Evil Queen (Disney) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids The Evil Queen |
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| Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs character | |
The Evil Queen in both forms from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
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| First appearance | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) |
| Created by | Art Babbitt (animation) Walt Disney & Joe Grant (design) |
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| Voiced by |
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| Based on | The Queen from the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Wicked Queen, Queen Grimhilde, Old Witch, Wicked Witch, Witch Queen, Queen-witch, Old Hag, Snow White's stepmother |
| Occupation | Sorceress, Queen dowager/regnant |
| Affiliation | Disney villains |
| Title | The Evil Queen |
| Spouse(s) | The King |
| Children | Snow White (stepdaughter) Evie (daughter in Descendants) |
The Evil Queen, also known as the Wicked Queen or just the Queen, is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Productions' first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and a villain character in the extended Disney's Snow White franchise. She is based on the Evil Queen character from the German fairy tale "Snow White".
In the film, similar to the Brothers Grimm story it is based on, the Evil Queen is cold, cruel, and extremely vain, owning a magic mirror, and obsessively desiring to remain the "fairest in the land". She becomes madly envious over the beauty of her stepdaughter, Princess Snow White, as well as the attentions of the Prince from another land; such love triangle element is one of Disney's changes to the story. This leads her to plot the death of Snow White and ultimately on the path to her own demise, which in the film is indirectly caused by the Seven Dwarfs. The film's version of the Queen character uses her dark magic powers to actually transform herself into an old woman instead of just taking a disguise like in the Grimms' story; this appearance of hers is commonly referred to as the Wicked Witch or alternatively as the Old Hag or just the Witch in the stepmother's disguised form. The Queen dies in the film, but lives on in a variety of non-canonical Disney works.
The film's version of the Queen was created by Walt Disney and Joe Grant, and originally animated by Art Babbitt and voiced by Lucille La Verne. Inspiration for her design came from the characters of Queen Hash-a-Motep from She and Princess Kriemhild from Die Nibelungen. The Queen has since been voiced by Eleanor Audley, June Foray, Janet Waldo, Eda Reiss Merin, Louise Chamis and Susanne Blakeslee, and was portrayed live by Anne Francine (musical), Jane Curtin (50th anniversary TV special), Olivia Wilde (Disney Dream Portraits), and Kathy Najimy (Descendants).
This version of the fairy tale character has been very well received by film critics and the public, and is considered one of Disney's most iconic and menacing villains. Besides in the film, the Evil Queen has made numerous appearances in Disney attractions and productions, including not only these directly related to the tale of Snow White, such as Fantasmic!, The Kingdom Keepers and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, sometimes appearing in them alongside Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. The film's version of the Queen has also become a popular archetype that influenced a number of artists and non-Disney works.
Contents
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Storyline
In "another land, far away," "many, many years ago," about the time of fairy tales of castles, knights, fair maidens, romance, magic and witches," a mysterious and icily beautiful woman with magical powers (a 1938 promotional brochure suggests that she is able to work her witchcraft having sold "herself body and soul to the bad spirits" of Germany's Harz mountains) has gained her royal position by marrying the widowed King, giving her rule over his kingdom before he died. "From that time on the cruel Queen ruled all alone, her every word was law, and all trembled in mortal fear of her anger." The vain Queen owned a magical mirror with which she could look upon whatever she wished. The Magic Mirror shows a haunted, smokey face of her familiar demon which replies to the Queen's requests. She regularly asks the mirror who is the fairest in the realm ("Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" which is often misquoted as "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all"), and the mirror would always reply that she is. The Queen has magical power only over her own domain, which is the castle.
One day, however, the mirror tells her that there is a new fairest woman in the land, her 14-year-old stepdaughter, Princess Snow White. She became obsessively jealous of the princess' emerging beauty, therefore turning her into a scullery maid in her own home. After observing the handsome Prince from another kingdom singing a love song to Snow White, the proud Queen falls in a jealous rage. She commands her faithful Huntsman, Humbert, to take the princess deep into the forest and kill her. He is also ordered to bring back her heart in a box to prove that he had done so. But Humbert cannot bear to kill the young princess upon realizing that she is impervious to harm, so he tells Snow White of the Queen's plot and tells her to run away and never to come back. To escape the penalty, he comes back 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, revealing that the box contains the heart of a pig. The Dwarfs are fearful of the Queen's black magic but decide to take in Snow White anyway.
Furious that Humbert tricked her, the Queen decides that first Snow White shall die by her own hand and at any cost. She goes down the dungeon to her secret room where she practices her dark magic, complete with a pet raven that "knows all her secrets," and in desperation uses her spellbook and cauldron to mix a potion that transforms her into a hag. Her beauty is shrouded in ugliness and age, though presumably reversible. She then conjures a poison apple, which will cause "the Sleeping Death", and proceeds to leave the castle via a moat boat. She is sure that no one would know or perform the counter-curse to her spell, and believes the Dwarfs would bury her rival alive, thinking her 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 the princess into letting her inside the cottage and eating the bewitched 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 angry Seven Dwarfs, who grab pickaxes and chase her deep into the forest as a great storm begins. She climbs up into the mountains, where she gets trapped upon a precipice that overlooks a seemingly bottomless canyon. She tries to push down a large boulder to crush the approaching Dwarfs. Before she can do so, a lightning bolt strikes between her and the boulder, destroying the precipice and sending the Queen (along with the boulder) down the cliff to her death, screaming while she falls to the jagged rocks below (this scream was later reused in Sleeping Beauty when Maleficent is stabbed in the heart by the Sword of Truth). As the Dwarfs look wide-eyed over the cliff's edge, they cannot see her, but the vultures descend into the chasm. The Queen's dark reign is over, and her castle is then taken over by the revived Snow White and the Prince who broke the spell. (A 1936 pre-release Good Housekeeping novelization by Dorothy Ann Blank, a member of the film's story team, affirms that the Queen in fact dies: "Far below, in a chasm as dark as her own wicked soul, lay the body of the hateful Queen.")
