HELLO! Long time, no upload! 😃👋

For a while lately, I’ve been getting back into The Lion King a lot and have been absorbing all the fanart and all the comics I can find on this site. I’ve always wanted to try my take on Mufasa and Scar’s parents, but reentering the fandom has propelled me to really give it a serious go! 😁

[For anyone not familiar, Ahadi and Uru are semi-canon characters that are both featured/mentioned in a collection of spin-off books called The Lion King: Six New Adventures from 1994. Ahadi is stated to be the father of Mufasa and Scar (called Taka at the time) and the king previous Mufasa, with his mate Uru being their mother. None of this is strictly canon, but these books have offered plenty of inspiration over the years that many fans have eagerly used in their original stories and headcanons. I have always liked these names and how well they’ve cemented themselves in the fandom, so I am using them too!]

My designs for mom and dad may not seem too different from other designs we've seen of them, but we're all working with the same genetics, so different takes are bound to overlap. The description of Ahadi being a “golden lion with a black mane” in the books has aways worked for me. It’s a simple color scheme with an even combination of both Mufasa and Scar, so I’m using it. As for Uru, I’ve always liked the idea of her and Scar having the same pelt color, since I’ve always headcanoned Scar as an ultra momma’s boy, and it's a good way to visually connect them. But Uru's side of the family is very “red”, even their mane and tail tufts, so that’s where Mufasa gets his rich red mane.

These character descriptions are my original headcanons:

Queen Uru is the crown queen before Mufasa, with her mate Ahadi as her king consort. She is the eldest daughter of King Mohatu and Queen Nafasi, and is a kind, fair, and just monarch. Even from a young age, she has always showed a clear aptitude for the position and was trained dutifully under her father. She is calm, soft-spoken, and almost never loses her temper. She and Ahadi grew up together as cubs and he has always been in awe of her natural skill and poise. He loves her deeply and considers her a beacon of strength and an icon of kindness. As a mother, her sons are her pride and joy and she has a special bond with both of them. Uru seems like the perfect monarch, mate, and mother, and for the most part she absolutely is. But what Uru will not say, to anyone or even herself, is that she is exhausted under the weight of that royal perfection. She’s always understood that being the heir to the throne was expected of her, and with seemingly no way around it, she’s never bothered to consider otherwise. In her mind she seems good at the job and everyone admires her for her dedication, so she refuses to put her individuality above the needs of her kingdom. She has shoved and locked away whatever personal life goals she might have in order to be the perfect queen. As such, while she is kind and fair in all of her interactions, there’s a certain…aloofness to her mannerisms that never seems to fade. Like there's an invisible barrier between her and everyone else that she strongly keeps up, even amongst her closest friends and family. As the years go on, her exhaustion continues to weigh on her to the point where although her gentle elegance never falters, her sense of self-worth and self-preservation just seems to slowly slip away. Her health comes to mean very little to her and while on a trip to her father’s famous river during another drought, she falls ill to a disease she picked up in the jungle. After her return to the Pridelands, she hides her sickness as best she can until one day her body gives out and it’s a tragic shock to everyone. She is remembered as a loving, peaceful queen despite her short reign. Mufasa, just on the cusp of adulthood at the time and grieving, doesn’t feel ready to take her place, so Ahadi agrees to step up as temporary king until Mufasa finishes his training.

-I wanted it to be clear that Mufasa takes very much after his mother and her side of the family, with her sturdy body type, strong jaw, and wide smile. He also has her small eyes and thick eyebrows. Whereas Scar inherited her pelt colors, fluffy chin, and nose type.

King [consort] Ahadi is his queen's devoted mate and partner. He was once a prince that hailed from a far away pride known for their very long, wooly, and often very dark manes that grow past their bellies (that neither Mufasa nor Scar inherited because the genes in their mother's royal bloodline are more robust and canceled it out) and used to be on friendly terms with the Pridelands. But by the time Ahadi was born, the pride was on the brink of collapse. A series of weak leaderships too prideful to ask for help caused the pride to dwindle to nothing. Ahadi's mother took leadership after the sudden death of her mate and begged King Mohatu to take in her infant son. Her wish was that hopefully he would grow up strong and healthy enough in a thriving land to one day return and take his place as leader of his birth pride when it was back on its feet. King Mohatu agreed and Ahadi has been living in the Pridelands ever since. His mother and his older sister would periodically travel to the Pridelands when they could spare the time to visit Ahadi and remind him of his promised duty to his homeland. However, falling in love with the crown princess was a happy accident that his heart could not deny. While he knew this would make him her consort and bind him to the Pridelands for her reign, he and Uru both agreed that one of their children would be offered the opportunity to lead his homeland pride in his place. He planned to tell his mother of this arrangement, but contact with her suddenly went silent. It wasn't until his sister arrived in the Pridelands one day with the news that their birth pride had officially failed and their mother had died that everything went up in smoke. Ahadi was devastated. And what's more, his sister seemed to blame HIM for it. She claimed that she and their mother had tried endlessly to stabilize the pride and protect it from rogues and other dangers despite having no leading males and increasingly barren lands, eventually having to abandon their home and keep themselves alive wandering in lifeless territories...and where was he? Living it up in the lap of royalty — fed, sheltered, and cared for. Ahadi tries to insist that none of this was his fault and he never asked to be sent to live in the Pridelands as a cub, but his sister will not hear it. Having no where else to go, she is welcomed into the pride as family, but she burdens Ahadi with no shortage of strife with her presence. Her sneering glances and whispered taunts test him on a daily basis, and although he detests her, his survivor's guilt won't allow him to do anything about it. He grows to hate himself, and her abuse only adds to it over the years, eating him from within and causing his once beautifully thick mane to prematurely lose much of its luster. He carries this guilt with him the remainder of his life, and he dies of a broken heart not too long after the death of his mate.

-Despite his narrow face and large mane that somewhat dwarfs his body, Ahadi is an incredibly strapping lion. Mufasa inherited his pelt colors and nose type, but Scar clearly gets his eyes, wispy mane and its dark color from Dad. The constantly extended claws trait that Scar has also comes from Ahadi's side of the family, and their bitter aunt has them as well.

That's all I got for now! I may do more with these characters and share more original Lion King content in the future. A big thank you to all my watchers, new and old, for their support and making DeviantArt such a fun community to return to!

Art and stories belong to me
The Lion King, Ahadi, Uru, Mufasa, Scar...wtc. (c) Disney