Queen (Snow White)
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2008-07-04T16:29:43Z
NoseNuggets
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/* The Evil Queen in popular culture */
[[Image:Franz_J%C3%BCttner_Schneewittchen_6.jpg|thumb|320px|The Queen poisons Snow White, Franz Jüttner, 1905]]
The '''Queen''' is a [[fictional character]] in the German [[fairy tale]], ''[[Snow White|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]]'', collected by the [[Brothers Grimm]], and adapted by the [[The Walt Disney Company|Disney]] into an [[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|animated film]]. The film version of the Queen was often referred to as "'''Queen Grimhilde'''" in Disney publications of the 1930s, and was voiced by Lucille LaVerne.
The Queen is extremely beautiful, but highly [[narcissistic]]. She seduced and married a widowed king, who had a daughter called [[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|Snow White]] with his first wife. After the king died, the Queen sent Snow White to work in her castle and forced her stepdaughter to abandon her title as [[Princess]], similar to the situation of [[Cinderella]].
The Queen ranks #10 in the [[American Film Institute]]'s list of the [[AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains|50 Best Movie Villains of All Time]].<ref>[http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/handv.aspx AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains]</ref>
==Fictional character history==
In all versions of the story the Queen grows envious of Snow White's beauty and attempts to kill her on numerous occasions, utilizing her magic mirror and the use of poison to great effect. Snow White thwarts the Queen at every turn with the help of seven dwarves until finally the Queen succeeds in killing her with a poisoned apple. After that the dwarves usually then place the princess in a coffin until finally a "handsome prince" will arrive and resuscitate her. At the climax of the story the Queen invariably meets an unpleasant demise some way or other.
==Original German fairytale==
The German fairytale was collected by the Brothers Grimm in their [[1812]] ''Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' ([[Grimm's Fairy Tales|"Children's and Household Tales"]]). In the first edition, though not the subsequent ones, the Queen is Snow White's biological mother, not stepmother.<ref name=windling>Terri Windling, "[http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forsga.html Snow, Glass, Apples: the story of Snow White]"</ref>
In the Grimm version, the Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White (or Snowdrop as she is called in the first edition<ref name=windling/>) into the forest, and bring her back her lungs and liver as proof that he has killed her. The Huntsman takes pity on Snow White, and instead brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a boar, which she [[cannibalism|eats]], believing them to be Snow White's.
As in the Disney adaptation, the Queen discovers that Snow White has survived by questioning her magic mirror. However, unlike the film, she does not use a potion to change herself into an old hag, but instead dresses in a disguise in her later attempts to kill Snow White. First, she visits the dwarves' house as an old peddler woman, and sells Snow White laces for a [[corset]]; but laces them tightly to [[asphyxiate]] her. When that fails, she returns as a different old woman, and tricks Snow White into using a poisoned [[comb]]. Finally when the comb fails to kill her, she visits again as a farmer's wife, and gives Snow White a poisoned apple.
Although the Queen does not die right after giving Snow White the poisoned apple, as in the film, she is killed eventually. After Snow White and the Prince reveal her true nature, she is invited to their wedding, where she was forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and "dance until she dropped down dead."<ref>{{cite book
|author=Brothers Grimm
|title=The Complete Fairy Tales
|publisher=[[Routledge|Routledge Classics]]
|isbn=0415285968
|chapter=Little Snow White
|year=2002
}}</ref>
==Disney version==
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The Queen possessed dark powers and knowledge, including the ability to summon wind and lightning. She has a [[magical]] mirror with which she could look upon whatever she wished. The Magic Mirror shows a haunted, smoky face which replies to the Queen's requests. She regularly asks the Mirror who is the fairest in the land ("Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"), and the Mirror always replies that she is.
One day, the Mirror tells her that there is a new fairest woman in the land, her stepdaughter, Snow White. After observing the handsome Prince singing a love song to Snow White, the Queen, in a jealous rage, orders her huntsman Humbert to take the Princess deep into the forest and kill her. He is ordered to bring back her heart (not her lungs and liver) in a box to prove that he had done so.
Humbert could not bear to kill the young princess, so he tells her to run away and never to return. In order to escape the penalty, he returns with a pig's heart and gives it to the Queen. When she questions her Mirror, it again replies that Snow White is the fairest in the land, and that she is living at the cottage of the seven dwarfs.