Conception, design and portrayal
Walt Disney changed the Queen from Snow White's biological mother in the Brothers Grimm story into her stepmother. Early concepts for the film called for a "fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied" Queen. However, Disney became concerned that such an approach would make the character seem less plausible. Sensing that more time was needed for the development of the Queen, he advised that attention be paid exclusively to "scenes in which only Snow White, the Dwarfs, and their bird and animal friends appear." Disney further developed the main plot himself (Ollie Johnston said the film's story was based on the idea that the Queen's character was going to murder "another drawing" and Disney decided to make it appear believable), finding a dilemma in the characterization of the Queen, whom he envisioned as a mixture of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, and decided to set on "a high collar stately beautiful type" whose "beauty is sinister, mature, plenty of curves – she becomes ugly and menacing when scheming." According to a description in her card in the Disney Villains set, "the Witch's ugliness symbolises the evil disguised by the Queen's beauty."
The Queen's appearance was inspired by the "ageless ice goddess" character of Queen Ayesha ("She who must be obeyed") from the 1935 film She, played by Helen Gahagan. The Queen, who was originally to be named Grimhilde (but who is never actually named in the film), was also modeled in part on Princess Kriemhild in the 1924 film Die Nibelungen. The Queen's face may have been inspired by Joan Crawford and possibly also Gale Sondergaard. Her costume and figure may have been inspired by a column statue at the Naumburg Cathedral depicting Uta von Ballenstedt, the wife of Eckard II, Margrave of Meissen who was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman of Medieval Germany. Also noted was her resemblance to two 1930s American movie stars from Europe, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. The Queen and Snow White were refined by Grim Natwick and Norm Ferguson, who would often override Walt Disney's instructions. As in the case of other characters for the film, the Queen's appearance had to be approved by Albert Hurter before being finalised. One pre-final version of the queen had her wear a looser hood and a different crown and the edge of her cape was fur trimmed, as it can be seen in Gustaf Tenggren's pictures.
Unlike much of Disney's animation of human characters in this period, none of Art Babbitt's lead animation work on the character was rotoscoped. The animators were noted to prefer to draw the Queen over Snow White "because she was more real and complex as a woman, and driven to desperate acts by her magic mirror." The character, however, turned out to be especially problematic for the animators, as she had to be "regally beautiful, with confined but graceful movements," and "the experiments on her lovely cruel mouth and eyes alone represent drawings enough to fill a paper house." The sequence of her transformation in particular was the film's toughest to visualise using trick effects, especially since Disney insisted on showing how the Queen felt as she changed.
Her castle, which had been originally different and less grand in a concept art by Cornett Wood, might have been inspired by Spain's Alcázar of Segovia and the throne she is uses has a peacock motif to symbolise her extreme vanity. The Queen is clad mostly in black and other "negative" dark colors, providing a contrast to Snow White's bright colorful wardrobe, and has "shiny black hair" under her hood. Her royal costume was painted with specially developed paints made to look like satin for her collar and like velvet for her robe. The Queen's music tracks were created with low celio notes, basses, and bassoons; the scribblings in her book of spells were written in Italian.
Notably, the Queen was the first character to ever speak in an animated feature film. She was originally voiced in English by Lucille La Verne, who achieved her voice change for the role of the Witch by removing her false teeth. Joe Grant, who contributed the design for her Witch form, noticed La Verne's changing attitude and posture when voicing the Queen and Witch, and sketched these poses and her body language down for animation reference. He also said he based the Witch's concept art on a woman who lived across the street from him. The character's foreign dubbing voice actresses included Cristina Montt in Chile; Mirela Brekalo in Croatia; Jiřina Petrovická in Czechoslovakia; Clara Pontoppidan, Kirsten Rolffes and Lise Ringheim in Denmark; Rauni Luoma and Seela Sella in Finland; Adrienne D'Ambricourt and Claude Gensac in France; Dora Gerson and Dagny Servaes in Germany; Ilus Vay in Hungary; Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir in Iceland; Abha Parmar in India; Antonella Rinaldi, Tina Lattanzi, Dina Romano and Wanda Tettoni in Italy; Tanie Kitabayashi in Japan; Blanca de Castejón and Cristina Montt in Mexico; Astrid Folstad and Bab Christensen in Norway; Danuta Stenka in Poland; Svetlana Smirnova and Zinaida Sharko in Russia; and Helena Brodin, Hjördis Petterson and Lil Terselius in Sweden.
The Queen was the first character to meet death in a Disney film. As part of elimination of the original story's more gruesome aspects, and to make Snow White seem more a "nice girl", the Wicked Queen is no longer cannibalistic and her destruction was made "just as certain but more merciful" than in the original story, where she is forced to dance to her death in red-hot iron shoes on her feet as an invited guest at Snow White's wedding. Snow White's role in the Queen's demise was removed, and the Queen "dies more neatly and quickly," as justice is served without resorting to killing or torture. She also invites her own downfall while pushing the boulder, and her fate is only suggested rather than shown. One of the Witch's animators was Ward Kimball, whom Walt Disney let to also draw the two vultures watching her fall "to make it a little easier" for him, as Kimball had been reassigned after his own sequence was cut from the film, since Disney thought these additional dwarfs gag scenes would distract from "the real drama" of the tension between Snow White and her wicked stepmother that was supposed to drive the film.
