Red Queen (Through the Looking-Glass)

The Red Queen is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's fantasy novel, Through the Looking-Glass. She is often confused with the Queen of Hearts from the previous book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, although the two are very different.

Overview

With a motif of Through the Looking-Glass being a representation of the game of chess, the Red Queen could be viewed as an antagonist in the story as she is the queen for the side opposing Alice. Despite this, their initial encounter is a cordial one, with the Red Queen explaining the rules of Chess concerning promotion — specifically that Alice is able to become a queen by starting out as a pawn and reaching the eighth square at the opposite end of the board. As a queen in the game of Chess, the Red Queen is able to move swiftly and effortlessly.

Later, in Chapter 9, she appears with the White Queen, posing a series of typical Wonderland/Looking-Glass questions ("Divide a loaf by a knife: what's the answer to that?"), and then celebrating Alice's promotion from pawn to queen. When that celebration goes awry, Alice turns upon the Red Queen, whom she "considers as the cause of all the mischief", and shakes her until the queen morphs into Alice's pet kitten. In doing this, Alice presents an end game, awakening from the dream world of the looking glass, by both realizing her hallucination and symbolically "taking" the Red Queen in order to checkmate the Red King.

Confusion with the Queen of Hearts

The Red Queen is commonly mistaken for the Queen of Hearts in the story's predecessor, Alice in Wonderland. The two share the characteristics of being strict queens associated with the color red. However, their personalities are very different. Indeed, Carroll, in his lifetime, made the distinction between the two Queens by saying:

The 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland perpetuates the long-standing confusion between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. In the film, the Queen of Hearts delivers several of the Red Queen's statements, the most notable being based on her "all the ways about here belong to me". Both characters say this to suggest importance and possible arrogance, but in the Red Queen's case it has a double meaning since her status as a Chess-queen means that she can move in any direction she desires.

In both American McGee's Alice and Tim Burton's film adaptation of the books, the characters are also combined, leading to further popular misconception. Also, Jefferson Airplane's song "White Rabbit" contains the lyric "and the Red Queen's off with her head", another instance of the two characters combined or mistaken for one another. However, American McGee's game implies that after Alice was put into the asylum the Queen of Hearts and Red Queen fused together.

Popular culture

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010)

The 2010 live-action film Alice in Wonderland, fashioned as a sequel to the novel, features Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.^[2] Bonham Carter's head was digitally increased three times its original size on screen.^[3] Bonham Carter's character is a combination of the Red Queen, the Duchess and the Queen of Hearts.^[4] From the original Red Queen, this character gets only a relationship to the White Queen. Here the Red Queen is the older sister of the White Queen, and is jealous of her sister, whom her subjects genuinely love. From the original John Tenniel illustrations of the Duchess, she gets a massive head in proportion to her body and a retinue of frog footmen. The White Queen theorizes that the movie's Red Queen has a tumor pressing against her brain, explaining both her large head and her deranged behaviour. Most of her characteristics are taken from the Queen of Hearts, including:

• A quickness to anger, including the famous phrase "Off with his/her/their/your head!" Her first name, Iracebeth, is a play on the word "irascible". In the movie, the queen's moat is full of heads from her many decapitations. Carter has said that she based her performance on her toddler-aged daughter.^[5]
• The use of animals as inanimate objects. Beside the flamingo mallets & hedgehog croquet balls from the original, this queen also uses them as furniture.^[6]
• Having tarts stolen, although in this adaptation it was a starving frog footman who stole the tarts rather than the Knave of Hearts. Here, the queen is madly in love with the Knave of Hearts, who leads her army, and has executed her husband the King for fear that he would leave her.
• Employment of a fish footman and the White Rabbit.
• Heart motifs throughout her palace & a 16th-century-style costume associated with the queen of hearts playing card & the original John Tenniel illustrations for the Queen of Hearts.

The irritable, snobbish mother of Alice's potential husband, cast as a corresponding villain in the "real world" also resembles the Queen of Hearts when she fumes about her gardeners planting white instead of red roses.

After the Jabberwocky is slain by Alice, the Red Queen's army stops fighting and following her orders. The White Queen banishes the Red Queen to Outland where nobody is to say a word to her or show her any kindness. The Knave of Hearts is also banished and tries to kill the Red Queen only to be thwarted by the Mad Hatter. As the Red Queen and the Knave of Hearts are carried off to their exile, the Red Queen repeatedly shouts "He tried to kill me" while the Knave of Hearts begged for the White Queen to have him killed.

In the video game adaptation of the film, she plays a minor role, first appearing as a mere illustration. She is not seen in person until near the end of the game, first playing croquet and beheading the hedgehogs she uses as balls whenever they miss their target at her castle, and then again both before and after the battle with the Jabberwocky. Her clothes and persona is similar to the Tudor sisters Queen Mary I (persona) and Queen Elizabeth I (clothes).

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

The Red Queen appears in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (a spin-off to Once Upon a Time) portrayed by Emma Rigby. She is a character distinct from the Queen of Hearts (Barbara Hershey), who was her tutor in magic. Like the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen is an émigré to Wonderland from the Enchanted Forest, having originally been Anastasia (one of Cinderella's stepsisters) with whom Will Scarlet (the Knave of Hearts) was in love. The Red Queen featured as one of the show's main antagonists, alongside Jafar.

Pandora Hearts

Two characters from the manga/anime Pandora Hearts are based of the Red Queen, Alice and Lacie, though Lacie has more in common with the Red Queen than Alice, who also has connections with The Queen of Hearts.

American McGee's Alice

The Red Queen is combined into the Queen of Hearts.

Adaptive uses outside the arts

In science

• The Red Queen's Hypothesis is an evolutionary hypothesis taken from the Red Queen's race in Through the Looking-Glass.^[7]
• Science writer Matt Ridley popularized the term "the red queen" in connection with sexual selection. (See Evolution of sex for more details.)

In business

• “Red Queen marketing” is defined as the business practice of launching new products in order to replace past failed launches while the overall sales of a brand may remain static or growth is less than fully incremental (Donald Kay Riker, 2009).^[8]

References

Further reading

• Bell, G. (1982). The Masterpiece Of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality. University of California Press, Berkeley, 378 pp.
• Lewis Carroll. 1960 (reprinted). The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, illustrated by J. Tenniel, with an Introduction and Notes by M. Gardner. The New American Library, New York, 345 pp. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
• Dawkins, R. & Krebs, J. R. (1979). Arms races between and within species. Proceedings of the Royal society of London, B 205, 489–511.
• Francis Heylighen (2000): "The Red Queen Principle", in: F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn and V. Turchin (editors): Principia Cybernetica Web (Principia Cybernetica, Brussels), URL: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REDQUEEN.html.
• Pearson, Paul N. (2001) Red Queen hypothesis Encyclopedia of Life Sciences http://www.els.net
• Ridley, M. (1995) The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-024548-0
• Leigh Van Valen. (1973). "A new evolutionary law". Evolutionary Theory 1: 1—30.
• Vermeij, G.J. (1987). Evolution and escalation: An ecological history of life. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.