Furious, the Queen goes down into the dungeon laboratory and mixes a [[potion]] that turns her into an old peddler woman. Her beauty is shrouded in ugliness; a true image of twisted evil. This appearance of the Queen is commonly referred to as '''The Witch'''. She then conjures a [[poison]] apple which holds death-like sleep inside it, and proceeds to leave the castle. She is sure that no one would know or perform the counter-curse to her spell, and believes the dwarfs would bury Snow White alive, believing she was dead.
The Queen comes to the cottage, followed by two vicious [[vultures]], and finds Snow White baking a pie for Grumpy the dwarf. Somehow, Snow White's animal friends realize that the old hag is the Queen. After an unsuccessful attempt to warn Snow White by attacking the Queen, they go to warn the dwarfs of the Queen's arrival.
The Queen tricks Snow White into letting her inside the cottage and eating the poisoned apple, telling her that it is a magic wishing apple. Snow White takes a bite and falls to the floor, apparently dead. The Queen rejoices in her victory, but is soon discovered by the Seven Dwarves, who chase her deep into the forest as a great storm started. She climbs up into the mountains, where she stands upon a [[precipice]], that overlooks a seemingly bottomless canyon, and attempts to push a large boulder onto the dwarves with a large stick. Just then, a well-placed bolt of [[lightning]] strikes between her and the boulder, destroying the precipice and sending her evil majesty falling to her death. As the dwarves look wide-eyed over the cliff's edge, the vultures fly past, to pick at the evil queen's remains.
Walt Disney Studios allegedly used [[Gale Sondergaard]] as the main inspiration for the Wicked Queen. Her appearance was supposedly inspired by the [[Helen Gahagan]] character in the film ''[[She (novel)|She]]'' (1935).
[[Walt Disney]] himself described the Queen as "a combination of [[Lady Macbeth]] and the [[Big Bad Wolf]]." Also many fans were left asking "Why the heck did she turn herself into an ugly, haggard witch if she wanted to be the most beautiful one of all?".
==Alternative versions==
===A Tale Of Terror version===
The film ''[[Snow White: A Tale of Terror]]'' was an attempt to make a more "realistic" story. There the character is not a Queen, but rather a noblewoman named Lady Claudia played by [[Sigourney Weaver]]. Also, while portrayed as a [[tragedy|tragic]] character, she is a far more malignant character than in any other version. It is probably the most faithful to the original story.
She starts out by marrying widower Frederick Hoffman, a man whom she dearly loves. She also seeks to befriend his daughter, Lilliana. They at first get along well — she gives her a puppy and plays with the girl's caterpillar friends — but Lilliana grows suspicious. That suspicion is vindicated when she sees her grandmother die in agony after seeing a mirror that had belonged to Lady Claudia's mother. From that, her comments about casting the [[runes]] early on, her mentioning that "they" hate her and her mother's kind, and that ''Snow White'' is a [[Germany|German]] fairy tale she might be a holdout of [[Germanic paganism]] hiding in a [[Christian]] world.
By the time Lilliana is a teenager, she and her stepmother despise each other. For example, when the people of the [[Manorialism|manor]] bless Lord and Lady Hoffman's marriage bed so that their consummation might be fruitful, Lilliana throws the [[holy water]] at Claudia's face. By the ninth year of her marriage to Lord Hoffman she is pregnant with a son. The night of the celebratory dance, she offers Lilliana the dress she had worn as a maiden but the daughter refuses. When she arrives at the dance, she wears her birth mother's dress and dances with her father. With Frederick Hoffman, and all the others, turn away from his wife for his daughter — and his first wife's memory — the enraged Lady Claudia suffers such a severe rush of stress that she collapses and goes into [[childbirth|labor]]. The baby is [[stillborn]].
Driven mad by grief, she turns to her magic mirror for reassurance, but sees her reflection distorted and deformed. The mirror blames Lilliana for the baby's death and with that Claudia plots her stepdaughter's death. Lilliana goes to play in the forest, and Claudia sends her [[muteness|mute]], [[inbreeding|inbred]] brother to kill her. When she escapes, the brother kills a pig and gives his sister the organs of proof of the deed. Lady Claudia serves part of the organs as a stew which she eats with sexual, [[cannibalistic]] relish. She also dances as she smears herself with the rest of the bloody organs. When her mirror tells her that her stepdaugher is alive, she uses her black magic to murder her brother by means of forced [[suicide]].
