The Queen
antagonist · human
Owns a mirror that cannot lie, and asks it the same question every morning for seven years.
What they are like
- Kind
- 1/10
- Brave
- 6/10
- Clever
- 10/10
- Honest
- 2/10
- Curious
- 8/10
- Patient
- 9/10
How we meet them
Through a habit rather than an action. Seven years of asking, described in one line, before anything happens at all.
Personality
Clever, capable and completely unable to stop. She is not driven by hatred of Snow White so much as by a question she cannot leave alone.
What they want
To hear the answer she wants. She has heard it thousands of times and it has never once been enough.
How they change
Loses the only thing she was ever really fighting, which was the question itself. Ends up somewhere with nothing to look into.
How they speak
In rhyme to the mirror and in short flat instructions to everyone else. She never explains herself to another person once.
How the story treats them
The story never calls her ugly or old, which most retellings do. It is careful that her problem is entirely internal.
One surprising thing
She eats half the poisoned apple herself in front of Snow White. She poisoned only one side, and worked out in advance that sharing it would be the only thing convincing enough.
If they were real today
She would be the person who checks the same number every morning and has never once felt better afterwards.
Things they say
- “Mirror, mirror, tell me true. Who is the fairest? Is it you?”
- “You think it's poisoned. Look.”
Key moments
Seven years of the same question
Every morning, the same rhyme, the same answer, and it never once makes her happy. The story states this plainly and then moves on.
Do not bring her back
She sends for the huntsman and gives the order in a single sentence with no explanation and no anger in it at all.
“Take her into the forest. Do not bring her back.”
Eating half the apple
Standing in the doorway, hurt at being suspected, she cuts the apple and eats one half in front of Snow White. Only the other half was poisoned.
“You think it's poisoned. Look.”
She smashed it
Hearing of the wedding, she asks the mirror one final time, receives the truth, and destroys the only thing that had ever told it to her.
Who they know
Snow Whiteenemy
One of them thinks about the other constantly. It is not the one you would expect.
Characters like The Queen
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