Abandoned concepts
The original outline of the story featured another attempt by the Queen to kill Snow White, using a poisoned comb, an element taken from the Grimms' version of the tale (the Dwarfs would arrive in time to remove it). The Queen was originally intended to have seven black panthers guarding the entrance to her secret room with the Mirror; a concept art of the Queen walking a pet panther can be seen in The Walt Disney Family Museum and at Disney California Adventure. The books Snow White: Magic Mirror Book and The Complete Story of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs reveal that the Huntsman was afraid to disobey a command to kill Snow White because the Queen might feed him to her panthers or shrink him magically "to the size of a walnut". In one 1937 novelization, the Queen vows the Huntsman would pay dearly for allowing her stepdaughter to escape, but first she would deal with Snow White herself. In another version, the Huntsman would also be dragged to the dungeon when the Queen finds out that he has betrayed her, and the Queen might smash her own Mirror in anger.
The envious Queen would also decide to take possession of Snow White's attractive young suitor, the (At the time) 18-year-old Prince (described in a press kit as "every woman's dream man") for herself, offering him an opportunity to share the throne with her through a marriage. With the Prince refusing to marry her, the Queen would have him captured by her guards and taken to her dungeon to be suspended in chains in a torture chamber. She would later visit him there and use her sorcery to taunt him by bringing the dungeon's skeletons (also chained to the walls) to life and making them dance, identifying one skeleton as "Prince Oswald" (the name was an inside joke reference to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit), only for the Prince to defy her again. She then has him given to the torturers, described as "the Nubians", and "exits with a dirty laugh." According to production story-meeting notes from October 1934, "Queen wants to marry Prince, but he refuses to acknowledge 'that she is the fairest in the land,' since he has seen Snow White." A story note states about their meeting in the dungeon: "This is a sequence of gruesome comedy ― of dancing skeletons ― fantastic shadows ― witchcraft and deviltry." Later, after transforming herself, she decides to punish the Prince for having scorned her. She informs the Prince of her plan to have the Dwarfs bury Snow White alive and then leaves him to his death, still chained and trapped in a subterranean chamber filling with water to slowly drown. She then makes her way to the Dwarfs' cottage with the poisoned apple, while birds and forest animals were to help the Prince escape the Queen's minions and find his horse as would race to try and save Snow White.
The Prince-in-dungeon plotline described above was not used in the final film, although it was carried out to the drawing and cel stage, and several inspirational sketch pictures of the dungeon scenes were drawn by Ferdinand Hovarth. It is said that Disney "knew that the Queen would have to look scary without being too scary." Some skeletons are briefly featured in the finished film in the other parts of the dungeon, except in Australia's censored original theatrical release version. Similar motifs and scenes were later used in Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin. Elements of this sub-plot have also made their way into some other Disney's Snow White fiction and visitor attractions.
Other appearances
Disney theme park attractions
The Queen is a primary character in the Disneyland rides Snow White's Scary Adventures (first opened in 1955), where she is seen more than any other character in all four versions of the ride, recreating a number of scenes from the film, sometimes including the torture chamber from an abandoned concept, with "a few skeletons of her past victims." In one new scene, she turns into a hag while standing in front of the mirror (back to the visitors) and intoning: "Magic Mirror on the wall, with this disguise I'll fool them all!" She also appears in her hag form at the roller coaster Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, first opened in 2014.
In the Disney Villains Mix and Mingle and Mickey's Boo-to-You Halloween Parade shows during Magic Kingdom's Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, the Queen is one of the villains led by Maleficent that appear during the Cinderella Castle Forecourt Stage. Susanne Blakeslee voiced the Queen at 2001's Share A Dream Come True Parade, where she could be seen transform herself into a hag. The Wicked Queen is one of the "favourite" villains included in Magic Kingdom Park's special pre-parade procession "It's Good to be Bad" a night before the annual Main Street Electrical Parade. One event featured a giant interactive mirror and included the Queen and two other "Divas of Evil", Maleficent and Cruella de Vil. She also prominently appears at Villains Unleashed party, a separately ticketed event at Disney's Hollywood Studios that was introduced in 2014.
In the interactive gallery Walt Disney: One Man's Dream, the Queen appears alongside Maleficent and Judge Frollo in the villains' act of the show, where she seems to be the leader of the trio. On the cruise ship Disney Fantasy, the Queen, appearing with her raven, is one of the seven suspects (and sometimes the culprit) in the interactive gallery Midship Detective Agency's story "The Case of The Plundered Paintings".
Film and television
The Queen is featured in some Disney television specials like Our Unsung Villains (1956) and Disney's Greatest Villains (1977). Segments of the Queen's appearance are also shown in Disney's Halloween Treat (1982) and in A Disney Halloween (1983). She makes small cameo appearances in the animated series Disney's House of Mouse, voiced by Susanne Blakeslee (where she is seen sitting with Lady Tremaine in her queen form, and with Madam Mim and Witch Hazel in her witch form) and in the films Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Runaway Brain (1995), shown there in her witch form.
In the live-action television special Disney's Golden Anniversary of Snow White (1987), the Queen is played by Jane Curtin in a parodic scenario. She casts a spell on Grumpy in an attempt to get him to persuade the other Dwarfs to retire and destroy the original film after the 50 years. After the failure of this, her Mirror convinces her to finally quit "this whole curse business" and focus on her current career as a television horror host.
The Queen (voiced by Susanne Blakeslee) is the main villain in the 2005 direct-to-video animated film Once Upon a Halloween, but appears only in the Witch version despite misleading cover art (furthermore, only her shadow is shown). In it, the Queen plots to conquer Halloween and asks her cauldron to show several villains to which one of them helps her in her plan. The cauldron also explains its origins as it is one of the cauldrons formerly owned by the three witches from The Black Cauldron. Eventually, the cauldron turns against the Wicked Queen and makes her vanish into nothingness.
Early on into the project that would become the mostly live-action film Enchanted (2007), it was actually supposed to be a direct-to-video animated sequel to Disney's Snow White (with a working title of "Snow White 2") in which Narissa (back then often misspelled as "Noriss") was the evil Queen's sister who would kidnap six of the dwarfs to lure Snow White, the Prince, and their 13-year-old daughter Rose aided by Dopey, into a trap. In the ultimately unrelated story of the released film, Susan Sarandon's character of Queen Narissa still had her characteristics, powers, and physical features were inspired by the Queen from Snow White as well as by Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Hank Tucker's storyboard shows how Narissa would appear as just the Evil Queen in an early version of the film's animated opening.
In a possibly related Mike Disa's and Evan Spiliotopoulos' abandoned pitch for the DisneyToons' Snow White prequel film The Seven Dwarfs, a beautiful girl similarly named Narcissa appears to aid the dwarfs against an evil wizard, who would be eventually revealed as her father whom she would betray and trap him inside a mirror. Narcissa steals the ancient magic secrets of the Olden Dwarfs, marries and then murders Snow White's father, and "begins her reign as the Evil Queen, with the damned soul of her own father forever encased in the Magic Mirror as her slave. Thus, the dwarfs must live in hiding to protect their families from the Queen's vengeance." Three computer-animated sequels to The Seven Dwarfs "were to follow the title characters return home to families and friends after the Evil Queen's death in Snow White."
In a 2015 Disney Channel Original Movie titled Descendants, the aged Evil Queen (played by Kathy Najimy) is among a host of other villains who have been imprisoned on a forbidden Isle of the Lost, and her daughter Evie (played by Sofia Carson) is among their offspring who are allowed to return into the kingdom to attend school alongside the offspring of iconic Disney heroes (Evie's father is unidentified). The Evil Queen seemed to have joined forces with Maleficent, Jafar, and Cruella De Vil in trying to take over Auradon. Its title image features the iconic red apple of the Evil Queen, which was prominently featured in a teaser trailer. Carson returned as Evie in 2017's Descendants 2 and 2019's Descendants 3.
In Justin Merz's and Evan Daugherty's script for the live-action spin-off Rose Red, currently in development, Snow White's sister Rose Red is going to "join Grumpy and the fellow Dwarves on a journey to find the Evil Queen and break her curse." Another project in development is Michael Seitzman's television series Book of Enchantment.
Theatrical shows
As in the film, the Queen character is featured in 1979 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs musical version, played by Anne Francine. In the Disney on Ice reenactment of the movie in 1986-1987, and then in 1994–1997 and again in 2000–2001, she was voiced by Louise Chamis and played by various skaters beginning with Melanie Scott in 1986-1987, and including Elena Koteneva, who was substituted by Davina Lee-Gooding in 1995. Francine also played her in the 1980 stage play and television program Snow White Live and Chamis voiced her in Disneyland's Snow White – An Enchanting Musical in 2004 and 2006. The Evil Queen was further featured in Disney Live's Three Classic Fairy Tales in the section based on the film.
In the night-time visual show Fantasmic!, first played in 1992, the Queen, voiced by Louise Chamis, is the main villain and the leader of all the Disney Villains. She is introduced in the second act, when her Magic Mirror (voiced by Tony Jay) tells her that there are now three princesses (Snow White, Ariel and Belle) fairer than her. Enraged, the Queen transforms herself into a hag and uses the Mirror and her cauldron to summon various "all the forces of evil" in the form of a collection of Disney villains to come to her aid. They include Maleficent, who transforms into a dragon. (In the Tokyo DisneySea version, she also traps Mickey inside her mirror.) At the climax of the show, Mickey is able to defeat the dragon and vanquish all the villains with a magic sword. The Witch is the last to die, transforming back into the Queen before she is destroyed.
In the Disney Dream cruise ship show Villains Tonight!, first played in 2010, Hades calls forth Disney's most powerful villains for help to regain his evil. The Queen, changing from the Witch form, denies his invitation since Hades also invited Maleficent, her rival for Hades' affections and for the status of "the most evil in the land". The Queen claims not to be Hades' girlfriend, but they just had "an interesting weekend" on Castaway Cay. In the end, the Queen and Maleficent put their differences aside as all villains should stick together and advise Hades to find evil within himself, and not from others.
Games
The Evil Queen is featured in a number of traditional games, albeit usually as a mere obstacle for the players. She is, however, playable in some of them, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Game in the Disneykins franchise and Disney Villains Collector's Edition Monopoly. In 2019, the Evil Queen was added to Disney Villainous as a playable character in the expansion set Wicked to the Core.