On learning Lilliana's whereabouts by means of her ravens, Lady Claudia tries to kill her and the seven miners with whom she hides by means of her witchcraft. She first buries a bird in the falling sand of an [[hourglass]] to cause a [[cave-in]] at the mine. She fails to kill Lilliana but succeeds at killing a miner. Later she pushes over and breaks her husband's statues of the [[Saints]] to make the trees in the miner's forest home fall over and hopefully break her stepdaughter. She fails and instead kills more miners. She then takes the mirror's advice; that advice being to kill her stepdaughter with [[Satan|the Serpent's]] fruit: the [[Apple (symbolism)|apple]]. Using magic to turn herself into a [[hag]], Lady Claudia poisons Lilliana, placing her in a [[coma]].
With Lilliana thought dead, Lady Claudia turns her attention inward, trying to seduce Lilliana's fiancee, Peter Gutenburg, and [[rape|raping]] her husband as a prelude to [[human sacrifice]] in an attempt to revive her dead baby. The actual ritual itself is performed inside the manor [[chapel]], Lady Claudia bringing her sacrificial victim before the image of the [[crucified]] [[Jesus Christ]] in order to profane Christian soil. She also bewitches every last servant of the [[manor house]], turning them into her monsters. When her stepdaughter at last is healed, she, Gutenburg, and Will, the chief miner, confront Lady Claudia. Peter is killed and Lilliana finds her father crucified upside down opposite the figure of Jesus on a life-sized [[crucifix]] now hanging upside down by a chain from the manor [[chapel]]'s ceiling.
After seeing this, Lilliana confronts her stepmother. A fight ensues during which a fire is started. Lilliana ultimately kills her evil stepmother by stabbing her image in the mirror, causing Claudia to rapidly age. As Claudia screams in horror the mirror explodes and the shards of glass strike Claudia who bursts into flames and is reduced to ashes.
===[[Queen of Fables]]===
The [[Queen of Fables]] is a witch from DC comic books. She was a scheming villainess who in her youth wrought Hell on Earth until she was trapped in a book by her own stepdaughter, Snow White. Centuries later, she was freed accidentally by Snow White's descendants and has since faced many Justice League superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman whom she thought was Snow White due to her great beauty.
===[[Christine White]]===
In the 2000 miniseries ''[[The 10th Kingdom]]'' the main villain is [[Christine White]]. After the events in the story of Snow White, the Evil Queen, who was left near death fled to Earth where she met Christine Lewis, a jealous, adulterous madwoman who was addicted to prescription drugs. After almost killing her daughter in a [[Psychopathy|psychopathic]] rage, Christine accompanied the Queen to the realm of the Nine Kingdoms and was groomed by the undead Evil Queen (now known as the Swamp Witch) to be her successor and the means by which she would have revenge. Christine insinuated herself into the House of White, first as the nanny of Snow White's grandson, [[Prince Wendell White]], and later as Wendell's stepmother, after having poisoned his mother. Prior to the events of the miniseries, Christine was finally imprisoned for the subsequent poisoning death of Wendell's father. As ''[[The 10th Kingdom]]'' begins, she escapes to cause further destruction, and at the climax of the series she is killed by the main protagonist, her daughter, [[Virginia Lewis (10th Kingdom)|Virginia]].<ref name=10K> Simon Moore, ''The 10th Kingdom'', DVD, directed by David Carson and Herbert Wise, New York: Hallmark Entertainment, 2000.</ref>
===[[Snow White (TV film)]]===
In the 2001 TV film [[Snow White (TV film)|Snow White: The Fairest of Them All]], the Queen is a power hungry hag-like creature named Elspeth, one of a race of strange humanoid creatures. She is transformed into a beautiful queen by her brother, the Green-Eyed Granter of Wishes. As in all versions of the story she grows to envy her stepdaughter, Snow White. Rather than disguising herself as an old crone she disguises herself as a young woman resembling Snow White's mother and succeeds in poisoning the young princess with a poisonous apple. She also has a habit of turning dwarves into stone statues with which she decorates her palace. Her fate is even more ignominious than in most versions of the story. At the climax of the film she becomes a withered old crone once again and is later throttled to death by the numerous dwarves whom she had turned to stone who have been released from her spell.
===[[The Brothers Grimm (film)]]===
In [[Terry Gilliam]]'s [[fantasy film]] ''[[The Brothers Grimm]]'', actress Monica Belluci plays a villainous character with many similarities to the Queen. Known as the Toringian Queen (also known as the Mirror Queen) she is extremely vain, obsessed with preserving her youth and beauty and being the fairest in the land and has a gigantic mirror in her chamber.
