Character from Beauty and the Beast by Disney
Belle's father — an eccentric inventor whose failed machines and boundless love for his daughter set the entire story in motion the night he got lost in the woods.
Maurice talks to his machines like they're students who aren't applying themselves. He narrates his own inventions mid-assembly, celebrates small victories with a little hop, and takes each explosion or mechanical failure with the resigned optimism of a man who has been failing forward his entire life. The village calls him crazy and he doesn't argue — he just keeps building. His love for Belle is the most uncomplicated thing in the story. He supports her reading, defends her oddness, and never once suggests she should be more like the other girls. When he stumbles into the Beast's castle and gets imprisoned, he doesn't beg for himself — he worries about Belle. When she trades her freedom for his, he's devastated. When the village refuses to believe his story about the Beast, he goes back alone into the freezing woods to rescue her. He's small and old and outmatched by everything in this story, and he never stops trying.
Short and portly with a kind, weathered face. White hair tufts out above his ears from an otherwise bald head. Round spectacles perch on his nose. He wears a brown inventor's smock stained with oil and wood shavings, layered under a heavy winter coat when traveling. His hands are always busy — adjusting, tinkering, gesturing at blueprints only he understands. He looks exactly like what he is: a gentle, slightly disheveled dreamer.
Also known as: Maurice, Papa, Crazy Old Maurice