This article is about the character. For other similar uses, see | Queen of Hearts | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Biographical information | |
| Alias | Red Queen |
| Provenance | Wonderland |
| Physical description | |
| Gender | Female |
| Hair color | Black [AMR] |
| Eye color | Green [AMR] |
| Personal information | |
| Allies | Alice Liddell |
| Enemies | Alice Liddell (formerly), Dollmaker |
| Occupation | Monarch |
Further information 
| |
| Voiced by | Anni Long |
| Image gallery (23) | |
| “ | You once rejected my attempts to control our lives, forcefully! But now you've allowed another to succeed in my role! |
” |
The Queen of Hearts is a major figure in the Alice series. She serves as an antagonist towards Alice Liddell.
In the first game, the Queen is the main antagonist and the final boss. Known as a corrupt, violent and merciless dictator, she is feared by all except Alice and the rebels. Her tentacles creep all throughout Wonderland. She is defeated and killed by Alice in the ending.
In the second game, the Queen is revived due to the hard mental reboot of Wonderland, although she is no longer in power over Wonderland and she wants nothing more than to be left alone in her decaying land.
History[]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland[]
Even before the fire that drove Alice insane, the Queen was a ruthless ruler who killed anyone that upset her. Whenever a person upset her, she ordered her guards to decapitate them. However, the King of Hearts would order the guards to spare the person later that day.
Before Alice arrived in Wonderland, she held a concert that the Mad Hatter sang at. She stated "he [was] killing the time," and ordered the guards to kill him. The Hatter escaped, but was punished by Time himself to be trapped at tea time. When Alice first met her, the Queen ordered a trio of card guards to be killed because a white rose tree was planted instead of a red one. The guards tried to hide the mistake by painting the roses red, and Alice helped them.
The Queen of Hearts with Alice.
When it was time for them to be executed, Alice hid them in a large flower pot and the executioner lied about the guards being killed. Later that day, the Queen held a large croquet game where flamingos were used as mallets, hedgehogs as the balls, and guards were the hoops. The guards, in fear of being decapitated, let only the Queen score. Then, a trial started because the Knave of Hearts stole some tarts from her.
During the trial, she used a "sentence before verdict" type of court system. The Queen had the Duchess' cook and the Mad Hatter interviewed before getting to Alice. By this time, Alice was a giant, so the King and Queen tried to throw her out of the court, claiming it was against the law to be "a mile high." This infuriated Alice, who began to yell at the Queen. The Queen ordered her guards to swarm at Alice, but Alice showed no fear, saying, "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" This resulted in the whole deck of cards swarming over her, after which Alice woke up from her Wonderland dream.
American McGee's Alice[]
After Alice was put in Rutledge Asylum, the Queen of Hearts apparently merged with the Red Queen from the Looking-Glass World and functioned as one entity, beginning a much crueler rule over Wonderland and commanding both the Card Army and Red chess pieces. This new "Red Queen" became the source of the corruption and evil that was afflicting Wonderland, and also put the Torch Gnomes into slavery.
At first, Alice only knew that the Red Queen must be slain in order to restore Wonderland, but because of hints from the Cheshire Cat and the others, she eventually realized that the Red Queen was the very embodiment of her own madness.[3]
The Queen confronting Alice.
Alice confronted the malformed Red Queen on her throne, and was able to defeat the beast. However, this "Red Queen" was pulled back through the wall, revealing that it was simply a puppet on a tentacle, and the Red Queen showed Alice her true, horrible form: the Heart Of Darkness, a monstrous tentacled abomination with two stiff metal rods protruding from her back holding a row of smoking spikes over her head forming her crown. Two of these tentacles took the form of the Voracious Centipede and the Jabberwock's heads and the Queen's puppet body. Inside the monster's mouth was the Mad Hatter's head and inside the Hatter's mouth was Alice's head, exposing the truth that the Red Queen was an incarnation of all of Alice's negative emotions and thoughts. The Queen attacked Alice with all the weapons and abilities of all the enemies she had encountered on her journey.
Despite the Queen's assertion that Alice will only destroy herself if she resisted, Alice showed no fear, and was able to defeat the horrific monster.[2] Her victory transformed Wonderland back into its original, peaceful form, and the now-sane Alice was allowed to leave Rutledge Asylum.[4]
Alice: Madness Returns[]
The Queen in Alice's flashback.
Pris Witless found Alice a place at the Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth, where she received therapy from Dr. Bumby. However, this only encouraged Alice's guilt surrounding her family's death to return, which allowed the Red Queen to revive, among other things.[5] Although much diminished, the Queen of Hearts was no longer dead, and still held a tenuous grasp on her Domain of Queensland.[6][7] Unable to regain control of Wonderland, and still very weak, she fiercely wanted to be left alone.[7][1] However, based on Caterpillar's advice,[8] Alice was determined to get the Queen's help in stopping the Infernal Train.
The Queen going to consume Alice.
Alice forced her way through Queensland despite all of the Queen's attempts to stop her.[7] When Alice finally reached the throne room, the Queen complained of her lost rule and was enraged that Alice had allowed the Dollmaker to claim authority over Wonderland in her stead. The Queen still offered Alice the truth as to how she may stop the desolation of her mind and gave her clues as to who could benefit from her insanity. She trapped Alice with her tentacles and said her quest for finding out the truth behind the fire was blinding her to the reality of what was actually happening around her, before consuming her. Alice came back to reality, and realized that it was Bumby who was making her forget the truth.[1]
Alice talking to the Queen in the train.
