As we all know, The Little Mermaid is based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. In it, the prince falls in love with the princess of a neighbouring kingdom. So could Ursula’s human disguise be based on her?
In the original fairy tale, the prince thinks the princess is the one who saved him. In the Disney film, Vanessa tricks Prince Eric into thinking she saved him.
Yes, of course. The character is a pretty basic element of the plot. The Little Mermaid trades her voice to become human; then, because she cannot speak, the prince falls in love with somebody else. That provides the major conflict of the second half of the story.
Disney films often diverge quite a bit from their source material, often to provide a happier, funnier, or more comprehensible ending. Aladdin (as an example of a movie from the same period as The Little Mermaid) has a primary conflict that bears almost no resemblance to what happens in the original Arabian folktale. Beauty and the Beast, on the other hand, retains the basic plot of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumontt's story. The Little Mermaid changes the ending so that the heroine doesn't perish, which requires making her romantic rival into an out-and-out villain. However, the key element of there being a romantic rival is taken straight out of Hans Christian Andersen's original.
