Re-Imagining the Greatest Evil Stepmothers of the World

While there have been great Princesses transformed into role models we can’t forget their evil stepmothers of the world. In the world of Snow White for example we have been given two completely different Evil Queens. Julia Robert’s interpretation of the Evil Queen was one that loved parties and staying queen as long as possible.

However, Raveena from Snow White and the Huntsman is a terrifying creature obsessed with beauty and power. Ravenna is strong, beautiful, and wicked. Her evil queen is one to be feared. Like the evil queens before her, she locks up Snow White and when she escapes she hires a huntsman to track her down. Unlike the other Snow White’s however, the Mirror tells Ravenna that she needs to eat Snow White’s heart to survive. Thankfully this Snow White is built of stronger stuff, just like the Huntsman that was sent to kill her. She even has a whole army waiting for orders along with her seven dwarves.

The Lady Tremaine

When we think of evil stepmothers, the one that comes to mind most often is of course the Evil Queen. However, we seem to overlook perhaps the scariest stepmother of all. Cinderella’s stepmother, The Lady Tremaine might be the most devious of all stepmothers.

Devious because she convinced Cinderella that it was her duty to take care of Lady Tremaine and her two selfish daughters. Lady Tremaine only wanted powerful matches for her two daughters. As it showed in the live-action Cinderella, she would’ve loved to get her hands on the throne as well. To control the prince the way she controlled Cinderella.

One of my favorite things about the live-action Cinderella is that they gave a lot more personality to the characters we have loved for so long in the Cinderella story. Within Disney, they have recreated Cinderella more than any other movie, except maybe Beauty and the Beast.

Cinderella had the original movie, the sequel that delved into her adventures after getting the crown, and the most recent recreation Cinderella III: A Twist of Time. The story follows a sequence of events that causes Lady Tremaine to end up with the Fairy Godmother’s wand and is able to change the past and give one of her own daughter Cinderella’s life.

What was amusing about this story, is that even under the spell, the Prince still loved Cinderella despite all of Lady Tremaine’s plotting, even going as far as trying to put Cinderella on a ship into the Americas. True love truly did win the day with basically the same result. Within both sequels, we also get a lovely story of Anastasia and her Baker man true love. Which is something beautiful to see, knowing that at least one of the Stepsisters were able to get their own love like their stepsister.

Mistress of Evil

While Maleficent isn’t technically a stepmother, in the live-action movies, we see a bond of motherhood between Aurora and Maleficent in the first movie, that continued in the sequel film. Maleficent loved Aurora in a way that the fairies who were forced to take care of her could not. Maleficent, as she told her raven didn’t believe in true love’s kiss. The irony is that Aurora’s truest love wasn’t the prince who was meant to marry her one day, but the mother that always protected her in the shadows, even if she was the one that cursed her. Maleficent was given a rough go of it, with Stefan cutting her wings. And eventually trying to murder her, in fear of her vengeance against him.

All these mothers are indeed not friends to the Protagonists of the most loved stories. They have little to no love for their sudden motherhood to these orphaned little girls. In the cartoon movies, we always see them as evil and cruel, but when you watch the live-action recreations you see women, who are just as good as the protagonists, all of them suffering in different ways and lashing out the only way they know-how, to the child who is forced upon them.