Jim Razzi's 1985 children's gamebook Snow White in the Enchanted Forest (Choose Your Own Adventure: Walt Disney #1) features an alternate story starring the original character of an unnamed boy from Snow White's kingdom in a series of confrontations with Evil Queen as she is searches the forest for Snow White hiding with the Dwarfs. The young hero's goal is either to "put an end to her, once and for all" before it is too late, or to lead the Prince to the sleeping Snow White. This task is made harder by the Queen's much greater powers in it than in the film, including being able to instantly instantly change between her hag and queen forms at will, magically disappear in a cloud of smoke, change herself into an animal and back, and turn others into animals with magic beams from her hands. She also serves as the antagonist in the unreleased Snow White game for the Atari 2600. In 2001's Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the Game Boy Color, the players need first to solve a puzzle minigame for the Queen to consult her mirror, and later to lead the Dwarfs in pursuit of the Witch before she can get back to her castle.
The Queen is one of the four Disney Villains that appear in 1999 video game Disney's Villains' Revenge, voiced by Louise Chamis. Jiminy Cricket and the player venture into the worlds of the stories to restore the happy endings. In the altered (and game's final) story, where there is no Prince, the Queen (appearing in both of her forms) has built a lair resembling her poisoned apple inside the scary wood, and has put Snow White to eternal sleep in her dungeon and intends to do the same to the Seven Dwarfs. The player needs to correctly mix ingredients for several potions including the True Love Potion to magically summon the Prince and save the day. It is followed by the fight with the Queen where she tries to get away and the player has to reflect her magic ball spells, until she retreats to her lair. There, while asking her mirror, she suddenly transforms into a hag and the mirror breaks.
In 2010's video game Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the Queen (voiced by Kyoko Satomi in Japanese and Susanne Blakeslee in English) appears in the Dwarf Woodlands world. She recruits the protagonist Terra to kill Snow White and bring back her heart in return for allowing him to use the Magic Mirror to locate Master Xehanort. Terra, like the huntsman, ultimately does not go through with this, and the Queen, learning of his betrayal, forces the Mirror to consume him, but Terra manages to fight the Mirror off and the Queen reluctantly gives him the information he looks for. She later appears briefly in Ventus's scenario, where she crosses paths with him on her way to poison Snow White. She drops the poisoned apple, which Ventus returns to her. She notices Ventus's Keyblade and muses that Terra threatened her with a similar weapon. She is then only briefly mentioned in Aqua's storyline, when the Magic Mirror tells Aqua that the Queen is now dead and he is no longer under her control.
In 2013's free-to-play mobile game Seven Dwarfs: The Queen's Return, an uncanonical continuation of the film, the Queen has survived the fall at the climax of the film because there was a lake at the bottom of the abyss. She then reverted to her youthful form and, seeking revenge, cast an evil curse on Snow White as well as the dwarfs and their entire forest. The game's updates were supposed to allow the players to "meet (and defeat)" the Queen, adding quests involving a search for her hidden hideout to, as promised, "help the Dwarfs rid the enchanted forest of the Evil Queen." However, this was ultimately left unresolved as the game was discontinued in May 2014.
A 2014 weekly challenge in Disney Infinity: Toy Box included "Mirror Mirror" obstacle course that pit Snow White against the Evil Queen in a race for the poisonous apple. Downloadable Queen-themed avatar costumes were made available for the users of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles. A webcam browser game Become Your Inner Villain hosted on Disneyland Resort's Facebook page enables the player turn into one of four villains including the Evil Queen. Her dungeon and laboratory (complete with the Mirror) are featured in the online game Aaah-Choo.
In the 1990 video game Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, an old witch named Mizrabel takes the form of the Evil Queen after draining the youth from Minnie Mouse. In 2012's Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, the previously defeated Mizrabel returns to transform into various Disney villains, including the Queen, before setting on Maleficent. In 2013's HD remake of Castle of Illusion, Mizrabel looks like a cross between the Queen and Maleficent in her youthful form and professes her ambition to be "the fairest of them all".
Literature
In the 1949 audiobook release, the Queen (voiced by Eleanor Audley) wears a yellow dress and a red cape. She tells the Huntsman to take Snow White to the forest and leave her there to die. In the end of the book, after being chased by the dwarfs, the Queen dies when she slips while climbing the mountain and falls into the sea. The Queen's story from the film is itself subject of the 2018 storybook release Disney Villains: The Evil Queen.
One chapter in Todd Strasser's 1993 Disney's the Villains Collection/Stories from the Films is dedicated to Snow White and the Queen. She is also a subject of one of the illustrated books in the Disney Princess series My Side of the Story, titled Snow White/The Queen (2004), which portrays her as a misunderstood positive character.
The novel Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen by Serena Valentino, published by Disney Press in 2009, tells a story much more sympathetic to the Queen than most other Disney media. The book shows how the Queen became the villain from the film, much in the style of The Killing Joke, with the Magic Mirror, here possessed by the spirit of her abusive father, having been a corrupting influence. According to the book, her mother was a witch and the King died in a war against another kingdom prior to the events of the film. After her husband's death, the Queen slowly descends into madness. By the end of the novel, Snow White gets the mirror and the Queen becomes the spirit inside the mirror after her death in the film.
The Queen is one of the Overtakers, villains of The Kingdom Keepers novel series. She was introduced in 2011 in the fourth book of the saga, Power Play, alongside Cruella De Vil. Like Maleficent, she is very powerful and is able to cast almost any spell with a flick of her finger; she can also transform herself and other characters. In Power Play, when Maleficent and Chernabog are captured by the Keepers, the Queen becomes the new leader of the Overtakers.
