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Ever since I can remember, I have loved the movie: Beauty and the Beast, but it leaves a burning question that leave others like the Carlin Bros thinking that it doesn't make sense. I believe this is because of all the puzzle pieces missing in the story: the parents, conditions of the spell, where the enchantress is now, who exactly the man in the painting is among other things.

So, let's step back and try and fill in the details that the movie left out.

We know, that at age 11, the prince (Who, we cannot assume was an only child) turned away an old woman into the bitter cold. The enchantress, whom was the old woman in disguise took this as an insult and punished the prince and servants.

The man in the painting: If I had to judge from appearance, definitely a family member? Couldn't have been the beast. He was eleven. Maybe his father...

It doesn't exactly say, at least not directly, what happened to the rest of the royal family.

What exactly happened? Is there further, deep-seeded meaning behind the beast's bitterness? What lead to his attitude towards the old woman/enchantress to begin with? Why do we only see one painting of any of the royal family? Where are the others?

I have come to the conclusion that these paintings were either taken down by the servants or taken with the family.

But, why would the family leave their son behind, even if he was a beast?

What kind of attitude did these people have towards their kid? What kind of people were they?

Would they have left him behind out of fear and disbelief and rebuilt elsewhere, perhaps away from the forest where magical creatures and man-eating wolves reside?

There are a lot of issues with Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast if you actually sit down and start thinking about. Various people have tried to make sense of it all without much luck.

According to the original fairytale by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the Beast was a prince who lost his father at a young age and his mother had to wage war to defend his kingdom. The queen left him in the care of an evil fairy who tried to seduce him when he became an adult; when he refused, she transformed him into a beast.

The portrait in the film is meant to be the prince himself. No relation. Do take into account that when the higher class had portraits done, it wasn't always so exact; the painters were encouraged to paint their subjects in a "good light". So, there might be some variations when being compared to the actual subject.
Family portraits? I wouldn't be surprised if the Beast ended up taking them all down because he saw too much of his human self in them. Especially with what he did with his own portrait. So, they're probably locked up in storage somewhere in one of the many rooms in the castle.

In regards to the Prince's treatment of the Enchantress (while she's disguised as an old woman) and why the parents would've left a child behind, you have to take into consideration the type of life one lives in that time period. Prince Adam is of royalty - the highest you can go in the high class of society; the Enchantress was disguised as an old woman, most likely of a lower class. Of the time period, it was quite common for the higher class to treat the lower class with disrespect. So, maybe the Enchantress was trying to help Prince Adam become aware of a revolutionary idea - look beyond classes and see the beauty of a person inside. After all, Belle is far from being of the high class herself; she's a merchant's daughter in a "poor provincial town" after all.

Also, strangely enough, some higher class families had limited interaction with their children. During the early years of their children, parents would leave governesses and the like (i.e. boarding school) to care for the children; they would only spend a brief period of time of the day to interact with their children ((Downton Abbey does a perfect job of portraying this)). Parents of the high class didn't play a major part in their children's lives until they were in their teen years - to train them in the family business (or prepare for taking the throne when the day comes, in Prince Adam's case) or to prepare them for their debut and complete a happy marriage.

I'm glad. I'm hoping it's really good, although it'll be hard to top the tone of the original, even with the original's inconsistencies. sweatdrop It's always been my absolute favorite Disney film.

That's crazy about the fairy, but it does seem like either an absolutely evil thing to do or revolutionary.

That's the thing with fairy tale fairies, though. They never do anything halfway, good or bad. They're kind of extreme.