Sarafina and Zira: part one

First: Here

Next: LINK

(full disclosure I already have the next part fully drawn, but god I don't feel like writing out the whole description tonight, and it'll be nice to draw out the story anyway, so oh well you'll have to wait. )

Background again belongs to Disney, and was edited for use over here.

Annnnnnyway, y'all might remember the story I wrote back in dinosaur times about Zira's life growing up, "Fall to Hatred", where she grew up as a princess of the Pride Lands and was absolute best friends with Nala's mother Sarafina. I've majorly reworked my TLK headcanons and story since writing that, and while I don't have it in me to write a whole multi-chapter fanfic about it anymore, Zira and Sarafina's friendship, and Sarafina's personality and story, were definitely something I thought about a lot and I figured I could draw a few pieces about their lives and briefly explain the story for each one. So here we go!

First though, you might wanna read this piece about Zira's father, it'll explain a lot of the context:

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Princess Ziara is the second born cub of the mutinous King Jadi, behind her older sister Princess Dunia. Sarafina is born and raised in King Jadi's pride alongside Zira and the two become inseparably close (yes they’re totally crushing hopelessly on each other.

Since Ziara is the second cub of the King, she becomes the leader of the Lion Guard (no magic roar in my headcanon, and the guard marks are brushed/stenciled on instead of magically appearing), with Sarafina as her Bravest. 'Fina is devoted to her best friend and will charge into any danger to protect her. She is a very stern, reserved, no-nonsense kind of lioness, hardened by the hardships of life in the Outlands (we'll get to that in a moment), determined to protect those she cares about.

When Sarafina and Ziara are young/middle teenagers, King Jadi dies in his attempt to take over the Pride Lands through tricking Taka, and King Ahadi finally takes full control of the Pride Lands and casts those still loyal to Jadi into the Outlands. Jadi’s furious widow, Queen Sharifu, vows revenge. She changes her name to Queen Shari (anger) to match the anger she feels in her heart and begins putting her pride through harsh training to become stronger to eventually take the Pridelands back.

Later on Shari arranges marriages among the young adult lions of the pride to create plenty of cubs to train to take over the Pridelands. Sarafina is betrothed to a fellow Guard member, a skinny but swift little male called Kimbia who serves as the Swiftest on Ziara's guard. They’re not in love, but they are friends, and neither blames the other for the less-than-ideal situation. Princess Dunia is also betrothed to one of the guard, the Keenest of Sight, a male called Tumbili, but she seems oddly reluctant to announce an engagement for Ziara.

Sarafina still loves her best friend, but over the years she becomes increasingly concerned about their queen’s violence and how Ziara seems to be swayed by her mother’s harsh training and desire for revenge. The scene in this drawing is one of probably many conversations they had with Sarafina trying to get her friend to see that her mother’s obsession with revenge and her harsh and often violent treatment of the pride was wrong, and a nervous Ziara who loves and respects her friend’s advice but won’t be convinced away from her mother’s teachings insisting that it’s fine ‘Fina, yeah mom can be harsh but she just wants everyone at their best, Ahadi and his heir have to be taken down, everything will be better when they get their home back. Sarafina, however, isn't fooled, and as time passes and more conversations like this happen and become more tense and fraught, her concern only grows...

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So yeah, this time Zira leads her own Lion Guard of the Outlands, and Sarafina is her bravest!

I'm super super happy with how the drawing part of this turned out. Admittedly I did trace part of Sarafina's head from a screenshot of the movie to get it to look right. Oh well, I never trace, and it's from a movie not another independent artist, so... yeah. Sarafina's got a scar on the underside of her jaw (about the only place I could justify fitting one that wouldn't have been seen in the movie based on her angles we see her head at). She got it protecting Zira from something.

How did Sarafina end up in the Pridelands instead? How did Ziara end up becoming Zira? I'll get into all of that in the next drawing. ;)