Happily Ever After?

So what happens to Aurora and Philip after the happy ending of Sleeping Beauty (1959)? Do they and their family live happily ever after?

There are Disney Channel television movies which are sequels to many Disney classic movies including Sleeping Beauty (1959), namely Descendants (2015), Descendants 2 (2017), and Descendants 3 (2019).

In Descendants (2015) Audrey, daughter of Aurora and Philip, lives with her grandmother in the Kingdom of Auderon and is the girlfriend of the future King Ben until Mal, daughter of Maleficent, arrives from the Isle of the Lost and becomes Ben's new girlfriend.

In the opening of Descendants 3 (2019), the hopes of Audrey and her grandmother are finally dashed when King Ben asks Mal to be his wife, sending Audrey off the deep end.

Why did Audrey's grandmother say that Ben proposing to Mal instead of Audrey was the end of their family's status? Audrey is a child of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty (1959), who were the heirs to the crowns of their fathers. So Audrey or a hypothetical sibling should rule two kingdoms. Audrey & her grandmother's family's status shouldn't depend much on whether Audrey marries the King of Auradon.

1) So maybe the Nazis conquered Stefan and Hubert's kingdoms.

2) Or maybe Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes came and massacred everyone in those kingdoms and Audrey and her grandmother were the only ones who escaped.

3) Or maybe those two kingdoms were overthrown in a revolution and the royal family was massacred except for Audrey and her grandmother, who perhaps escaped with the aide of the Princess Protection Program (2009).

4) Or maybe Audrey's brother or older sister now rules those two kingdoms and can't stand Audrey and her grandmother and so exiled them.

5) Or maybe one of the villains, or a league of villains, conquered and/or destroyed those two kingdoms and others and attacked Auradon, and King Beast, the former King of Auradon, defeated that villain or villains and exiled them to the Island of the Lost, and the survivors (if any) of the kingdoms of Stefan and Hubert abandoned their former royal family and became subjects of the Kingdom of Auradon.

Those are all the reasons I can think of why Audrey might not be a member of a reigning royal family or even already be a queen regnant, and they all seem rather dark for Disney and ominous for Aurora and Philip.

But having such a tragic backstory could explain why everyone in Auradon is so quick to forgive Audrey for being a little mean and then turning into a villain who almost kills everybody.