Eriel

Eriel is the het ship between Ariel and Eric from The Little Mermaid and Once Upon A Time fandoms.

Disney
The Little Mermaid

After Ariel notices a ship pass above her secret grotto, she swims up to the surface to take a closer look, and as she secretly watches the party that is happening on the ship, she spots Eric, where it is love at first sight for her. However, Eric isn't aware that a mermaid is very close by or is secretly watching him with affection. When the ship is hit by a terrible storm and all but Eric get off the ship that is about to explode from the remaining fireworks onboard, Ariel spots an unconscious Eric that is about to drown. The mermaid swims to his rescue. The next day, Ariel is able to swim Eric to a beach, even though she isn't very sure if he is still alive when she brings him to shore, until she sees him breathing. She starts to sing to him, even though he is semi-unconscious. As he starts to wake up, she disappears and continues to sing about how she'll find a way to be with him. Sebastian, however, tries to convince a lovesick Ariel to let go of her desire to be with the male human. Ariel's family notices that she is in love, which worries the crab.

Eventually, her father finds out about Eric accidentally from Sebastian and destroys her human collection, including the Eric statue. Ariel is then persuaded by the sea witch Ursula's pet eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, to go see her so she'll be able to be with Eric as a human. She goes to the sea witch and agrees to give up her voice to become human for three days. If she doesn’t get Eric to give her a true love's kiss before the final sunset, she'll become Ursula's property forever. Ariel becomes a human, and with the help of Flounder and Sebastian, she almost has Eric give her true love's kiss, but they’re stopped by Ursula's eels.

When Ursula notices that Ariel is getting close to being successful, she transforms herself into a beautiful and seductive girl named Vanessa. She uses Ariel's stolen voice in her seashell to hypnotize Eric into thinking she was the one who saved him and convinces him to marry her at sunset. A heartbroken Ariel flees to the deck and cries, thinking that she has lost Eric. Suddenly, Scuttle flies from the wedding ship to alert Ariel, Sebastian, and Flounder that Vanessa is really the sea witch in disguise. With the help of their sea friends, they stop the wedding, and Ariel gets her voice back. No longer under the spell, Eric realizes the girl who saved him is Ariel. Just as he is about to give her true love's kiss, the sun sets, and she turns back into a mermaid.

After Ursula takes her back into the ocean, Eric goes after them to save Ariel, as he doesn't want to lose her a second time. Eric's desire to save Ariel allows him to defeat Ursula for good. Ariel's father, King Triton, finally realizes that she truly loves Eric and gives in as he turns Ariel back into a human, permanently. Eric wakes up to see her walking out of the ocean towards him and runs to Ariel, picking her up and twirling her around before he finally kisses her. Surrounded by their human and merpeople families at they're married, King Triton accepts Eric as his son-in-law. Eric and Ariel then start their happily ever after as husband and wife and kiss passionately.

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea

A few years after their wedding, Eric and Ariel have become the proud parents of their beautiful daughter Melody, a child that is born between the "sea and shore." They have planned to raise her between their two worlds, but when Melody's life is put in danger by Ursula's sister Morgana, even though Ariel and Eric were able to save Melody from her, Ariel becomes scared that they might not be so lucky next time and decides to raise Melody away from the sea until Morgana is caught. Understanding her fear for their daughter's life, Eric agrees with his wife, and they build a large wall that separates them from the sea. Over the years, they make Melody believe that mermaids and the underwater kingdom of Atlantica is a fairy tale, until the day their daughter uncovers the necklace that her grandfather had given her and begins to ask questions. Seeing his wife upset on the matter, Eric tells Ariel that it is time for Melody to learn the truth from them, and as they go to look for her, Sebastian informs them that Melody has run away, out on the open sea.

After having no luck in finding her on the surface of the sea, Eric asks Ariel to join her father's side of the search party under the sea as a mermaid, again. Ariel doesn't want to leave Eric's side, but after he reminds her that, out of the two of them, she knows both the ocean and their daughter, making her the perfect person to bring Melody back home to them. Before Ariel finds Melody in Morgana's lair, she sends word to both Eric and her merfamily so they could finally put an end to the sea witch and keep Melody safe from her forever. When they arrive, however, Morgana already has Ariel in her tentacles, and this worries Eric. Shortly after the sea witch has her rays drag him into the seas, Ariel breaks free to save him before he drowns. While Ariel is able to save her husband, Morgana uses her new powers to make her bow to the new queen, until Melody's actions save them all. With the sea witch no longer able to harm them ever again and thanks to their daughter's much better idea, shortly after Ariel becomes a human again, the people of the land and sea are finally able to live beside each other side. This pleases both of Melody's parents, and they all have fun in the sea, where Ariel and Eric share a kiss. After everything they’ve been through, Eric, Ariel, their daughter, and the rest of their families can finally have a happy ending.

