As the story opens, a busful of tourists are touring Copenhagen. Their The Guide draws their attention to a beautiful statue at Langelinie. But the scene quickly shifts beneath the waves, where a wry fish narrator teases the human belief that love can truly last, telling the tale to several smaller fish as the camera glides into an underwater realm.
A galleon founders on a rough sea, and its young captain, a prince, struggles to keep the ship from harm before he finally succumbs to the waves. From an alabaster palace beneath the sea, four mermaid princesses rise: the three older sisters dressed in blue bestow a vivid red cloak on their younger sister, signaling the protagonist’s fate with a subtle, symbolic gesture.
The youngest mermaid, known as the little mermaid, rises toward the surface and spots the unconscious prince adrift. She carries him to shore and sings a gentle, hopeful song over him. A convent bell tolls nearby, and several women emerge. The little mermaid slips back into the sea, waiting to see what fate awaits the prince, while one of the convent’s ladies—who bears a striking resemblance to the mermaid—helps him to the convent.
Back at her underwater home, the little mermaid shares her encounter with her sisters and resolves to seek help from the Sea Witch. The Sea Witch offers a potion that will grant her a human form, but at a steep price: she will lose her voice and endure painful feet as she learns to walk. The little mermaid agrees without hesitation.
On land, the little mermaid arrives to find the prince now mounted on a horse. He is drawn to her beauty, and she dreams of a wondrous world where she could ride with him on a winged horse into the stars. Their voyage continues aboard a ship toward a distant land, and a palace servant on a balcony spots the ship and calls for the princess. The prince and the little mermaid enter the nearby palace, where the king welcomes them and introduces his daughter—the girl from the convent. The little mermaid’s heart sinks as she remembers the bargain, for the hag had warned that if the prince chose another, she would die at the first sunrise.
The prince and the princess, now dressed in wedding attire, return to the ship with the little mermaid trailing the bride’s train and an entourage in tow. As she waits for the next day with growing dread, the young woman’s three sisters reappear—having cut their hair, sacrificed wealth, and abandoned their castle to obtain magic for their sister. They present her with a magic shell that could save her life by killing the prince and his new bride, but returning her to her mermaid form. The little mermaid, torn between love and life, refuses and drops the shell back into the sea.
A towering wave surges over the ship, and the little mermaid dies for love. The prince notices her absence too late, but as she slips away, his bride hears her final, haunting song. He gazes at her and whispers, “So you remembered the song after all.”
Two endings unfold in the tale’s final notes: a fish voice laments the mermaid’s fate as a cautionary tale about knowing one’s place, while a human perspective frames it as a beautiful, utterly tragic love story—in which longing and sacrifice collide with the harsh laws of existence.
