Woman of the Month: Eris

Eris from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

For this month, I am allowing myself one semi-obscure female villain.

Of course, the goddess Eris is hardly unknown: she’s a major player in Greek mythology and the deity who kicked off the Trojan War when she threw the Golden Apple of Discord into the crowd at Peleus and Thetis’s wedding (and by doing so, making herself the progenitor of the evil fairy that curses Sleeping Beauty at her Christening, for whether she’s called Maleficent, Carabosse or the Fairy of Red, that character also sows discord after not being invited to a party).

But this particular take on Eris might count as obscure, as she’s from an animated movie released in 2003 that bombed badly at the box office. Yet for all that, she is easily its highlight, and reason enough to watch Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas at least once.

Michelle Pfeiffer lent her silky voice to the manipulative, chaos-loving goddess who has an elaborate plan to strew havoc throughout the known world, but what really gets your attention is the stunning animation that brings her to life. She slinks and glides across the screen, shifting in and out of ink-black smoke, with serpentine hair that undulates around her with an underwater fluidity. Sometimes she’s the size of a mortal woman; other times she expands to frighteningly large proportions, with glowing eyes and elongating fingers. You can’t take your eyes off her whenever she’s onscreen

Truly, she’s a marvel of animation; demonstrating that even a not-great movie can be elevated by a truly great villain.

Woman of the Month

 

Debbie Jellinski from Addams Family Values

It’s time to showcase a comedic villainess.

I was surprised to discover that Addams Family Values was a flop when it was released back in 1993, as in my opinion it’s far better than the first film, and Joan Cusack damn near steals the show as its villain. She plays Debbie Jellinski, a woman engaged in that noble profession of marrying rich guys and then killing them to inherit their fortunes. She’s been doing it for a while, successfully offing her unfortunate string of husbands and evading law enforcement, but what elevates her from being another run-of-the-mill black widow is Cusack’s performance.

There is truly nothing more fun than watching her go from the wide-eyed, earnest, virginal (yet still aggressively sexual) Debbie in the first half of the film to the cruel, materialistic, vindicative monster-bitch (who remains aggressively sexual) in the second. Joan Cusack just oozes malevolence from every pore, her facial expressions and body language so completely predatory and over-the-top.

Her incredulous “you?” when Fester admits he’s a virgin, her wriggling glee when she watches the Nightline exposé on herself, the look of dark intent when she preps the bomb to take out her latest husband – all done in an array of colourful sundresses. Her manipulations even get Wednesday and Pugsley sent to summer camp.

The craziest thing is that if Debbie had just been upfront about her intentions, the Addams family probably would have welcomed her as one of their own (Morticia is cool with her scheming, it’s the pastels she objects to). They even wish her good luck as she’s about to murder them and make her escape.

What was a pretty clichéd villain is elevated entirely by Joan Cusack’s deliciously evil performance. She practically slithers her way through the role, and is the larger-than-life villain that the previous film lacked; the perfect dark foil not only to the Addams family, but also the obnoxiously chipper camp leaders. Not everyone can paraphrase the Wicked Witch of the West (“I’ll get you, and your little hand too!”) and own it.

Woman of the Month: The Velociraptors

The Velociraptors from Jurassic Park

All the villainesses I’ve featured in these posts so far have been reasonably complex figures, with equally complex motivation – but not these girls. The velociraptors of Jurassic Park (specifically Jurassic Park; I never saw the sequels and I’m definitely not counting the raptors who respond to Chris Pratt’s commands in Jurassic World) don’t want anything beyond hunting people down and eating them.

But the way in which they do so makes them the key antagonists of the film, and the lead-up to their first onscreen appearance is a masterclass in building a sense of dread. The opening sequence involves a team of men transferring an unseen creature from a crate into a walled facility, and the apprehension on their faces (along with the weapons they wield) speaks for itself. Before the scene is over, an unfortunate worker is pulled to his death by whatever’s in the crate – we don’t get the slightest glimpse; we can only hear its unholy shrieks and screams.

With just a fossilized claw, Alan Grant scares the crap out of an obnoxious kid by explaining the hunting techniques of the raptors (“you’re alive when they start to eat you”) and much later, he holds a baby one in his bare hands, realizing what it is: “raptors… you’ve bred raptors?” Right now it’s harmless, but already the audience is trying to imagine what this little thing of teeth and claws might look like when it’s fully grown.

They’re taken to the velociraptor enclosure, where the gamekeeper delivers an ominous backstory: “we bred eight originally, but when she came in, she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one – when she looks at you, you can see she’s working things out.” After explaining how the raptors were attacking different parts of the fence during feeding time, looking for weaknesses, he turns to them with a half-grim, half-admiring look on his face: “they remember.”

At this point we’re about twenty-five minutes in and we still haven’t actually seen them. It’s not until the last half-hour of the film in its entirety that we finally get a good look, after they’ve taken out the gamekeeper (arguably the most capable human on the island) by tricking him into looking one way while they sneak up on him from another – just as Alan described at the start of the film.

Now that they’re Unseen No More, the hits just keep on coming. Nobody can forget Ellie escaping the maintenance shed by the skin of her teeth, or the terrifying cat-and-mouse hunt in the kitchen, or Lex falling through the roof and nearly getting her leg chomped, or my personal favourite: Ellie stating “[we’re safe] unless they’ve learned how to open doors.” The film then cuts immediately to a raptor doing exactly that.

Whereas the other dinosaurs are portrayed as animals, who simply act according to their natures, the velociraptors veer a little closer to genuine, deliberate monsters. There is a malevolence in their design that sets them apart from the rest of the creatures in the park, and their combination of intelligence, speed and cooperative hunting tactics makes them absolutely terrifying. Like the gamekeeper says, there’s something in the way they look at their prey that taps into our primal fear of being hunted, cornered – of there being no escape from a bloody and violent death.

It's no surprise that they ended up being the go-to villain for the franchise, even as their impact is diluted with each passing sequel. But in Jurassic Park at least, the threat they pose looms large over the entire film, and it’s not for nothing their leader has since been immortalized as “clever girl.”

Woman of the Month: Callisto

Callisto from Xena Warrior Princess

There’s an argument to be made that Callisto is one of the most iconic villains of popular culture, breaking more than a few glass ceilings in how women can be represented as compelling, dangerous threats, while also remaining complex and pitiable, with no easy answers provided in how someone like her should (or even could) be dealt with.

