Red Queen (Through the Looking Glass)

Red Queen
Alice character
The Red Queen lecturing Alice, by John Tenniel
First appearance	Through the Looking-Glass
Created by	Lewis Carroll
Portrayed by	Helena Bonham Carter (Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass) Emma Rigby (Once Upon a Time in Wonderland)
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Queen
Spouse(s)	Red King Will Scarlet (Once Upon a Time only)
Nationality	Looking-Glass Land

The Red Queen is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass. She is often confused with the Queen of Hearts from the previous book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, although the two are very different.

With a motif of Through the Looking-Glass being a representation of the game of chess, the Red Queen could be viewed as an antagonist in the story as she is the queen for the side opposing Alice. Despite this, their initial encounter is a cordial one, with the Red Queen explaining the rules of Chess concerning promotion — specifically that Alice is able to become a queen by starting out as a pawn and reaching the eighth square at the opposite end of the board. As a queen in the game of Chess, the Red Queen is able to move swiftly and effortlessly.

Later, in Chapter 9, she appears with the White Queen, posing a series of typical Wonderland/Looking-Glass questions ("Divide a loaf by a knife: what's the answer to that?"), and then celebrating Alice's promotion from pawn to queen. When that celebration goes awry, Alice turns upon the Red Queen, whom she "considers as the cause of all the mischief", and shakes her until the queen morphs into Alice's pet kitten. In doing this, Alice presents an end game, awakening from the dream world of the looking glass, by both realizing her hallucination and symbolically "taking" the Red Queen in order to checkmate the Red King.

The Red Queen is commonly mistaken for the Queen of Hearts in the story's predecessor, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The two share the characteristics of being strict queens associated with the color red. However, their personalities are very different. Indeed, Carroll, in his lifetime, made the distinction between the two Queens by saying: