I cracked it. I know how to give Maleficent a realistic, relatable motivation without destroying her villainy.
I know Maleficent is a character that should not have a pure and
honest motivation for sentencing a child to death, but it all depends on
what sort of character you are trying to portray. She does NOT work as a
hero, but that's not the only change.
You could make her insane, as I
previously have, and set her on her path of violent destruction because
she was obsessive over a certain man while in Aurora's area.
Another
one that resonates with me strongly is that Maleficent is perfectly
aware of the story she is in, and simply is doing what so many modern
story tellers are doing poorly: making a perfect fairy tale grim. She
tries to set up a version where Aurora dies, with the fairies then
choosing to twist it to a love awakening story.
She
tries to suggest a more reasonable compromise, but Aurora goes missing
for years. Therefore, she tries to set up a bittersweet ending where
Aurora does awaken, but her love is an elderly man who was kept in a
dungeon for 100 years. The fairies then get active in subverting this
story and even turn her bird to stone after he makes the guards subdue Phillip.
Only after her pet is, for all intents and purposes, killed off does she start getting violent lightning and dragon smacking our hero. She got pretty peeved with how things turned out, understandably, and figures she can still have a tragic ending if the prince dies and Aurora and the kingdom are trapped in an eternal slumber.
This gives her the reason of being a story teller who is simply trying to influence the story she is in to end in a more interesting way than "they lived happily ever after". She is by no means unreasonable, but definitely not a truly sympathetic character.
She is a horrid, horrid woman. But now, you understand why she does what she does.