Melissa de la Cruz wrote the Descendants prequel novel Isle of the Lost. In that book, it is revealed that the Evil Queen once tried to overthrow Maleficent as the ruler of the Isle.
Comics
The 1937–1938 film tie-in serial comic strip "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" written by Merrill De Maris, one of the writers of the film, is centred primarily around the relationship between Snow White and the Queen. It further explores the source of the Queen's descent into a murderous envy, as she learns that the Prince came to her castle seeking the most beautiful woman in all the world and is shocked when he says he meant Snow White. Like in the abandoned film concept, the Queen (here actually named Grimhilde) has the Prince arrested. In her Witch form, she later tells the captive Prince that she is going to get rid of Snow White and make him hers, while the Prince is defiant and calls her a "miserable hag". This scene is followed by his escape from prison, in much less dramatic circumstances than the film's drowning concept. The film was further adapted into an other comics including in 1969, 1973, 1983, and 1991.
There is a number of sequel comics quasi-canonically set in the film's world. A 1939 Italian comic "Snow White and the Wizard Basilisk" (Biancaneve e il mago Basilisco) features the titular evil wizard who later lives in the castle that had belonged to the Queen, trying to hurt Snow White's and the Prince's son until he is too killed when the castle is destroyed. The Prince's imprisonment in the Queen's dungeon from the earlier comics is referenced in it. Another early sequel comic Pamuk Prenses ile Sevimli Prens (1942) tells of the further adventures of Snow White and Prince Charming, as the Witch returns to put a spell on the latter. In one American 1944 sequel, the dead Queen's castle is taken over by her brother, the Wicked Prince.
Later comics usually feature the Queen in her Witch incarnation, often with her still trying to eliminate either Snow White ("The Seven Dwarfs and Thumper", "No Ritmo Da Bruxa", "A Maçã Superenfeitiçada", "Kerstverhaal") or the dwarfs ("The Enchanted Mountain", "Halloween"). Such stories include Jack Bradbury's stand-alone 1958 comics Mystery of the Missing Magic and A New Adventure of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the comic "The Seven Dwarfs and the Witch-Queen", the Witch shrinks all the dwarfs except of Dopey who manages to save his brothers. In "A Pirate's Tale" (aka "The Pirate"), the greedy old Witch transforms herself into a rat as she plans to steal a treasure and turn the dwarfs into cheese and eat them, but Dopey destroys her with a cat.
Usually under the alias the Witch, she often comes back to interact (usually to antagonize, but sometimes also to occasionally cooperating with protagonistic characters) with other Disney characters. She has appeared in the comics of many characters, including Daisy Duck's nieces April, May and June, the Beagle Boys, Br'er Rabbit, Chip 'n Dale, Donald Duck & Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Jiminy Cricket, José Carioca, Mickey & Minnie Mouse, Li'l Bad Wolf, Tinker Bell, and the Three Little Pigs, as well as her fellow witches such as Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone, Witch Hazel from Trick or Treat, and Magica De Spell (especially in Brazilian comics). She also starred with the Big Bad Wolf in the 1970s-1980's comics series The Big Bad Wolf & The Wicked Witch, including "Mirror Mirror", "Witch Switch", "The Apple Caper", "The High-Hopping Wolf", "Double Trouble", and "Getting the Boot".
Several comics include the Witch kidnapping another Disney character, either to be her slave or to exchange them for something, until they are rescued. Example of this include her abducting, besides Snow White ("Diamond Dust Dilemma", "The Weather Witch"), such characters as Chip 'n' Dale ("Witch Convention"), Tinker Bell ("Pixie Dust Dilemma", "The Big Bust-out"), and Dumbo characters ("Dumbo", "The Chips Are Flying", "A Witch in Time"). The Witch also captures Dumbo in "Dumbo l'échappe belle", but is defeated by Mickey and Br'er Bear and imprisoned by the Dwarfs. In "The Gingerbread House", the Witch captures the Wicked Witch of the West's children Witch Child and Warlock whom Magica De Spell was tasked to look after. Another recurring motif is the Witch's attempts to turn characters into gold, for example Pinocchio ("The Magic Brew") or all the forest animals ( "Get Rich Witch"). She may also simply try to steal the treasures, from either the Dwarfs ("Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs", "Verjongingsdrank") or other characters ("Black Magic Menace", "Pursuit of Plunder"). In a prequel story Battle of Wits and Witches, the Queen turns into the hag to steal a diamond from the Dwarfs but is foiled by Mickey and Goofy. She also repeatedly attempts to ruin Christmas, like in "The Golden Christmas Tree" where she lures Huey, Dewey and Louie to her lair use their tear drops in a magic potion to destroy all the Christmas trees in the world, or in "Delivery Problems" where she plots to put Santa Claus' reindeer to sleep.
In the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories parody of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, "The Wizard of Bahs" by Vic Lockman and Strobl, the Witch is unexpectedly turned into an old tree trunk by Daisy Duck while her castle turns to sand. In "The Captured Castle", the Witch captures Cinderella's castle, while in "It's Snow Joke" she turns Dale's snowdragon alive and Chip 'n' Dale steal her flying powder in "The Magic Spell". The Witch's magic wand is obtained by Goofy in "Magic-Mender" and stolen by the Big Bad Wolf in "The Magic Wand". In "The Haunted House Caper", the Witch turns Donald Duck's house into a haunted one, a story continued in "13 Blackcat Road". In O Sindicato Das Bruxas, José Carioca fights against her syndicate of witches. In "The Washed-up Witch", she ends up deprived of her powers and accepting Scrooge McDuck's offer to become his private secretary, while Mickey hires the Witch as a babysitter for Morty and Ferdie in "The Sitter Solution".
