Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Queen is a fictional character in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the Disney animated film based on it. The Queen was often referred to as "Queen Grimhilde" in Disney publications of the 1930s. Her appearance was inspired by the Helen Gahagan character in the film She (1935). She was voiced by Lucille LaVerne.

The Queen is extremely beautiful, but very vain. She seduced and married a widowed king, who had a daughter called 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 50 Best Movie Villains of All Time.

[edit] Brothers Grimm version

The original Brothers Grimm fairy tale is mostly the same as the Disney one, with a few differences.

• In the first edition, though not the subsequent ones, the Queen was Snow White's mother, not stepmother.
• The Queen did not use a potion to change herself into a witch, but instead dressed in the guise of an old woman.
• She tried three times to kill Snow White: once with a silk lace, once with a poisoned brush/comb, and finally with a poisoned apple.

Also, although the Queen did not die right after giving Snow White the poisoned apple, she was killed eventually. After Snow White and the Prince revealed her true nature, she was invited to their wedding, where she was forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and "dance until she dropped down dead."

[edit] Disney version

The Queen possessed dark powers and knowledge, including the ability to summon wind and lightning, and a magical mirror with which she could look upon whatever she wished. The Magic Mirror showed a haunted, smoky face which replied to the Queen's requests. She regularly asked the Mirror who was the fairest in the land ("Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"), and the Mirror always replied that she was.

However, one day, the Mirror told her that there was 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, ordered her huntsman Humbert to take the Princess deep into the forest and kill her. He was ordered to bring back her heart 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 returned with a pig's heart and gave it to the Queen. When she questioned her Mirror, it again replied that Snow White was the fairest in the land, and that she was living at the cottage of the seven dwarfs. It is unknown whether the Queen sents Humbert to his death or he has escaped.

Chagrined and furious, the Queen went down into the bowels of the castle and mixed a potion that turned her into a hag, an old peddler woman. Her beauty was shrouded in ugliness; a true image of twisted evil. It is quite ironic that she who is so obsessed with her own beauty would be willing to forsake it to destroy a competition to it. It wrinkled her skin into that of an old lady and lengthened her nails into claws. This appearance of the Queen is commonly referred to as The Witch. She then conjured a poison apple which held death-like sleep inside it, and proceeded to leave the castle. She was sure that no one would know or perform the counter-curse to her spell, and believed the dwarfs would bury Snow White alive, believing she was dead.

The Queen came to the cottage, followed by two vicious vultures, and found Snow White baking a pie for Grumpy the dwarf. Somehow, Snow White's animal friends realized that the old hag was the Queen. After an unsuccessful attempt to warn Snow White by attacking the Queen, they went to warn the dwarfs of the Queen's arrival.

The Queen tricked Snow White into letting her inside the cottage and eating the poisoned apple, telling her that it was a magic wishing apple. Snow White took a bite and fell to the floor, apparently dead. The Queen rejoiced in her victory, but was soon discovered by the Seven Dwarves, who chased her deep into the forest as a great storm started. She climbed up into the mountains, where she stood upon a precipice and attempted to push a large boulder onto the dwarfs with a large stick. All of a sudden, a flash of lightning struck between her and the boulder, destroying the precipice. The Queen plummeted into the dark chasm, and the boulder falls back, smashing her. As the dwarfs looked wide-eyed over the cliff's edge, the vultures flew past, apparently to devour her corpse.

[edit] Trivia

• In Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, actress Monica Bellucci plays an evil character with many similarities to the Queen. For example, she is extremely vain (obsessed with preserving her youthful beauty and being the fairest in all the land) and has a gigantic mirror in her chamber.
• 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 into gold and tricks two of Donald Duck's nephews into becoming apples-in the end she is temporaly 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.
• 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, Cruella de Vil, Scar, Judge Claude Frollo, Jafar, Hades, Chernabog, and Maleficent. Eventually, Mickey destroys all the villains and the Queen is the last to be destroyed.
• The evil queen was featured in the Disney Interactive game, 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.
• Walt Disney described the Queen as "a combination of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf."