Ariel

Ariel is the main protagonist in Disney's The Little Mermaid franchise, voiced by Jodi Benson. She is the seventh and youngest daughter of King Triton and Queen Athena, rulers of the undersea kingdom of Atlantica. Ariel lived through much of her young life with a passionate - yet forbidden - admiration of the human world, and longed to someday experience life on the surface.

Ariel is loosely based on the nameless protagonist of the Danish fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen. However, unlike Andersen's fairy tale in which the nameless protagonist dies, the Disney animated feature film has a happy ending.

Ariel is the fourth official member of the Disney Princess line-up.

Ariel appears as a supporting character in some episodes of the Disney animated series Eilonwy's Magical Tales.

Ariel also appears as a playable fighter in Fighting Royale: Disney Edition.

Trivia

 * Ariel (or at least a mermaid resembling her) makes a cameo appearance in Luna & Zak, a 2013 CGI-animated feature from Disney's rival company Universal Pictures, at one point, during when Luna, Zak and A.C.E. encounter the "ice aquarium" in the alien universe, Ariel can be seen as one of the frozen statues. Ironically enough, former Disney animator Mark Dindal, who served as a visual effects supervisor for The Little Mermaid, directed Luna & Zak.
 * On a similar note, in the 2004 DreamWorks film Shrek 2 (Universal now owns the rights to that film along with every DreamWorks Animation film following the studio's purchase of DWA in 2016), the mermaid that washes up on Shrek in the beginning of the film bears strong resemblance to Ariel.
 * A silhouette of her can be seen in a book a young King Agnarr is reading in Frozen II.
 * Ariel briefly appears in the Fox animated film The Pixelators: Level Two, with her voice actress Jodi Benson reprising her role. The reason for this is Disney's purchase of 21st Century Fox and its assets which was completed back in March 2019 when The Pixelators: Level Two was in production at the time.