But what makes a “good” villain? Panache? Presentation? A sympathetic point-of-view? That debate continues, but on some level it’s generally agreed upon that the most effective bad guys often serve as a mirror to their heroic counterparts, highlighting their foibles and reflecting their strengths, bringing them into sharper focus by operating as a dark foil to their thoughts and deeds.

That pretty much sums up Callisto, who first appears in the episode aptly named “Callisto,” in which she’s introduced destroying villages under the name and guise of Xena herself. When our Warrior Princess rocks up in order to put a stop to it, she’s hit with a devastating truth bomb:

When she was just a child, Callisto was the sole survivor of a raid that Xena led on her community, one that took the lives of both her parents. Driven mad with grief and rage, Callisto has now come of age and is ready to take her revenge. She’s a destructive, unanswerable, in-your-face consequence of Xena’s own past, who has no motive or ambition beyond making Xena suffer as much as Xena made her suffer when she was a girl. She cannot be stopped or swayed or reasoned with. She doesn’t want power or wealth or even an apology – only to wreak havoc on Xena’s life. 

As Callisto herself announces at one point: “you created a monster – with integrity.”

It’s reminiscent of the whole “you made me/you made me first” exchange between Bruce Wayne and the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, but with infinitely more depth since Xena has to take full responsibility for what Callisto is. And yet her existence leaves Xena powerless: she can’t deny what she did to Callisto, and she certainly can’t defend it. She can’t apologize for it in a way that changes anything, and she can’t make it better in any meaningful way.

What gives Xena the right to kill a woman whose family she murdered and life she ruined? And yet, how can she justify sparing her when Callisto kills indiscriminately? It’s the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object: an enemy of Xena’s own making.

This of course is where the show stumbled a little. Being naturally unwilling to kill Callisto off permanently, and yet not being able to let her roam free or incarcerate her for any length of time, the writers relied heavily on cave-ins and falling rubble and other contrived ways of rendering her incapacitated until the time was right to release her from these narrative holding pens.

Which was often, as she was a recurring villain throughout five of the show’s six seasons. Though her final fate was a bit of a headscratcher (she’s eventually reborn as Xena’s daughter), until that point you could guarantee that any episode which featured her was sure to be a highlight. Her episodes often focused on the cycle of vengeance and its inescapability, and along the way she also murdered Gabrielle’s husband, temporarily swapped bodies with Xena, allied herself with a demonic child, died and started working for the devil, and became an angel before her eventual rebirth. She even enjoyed a few guest appearances on Hercules.

And none of this would mean anything if it wasn’t for Hudson Leick’s performance. In the past I’ve described her as a blend of cat and spider, child and woman, mental insanity and clarity of purpose, complete with a little-girl voice, creepy mannerisms and deranged look in her eyes. As Xena’s accidental protégé, physical match and living reminder of her past sins, she was easily the show’s most evocative villain.

Woman of the Month: Demona

Demona from Gargoyles

With each year that passes, Demona feels less like a villain and more like an anti-hero. She wants to destroy all of humankind, and these days, who can really blame her? TV Tropes would probably describe her as a Well-Intentioned Extremist or a case of Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, and if she was in a Marvel movie, she would be one of those patented “has noble motivations but is going about achieving their ends in the wrong way” left-coded antagonists, who fight for things such as equality and freedom and essential supplies for the underprivileged, but blow up buildings along the way so the audience doesn’t become too sympathetic to their cause.

Demona is someone who has a very real set of grievances, though back in the halcyon days of the nineties, the oppression she faces must be met with boundless patience and forbearance, as demonstrated by her partner Goliath, even when her fellow gargoyles aren’t allowed into the dining hall built upon their ancestral land without being called “beasts,” or hang out on the clifftops where their eyrie is situated without someone throwing a burning log at them.

Understandably, Demona despises this treatment, and so comes up with a plan to reclaim the land for her own people. Sounds pretty fair to me! But of course, nothing ever goes according to plan...

What follows is a saga that spans hundreds of years, forming the backbone of the show in its entirety. From surviving the massacre at Castle Wyvern to her generational feud with the Hunters, her immortality granted at the hands of the mysterious Weird Sisters to the stable time loop in which her future self appears to show a young Demona her what the future holds, thereby ensuring the entire tragedy is set into motion in the first place, Demona’s life story was Shakespearean in its grandeur. And I mean literally – a huge part of it involved Macbeth himself.

Goliath and the other clan members may have been the show’s protagonists, but you knew you were in for an incredible episode whenever Demona turned up.

Marina Sirtis voiced the character with an arch, sharp elegance, though the most compelling thing about Demona was that you could never fully discount her opinions on the cruelty of humanity or the state of the world. Still, the moral framework of the show made it clear that her one-woman war against mankind was a misguided cause, one that leaves her embittered and hateful, thereby rendering her the very thing she initially wished to destroy.

Yet despite her blind hatred and inability to take responsibility for her actions (perhaps her most telling line is when she looks upon the destruction at Castle Wyvern and cries: “what have I... what have they done to you?”) according to creator Greg Weisman’s website, his long-term plans for Demona would have eventually included a redemption arc, largely brought about by her love for her daughter Angela. I hope one day we get to see this story play out.

Until then, Demona remains one of the most complex and three-dimensional villainesses of all time. Truly, I’m struggling to think of anyone comparable, and that she appeared in a Disney cartoon back in the nineties is just astounding. As pitiable as she is terrifying, surely her most memorable moment would have to be at the end of “City of Stone,” in which the other characters implore her to tell them a password they need to reverse a timed chemical reaction that she’s sabotaged.

After some cajoling from mystical forces, she eventually divulges the word she chose to override the computer system: “alone.”

Whew. If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will.

Woman of the Month: Medea

Medea from Greek Mythology

What is the most heinous crime a human being can commit? I think most would agree it’s filicide; the murder of one’s own children.

The act is perceived as particularly appalling when it’s at the hands of a child’s mother. Mothers are meant to be nurturers and caregivers, not to mention the incubators that grow babies inside of them for an extended period of time before giving birth. Mothers literally give people life, and humanity’s collective hang-ups regarding this supposed biological imperative is like, a whole thing.

