Gonna pitch a movie to Disney that explains the only reason the hunter shot Bambi’s mom is because he raised a lost baby deer when he was younger, but the deer grew up and stole his family’s fortune before skewering his parents on his antlers and running off, and now he has to live off the land hunting deer because he’s broke.
Even grittier historical drama Cruella where she attempts to raze the kingdom of Dalmatia due to some personal aristocratic grudge.
In the early tenth century, mercenaries under the command of Drusillia of Friuli staged an attack on the Dalmatian Islands but were repulsed by the Dalmatians and the aid of the displaced Saxon warlord Hrodger and his consort Anna. The story of Drusilla and the “Hundred Dalmatians,” referring to the many islands of Dalmatia, was passed down into local folklore. The Friulan “Drusilla d’Il Friûl” or Croation “Drusilja Furlanija” were eventually corrupted into English as “Cruella De Vil.” The confusion in the English-speaking world between the historical territory and the breed of dog became widespread by the Regency period, and the Saxon involvement was of great interest to English writers. “The witch Cruella de Villa defeated by a hundred Dalmatian dogs led by the Englishman Rodger” appears in a late nineteenth century English folktale collection.
The historical Drusillia’s raid on Dalmatia seems to have been spurred by a dispute over control of a fur trade pipeline that led from the north of the Alps to Dalmatia. A version of the legend discovered in a fifteenth-century Croatian prose manuscript claims that Drusillia’s widowed mother Katharina of Friuli was murdered by Illyrian pirates, and that Drusillia’s brothers Horatius and Gasparus did not adequately seek recompense. A thirteenth-century history of Friuli written in Latin mentions the raid of Drusillia and her husband Gasparus against the warlord Bornaus rex dalmatiae, elsewhere referred to in the manuscript as Bogdanus dalmatiae. It is believed that this “Borna” or “Bogdan” king of Dalmatia was received in English as “Pongo of the Dalmatians.”
