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At the christening of a long-wished-for princess named Aurora ("The Dawn"), fairies invited as godmothers offered gifts, such as beauty, wit, and musical talent. However, one wicked and spiteful faerie named Maleficent, who had been overlooked, placed the princess under an enchantment, saying that, on reaching adulthood, she would prick her finger and die. Three good faeries, though unable to completely reverse the spell, gave her gifts to counteract it: she would not know sickness, age, or death, and would merely sleep, until awakened by true love's kiss.

In an effort to protect her, the king and queen banished from the castle anything that could have accomplished the curse's prediction, but when the princess was sixteen she chanced upon a rose bush growing wild. Enchanted by the fragrance and the beauty of the flowers, she wrapped her fingers around the stem and pricked her thumb on a thorn. Thus, the wicked faerie's curse was fulfilled. A forest of briars sprang up around the castle, shielding it from the outside world: no one could try to penetrate it without facing certain death in the thorns. Niamh, one of the faerie godmothers, slipped past the boundaries using her magic, and put everyone in the kingdom to sleep, until a suitable prince could slip through, kiss the maiden, and end the curse.

The kiss never came.

Twenty years later, Niamh the Golden defeated Maleficent in battle. Remembering the enchanted princess, and knowing the curse would be reversed the moment Maleficent's black heart stopped beating, she came into the still and silent kingdom and found the princess awakening, as young and beautiful as she had been the day she fell over dead. Alas, many of the citizens of the kingdom had died in their enchanted sleep; only the very young still lived. With the help of the other two godmothers, Niamh took up the task of helping the young princess--now the queen of Nod--rebuild her kingdom and instill hope in her frightened and confused people.