The Reluctant Prince

"Everything?" Mkali inquired, looking over the seemingly endless expanse of space with a shiver of dread.




Long description ahead! Enter at your own risk. Okay, so for those that don’t want to read that giant wall of text, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version. This is my TLK fan OC, Mkali. He is the star of my fan fiction/alternative sequel idea and is based off of ‘Fluffy’ (the cub at the end of the first movie). He has no relation to Kiara or Kopa, as they don’t exist in this universe



Yeah, so lately I’ve been thinking a lot about The Lion King and it’s sequel. And while I still really like Simba’s Pride, I can’t overlook it’s glaring flaws. Do I think it’s a bad movie? No. But it has quite a few plot holes and inconsistencies, and half of the original characters’ personalities were murdered quite violently, along with their designs In addition, I don’t think the protagonist, Kiara, is a very strong character. The colors of the movie also bug me a lot now, especially in the nighttime scenes. So I got to thinking, if sequels were big business back in the nineties like they are now with Pixar and Dreamworks, what would a more ‘official’ sequel have looked like. And by official, I mean made by the original team that made the first movie, with the same quality of animation, to be released in theaters.

That’s where my story comes in. I’m not using any info from the storybooks, comics, or Simba’s Pride, only research obtained from the first movie and the play (which was worked on by some of the same people). That means no Kiara, no Zira, no Kopa, no Malka, no calling Scar ‘Taka', etc. This is just a fun project where I try to make what I think might have been a more official sequel.

So, without any further ado, I present Mkali (aka Fluffy) For those that don’t know, TLK was not initially predicted to be a success and so the cub at the end of the movie was given the name of Fluffy and supposedly remained genderless, because they didn’t expect to have any need to churn out any sequels Well, to everyone’s surprise, TLK became a monster success and a sequel would later be in the works. They decided to make ‘Fluffy’ a girl, change part of her appearance (and the appearance of her ceremony) to make it work with the Romeo and Juliet angle Now this would have worked much better if they were trying to make a dynamic, strong female character, but no, we just get another whiny princess who falls in love with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks (yeah, totally haven’t seen that before) But there are several indicators to me that suggest that the ‘genderless’ cub was intended to be a male. For one, it has ear rims (something female lions don’t achieve until maturity in the TLK universe), thick eyebrows (generally a pretty strong indicator of a male character), and, if you look close enough, a hair tuft. In addition, there were several audio and storybooks which referred to this cub as the ‘new lion king’ or the ‘son of Simba’ (yeah, I know that doesn't make it official). Heck, even the people who made Simba’s Pride originally planned to have a character named Chaka, who was Kiara’s older brother and therefore the cub we saw at the end of TLK 1 So to me it just made sense to make ‘Fluffy’ a boy, and since I wouldn’t give him any relation to Kopa, Kiara, or Chaka, I sort of made him my own. Although he looks like Simba at first glance, there are actually several very deliberate differences. Example: his pointed cheek fur, scruffy ears and general excess of fluff (‘Fluffy’ reference, anyone?), Scar-like green eyes, Nala-like eye, eyebrow, and nose shape, spiky tuft of dark brown hair/mane, and much higher patch of pale fur on his chest. I tried to stay as true to the original design of the cub at the end of the first movie as I could, making the patches of fur beneath his eyes paler than his muzzle and chest, giving him dark ear rims, darker fur, and a bright pink nose. I darkened his colors, so as to match with the technique used by the original TLK team, who made the characters grow darker with age. So through a combination of ‘Fluffy’ and my own character ideas, I made Mkali, the son of Simba and Nala. Although he is based on a design from the movie, I still consider him my OC, since I put some much work into designing him

Anyway, long description is long I’ll try to make a character sheet for him eventually, where I’ll write out his history and personality. I'm hopeless when it comes to TLK style, so I had to use a screen shot as a ref for this, but I still put a lot of work into it. Thanks for looking

The Lion King belongs to Disney

The character Mkali in his final form and the art featured here belong to me so do not steal, trace, copy, reference, or otherwise redistribute in any way.