Sea Widow

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The Sea Widow, also known as Cora June and Nadirah, was a sea witch of the seven seas around the time of the Seven Years' War. A terrifying woman of great power, she spent many years orchestrating the demise of the notorious pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, incorrectly blaming him and holding him responsible for the death of her husband and children. The Sea Widow would eventually make an unholy alliance with Inez Luisa Gabriella di Savoia, the Queen of Spain, in an attempt to find the magical pearls from the broken Trident of Neptune so she could finally have her revenge.

Biography

The Tragic Tale

The origin of the woman who would become known as the Sea Widow was shrouded in mystery. The only certain facts of her past were that one day she was stranded in the open sea in a longboat with her children. The merciless heat of the sun and the lack of food and water took their toll on the helpless castaways and the children died of thirst and hunger. The mother managed to escape that fate, but only because she succumbed to cannibalism, eating the flesh of her own children in order to survive. She was eventually rescued by the infamous pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. The woman was brought back to civilization and nursed to health. However, her grief-stricken mind made her forget the truth of her survival and replaced it with another tale ― a tale of a husband who consumed the flesh of his own children after he was set adrift by Jack Sparrow. Completely insane, the woman believed Jack responsible for the loss of her entire family, and swore revenge against him.^[3]

The Sea Widow

Mad with delusions and hate, the woman started calling herself the Sea Widow, grieving for the husband she never had. Knowing that she had no chance against Jack Sparrow in open combat, she resorted to studying the myths and legends of the sea, over the years becoming the mistress of the dark arts. The distorted story of the Sea Widow eventually spread throughout the Caribbean. Due to her otherworldly mystical powers, some people believed her to be a haunted spirit, instead of a living human being.^[3]

The Sea Widow eventually came up with a plan to kill Jack Sparrow, but to accomplish that goal first she needed to collect several magical items ― the Trident of Neptune, the three Pearls of Neptune which gave the trident its powers, and the Siren Shell which contained the siren song. The Trident was in possession of Inez Luisa Gabriella di Savoia, the Queen of Spain, powerless without the pearls. The Sea Widow made a deal with the Queen, promising to bring her the pearls, which the Queen gladly accepted, hoping to use the Trident against the British forces, which were waging war on Spain. In unknown circumstances, the Sea Widow managed to recover Tyrah, Pearl of the Tides, but she was attacked by the giant sea serpent, which bit off the Widow's left fist, swallowing it and Tyrah with it. The Widow was also somehow cursed with the Black Spot, and the sea serpents constantly searched for her, hoping to devour her.^[3]

The loss of Tyrah did not disconcert the Widow. More determined than ever, she used her shapeshifting powers to create two alternate identities, the beautiful young Nadirah and the little girl Cora June. As Nadirah, she found employment as a prostitute in Marty's brothel in the town of Georgetown, San Domingo. However, none of the ordinary costumers were allowed to touch her, because her beauty and proclaimed virginity were reserved for only one man, the pirate Captain Hector Barbossa, the man in possession of Rhysis, Pearl of the Winds, which was hidden inside a sapphire which was embedded into the hilt of the Sword of Triton, which Barbossa won in battle with the infamous pirate Blackbeard.^[3]

As Cora June, she made an acquaintance with Philip Swift, a former cleric who became a cartographer's apprentice in Kingston, Jamaica. Philip was searching for the Mermaid Trove, the legendary treasure said to be collected by the mermaids from every shipwreck on the Seven Seas. The Sea Widow knew the Siren Shell would be found in the Trove, lying along the corpses of the mermaid rulers at the bottom of the sea. As Cora, she stole a logbook from the recently arrived ship from Barbados, and brought it to Philip. Although he scolded the child for stealing, Philip took the log, and used it to cross reference the data he had collected from other logs and maps. When he was finished, Philip figured out the exact location of the Trove, close to Fort San Cristobal, an abandoned Spanish fortress on the northern coast of San Domingo, and marked it on his map. However, the Widow used her supernatural powers to start a fire which consumed the chart shop, forcing Philip to flee and allowing the Widow to take the map for herself.^[3]

