  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
- NOTE: This article is for the Queen of Hearts from the American McGee's Alice series. To see the article for the original version of her, go to Queen of Hearts.
|
| “ | Off with her head! | „ |
| ~ Queen of Hearts and her most iconic quote. |
| “ | You've recaptured your vagrant memories. What are you doing with them? 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 in Alice: Madness Returns. |
| “ | 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 now to the sterile safety of your self delusions, or risk inevitable annihilation. If you destroy me, you destroy yourself. Leave now and some hollow part of you may survive. Stay, and I will break you down! You will lose yourself forever! | „ |
| ~ Queen of Hearts before battling Alice in American McGee's Alice. |
The Queen of Hearts also know as the Red Queen and the Heart of Darkness is an major character in the American McGee's Alice video game series. She serves as the main antagonist of the 2000 dark fantasy action-adventure game American McGee's Alice, and a major antagonist of its 2011 action-adventure horror sequel Alice: Madness Returns.
She is the tyrannical ruler of Wonderland and has become even more corrupt, violent and a merciless dictator since Alice's last visit to Wonderland. During Alice's time in Rutledge Asylum, the original Queen of Hearts merged with the Red Queen from the Looking-Glass World to become one singular entity. Her tentacles creep all throughout Wonderland as she is feared by all except for Alice, as she slays the Queen of Hearts. She's later revived due to the hard mental reboot of Wonderland. Although she is no longer in power, she wants nothing more than to be left alone in her abandoned kingdom.
She is voiced by Anni Long, who also voiced The Dutchess in American McGee's Alice and Pris Witless in Alice: Madness Returns.
Background[]
The Queen of Hearts was a ruthless ruler that killed anyone that upset her. Whenever a person would upset her, she ordered the her card guards to kill them via decapitation. 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 that "he's 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.
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's cook, the Mad Hatter interviewed before getting to Alice. By this time, Alice was a giant, so the King and Queen of Hearts tried to throw her out of the court, claiming it is against the law to be "a mile high." This infuriated Alice, who begins to yell at the Queen. The Queen ordered her guards to swarm at Alice, but Alice shows no fear, saying, "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" This resulted in the whole deck of cards swarming over her and Alice then woke up from her Wonderland dream.
History[]
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. At some point the Queen obtained the assistance of the Jabberwock to be her personal servant and enforcer.
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 other characters, she realized at the end that the Red Queen was the very embodiment of her own madness.
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, a monster with the body that resembled a human heart with tentacles and spikes on the top of the abomination's head that formed her crown. Two of these tentacles took the form of the heads of the Voracious Centipede and the Jabberwock. Inside the monster's mouth was the Mad Hatter's head and inside the Hatter's was Alice's head, exposing the truth that the Red Queen was an incarnation of all of Alice's negative emotions and thoughts.
Despite the Queen's assertion that Alice would only destroy herself if she resisted, Alice showed no fear, and was able to defeat the horrific monster. Her victory transformed Wonderland back into its original, peaceful form, and the now-sane Alice was allowed to leave Rutledge Asylum.
Alice: Madness Returns[]
Pris 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. Although much diminished, the Queen of Hearts was no longer dead, and still held a tenuous grasp on her Domain of Queensland. Unable to regain control of Wonderland, and still very weak, she was enraged that Alice has allowed the Dollmaker to claim authority over Wonderland in her stead, and wanted fiercely to be left alone.
However, based on Caterpillar's advice, Alice was determined to get the Queen's help in stopping the Infernal Train, and forced her way through Queensland despite all of the Queen's attempts to stop her. When Alice finally reached the throne of the Queen, the Queen complained of her lost rule, but offered Alice advice as to how she may stop the desolation of her mind and gave her clues as to who could benefit from her insanity. At this, Alice came back to reality, and realized that it was Bumby who was making her forget the truth.
When Alice finally makes it aboard the Infernal Train, she found that the Red Queen was one of the passengers. The Red Queen revealed that the noise Alice heard the night of the fire was not "Lizzie talking in her sleep," which makes Alice understand that Bumby raped her sister. As Alice left, the Queen commanded Alice to make her survival mean something, or they were all doomed.
Personality[]
| “ | "Authority must be obeyed, or it must be overthrown!" | „ |
| ~ Queen of Hearts |
American McGee's Alice[]
Through out the series the Red Queen is depicted as a ruthless and violent ruler who will not hesitate to destroy what she must in order to achieve her goals. She has a "guilty until proven innocent" outlook view on life. She's shown to be very well-spoken and highly educated knowing much about what goes on in Wonderland and Alice's personal life, It becomes very apparent that she sees herself as superior to all around her, constantly treating others as idiotic and treating them like disobedient children. She's constantly undermining Alice and attempting to "teach" her, sometimes more forcefully than others.
Alice: Madness Returns[]
In the sequel she's much more somber, wanting only to be left alone and away from all 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. She however still shows some of her abrasive and antagonistic personality at points Besides this the Queen 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 than previously.
Appearance[]
American McGee's Alice[]
In the first game the Queen of Hearts is a beast of many tentacles, which stretch throughout Wonderland 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 actually body is a fleshy colored, her limbs are tentacles that resemble that of an octopus's. She wears a red and purple dress with spike along the collar and sleeves, also her crown has fleshy devil like horns.
The Queen's true Lovecraftian form shows a terrifying gigantic fleshly body that is seen with even more tendrils sprouting rapidly throughout. Her face has glowing yellow eyes with a gaping mouth that holds head of the Mad Hatter sitting inside, with the head of Alice within that. A giant crown floats above her head covered in spikes.
Alice: Madness Returns[]
In the second game the Queen of Heart's tentacles have retreated back to Queensland, although the castle is still built into them. Multiple eyes and hearts have been planted throughout the domain, which allow her keep watch over her abandoned home.
The her original puppet body was destroyed by Alice on her last visit, so the Queen created a new one. This new puppet body has a human-like upper body, albeit gaunt from starvation, whose face shares a striking rebalance to Alice's own as a child. A crown floats on top of her head, and she's wearing a high collar black, red, and gold dress. Her arms and lower body are still composed of tentacles, she has the claw hands that resemble veins or bare flesh, and when she fully opens her mouth rows of jagged teeth reside. Her voice constantly fluctuates in pitch and tone, ranging from the voice of a little girl (Alice Liddell's younger self) to one of an elder woman (her own voice).
Trivia[]
- 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.
- Wilson's casebook reveals that Alice refused to draw or describe the Queen to Heironymous Q. Wilson implying Alice has PTSD due to her past with the Queen of Hearts during her first adventure in Wonderland.
- In Alice: Madness Returns, it is implied that the Queen may be somewhat of an avatar for Alice's dead sister Lizzie, although the art book implies that she is mainly an avatar for Alice herself. Despite this, American McGee has confirmed that the Queen is young Alice and not a manifestation of Lizzie.
- The designers for Madness Returns originally wanted the Queen to resemble a dying woman, but American McGee suggested the final design instead. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- One of the Queen's lines in Madness Returns, "It's only a flesh wound", is a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference said by the Black Knight.
External Links[]
[]
 Villains
| |||
|
American McGee's Alice Main Enemies Alice: Madness Returns Main Enemies Alice: Otherlands Others | |||
 Villains
| ||
|
Books Movies Television Video Games Theatrical References | ||