Many stories have been first published in Italian Disney digest comic series, in particular in Topolino. They include "The Seven Dwarfs and the Evil Witch" (I Sette Nani e la Strega Malvagia), "Snow White and the Broken Mirror" (Biancaneve e lo specchio infranto), "The Seven Dwarfs and the Spell of the Queen" (I Sette Nani e l'incantesimo della regina), "Snow White and the Castle of Four Winds" (Biancaneve al castello dei quattro venti), "The Seven Dwarfs and the Heroic Antieve" (I Sette Nani e l'eroica antivigilia), "The Seven Dwarfs and the Brew of Seven Herbs" (I Sette Nani e l'infuso delle sette erbe aka "The Seven Herbs Spell!"), "Snow White and the Silver Rose" (Biancaneve e la rosa d'argento), and "The Seven Dwarfs and the Joker Wizard" (I Sette Nani e il mago burlone), among others.
In Italian Disney comics, the Queen in her youthful form is usually wearing a red robe and is often shown using a crystal ball to spy on the good characters. "Snow White and the Shattered Mirror" (Biancaneve e lo specchio infranto) has the old Witch, terminally ill, discover she has only one day to live, but she refuses to accept her destiny and finds a way to conquer death. In "Goofy the Magician and the Seven Dwarfs" (Pippo mago e i Sette Nani), the young Queen's four goon henchmen attack the dwarfs and steal their treasure but then decide to keep it for themselves and Grimhilde seeks help from the wizard Abracadabro to stop their run; eventually, it is the Prince who defeats the robbers. In other comics, the Queen works specifically to magically hurt Snow White and others in various cruel ways. "Donald Fracasse" (Paperin Fracassa) is a parody of the adventure film Captain Fracasse in which Snow White is blinded by the Queen and Donald Duck needs to heal her. In "The Seven Dwarfs and Christmas in Danger" (I Sette Nani e il Natale in pericolo), the Queen goes to steal a comet stardust as the last ingredient for her spell to destroy Snow White. In another Christmas story, "The Seven Dwarfs and the Christmas Spell" (Il Sette Nani e l'incantesimo di Natale, the Queen turns Snow White's baby son Glauco into a Christmas tree, but the curse is broken by the motherly love of the princess.
Many of the Topolino Snow White comics were the works of Romano Scarpa. His comic "The Seven Dwarfs and King Arbor's Crystal" (I Sette Nani e il cristallo di Re Arbor) provides an explanation as to how the Queen would have survived her apparent death in the film (as some branches and bushes eased the fall and she was rescued by her loyal guards) and why she could not change back to her normal self (as her castle was burned down by the Huntsman and her book of magic is gone). In this story, Grimhilde (Grimilde) enlists the aid of her great admirer and past suitor, the evil King Arbor of Vegetalia, in a plot to use a magic crystal device to swap her old body with Snow White's. The intrigue is foiled by the dwarves who destroy the crystal, and the resigned Arbor allows the Witch to live with him, saying he will try to remember she was "the most beautiful among queens". The uneasy relationship between Grimhilde and Abor continued in "The Seven Dwarfs and the Fountainhead" (I Sette nani e la fonte meravigliosa), in which she desperately attempts to regain her youth, but instead only turns into a childlike version of her Witch form for a short time. Other comics by Romano Scarpa do have the Queen back in her youthful body, and sometimes even taking other shapes, as well as commanding various minions. In "The Seven Dwarfs and the Birtch Ring" (I Sette Nani e l'anello di betulla by Romano Scarpa), the Queen learns about the eighth Dwarf named Ginger (Zenzero), who has left his companions to go in search of fortune traveling the world, and transforms into a pixie calling herself Fagottina to send him home and sow discord among his brothers. In "The Seven Dwarfs and the Wolf's Cliff" (I Sette Nani e la balza del lupo), she sends a gang of three bandits named Bragia, Sghembo and Schidione to kidnap Snow White. In "The Seven Dwarfs and the Throne of Diamonds" (I Sette Nani e il trono di diamanti), Jiminy Cricket is deeply enamored by the Queen's beauty and attempts to convince her to become good, but the Queen refuses to be redeemed. Instead she orders her loyal soldiers to steal the throne that the Dwarfs make for Snow White in a plot to turn her rival into an old woman. Eventually, the Queen is captured by another witch named Tardona and Snow White is restored to her youth.