===[[Dead Moon Circus#Queen Nehellenia|Queen Nehellenia]]===
One of the main antagonists in the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' manga and anime, Queen Nehellenia is based on most evil queens and sorceresses in fairytales with a particular emphasis on the Queen from Snow White.
==The Evil Queen in popular culture==
* In "Mirror Mirror", by Gregory Maguire, the Queen and Witch are portrayed as [[Lucrezia Borgia]].
* Disney's version of the Queen is still one of the most popular movie villains to date. She would go on to make frequent appearances in Disney comics, where, under the alias The Witch, she regularly antagonized Disney characters like [[Li'l Bad Wolf]], [[Chip 'n Dale]], and [[Tinkerbell]]. {In one comic story she tries to get rich by turning [[Pinocchio (1940 film)|Pinocchio]] into gold and tricks two of [[Donald Duck]]'s nephews into becoming apples-in the end she is temporarily turned into gold herself and our heroes are restored to normal}. There was even an Italian story explaining how she had survived her apparent death in the movie, and why she couldn't change back to her normal self.
* A Brazilian story named ''O Feitiço Virou Contra a Feiticeira'' featuring [[Magica De Spell]] shows Magica trying to use The Witch's apples to put [[Scrooge McDuck]] and everyone else in the [[Money Bin]] to sleep so she could easily steal the [[Number One Dime]]. The apples were left at the bin's door, but Scrooge decided to sell the apples rather than eating them. Searching for consolation after defeat, Magica visits [[Mad Madam Mim]] and they eat a pie. They both go to sleep after she tells Magica she made the pie with apples bought from Scrooge's nephews.
* In a portion of the Disney film that was never completed, the Evil Queen was to have captured the Prince who wakes Snow White. In this scene, she was also to have made the skeletons in the dungeon dance in order to frighten him. This would later inspire the dungeon scene in Sleeping Beauty when Maleficent mocks Prince Philip.
* Queen Narissa, the villain in Disney's 2007 film ''[[Enchanted (film)|Enchanted]]'', is similar to Snow White's Queen, being a step-mother to the hero and using a disguise and a poisoned apple to eliminate her rival; one major difference is that she is concerned about losing her throne should her stepson marry, rather than physical beauty. (As with many aspects of the film, Narissa's character is based on many [[Disney Princess]] movies.)
* In both versions of the nighttime show [[Fantasmic]] in Disneyland, the Queen plans to get rid of [[Mickey Mouse]] by changing his dream into a "nightmare Fantasmic." She mixes a spell and becomes the Witch in a similar way to the movie. She calls on a host of other villains, including [[Ursula (The Little Mermaid)|Ursula]], [[Cruella de Vil]], [[Scar (The Lion King)|Scar]], [[Claude Frollo (Disney)|Judge Claude Frollo]], [[Jafar (Aladdin)|Jafar]], [[Hades (Disney)|Hades]], [[Chernabog (Fantasia)|Chernabog]], and [[Maleficent]]. Eventually, Mickey destroys all the villains and the Queen is the last to be destroyed before Malifecent completely dies.
* The Evil Queen also appears at the [[Walt Disney Parks and Resorts]] as a [[meetable character]].
* The Evil Queen was featured in the [[Disney Interactive]] game, [[Disney's Villains' Revenge|Villains' Revenge]] as one of the four primary villains who had altered the endings of their stories. She put the seven dwarves and Snow White to sleep and change the Dwarves' cottage into a giant apple-like house. The player had to mix potions to free the prince so the story could be complete. The queen returned again and battled the player, firing magical spells. After losing to the player, she retreats into her house where she realises how ugly she is in her disguise and perishes, breaking her magic mirror.
* Except for a silhouette which shows her as the hag on the Snow White podium, The Queen is one of the few major Disney villains that do not appear in the [[Kingdom Hearts (series)|Kingdom Hearts]] series in person. Other major villains that do not appear in the series whatsoever include Cruella de Vil, Lady Tremaine, Gaston, Frollo, Yzma, Gantu, Shere Khan and Kaa.
==References==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characters in the Disney animated features canon]]
[[Category:Fictional queens]]
[[Category:Fictional witches]]
[[Category:Fictional characters with mental illness]]
[[Category:Fictional shapeshifters]]
[[Category:Fictional murderers]]