The Queen of Hearts is a character from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by the writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll. She is a foul-temperedmonarch, that Carroll himself pictured as "a blind fury", and who is quick to decree death sentences at the slightest offense. Her most famous line, one which she repeats often, is "Off with their heads!"
The Queen is referred to as a card from a pack of playing cards by Alice, yet somehow she is able to talk and is the ruler of the lands in the story, alongside the King of Hearts. She is often confused with the Red Queen from the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, although the two are very different.
Alice observes three playing cards painting white roses red. They drop to the ground face down at the approach of the Queen of Hearts, whom Alice has never met. When the Queen arrives and asks Alice who is lying on the ground (since the backs of all playing cards look alike), Alice tells her that she does not know. The Queen then becomes frustrated and commands that her head be severed. She is deterred by her comparatively moderate husband by being reminded that Alice is only a child.
Generally, however, as we are told by Carroll:
- The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round.
One of the Queen's hobbies - besides ordering executions - is croquet, however it is Wonderland croquet, where the balls are live hedgehogs and the mallets are flamingoes. This is presumably with the aim that the birds' blunt beaks should strike, but, as Alice observes, it is complicated by the fact that they keep looking back up at the players- as well as the hedgehogs' tendency to scuttle away without waiting to be hit. The Queen's soldiers act as the arches (or hoops) on the croquet grounds, but have to leave off being arches every time the Queen has an executioner drag away the victim, so that, by the end of the game in the story, the only players that remain are the Queen herself, the King, and Alice.
Despite the frequency of death sentences, it would appear few people are actually beheaded. The King of Hearts quietly pardons many of his subjects when the Queen is not looking (although this did not seem to be the case with The Duchess), and her soldiers humor her but do not carry out her orders. The Gryphon tells Alice that "It's all her fancy: she never executes nobody, you know." Nevertheless, all creatures in Wonderland fear the Queen. In the final chapters, the Queen sentences Alice again (for defending the Knave of Hearts) and she offers an interesting approach towardsjustice: sentence before verdict.
Modern portrayals in popular culture usually let her play the role of a villain because of the menace the character exemplifies, but in the book she does not fill that purpose. She is just one of the many obstacles that Alice has to encounter on the journey, but unlike other obstacles, she makes a higher potential threat.
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 the American McGee's Alice adaptation of the books, the characters are also combined, leading to further popular misconception.
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.[4] Bonham Carter's head was digitally increased three times its original size on screen.[5] Bonham Carter's character is a combination of the Red Queen, the Duchess and the Queen of Hearts.[6] 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.[7]
- The use of animals as inanimate objects. Beside the flamingo mallets & hedgehog croquet balls from the original, this queen also uses them as furniture.[8] location= red queens castle in salasumgrum
- 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 so Alice paints them red to please the mighty red queen.
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 sistersQueen Mary I(persona) and Queen Elizabeth I (clothes). Her name Iracebeth is also a play on the name Elizabeth.
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