown here as a girl abandoned by her mother and shaped by dark magic and loss.
The three mysterious witches who recur across Valentino's Villains series, influencing events from behind the scenes.
Appears in the framing sections set during the events of Tangled.