The Opening Move

In unknown circmstances, the Sea Widow came in possession of a magical silver blade that was destined to kill Jack. A few years after stealing the map from Philip, the Widow made contact with Captain Barbossa, and they made a deal, Jack's life in exchange for the restoration of Barbossa's severed leg, which was left aboard the Black Pearl when she was magically shrunken and turned into a ship in a bottle by Blackbeard. To that end, Barbossa and three of his thugs attacked Jack on the island of St. Vincent and stole the Pearl, which they brought to Fort San Cristobal, where the Sea Widow made her residence. For unknown reasons, Barbossa's henchmen were killed, but the Widow performed a ritual which freed the Pearl from the bottle and restored the ship to her normal size. The Widow merged Barbossa's missing leg with with the stump, but she could not control the Pearl, and the ship sailed away, carried by the winds into the open sea.^[3]

Carrying the magical sword she named Jack Sparrow's bane and transformed into Cora, the Widow teleported herself to St. Vincent where she found Jack and his crewman Scrum on a beach, after they barely survived a skirmish with Barbossa and his thugs. Showing them the Black Spot on her right hand, she revealed her knowledge of Jack's past adventures, and asked for help. When Jack refused, Cora told them there was a way to restore the Black Pearl, elsewhys Barbossa would not have stolen the bottle, and that the Sea Widow would aid him. Hearing the hated name, Jack grabbed the girl by the throat, afraid that everything that just happened was a part of the Widow's ploy, unaware that he was right. However, Cora convinced him to release her, saying that she knew where the Widow would meet with Barbossa. Jack, Scrum, and Cora boarded Jack's ship, the Cuttlefish, and sailed for San Domingo. When they reached Fort San Cristobal Cora revealed she was being chased by the sea serpent. While Jack and Scrum argued Cora used their lack of attention to teleport inside the fort.^[3]

Jack and Scrum entered the fort where they found the corpses of Barbossa's men, the skeletons of several children, and Barbossa, seemingly mad and dancing, with his missing leg completely restored. Barbossa used the moment of Jack's distraction and shackled him to the wall, and the Sea Widow revealed herself to them, in her true, terrifying appearance. As Barbossa departed with Jack the monkey, the Widow asked Jack if he remembered her story, to which he replied that he was familiar with the legend. The Widow accused him for the death of her imagined husband, but he asked her about the fate of the Black Pearl. Saying that those two losses were not comparable, the Widow proclaimed that Jack's ship was lost to the sea. Then she unshackled Jack, telling him to run, so he could suffer the same fate as her husband did. Jack refused, to which the Widow responded by revealing she knew the location of the Mermaid Trove and the siren song he was obsessed with. She then used her dark magic to reanimate the skeletons, and sent them after Jack. However, Jack and Scrum managed to escape, and jumped into the sea.^[3]

The Engagement

The Widow teleported to Georgetown, transformed into Nadirah. Seemingly completely in love, but actually bewitched by the Widow, Barbossa entered Nadirah's chambers, and declared they would be married right then and there. When she stated that he was still bearing scars of his pirate life, Barbossa showed her his right leg, now completely restored. Nadirah then put him to a test, asking him to part with what was dearest to him, the sword he won in battle with Blackbeard, or more precisely, the pearl hidden in the sapphire embeded into the hilt of the sword. Without hesitation, Barbossa took a fireplace poker, and with a mighty strike broke the sword's hilt. The second strike broke the sapphire, revealing the pearl. The pirate captain then declared he would have the pearl placed on a silver ring, so he could put it on Nadirah's finger, to which Nadirah responded by stating they would be wed the next day.^[3]

Hunting the Sea Serpent

As Jack and Scrum reached the shores, the Widow rejoined them, once again transformed into Cora. Pulling out her sword from its scabbard, she furiously attacked Jack, accusing him of abandoning her. Due to the magic of the sword, she managed to disarm Jack and break his sword in two, but then offered him her own blade, which she called Jack Sparrow's bane. Then she revealed that the sword was destined to kill Jack, but he was safe as long as he had it in his possession. Jack agreed to help her, and Cora asked him to kill the sea serpent, after which the pirate took the sword but immediately attempted to renege, stating that Cora owed him a sword. Expecting Jack's dishonesty, Cora revealed that she was cursed with the Black Spot by the Sea Widow because she discovered her plans, and Jack would would want to know those because both he and the Widow had same goal ― to find the legendary Mermaid Trove.^[3]