Several stories by Scarpa and others have the Queen meet her actual end in various ways while trying to get her revenge, usually involving being defeated by Dopey as he alone escapes her plots. In Scarpa's three-part "Snow White and the Green Flame" (Biancaneve e verde fiamma), the Queen proudly flies on a broom to the great gathering of witches, but is met with a very different welcome than she excepted: the other attendees declare that her shameful inability to deal with just a little girl and a few dwarfs has disgraced them all and so she should be punished for this according to the laws of Hell. When the Queen begs the High Witch for mercy, she is given a magic wand with the power of transformation and is told that, if she fails to succeed this time anyway, she herself will be turned into a magic broom for a more "honorable" witch to fly on. Desperate to avoid her sentence, the Queen uses this wand to gain trust of Snow White and to turn her a figurine, then takes the form of the princess to ambush the dwarfs and do the same with them. But Dopey escapes and he manages to outwit the Queen as she waits for the Prince's arrival to complete her work. After a fight, he takes hold of her wand and uses it to restore his friends and to foil the last gamble of the Queen, who is herself first transformed into the figurine then does turn into a broom by the High Witch's curse. Scarpa's "Snow White and the Chained Fairy" (I Sette Nani e la fata incatenata) begins with Grimhilde flying to strike down Snow White with a thunderbolt, but the princess is saved by the fairy named Fawn. The Queen captures Fawn in a cavern and the dwarfs struggle to free the fairy. To thwart their mission, the Queen takes on many forms trying destroy them in various ways, and one-by-one the dwarfs sacrifice their lives until only Dopey remains. But then he alone manages to win the magical water that brings back all of them to life, and the freed fairy's magic makes the cavern collapse down on the Queen to make sure she will never hurt anyone again. The Queen also again transforms into a pixie in his "Snow White and Easter in the Woods" (Biancaneve e la Pasqua nel bosco), where, after her attempt to kill Snow White with magic is foiled by woodland creatures, the Queen is so enraged that she calls upon the infernal powers to "take her" and her castle burns into flames and crumbles around her. "Snow White and the Bewitched Dress" (Biancaneve e l'abito stregato) has the Queen magically disguise herself as an old Gypsy to give Snow White a cursed dress and capture her, then starts her work on the spell to rid of the dwarfs and all the forest creatures. But Dopey infiltrates her castle, frees Snow White, and locks up the Queen inside her laboratory set ablaze. After he and the princess escape, they watch how the castle with the Queen trapped in her own dungeon is consumed by fire and finally explodes. In "The Seven Dwarfs and the Covenant of the Queen" (I Sette Nani e il patto della regina), she conjures the demon Shadow Lord Oren and makes a pact with him to take the soul of Snow White, but Oren warns her that if she fails she will pay him with her own life. With now greater powers and the help of seven evil dwarfs she attempts to eliminate her hated rival once and for all, but instead ends up burning all of her vital energy and Oren arrives to inform her how she now destroyed herself with her own hands. The Queen, begging for a last chance, disappears as Oren takes her with him to Hell. "The Seven Dwarfs and the Christmas Fairy" (I Sette Nani e la fatina di Natale) presents a scenario in which the Queen successfully casts a forever-sleep enchantment, this time perfected for no awakening by a kiss, on Snow White again. But, while trying to zap Dopey, she then accidentally falls victim of her own witchcraft. The titular Christmas Fairy manages to wakes up Snow White and leaves the Queen to her Sleeping Beauty style fate. In a less definitive ending in "Grump & Crump" (Brontolo & Briciola), Grumpy sends the Queen to her to prison by the magic of the Christmas mistletoe.
The Queen also appears as one of the villains in the 2005 Disney manga series Kilala Princess by Rika Tanaka and Nao Kodaka, where the protagonists Rei and Kilala Reno find themselves in the world of Snow White, and meet and befriend the princess. They go the Queen's castle to ask the Magic Mirror how to find Kilala's friend Erika, but discover the Queen is still alive (and even commanding the two vultures, as well as wolves) as she appears and demands Kilala's magical tiara. The children try to flee but are attacked by wolves and locked up in the dungeon, where the Queen transforms into the Witch and prepares to turn Kilala into an ugly creature. Snow White appears and agrees to sacrifice herself to save them, but Kilala stops her at last moment before she can eat a poison apple; Rei then attacks the Queen, who falls into her cauldron, turns into a vulture, and flies away in a defeat.
Merchandise
The character has been featured in a wide variety of Disney merchandise, such as in the Designer Villains series of limited edition dolls and make-up products, or the Wickedly Beautiful entry in the Beautifully Disney collection of cosmetic products. Various other such merchandise include many dolls, figurines/statuettes, costumes, clothing items, watches/clocks/mirrors, key chains/blanks, mugs, other tableware, bags/purses/suitcases, containers, prints/posters/cards/stickers, pins/buttons/magnets, holiday ornaments, plush toys, puzzles, other beauty products, and so forth. In one issue of Disney Adventures in 1997, the Evil Queen appeared on the cover attempting to woo Will Smith.
One hand-made figure costing $2,000 was the most expensive out of 200,000 items being sold at the Disney World shopping village in 1985. During an auction in 1988, an animation cel from the iconic scene of the Queen holding her heart box sold for a record-setting price of $30,000. In 1997, another cel from the same scene sold for $21,275 and a cel of the Witch offering an apple to Snow White realized $13,800. Another cel showing the Queen reading her spellbook sold for $8,050 in an earlier in auction in 1995. In 2015, a Hag cel was sold on an auction for $48,000. Another record was made in 2016, when a cel of the Queen in front of her mirror was sold for $58,000.
In Once Upon a Time
An almost entirely alternate take on the character of the Evil Queen is Regina Mills, the main antagonist in the first season of the 2011 ABC live-action TV series Once Upon a Time where she is played by Lana Parrilla. Regina is the mayor of the idyllic town of Storybrooke, Maine, but is secretly the Evil Queen of legend, having cursed many beloved fairy tale characters to live in a land without magic, where they will never get their happy endings. The show is not directly based on the Disney animated films, but is inspired by them and makes many references to them. One of its episodes is titled "The Evil Queen".
See also
In Spanish: Reina Grimhilde para niños