Once Upon a Time
Sometime after Ariel saves Eric from drowning and falls in love with him, she uncovers an invitation to a party he'll be attending. Because it is being held on the very day merfolk are able to turn their fins into a pair of legs, Ariel realizes that the party is the perfect moment to see him again.

Kingdom Hearts II

 * As Eric goes back to the beach he was rescued on, he hears the singing voice of the woman who saved him coming from the direction of the sea's waves.
 * When Eric finds a voiceless, human Ariel on the beach, she gives him the gold pendant he lost, and he thanks her for its return before bringing her back to his castle.
 * After Ariel reveals herself to be a mermaid to Eric and is prepared to say "good bye" to him, Eric dives into the water so he could ask Ariel if she could teach him how to swim before the two hug each other.

Broadway Musical

 * As Eric teaches Ariel to dance, he talks with her about her voicelessness and tells her that dancing is a language that doesn't need spoken works.
 * At the singing contest, Ariel "sings" to Eric through dance steps. While no one understood that she was "saying," Eric did.
 * Their first kiss brings back Ariel's voice.

Children
Melody Melody is the daughter of Disney's The Little Mermaid versions of Ariel and Eric. Her birth was being celebrated out on the sea, between the people of the land and Atlantica when Morgana attacks the boat. While she was driven away, Ariel and Eric decide that it would be best to keep her away from the sea. Melody grows up knowing nothing of her mermaid family or heritage, but, much like how her mother was drawn towards the land, Melody feels drawn to the sea. Melody's ability to understand certain kinds of animals could have come from her mother's mermaid origins. Her hair is the same color as her father's.

Elle

Elle is the daughter of the Disney Descendants versions of Ariel and Eric. She is shown to be a wheelchair-user and has dyed her hair in all three films, as the first film had her as a brunette, Descendants 2 showed her as a blonde, and Descendants 3 showed that only a few parts of her hair have been dyed blue. For a long time, she was only known as the "princess in a wheelchair," before Kenny Ortega confirmed on the set of the third film that her name is Elle and that she is the daughter of Ariel.

Behind the Scenes
"Friendship, I think. Disney romances are always, you know, they're filled with that instinctive attraction to one another. We all wanna see that. But I think what was fun about this, and I think a lot of it came from our off-screen selves as well, was looking at Ariel and Eric as two people who were kindred spirits who felt a little bit restless, who felt like they were behind the four walls of their respective castles, and were very much looking outwards and not in. And I think what was nice about that was that it meant that their relationship feels really earned. They both felt like they were teaching each other things. They were excited and fascinated by each other's worlds although they didn't actually know it until the end. I think it's a really good message for what it means to be in love and what it means to be in a relationship is ultimately tied to friendship. That's the fundamental thing of it. And that's why it lasts, and that's what makes it special."

- Jonah Hauer-King (Eric) on what his favorite addition to the remake is.

"And we really wanted the relationship to be what won out and having them really experiencing each other as friends, deep, deep friendship. So it wasn't just falling in love with a handsome guy or the pretty girl. And so the wedding, we didn't show the wedding. We don't really have a wedding because we didn't want to make it that it was all the penultimate thing is the wedding. No, it's the relationship. They're going off together and adventuring together."

- John DeLuca (TLM 2023 producer)

Fanon
The ship has support due to its canon status in the Disney movie.

After Ralph Breaks the Internet shows Ariel wearing modern-style clothes as her Netizen counterpart, a few fans were inspired to give Eric his own set of comfy modern clothes, while Ariel wears her RBIT clothes beside him. These outfits have been helpful for people creating modern AUs.

With the 2023 live action remake, the ship naturally got a resurge in attention. Both critics and fans have praised the remake for how it fleshes out Ariel and Eric's relationship, considering it an improvement from the original. The remake has Eric, like Ariel, have a passion for adventure and traversing the unknown, giving them a reason to connect past just infatuation. Many also bring up Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King's chemistry on screen, which makes Ariel and Eric's love all the more believable.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Ariel/Prince Eric (Disney) on FanFiction.Net
 * Ariel/Prince Eric (Kingdom Hearts) on FanFiction.Net
 * Ariel/Prince Eric (Once Upon a Time) on FanFiction.Net
 * Ariel/Prince Eric (Kingdom Hearts) on FanFiction.Net
 * Ariel/Prince Eric (Once Upon a Time) on FanFiction.Net

FAN ART

Trivia

 * They are one of the many canon Disney couples to be seen in the Kingdom Hearts series.
 * Eric and Ariel's happy reunion near the end of the Disney film is recreated, as well as mirrored, in the Once Upon A Time series.
 * Ariel is seen wearing a blue dress, barefoot, and Eric picks her up in his arms and swings her around by the shoreline, before they kiss.