When Alice finally made it aboard the Infernal Train, she found out that the Red Queen was one of the passengers. Alice inquired about the train's destination, although she replied Alice already knew the answer: madness and destruction. The Queen revealed that the noise Alice heard during the night of the fire was not "Lizzie talking in her sleep," which made Alice understand that Bumby raped her sister, as there are no centaurs in Oxford. As Alice left, the Queen commanded Alice to make her survival mean something, or they were all doomed.[9]
Appearance[]
American McGee's Alice[]
The Queen's final form.
The Queen of Hearts is a beast of many tentacles, which stretch throughout Wonderland as literal tendrils wrapping around Alice's mind; even her puppet body's hair and limbs are simply more tentacles. Her castle is covered with her flesh, and many of its passages contain bones or esophagi, implying that the edifice is built into her own massive body.
Her true, horrible form's face also has the head of the Mad Hatter within its mouth, with the head of Alice within that.
Alice: Madness Returns[]
The Queen, now emanating the visage of young Alice, showing her claws and floating crown.
The Red Queen's tentacles have retreated to Queensland, although the castle is still built into them. Her multiple eyes and hearts are planted throughout the domain, which allow her to monitor her land but also give Alice a way to weaken her.
Although the face of her original puppet body is destroyed, the Queen's new puppet body has a human-like upper body, albeit gaunt from starvation, whose face shares the likeness of Alice's own as a child. She has Alice's dark black hair and green eyes.
Her arms and lower body are still composed of tentacles, she has the hands that resemble veins or bare flesh, and her voice constantly fluctuates in pitch and tone, symbolizing that her mouths and throats scattered around the castle, ranging from the voice of a young girl (Alice Liddell's former self) to one of an old woman (her own voice).
Personality[]
| “ | I rule Wonderland alone. Your interference will not be tolerated. This realm is for grown-ups; raw, well-ordered, ruthless, careening on the jagged edge of reality. Self-pitying dreamers are not wanted here; they cannot survive here. You fear the truth. You live in shadows. Your pathetic attempts to reclaim your sanity have failed. Retreat to the sterile safety of your self-delusions, or risk inevitable annihilation. |
” |
The Queen looking fierce.
In the beginning of the series, the Queen of Hearts is a ruthless and violent leader who will not hesitate to destroy what she must in order to achieve her goals. She has a "guilty until proven innocent" outlook and she is of the opinion that authority must be obeyed, or it must be overthrown. Her motives are always apparent through the degrading stages of Wonderland.
She is well-spoken and fairly educated, knowing much about Wonderland and Alice's disposition.
She is a fairly cocky in her own right, constantly undermining Alice and attempting to "teach" her, sometimes more forcefully than others. It is apparent that she sees herself as superior, constantly treating others as idiotic – with the exception of Bumby or the Dollmaker.
The Queen of Hearts in her throne.
Her intents, however, are much more somber later on, wanting only to be left alone and away from the chaos of Wonderland while she retreats into her destroyed kingdom. She has apparently learned her lesson from Alice's third return to Wonderland, and is less antagonistic towards Alice during her fourth adventure. The Queen even gives Alice advice to remember her family's murderer, and tells Alice to make her survival mean something, as if she is more sympathetic and understanding towards Alice's plight.
Attacks and tactics[]
See: Walkthrough:Heart of Darkness
Trivia[]
The Queen's throne.
- Wilson's casebook reveals that Alice refused to draw or describe the Queen to Heironymous Q. Wilson.
- In American McGee's Alice, the Queen's throne depicts her standing over a crying Alice.
The Queen's head in a head in a head.
- In American McGee's Alice, American McGee revealed that all of the characters in Wonderland represent Alice's broken emotions, and the Queen represents Alice's collection of broken emotions. In a sense, the Queen also plays the part of Alice's super-ego.
- In Alice: Madness Returns, it is implied that the Queen may be somewhat of an avatar for Alice's dead sister Lizzie,[10][11] although the art book implies that she is mainly an avatar for Alice herself.[12] Despite this, American McGee has confirmed that the Queen is young Alice and not a manifestation of Lizzie.[13]
- The designers for Madness Returns originally wanted the Queen to resemble a dying woman, but American McGee suggested the final design instead.[12] Her new form appears on the Queen of Hearts card that appears in the opening cinematic, while her old appearance shows up in Alice's memories, and is used as her symbol throughout Queensland.
- When the Queen says "Off with her head!" as Alice goes to meet her during Madness Returns, the recording is the same one from American McGee's Alice, only edited with special effects.
- One of the Queen's lines in Madness Returns, "It's only a flesh wound", is a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference.
Alice Madness Returns - Second Teaser Trailer (Fiery Tentacles)
The "fiery tentacles" trailer.
- The Red Queen appears briefly in the "fiery tentacles" trailer, dragging Alice through a shattered window and into a fire with her extruding tentacles. Upon examining the Queen, her tentacles are mechanical and have miniature saws on the tips.
- Some of the Ruin monsters in her domain are bloody red rather than black, which may imply that she is capable of usurping control of the Ruin from the Dollmaker.
- The Queen is the only major American McGee's Alice character to never receive a figurine, possibly due to the fact her appearance was classified as a spoiler (in both games).
- Although not all were used, Anni Long recorded eight different versions of her saying "Off with her head!" alone. Long reprised a lot of her roles several times which can be found in the in game files that were kept but never used.
Concept art of the Queen in Asylum.
The "Queen of Red Heart".
- In the Extra Content, Alice referenced the Duchess as the Queen of Hearts' cousin. However, given the lack of familial history between them as well as Alice's phrasing, it could most likely be just her mocking the Duchess.
- McGee has said he likes the idea of the Red Queen and Queen of Hearts being separate characters in Alice: Asylum, and exploring how they might have merged into the single Queen seen in the subsequent games.[14] A piece of concept art depicting the Queen of Hearts at the beginning of her transformation into a monster calls her the "Queen of Red Heart", which may imply that the Queens merged at that moment.
References[]
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External links[]
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