disney's descendants backlog post: good mom cruella au

originally posted on tumblr here on Nov 29th, 2020

Alright, I was listening to the last great american dynasty by Taylor Swift and I started thinking about Cruella de Vil for some reason. So here's the good mom Cruella AU that I thought up but haven't decided if I'm gonna write:

  • Cruella only stole the puppies because she was off her meds in this AU, and she didn't plan on making them into fur coats, that was a lie spread by her brother, who was jealous of her fashion empire
  • She's a singer in this AU too because I wanted an excuse for the song that inspired this to actually be in it. She wrote the last great american dynasty about herself and her first husband and it's Carlos' favorite song because she would sing her own songs as lullabies to him
  • It's funny because one of the lines is "and in a feud with her neighbor, she stole his dog and dyed it key lime green" which means in this AU, Cruella has a history of stealing dogs lmao
  • When Carlos is upset, he hums his mom's songs to calm himself down
  • Cruella doesn't have meds on the Isle, but Evil Queen makes non-magical potions for her that have the same effect in return for Cruella making her fashionable clothing out of the scraps the Isle gets
  • Cruella teaches Evie about fashion!!! Evie is even better than she already is because she has a fashion expert teaching her from a young age
  • Cruella offers the use of Hell Hall to children with rough home lives when they need it. Every VK knows if you need a good parental figure, you go to Cruella
  • She only named it Hell Hall as a joke, mostly because living on the Isle is hell
  • When the Rotten Four go to Auradon, Carlos' goal is to get his mom help, either by appealing to get her off the Isle, or at least getting her proper meds
  • Carlos is still afraid of dogs, but that's because the only dogs on the Isle are the villain dogs from various Disney movies where the dogs are assholes and/or their owners raised them to be vicious (like the bad guy's dogs in Oliver and Company)
  • Nobody trusts Carlos because he's very open about trying to get his mom help, and they all think she's a villain
  • They tell Ben stories of all the children Cruella has helped on the Isle
  • Cruella has the protection of everyone on the Isle because she helps the kids

    • And then this next part isn't really important to the AU, it's just a fun tidbit I put in because of the song betty by Taylor Swift:

  • Maleficent used to be in a relationship with Leah but it ended poorly, and that's why Maleficent wasn't invited to Aurora's christening
  • For a really fun time, Cruella knows the real story because she gossips, and she wrote betty for Maleficent. She wrote it from a man's perspective (the line "she said 'James, get in'") and changed the names to make it less obvious who it's about

    • Is this AU indulgent? Somewhat. Do I care? No. Anyway, here's the playlist I made for this AU: she stole his dog

    thoughts from Mar 21st, 2026:

    the playlist has since been deleted, but I kept the sentence in to be accurate in this backlog