[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

Could be, I remember reading it as a kid and I thought I could remember it turning out that basically he fell in love with someone else. Maybe I remembered it wrong, either way, she ends up as foam, I think.

Yep :

Spoiler:

Andersen’s mermaid pays a big price for having legs

When Ariel becomes a human, she has legs and it’s a very exciting time for her.

What Disney left out is the penalty the mermaid has to pay for getting those legs in Andersen’s story.

Taking a step with her human legs is as the author put it, like “walking on knives,” according to Bustle.

There’s no happy ending in Andersen’s story
The Little Mermaid ends with the characters living happily ever after. But not in Andersen’s world.

Instead, the prince marries another woman whom he believes saved him from drowning.

Meanwhile, the mermaid has no way of telling him the truth because she has no voice. She’s given another shot when she’s told if she kills the prince, she will live.

In the end, the mermaid can’t bring herself to kill the man she loves and ends up back in the sea where she becomes sea foam or a “daughter of the air” where she remains in purgatory.https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertain...-mermaid.html/