With that societal/cultural/historical context in mind, it’s no wonder that Medea cannot escape the notoriety of killing her two sons. Even in adaptations of her story that end well before the crime is committed, the fact that she will eventually take the lives of her own children overshadows everything else in her life. Just as Oedipus is the guy who married his mother, Medea is the woman who killed her sons.

The thing about Greek mythology is that a fair number of the stories seek to embody an idea; a concept; a taboo. The aforementioned Oedipus brought forth the theory of the Oedipal Complex, in which little boys secretly want to get rid of their fathers in order to have their mothers all to themselves, just as Electra is the gender inverse of this; girls who imagine themselves in competition with their mothers for their father’s attention.

Within that psychological framework, the figure of Medea might simply represent a dark subconscious desire in mothers to rid themselves of their children, or at least the potential for it. Perhaps there are shades of post-natal depression to be found here, long before people had a term for it.

But within the story of Medea itself, there’s… well, a story to go with it. The reason given for the filicide is that it’s an act of vengeance against her husband Jason when he decides to put her aside in order to marry a younger woman; a match that will grant him political and social advantages. Unable to accept this, Medea kills their two sons to punish him for his betrayal. The ultimate woman scorned.

I’ve no doubt there’s a well-meaning novel out there in the current deluge of Greek mythology retellings that seeks to justify or at least recontextualize these murders. Perhaps Medea went temporarily mad, like Grace in The Others. Perhaps she was driven to desperation like Anna Karenina on realizing she had no home, status or protection without Jason, and that her children would suffer terribly as a result.

Perhaps she felt she had lost everything and so might as well finish the job, or that having sacrificed so much for her husband (including committing terrible acts for his sake, like desecrating her brother’s body) her pride would not allow her to simply give up and let him abandon her without a fight. Heck, maybe as a witch of Colchis, she had a profoundly different outlook on the nature of death and who has the right to deal it out.

Even Euripides’s play on the subject is not without a degree of sympathy for Medea’s plight, stating: “Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive.”

Personally, I don’t buy any of these explanations. The whole point of the story is that Medea does a heinous thing, an unthinkable thing. It’s no use trying to alleviate or rationalize it, for the very crux of Medea’s story is that a mother killed her children – deliberately and with much consideration. Hate overcame love, as she makes clear in Euripides: “I have done it because I loathed you [Jason] more than I loved them.”

Her hate for Jason was stronger than her love for her children. What must that feel like? But what should she have done instead? Admit defeat, bow out quietly, and lose her children to their father? For almost every single mother in the world, the answer would be an incontrovertible yes, that they should indeed swallow their pride and passively accept defeat for the sake of their children.

But not Medea.

The unsettling thing about her is that her logic is sound, and her motivation understandable. Jason threw away her life, and so she had to repay him in kind. The great love she had for him was poisoned in the wake of his betrayal. She had given up so much for him, and was now on the brink of losing everything – including her sons, one way or the other. “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

And so she does an evil thing, one that can never be defended, for if she despises Jason’s cruel treatment of her, then how can she justify all the innocent people she destroys to obtain her revenge? There’s an ongoing recent trend in fiction to try and soften female characters instead of letting them be cruel and complex, full of rage and hate; perhaps bourn out of people overidentifying with certain characters and so trying to mitigate their actions as a form of self-defense.

But we should be afraid of the dark places in ourselves and what we’re capable of – characters like Medea are what bring them out into the light so that we might examine them at a safe distance. She’s a wronged woman, and a proactive participant in her story, and a human being with all her faculties – and she’s a villain. She says so herself: “I understand too well the dreadful act I'm going to commit, but my judgement can't check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do.” The most we can do for Medea is let her own the terrible crime that she commits.

(Clytemnestra on the other hand – she did nothing wrong!)

Woman of the Month: Milady de Winter

Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers

I must start this entry with a confession: I have never read Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers in its entirety – though I am aware that his Milady de Winter is a much darker character than how she’s portrayed in more modern takes on the source material. In fact, I was rather shocked to read the Wikipedia page on her character and realize just how softened she’s become across various film and television adaptations – while still remaining an assassin-for-hire for a corrupt cardinal, of course.

In the book, her worst crime is murdering Constance in cold blood, largely out of spite. Although many adaptations like to depict her love affair with Athos as a romantic tragedy (as well as the impetus for her malice after he turns on her when her history is discovered) the book makes it more of an opportunistic match to advance her fortunes. And it can be very disconcerting to learn that she’s ultimately beheaded without trial by our “heroes” in the original text.

It’s no wonder that adaptations go a little easier on Milady, as it’s difficult to justify her treatment in the novel – Athos discovers a convict brand on her shoulder while they’re out riding one day and promptly hangs her from a tree. Dude! No trial? No opportunity to explain herself? No benefit of the doubt? To your own wife?? No wonder she hates you! Unsurprisingly, modern adaptations try to moderate all this with some tweaks to her backstory: the 2023 films show us the convict brand was administered at the hands of her abusive first husband, while the 2014 series has her claim she killed her brother-in-law in self-defense after he assaulted her.

Plenty of other films and shows have also alleviated her fate, whether it’s letting her survive the film (2011) or allowing her to take her own way out (1993). I’ve no complaints – think of all the male villains, from Dracula to Judas to Loki to Hannibal Lector, who have been humanized across the decades. It’s nice that we’re capable of doing the same thing to a villainess.

Though of course, the reason why Milady is spared in so many adaptations is obvious: in any kind of franchise that has its eye on sequels or multiple seasons, why would you do away with a character who is as much fun as Milady de Winter? She’s a master of disguise, an expert manipulator, a cunning thief, a crack-shot… you can’t just have her executed halfway through the story! She has to be kept around to cause more trouble and torture Athos in a rare example of a bad girl/good man pairing.

(Likewise, adaptations can’t resist leaning into the portrayal of a genuine love affair between Athos and Milady, for who could resist the glorious toxicity of two messed-up people who tried to destroy one another, only to discover that the other still lives? It’s a dynamic infused with the potential for all sorts of drama, though like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, they can never be fully reconciled in front of the audience. If it ever happens, it must occur off-screen, in secret, and out of sight).

Milady de Winter is also one of pop-culture’s quintessential Femme Fatales. The debate over whether a woman using her feminine wiles to get what she wants is to be condemned as anti-feminist or celebrated as sexual empowerment continues to this day, but it can’t be denied that it’s a lot of fun to watch. Milady is a classic example of the archetype, charming and seducing her way across France – though of course, there’s a downside. Whenever power and unbridled sexuality are mingled in a female character, there’s bound to be at least some subtextual commentary on mankind’s fear of both those things existing in a woman.

In that sense, Milady reminds me of so many other wronged women who are also highly sexualized: Lilith, Morgan le Fey, Medea of Colchis, Isabella from the BBC’s Robin Hood – women who end up committing terrible crimes as retribution for how they’ve been treated. Men may be afraid of her, but I’m sure more than a few women are silently egging her on, as the moral of the story shouldn’t be to beware of her, but to not push her into villainy through cruelty and neglect in the first place! 

As befits a mutable figure, who at times can appear vicious and cruel, at others pitiable and ambiguous, Milady has been played by dozens of different actresses across the years: Barbara La Marr, Dorothy Revier, Margot Grahame, Binnie Barnes, Lana Turner, Mylène Demongeot, Faye Dunaway, Rebecca De Mornay, Emmanuelle Béart, Milla Jovovich, Ekaterina Vilkova, Maimie McCoy and Eva Green to name a few.

In the hands of these performers, Milady slinks in and out of the shadows until the next adaptation comes along – to evade execution, to be avenged by her son, to find new outlets for her range of talents, to defy her book fate and survive whatever’s thrown at her. She’s an amorphous figure that’s impossible to pin down – even the original text contains several inconsistencies in her backstory and never even definitively decides on her real name.

Milady’s true self is unknown to all.

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2024

This post comes a little later than usual, as I feel like I’ve been running behind on practically everything for an entire year. Still, I always get there eventually, and so here is my retrospective on the female characters of 2024: not the twelve I selected as Woman of the Month, but the ones I discovered, enjoyed or was impressed with over the course of the entire year, who didn’t get the chance to be spotlighted. 

Looking back, we actually had a pretty good stretch of female characters throughout pop culture in 2024. The problem is, I didn’t watch any of shows or films in which they appeared. Tired of committing to new projects only for them to get cancelled almost immediately, I stared watching (or rewatching) media that I knew wouldn’t disappoint me.

As such, a lot of the women featured below are from stories that aired or were published some time ago. Two inclusions have admittedly more to do with how the characters are presented in their given narratives rather than the characters themselves, as I’ve noticed some interesting changes in how women are being portrayed across fiction recently, brought on by authors becoming more self-aware about certain gender-specific clichés and tropes (though this isn’t always a good thing).

In any case, you get to read my half-formed thoughts on the subject. I’ve tried to keep my stream-of-consciousness blathering under control, but no promises.

Woman of the Month: Princess Azula

Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Looking back, it’s amazing to think that aside from two brief, silent cameos, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation did not appear at all throughout season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Amazing because she is one of the most memorable parts of the show in its entirety, and an iconic villain in her own right.

Her first true appearance is one for the annals of best Character Establishing Moments, in which she’s depicted onboard a seafaring vessel, directing its captain to pull into shore despite the tide preventing them from doing so safely. The following conversation commences:

Captain: Princess, I’m afraid the tides will not allow us to bring the ship into port before nightfall.

Azula: I’m sorry captain, but I do not know much about the tides. Can you explain something to me?

Captain: Of course, your highness.

Azula: Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: Ah, I’m afraid I don’t understand.

Azula: You said the tides would not allow us to bring the ship in. Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: No, Princess.

Azula: And if I was to have you thrown overboard, would the tides think twice about smashing you against the rocky shore?

Captain: No. Princess.

Azula: Well then, maybe you should worry less about the tides, you have already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who’s still mulling it over.

Captain: I’ll pull us in.

It conveys so much of her psyche: her cruelty, her insouciance, her power games, and ultimately, her madness. The captain knows it’s not sensible to pull into shore at that time, but it’s unclear whether Azula does. All she cares about is getting what she wants, at the precise moment she wants it – common sense be damned. And anyone trying to thwart her is in for some public humiliation.

This need for control ends up being her undoing. Generally I’m not a fan of stories in which female villains are defeated after losing their minds, but in this case it was all painstakingly seeded across the course of Azula’s arc, from her emphasis on never having one hair out of place, to the flashbacks that depict her as a prodigy, to her intense sibling rivalry with Zuko. She has to be the best; there is no room for imperfection.

The writers pulled off a massively impressive feat when it came to her as the show’s central antagonist (yes, Fire Lord Ozai is the Big Bad, but Azula is the true face of the narrative’s villainy). She’s loathsome, awe-inspiring, terrifying, ruthless... but ultimately pitiable. That she’s drawn from the narcissist’s playbook is undeniable, ticking every box on the checklist: a sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with power and success, entitlement issues, arrogance, interpersonally exploitative/manipulative for her own gain, a lack of empathy, a need for admiration and praise, and a deep-seated sense of insecurity despite her supposed confidence.

Of course, living in a fantasy world where people can command the elements, Azula can back up her sense of superiority with very-real power: not only the honour and privileges that come with being a princess, but the fact that she can shoot fire from her hands. Blue fire in fact, which burns hotter than red, orange or white flames, demonstrating her absolute mastery over the art of fire-bending.

For most of the show’s duration, she’s always one step ahead, always in complete control, always maintaining the upper hand... which means the only person who could ultimately defeat her was Azula herself. Several crucial missteps put her off her game: she underestimates Mai’s loyalty to Zuko, grows increasingly threatened by her father’s dismissive behaviour, and experiences several visions of her lost mother.

The last we see of her on the show is confronting: she’s been laid low by Katara, a mere “peasant,” whose water-bending prowess exceeds her own. Rendered powerless after being chained to an iron gate, Azula’s mind breaks, and all she can do is scream and sob over the fact her entire worldview has crumbled. Wringing a sense of pity from the audience was a masterful final move on the behalf of the writers, reminding us that this was ultimately a fourteen-year-old girl raised in a way that gave her very little recourse to be anything else than what she became.

Her story continues a little into the graphic novels, but I’m not entirely sure whether they’re meant to be considered canon, and I’m ambivalent over the prospect of whether or not she should be redeemed (however you want to define that). How she’ll be handled in the upcoming animated films is another mystery – if she’s even featured at all.

Personally, I think her story is perfect just the way it is, and Azula is truly one of the most remarkable antagonists in all of fiction. Not just in the category of “female villains” or “animated villains” – but ALL villains.

Woman of the Month: Maleficent

Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty

I’m doing something very different this year for my Woman of the Month posts: for the first time I’ll be showcasing twelve female villains throughout 2025. And how could I start with anyone other than Maleficent, the Mistress of All Evil, and without a doubt the most effective and terrifying villain of the Disney Animated Canon?

If you look at her involvement in various retellings of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale across the centuries, you’ll note she’s had a rather illustrious career. The name Maleficent (a mash-up of “malevolence” and “magnificence”) was invented for the Disney movie, but older versions of the tale refer to her as the Fairy of Red or Carabosse. More modern adaptations have also called her Makemnoit, Arachne, Pernicia or Odelia.

And yet if you go even further back, does the story of a powerful goddess who gatecrashes a party to wreak havoc because she wasn’t invited sound familiar? A possible genesis to this wicked fairy is Eris, the Goddess of Strife. In her case, events led to the Golden Apple of Discord and the Trojan War, but here things remain on a slightly smaller scale: a deadly curse placed upon an infant girl.

And that’s precisely part of what makes Maleficent so memorable. It’s not just Eleanor Audrey’s cold, sharp voice, or the staggering levels of power she wields, or the aesthetic formidableness of her cloak and staff, her mountainous castle, her army of hobgoblins – to me, it’s also the striking blend of petty vindictiveness and terrifying allegiance to nothing less than Hell itself (I’m not exaggerating, she declares at the film’s climax: “you must contend with me and all the forces of Hell!”)

All this drama is because she wasn’t invited to a Christening, which escalates into a deadly curse, a sixteen-year reign of terror, the attempted murder of a teenage girl, the kidnapping of a prince, and turning herself into a dragon to thwart her enemies. Has any other villain put this much effort into just messing with a single royal family? She has no motivation beyond For The Evulz, and that’s what makes her so scary.

Contrary to popular assumptions, Maleficent isn’t a witch or a sorceress – she’s an evil fairy, and so in a way it’s unusual that she’s leaden with so much demonic symbolism. There’s her horned headpiece, the green hellfire, the terrifying dragon she transforms into... Based on some of her dialogue, you’re left wondering if her power derives from Satan himself. At some point of her career, did she enter into a Deal with the Devil? Was she once a good fairy before she got corrupted? Is she really an emissary of Hell, as she claims?

Then there’s her style. You cannot deny that Maleficent knows how to make an entrance: the eerie green light, the flowing cloak, the echoing clang of her staff on the flagstones, and especially her sinister, teasing motif. Apparently this music is even diegetic, as the strains of it tips off Maleficent’s presence to the good fairies later in the film.

She’s also the instigator of the most frightening sequence in all of Disney animation: the luring of Princess Aurora from her room and up the spiral steps to the tower where the spindle awaits her. The music, the suspense, the panic of the other fairies, the excruciatingly slow walk of Aurora – it’s matched only by the scene of abject cruelty in which Maleficent taunts Philip with the promise of setting him free... in a hundred years’ time when he’s too old to do anything.

And obviously her transformation into the terrible dragon. My favourite detail is that even as she’s dying, she takes one last snap at Philip before she goes over the cliff.

That she has no decent motivation beyond petty offense, her malevolent blend of small-minded spite and demonic power, her gloriously evil aesthetic... all of it comes together into one unforgettable figure of evil. I remember the derision when the Game of Thrones script for the final episode described Daenerys as “her Satanic Magnificence,” a descriptor which far better fits Maleficent, the self-described Mistress of All Evil. I couldn’t start this Year of the Villainess with any other character. She sets the tone for what’s to come, and in a world that’s filled with so many real-life jerks, it’s a balm to remind oneself that none of them would be able to handle any of the forthcoming women.  

Woman of the Month: Balsa

Balsa from Moribito: The Guardian of the Spirit

This was an easy one! Almost three minutes into watching this standalone anime, it was blatantly obvious that Balsa was going to be my final Woman of the Month for 2024. The sad truth is that female characters like her are so rare: mature and stoic and kind, yet also efficient and highly-trained and lethal when need be – and all in such a way that she doesn’t get Mary Sue accusations lobbed at her.

Balsa is a bodyguard-for-hire approaching her thirtieth birthday, proficient in wielding a spear in defense of herself and her clients. Though we don’t learn her backstory until far into the series’ run, she’s on a self-appointed mission to save the lives of eight people, as atonement for the eight lives that were taken to protect her when she was just a child.

She gets her chance to save the eighth and final life when happenstance puts her in the right time and place to save young Prince Chagum from a carriage accident that sees him fall off a bridge and into the river below. But it’s not that simple – on being summoned to the palace in secret later that night, the prince’s mother reveals the accident was a planned assassination attempt, ordered by the boy’s own father.

Now Balsa doesn’t have to just protect Chagum, but to find out why exactly his father wants him dead. Though she’s not a naturally maternal person, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the two of them will bond across the course of their journey together, and that Chagum will grow into a wiser, nobler ruler due to the influence Balsa has upon him.

The most notable aspect of the story is that although there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Lone Wolf and Cub tales, the lone wolf in the equation is hardly ever a woman. And neither are there any silly depictions of Balsa being unnaturally standoffish or unpleasant to the boy in her charge – she may not have much familiarity with children, but all the expected clichés (she’s bad at cooking, she’s a strict disciplinarian who gradually lightens up) are avoided.

In fact, there are plenty of subversions regarding gender roles strewn throughout the story, such as Balsa’s old friend and quasi-love interest Tanda, a healer who spends most of his time collecting herbs and sharing his gifts with those in need. Though there is something of longstanding attraction between them, the show’s conclusion doesn’t depict them settling down into marital bliss. Instead, Balsa heads off on another mission while Tanda tells their friends he’s content to wait for her return.

That’s not even getting into Balsa’s reluctance to use lethal force when she’s fighting her enemies, or the circumstances of her vow to save eight lives, or the fact that she’s technically past her prime and just as often has to use her wits as much as her strength in battle...

In short, just an incredibly rich and wonderful character to close off the year.

Woman of the Month: Catherine Standish

Catherine Standish from Slow Horses

There are plenty of great female characters featured in Slow Horses, so why am I going with Catherine Standish? I love watching long-suffering Louisa, ice-cold Diana Taverner, and scrappy, furious Shirley, but Catherine Standish is a great example of a character trope I love: Hidden Depths. Or to put it another way: more than meets the eye.

Think Mrs. Gummidge in David Copperfield, who ceases her complaining and rallies the family in the wake of Emily’s disappearance, or Hopper in Stranger things, who comes out of his depressed, drunken stupor to demonstrate he’s a lot more competent than he looks, or Mary Hamilton in Batwoman, a vapid influencer who is secretly running a free medical clinic.

There’s something about concealed duality in characters, whether they’re deliberately putting up a front or are simply better people than they realize, that always inspires.

Catherine Standish fits the bill, initially tottering about Slough House in dangerously high heels, on her daily routine of distributing menial paperwork to the team. She always looks on the brink of taking a fall, which is a clever character note for a recovering alcoholic, with a meek and quiet demeanour. She has a passable appearance – not unkempt, but hardly well-groomed either – and emanates the air of a cleaning lady or old fuddy-duddy.

And in many ways, she remains that way throughout the series. It’s not like she ever morphs into a glamourous secret agent at any point.

Exiled to Slough House due to her alcohol abuse, she is nevertheless a lot sharper and more efficient than anyone gives her credit for, and is surprisingly good at handling people in her quiet, determined, measured tones. Every season will give her a sequence that demonstrates her capabilities, whether it’s pulling a concealed gun on Head of Security, endangering her sobriety while partaking in a chess game to gather intelligence, silently conveying information about her kidnappers to the team via the hostage video, or gently helping an ex-colleague suffering from dementia.

Heck, putting up with Jackson Lamb is a superhero ability in itself, and she’s the epitome of a woman who can get away with a lot because she’s so underestimated.

Four seasons in, and the show has yet to really explore her relationship with Charles Partner, her former boss who was killed by Lamb on the orders of David Cartwright (protagonist River’s grandfather). I can honestly say I don’t know how she’ll react when the truth comes out, but there’s a chance her former colleagues could be in serious danger. As they say, Beware the Nice Ones.

Woman of the Month: Mina Murray

Source (yes, I know it's AI generated, but I couldn't
find a decent illustration of this character ANYWHERE).

Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker, née Murray from Dracula

I always try to pick a spooky-themed woman for October, and having just finished up Bram Stoker’s Dracula, what better choice than the female lead in the most famous vampire novel of all time?

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I first cracked open Dracula, though given that it was first published in 1897, I wasn’t exactly anticipating a subversive heroine that charted the course of early feminism. But sometimes these old books can surprise you, especially in the horror genre.

It doesn’t get off to an auspicious start, since our very first mention of Mina is a brief note written by her fiancé Jonathan in his journal, reminding himself to get her a recipe for a meal he enjoyed, presumably so she can cook it for him. As his experiences in Dracula’s castle become ever more terrifying, he references her in his writing with more and more desperation, until his last words are committed to the page: “Goodbye all! Mina!”

Once we reach her narrative, we can glean some details about herself that she reveals in passing: she’s an orphan (“I never knew either father or mother,”) she works as a teacher at a girls’ school (“the life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying,”) and she’s learning shorthand (“when we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan.”) Beneath this practicality, there’s also a sense of wistfulness and romanticism about her, stating in a letter to her friend Lucy: “it must be so nice to see strange countries. I wonder if we – I mean Jonathan and I – shall ever see them together.”

If it wasn’t already obvious from Jonathan’s journal, Mina’s correspondence makes clear there’s an attachment and understanding between these two characters, though Mina herself doesn’t seem to have any ambition beyond becoming the perfect helpmeet to her future husband. As the story progresses, a lot is piled on this girl’s plate: she instinctively worries that her fiancé is in grave danger, has to deal with her friend’s nightly sleepwalking, and grapples with a palpable dread that only intensifies when the preternatural events occurring all around her become undeniable.

And yet, she has a zest and enthusiasm for life, and she’d probably be described as a Cute Bookworm in modern parlance. She has an interest in the New Women, her portable typewriter goes with her everywhere, and she writes to Lucy: “I shall try to do what I see lady journalists do: interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember conversations.”

This encapsulates her most important role in the story: to be the recorder, the transcriber, and the editor of all the events that follow. She copies everyone’s letters and diaries, types out Doctor Seward’s phonograph entries, and collates relevant newspaper articles. It’s through parsing through the words of the men that she figures out what route Dracula is taking back to his castle, and her idea that she should be hypnotized each day in order to get a fix on his location.

In other words, she holds the power of the narrative. We have this story because of her. To compare her to another character in a similar role, she’s like Eliza at the end of Hamilton, drawing together all the accounts and interviews and letters to form a coherent history. “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Mina does.

But because none of the movie adaptations can effectively demonstrate the legwork she puts into organizing the mass of documents that make up this book (because watching a woman type isn’t exactly interesting) and are loathe to arm her with a stake and turn her into a vampire slayer (though she is given a revolver in the book’s final act), much of her importance to the narrative is lost on-screen.

Across various films and television shows she largely comes across as a passive victim of Dracula – if she’s not being forced into a turgid and completely fabricated love affair with him – much like how the irony of Irulan’s purpose in the Dune novels is lost when you cut out her quotes at the start of each chapter. Some things only work on the page, with the written word.

There are other elements to Mina that are present in the book and dramatized in various adaptations: sadly, a lot of it has to do with the Madonna/Whore Complex, with Mina explicitly compared to the vampiric women that hold Jonathan captive (“Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is naught in common”) and implicitly with Lucy after her transformation into one of the undead. When she plays a trick on van Helsing there is an interesting passage in which she states: “I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit – I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths,” though later she leans heavily into the “mother” aspect of the Madonna archetype when she comforts Arthur Holmwood:

“I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood; for when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly... we women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may like on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child.”

It's all insanely Victorian, and as with most things of this nature, I’m in two minds about it. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with comforting a grief-stricken man, and I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in men being more comfortable being emotionally open in front of women than other men, but there’s a ring of old-timey condescension here that bleeds into the menfolk’s decision to keep Mina in the dark when it comes to how they intend to deal with Dracula:

“When we part tonight, you no more must question. We shall tell you all in good time. We are men, and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are.”

“Somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at all; but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such a way that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is finished, and that she can henceforth leave the rest to us.”

“Our first step has been accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina or troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and smells of horror which she might never forget.”

“Mrs Harker is better out of it. Things are quite bad enough to us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time infallibly have wrecked her.”

And what does Mina have to say about all this? “I did not say anything, for I had a greater fear that if I appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave me out of their counsels altogether.”

And yet to Stoker’s everlasting credit, he makes it very clear that leaving Mina out of the loop is the wrong decision. Heck, it’s a crucial plot-point that it’s the wrong decision. The fact the men do not share basic information with Mina about what’s happening is what nearly gets her killed. After she’s attacked and infected by Dracula, the men change their tact entirely:

“When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full confidence; that nothing of any sort – no matter how painful – should be kept from her.”

With Mina in the inner circle, she proves herself invaluable to the destruction of the vampire – as mentioned, she figures out by which route he’s returning to his castle lair, and comes up with the idea that she be hypnotized in order to exploit the psychic bond that now exists between her and the vampire they’re hunting. As she said earlier: “Fortunately I am not of a fainting disposition.”

And because she’s been bitten by the vampire, her very soul is now at stake. There’s some surprisingly fraught conversations about suicide and euthanasia, with van Helsing urging her to live at all costs – for were she to die before Dracula is killed, she’ll return as one of the undead. As they travel with her across Transylvania, all the men are acutely aware of the danger she poses, for just as she can peer into Dracula’s psyche, it stands to reason that he can do the same to her.

It's a no-brainer writing technique to add deeply personal stakes to whatever large-scale conflict the protagonists are attempting to resolve, and in this case the men are spurred on by their love for Mina just as desperately as their understanding that an unholy demon that preys on human beings cannot be allowed to live. In this case, it also nearly leads to one of my most hated tropes: a man being forced to kill the woman he loves.

As Mina says of the gathered menfolk:

“I shall tell you plainly what I want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this connection between us now. You must promise me, one and all – even you my beloved husband – that, should the time come, you will kill me... you too, my dearest. You must not shrink. You are nearest and dearest and all the world to me; our souls are knit into one, for all life and all time. Think dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Their hands did not falter any the more because those that they loved implored them to slay them. It is men’s duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! And oh, my dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it be at the hand of him that loves me best.”

Bleh.

It’s one of those things that on a Watsonian level it makes perfect sense; of course she’s asking to be killed if she becomes a monster. But on a Doylist level, it’s yet another example of a male writer eagerly exploring the possibility of what it must be like to kill a woman and be absolutely justified in doing so. I’ve ranted at length about this before (Maid Marian, Daenerys, Vanessa Ives, Jean Grey, the list goes on) so I’ll spare you the repetition, but it wasn’t much fun to see here, especially knowing that this scene probably inspired countless other books on the same subject.

As the core reason for their passion and drive; the very thing that the menfolk rally around to protect and fight for again overwhelming evil, Mina is inevitably showered with effusive praise. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to do all this for one of those voluptuous women, right? The Madonna Complex is in full effect, and nobody holds back with how precious and pure and wonderful Mina is.

To wit: “a pearl among women,” “there are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights,” “she is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men... that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth,” “so true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egotist,” “she has man’s brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted – and a woman’s heart,” “this boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.”

And look, it’s not like I disagree with any of these platitudes – Mina is indeed amazing. Like Molière said: “to inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition,” and for many such women, that’s all they want in life. But I sense that Mina wanted more. By elevating her onto a pedestal that high, she ends up robbed of some of her humanity, and the hopeful young woman who at the beginning of the story wrote: “it must be so nice to see strange countries,” doesn’t get much of a look-in by the end.

I hope that in the years to come, she gets to see those strange countries, and takes that portable typewriter with her. Perhaps she’ll write a travelogue, or a history, or a book on ancient folklore. For my favourite passage from her reminded me a bit of Tolkien’s take on Éowyn, of whom he said: “like many brave women [she] was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis.”

Or as Bram Stoker says of Mina: “There may be a solemn duty; and if it come, we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing.”

Woman of the Month: Janine Teagues

Janine Teagues from Abbott Elementary

Fandom usually tends toward edgy, moody, dark characters in fiction – but fiction, as in real life, will always require the existence of people like Janine Teagues. The protagonist of mockumentary Abbott Elementary, she’s defined by her determination to be the very best second grade teacher she can possibly be, in circumstances that often make that goal extremely difficult.

She’s perpetually on the bright side. Her favourite day is Monday. Her wardrobe seems to be made up entirely of mustard and canary yellow cardigans.

But it turns out her boundless optimism and drive can be just as much of a flaw as it is a virtue. Instead of waiting for the handyman to repair a light fixture, she does it herself and causes a blackout. Her attempts to reason with the children about “desking” (jumping on top of the desks during class) only makes them more determined to do it. She can’t bring herself to admit her terrible boyfriend is holding her back. She’s so positive, and such a people-pleaser, that it skews towards toxicity.

But she tries – oh, how she tries.

There’s another issue that’s often mined for laughs, but which is deeply poignant in its implications. She’s desperate for a surrogate mother and mentor in her life, and has decided co-worker Barbara Howard is the one to take on this “mum-tor” job. Barbara is not as receptive. But Janine’s obvious yearning for a connection is a little heartrending, and in a genre where drama is usually derived from women getting jealous over a man, Janine insecurity piques on meeting Barbara’s daughter Taylor. (Who then starts dating her love interest, so I guess the show covered both bases).

Here is a woman who believes deeply in her chosen career field, someone brimming with passion and drive, but who permanently exists on the verge of a breakdown. She’s a sunflower that knows she could be pulled up at any moment. Any second someone could verbalize what she’s always thinking: she’s not good enough. And so she wields her sunny attitude like a shield to deflect reality. She doesn’t leave her boyfriend because she doesn’t think she deserves any better. She’s optimistic to the point of delusional.

And yet, she’s also a woman that will pep talk a nervous kid while fighting back a panic attack because they’re both stuck on a hot-air balloon and she’s terrified of heights.

All this means that when she finally gets a win – praise from Barbara, connecting with a student, or getting the class to promptly take their seats in the final episode – it’s a cause for celebration. And the most endearing thing about her is that she’ll never give up. We need more Janines in the world.

Woman of Month: Mariko

Toda Mariko from Shōgun

Over the past couple of months my friend and I have been making our way through Shōgun, and it’s no secret that the female characters more or less steal the show – which is impressive considering they’re up against Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga, Manipulative Chessmaster extraordinaire.

When English sailor John Blackthorne runs aground on Japanese shores during the Sengoku Period, he’s thrown headlong into a dangerous world about which he knows nothing. His only avenue of comprehension is the translator appointed to him by the daimyo Toranaga who sees his value as a political asset. This translator is astute and poised and observant, and also happens to be stunningly beautiful: Mariko.

Yes, we’ve seen this story before: the white outsider falls for the beautiful princess and is gradually accepted into her culture (probably becoming better at it along the way than those who’ve been raised within it). I confess to groaning when the two characters lock eyes for the first time, as the show couldn’t have been more obvious about what was going to happen.

But then we get the rest of the story, in which Mariko’s love affair with Blackthorne plays only a very small part, and is more about her than him.

As Toranaga’s translator, she’s in a unique position compared to the women that surround her. Although they hold different degrees of their own power and agency, Mariko is at the very heart of political discussion and intrigue, for as a result of her linguistic talent she is a necessary participant in private meetings between Toranaga and Blackthorne. All communication passes through her; all the men involved are dependent on her honesty and intelligence.

She’s defined by her composure, though some (such as her husband) would call it iciness, a persona that is explained as her backstory gradually comes to light. Her father killed a daimyo in an act of treason that led to him being ordered to kill his own family before committing seppuku himself. Mariko would have been amongst the dead, were it not for her husband forbidding her involvement.

Rather than being grateful for this reprieve, Mariko longs for death. Unhappy in her marriage, estranged from her son, ashamed of her family – she’s bereft on all sides, gleaning only the tiniest bit of happiness from Blackthorne, which of course, comes with its own expiry date.

Another interesting facet to her character is her conversion to Christianity, though sadly this isn’t explored in any real depth. What was it about the religion that drew her to it? How does she reconcile it with certain aspects of the culture she belongs to? Is she a true believer, or is it a ploy to get closer to the Portuguese missionaries?

Matters of faith fascinate me, and it’s a shame we learn relatively little about what the gospels mean to her, especially when contrasted with her Death Seeker mentality and her desire to commit seppuku.

Throughout it all, Anna Sawai’s performance is captivating, in which so much is conveyed through her eyes: longing, anger, regret, sadness. Her expression remains impassive, but her eyes are windows to the soul. Heck, this story could have been vastly improved by cutting Blackthorne entirely and making her the protagonist, giving the show more time to explore the fascinatingly contradictory parts of herself.

SPOILERS

I had decided to make Mariko the subject of this particular entry a while ago, and at the time was not aware of how her story ended. In the most recent episode I’ve seen, she perished in an attack designed to undermine Toranaga, by deliberately positioning herself against a door that is about to be blown up by explosives.

I’m not entirely sure how any of this plays out in either the book or the original miniseries, but the show takes measures to avoid the usual fridging clichés. Here Mariko takes the opportunity to go out on her own terms: to fulfil her lord’s mission, to try and shield the other women in the storeroom, and to protest what’s being done to her.

It is about her duty, her tragedy, her sacrifice – what it means to her and why she does it.

Woman of the Month: Princess Rosella

Princess Rosella from King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
 and King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

Behold: the pixelated visage of the first playable female protagonist in a computer adventure game. I’m cautious not to say the first playable female protagonist in a computer game ever, since that honour goes to Mother Kangaroo in the Atari game Kangaroo, or perhaps Billie Sue in Wabbit, both of which were released in 1982.

But they were considered arcade games, not adventure games with structured stories and developed characters. With those criteria in place, Rosella was undoubtedly first when she appeared in King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella in 1988.

Yet even this wasn’t her first appearance; that took place back in 1986, at the end of King’s Quest III: To Heir of Human. It was not an auspicious start, as she was presented a standard Damsel in Distress who had been offered up as sacrifice to a three-headed dragon, saved at the last minute by her long-lost twin brother Alexander, who – as the textboxes are at pains to tell us – finds her super-hot.

But within hours of this ordeal, Rosella gets the chance to take an adventure of her own. Delighted at her safe return, her father King Graham decides to pass on his trademark adventurer’s cap to his children, only to keel over with a heart attack before it reaches their outstretched hands. Seizing the opportunity to be magically transported to a faraway land where grows a rare fruit that could cure him, Rosella is given twenty-four hours to save her father’s life and rescue the land of Tamir from an evil fairy.

Rosella only cameos in the next two games, not appearing until each one’s conclusion, but in King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, she once against takes centre-stage. Here she’s reintroduced as a Rebellious Princess who chafes against the restrictions of her royal standing, instead longing for excitement and adventure. She even gets an “I Want” Song in which she conveys her disgust at the idea of marriage. So like Alice down the rabbit hole, she barely hesitates before leaping into a magical portal that opens before her during a walk in the forest, though which she can glimpse a castle in the clouds...

Eight years after the release of her first adventure, the graphics and sound engines had improved exponentially, granting Rosella a level of characterization (largely due to the voice-acting and animation) that could only be hinted at earlier – though in saying that, it’s amazing how much personality a collection of pixels was able to convey in The Perils of Rosella. But The Princeless Bride depicts her as something of a Disney Princess: brave, kind, impulsive, curious, stubborn...

There is a perfect blend of femininity and gender neutrality at work within Rosella’s story: on the one hand, she’s clearly a Proper Young Lady, who kisses frog princes, befriends the seven dwarfs, rides a unicorn, and visits the island of a fairy queen, but also someone who gets swallowed by a whale, steals the hen that lays golden eggs, finds Pandora’s Box, and goes graverobbing in the dead of night in a zombie-infested cemetery.

It’s difficult to understate the importance of her existence, or the impact she had on me as a child – namely, that I took it as a given that girls could have their own virtual adventures. It seems odd that things have gotten both better and worse since then, for as creator/designed Roberta Williams said in an interview: “I knew the female lead is just fine for women and girls who play the game, but wasn’t sure how it would go over with some of the men. And you know what? It wasn’t as controversial as I expected.”

If only that were still true today!