Equipment and skills

The Sea Widow's greatest weapon was her magic. Her otherworldly mystical powers were so great that some people believed her to be haunted spirit, and both Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa were afraid of her. She spent years studying the dark arts on her quest to kill Sparrow. She was capable of reanimating skeletons and change her form at will. She was thus able to create two alternate identities, the beautiful Nadirah and the little girl Cora June, which she used to spin a web around her prey. As Cora she was able to match Sparrow's skills with the blade, although it's hard to tell if she was a capabale fencer or she just let her enchanted sword lead her moves. As Nadirah she bewitched Captain Barbossa and made him fall in love with her, all so he would give her Rhysis, one of the Pearls of Neptune that was hidden inside a sapphire which was embedded into the hilt of the Sword of Triton. With Rhysis, the pearl which commanded the winds of the sea, and Tyrah, the pearl of the tides, she was able to restore most of the powers of the Trident of Neptune, which gave her control of the sea. The Sea Widow also seemed to be capable of teleportation, with her three identities appearing in different locations at the same time.

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Behind the scenes

The Sea Widow, who also takes the form as "Cora June" and "Nadirah" throughout the story, appeared in Terry Rossio's 2012 screenplay draft for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.^[1] Rossio mentioned the film in his annotations for his screenplay, specifically for the character named "Cora" who was intended to be a ten-year-old child, and distinctive from Nadirah and the Sea Widow. He noted the urge on the part of various production entities to cast a young woman or age the character upwards, comparing to what was done with Jim Hawkins on Disney's Treasure Island adaptation Treasure Planet or Dave Sutler "the Apprentice" in the 2010 film The Sorcerer's Apprentice, to cite examples of films where the kid-adult relationship was distorted into a young adult-adult relationship.^[1][4] The scene with Cora hiding behind a shelf while overhearing Captain Benbow and McNally, the owner of the shop McNally & Sons Chart House, is a reference to a similar scene from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island where Jim Hawkins hides in the apple barrel and overhears Long John Silver and two other pirates planning a mutiny.^[5]

The scene with the skeletons of dead children in Fort San Cristobal implies that the Sea Widow had killed children at sea which is based on a character from Greek mythology, the beautiful Libyan queen Lamia who became a child-eating daemon. In the mythology, Lamia had the ability to remove her eyes and still see through them. In other stories, she was cursed with the inability to close her eyes, so she would always obsess over the images of her dead children.^[6]

According to Rossio, the inclusion of a female villain was the reason his version of Dead Men Tell No Tales was discarded, and rejected by actor Johnny Depp, who was "worried that would be redundant to his 2012 film Dark Shadows, which also featured a female villain."^[7][8]

In Jeff Nathanson's early 2013 screenplay draft for Dead Men Tell No Tales, there was a witch named Melia who—similarly to the Sea Widow—prophesied that Jack would get his throat slit by his own sword, although it was his regular cutlass rather than a bane like in Terry Rossio's script.^[9] The witch in Nathanson's draft later became Shansa, the sea witch featured in the final version of the 2017 film.^[10]

Notes and references

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13} Wordplayer.com: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES by Terry Rossio
2. ↑ In the script Pintel and Ragetti explain that Spain and Great Britain have been fighting the war for seven years, and thus named it the Seven Years' War. The war entered its seventh year in May 1762 and ended in February 1763, which means the Sea Widow had to die between those two dates.
3. ↑ ^{3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09} Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales by Terry Rossio (Draft dated August 15, 2012)
4. ↑ P5 Annotations by Terry Rossio
5. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Men Tell No Tales - Annotations - Terry Rossio - 8/14/12 - Page 2
6. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Men Tell No Tales - Annotations - Terry Rossio - 8/14/12 - Page 10
7. ↑ Wordplayer.com: Wordplayer.com: WORDPLAY/Columns/55. "Time Risk" by Terry Rossio
8. ↑ Pirates 5 Originally Had a Female Villain - Screen Rant
9. ↑ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lM8rsLXSNQwVZfIiHC4ncZxnzV_dMYKs/view?usp=drivesdk
10. ↑ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales