#eah evil queen

[pontipines]

Oh,Raven! Your mommy issues are so good✨✨

[class-of-classics-blog]

i was gonna write some headcanons today but i have seen too many comments on tik tok saying evil queen is a good mom so now im pissed

"growing up is realising evil queen was a good mother", " evil queen was actually a great parent to Raven", " evil queen may be evil, but she was a good mom"

stfu stfu stfu sutf SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

She was abusive.

She turned Ravens puppy that she got for her 6th birthday into a bone rat right in front of her. She traumatised her daughter so fucking much that she is scared to look at herself in the mirror because she looks too much like her. She tried to manipulate her into freeing her from prison multiple times. She framed her daughter so that the whole school would hate her again. She imprisoned her second pet, Nevermore. She never listened to Raven and just wants to turn her into another version of herself. She literally tried to force her to be evil, just like Grimm did.

Does evil queen love her daughter? Yes.

Is that love twisted and comes with conditions? Yes.

Is she at least a decent parent? NO. She is an awful mother.

I swear to god if I see one more irritating TikTok comment like this coming from someone who speaks like some fucking professional on Ever After High subject, I'm gonna make it my mission to find their address.

@athena-xox is right. Cook is a better mother to Raven than the evil queen ever was.

[xbomboi]

Ever After High: Fairy Queendom Quest

Coming whenever I feel like it….

[whateverafteriguess]

raven thinks that being powerful and confident is evil because that’s what her mother was and what she taught her to be. being a villian can require being powerful and assertive but the opposite isn’t true. raven can be confident without having to be like her mother, but when being powerful is all she can associate with eq, she naturally drifts toward the opposite side of the spectrum. letting her life pass by and hoping for some kind of change, instead of being that change herself (which she does in the first book).

also typo in the tags that i don’t feel like fixing: raven can be like her mom WITHOUT it being a bad thing

[something-nunholy]

I love that in the EAH series they made the Evil Queen a D1 ragebaiter. Like, in the books she uses the very clever manipulation of Raven's feelings to try and escape the mirror but is also quite clearly very pleased to be able to speak to Raven again. Whilst the latter is true in Dragon Games (woman who is desperate to talk to anybody, let's be real), it's implied that she attempts to bait Raven into destroying the mirror physically every single visit. And get this! Even at 16, Raven still nearly falls for it! Despite years of visits, years of goading, she is locked and loaded into shattering the mirror with her powers!

I do sometimes also wonder if her rage is almost an excuse to attempt to release her mother as well, in a more subconscious way. Whilst she knows the Evil Queen is evil and should never, ever be let out, we get glimpses into how rough that is for Raven (the rant in the Castleteria defending her in Way Too Wonderland, for example). Also, like... Raven is literally the only character in EAH (if memory serves me right) confirmed to have an absent parent, never mind that absent parent is both incarcerated (as opposed to dead, so, in theory, she should be able to see her mother again but is limited to one visit a year) AND the fairytale character she is meant to follow in terms of destiny.

Anyway! All of this to say, I'm not surprised Apple shattered the mirror in her first interaction with the Evil Queen. If Raven still struggles to control her temper and has had a lifetime of learning her mother's manipulation techniques, Apple, who has never had proof of just how evil the Evil Queen is, is especially susceptible to doing something as stupid as throwing an apple at the mirror in rage. I'd also like to flag up the fact that the Evil Queen knows exactly how to manipulate Snow White straight off the bat as well. The game was rigged against Apple in this one, I'm afraid.

Also interesting to consider how Apple's interactions with Raven's mother influence her perception of what she is trying to do to Raven. I believe up until she has seen Real Evil she has thought of destiny as people playing pretend. A 'you poison me, I get kissed awake and imprison you and then I release you and we go back to being friends' kind of thing. Make-believe but destiny, you know? It's through the Evil Queen that she glimpses the way in which a destiny is for life, not just for Legacy Day.

[thecheshireninja]

it's really interesting how different Snow White is in the books from the show, and it changes quite a bit how you could understand Apple's character. we all know the show version: lowkey antagonistic, puts an unhealthy amount of pressure on her daughter, hates the Evil Queen. even her design is cold and severe.

but the books describe a separate character. she appears in a key scene in The Unfairest of Them All when Apple is visiting home during Yester Day (a day when students have to interview graduated fairytale characters about their stories). right off the bat you can tell their relationship is a lot better than the one displayed in the show; they're a lot more affectionate with each other, and Apple clearly feels at ease around her mother. the main impression i get whenever i reread this scene (and believe me i have read it a lot) is that Snow seems like... a good mom. she doesn't act disappointed or accusatory toward Apple for Raven's refusal to sign. Apple to some extent considers it a personal failure that she didn't persuade Raven to sign; Snow doesn't express any sentiment of the sort. she gets straight to the heart of the matter, which is the problem of division between the Royals and Rebels and the chaos that will undoubtedly ensue (and already has, at this point in the book).

in fact, it's ironic that Snow doesn't address who's in the wrong in this matter, because that's exactly what Apple is focused on. she strongly believes that going off-script is pure evil, and she wants Snow to confirm that for her--which Snow doesn't do. because Snow is a leader, and she knows that pointing fingers is not going to solve a crisis. her advice to Apple is to focus on bringing people back together first, which is ultimately the key to Apple's character arc in this book.

Apple is frustrated by this conversation because Snow's advice seems useless to her: "Just keep smiling." that isn't a very concrete solution to any of the rampant problems she's facing right now; she leaves believing Snow doesn't understand the magnitude of these problems. i don't think that's fully the case, because Snow knew the Evil Queen and had to have witnessed some part of her rampage, which would have been extremely chaotic, but we don't have details on it so that's neither here nor there.

Snow's most important advice to Apple was the line she got cut off, which is "And when you look back, look deeper." based on the context and the conclusion of Apple's arc in this book, i can guess she meant: look at them for who they are, not for who you think they are. in other words, not for who the stories say they are--which is the lens through which Apple is used to judging the rest of the world. that's indeed how she changes and grows by the end of the book, because she learns to stop assigning the roles of "hero/villain/Royal/Rebel" to her peers, and instead think of them for the people they are underneath. Lizzie, a kind-hearted girl who loves to create; Daring, who's eager to help her if she just says the word; Sparrow, who prides himself on his thieving skills; and Kitty, who Apple knows would do anything for Maddie. she even gets Cerise and Duchess to work together.

as a kid i didn't really get the ending of this book; it felt like no one had really solved the destiny conflict. no one had managed to point out how the Royals were in the wrong or fixed everything that was awful about the Rebels' situations. but that would have been too simple, which is crazy for a book written for kids, but that's what makes it so good--instead of trying to eliminate the problem and wrap everything up in a neat little bow, which might have felt really good to read but probably would have fallen very flat, the story acknowledges the problem is bigger than that and people are more complicated than that. Apple is not the villain of the story; she's just a young girl trying to take responsibility (something Raven actually has trouble doing in comparison, which is another reason they balance each other out). Snow gave good advice.

i sort of went off on a tangent there, but to circle back to Snow--in the books her relationship with EQ is very obviously not the same as in the show, as we don't know if they were even in the same class. it's portrayed as something much closer to what the original dynamic of Snow White and her evil stepmother would have been. Snow does not condemn Raven for any of her actions; she even expresses her own doubt about the way Ever After works, about how "if there's no story, it rarely happens." Apple fixates on that statement as explaining why it's bad to go off-script, but what Snow actually seems to be implying is that the lack of freedom in that area is troubling. in a sense she almost seems sympathetic to Raven.

granted. DG was set after the destiny conflict was resolved and Snow's main problem there was her daughter's popularity. however even in the books Apple's position of leadership is being threatened simply by the division between Royals and Rebels, and Snow doesn't seem at all bothered by that. but like, ultimately the books and the show were telling two different stories by that point so it isn't really worth arguing over, imo. i actually quite like Snow White in the books as i always found her interesting. of course, as people like to remind me even though the fact should speak for itself <3 the show's writing had regressed considerably by DG which explains why that one was so one-dimensional.

[vivi-designs]

After raven has signed and keeps having nightmares that she is evil

I could say more but I got my wisdom teeth taken out this morning so I don’t feel like it y’all get the gist

[dumbdolphin333]

something something the evil queen brushing apple's hair in dragon games

something something the poisoned comb in the Grimm version of Snow White