Queen of the Elves
| The Queen of the Elves | |
| [[Image:|thumb|center|240px|{{{1}}}]] | |
| Name | Nightshade, Queen of the Elves, Fairy Queen, or simply the Queen |
| Race | Elf |
| Age | |
| Occupation | Queen |
| Physical appearance | appears as she chooses, often in the form of a tall, slim woman with long black hair, pale faced, cherry red lips, dressed in red, white and black |
| Residence | Fairyland |
| Death | |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | King of the Elves (estranged husband) |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | |
| Appearances | |
| Books | The Wee Free Men Lords and Ladies The Science of Discworld II: the Globe The Shepherd's Crown |
| Cameos | |
Usually seen as a tall, slim dark-haired woman, wearing a dress of red, white and black, the Queen of the Elves can appear in whatever form she likes, and no stated appearance is definitive. She wears a copper crown in her hair and has exquisitely thin hands. Her true face is almost triangular, a tiny mouth, an almost non-existent nose and eyes larger than those of a human - but again, this may not be the face that people see. She is often referred to as simply the Queen.
The Queen rules Fairyland, supported by her principal henchman, an elf called Lord Lankin. Her country reflects her cold cruelty in an eternal winter. Fairyland is a parasitic world, a place where no sun shines and nothing grows, floating in existence searching for those weak locations where no one is paying attention and feeding off the bounty of those worlds. Once, the Nac Mac Feegle served the Queen in the theft from other worlds until, after long enduring her callous disregard for what is right, she tricked the pictsies and they rebelled.
The Queen populates her world with creatures she kidnaps from other worlds, such as unicorns and dromes. Children from Discworld are a favorite, and she expects them to sing and dance and play for her delight. The Queen will give the child anything he wants, such as all the sweets imaginable, but nothing the child needs, such as love or the chance to grow up.
The Queen has supreme control over dreams, an ability to make them more solid than those created by her dromes. Malicious and vicious, she relies heavily on the Glamour of the Elves to cow people into believing they are not worthy to stand against or naysay her. When push comes to shove, however, Magrat is her match through love, which she cannot understand, and Granny Weatherwax defeats her with power she cannot comprehend. Tiffany Aching banished the Queen from The Chalk by her keen sense of reality and self.
It is mentioned in The Science Of Discworld II that there are, or have been, many Queens of the Elves. Even so, their personalities and behavior are so indistinguishable that it is unclear whether the Lancre witches, Tiffany, and/or the UU faculty all encountered the same Queen or not.
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The Roundworld Queen of the Elves is Titania (as least this is what we commonly know her today-other names are Mab, Oona, Morgan and many more) , who had fought bitterly with her King, Oberon. She was full of malice, just like the Discworld's, but just like here too, it only took a brief moment for the King to have it all sorted out.
Her true face is almost triangular, a tiny mouth, an almost non-existent nose and eyes larger than those of a human - but again, this may not be the face that people see. Today, the human race is far too sophisticated and technologically advanced to believe in the laughable old superstition that fairies and Elves come in through the window at night, and, for eg, abduct your child whilst leaving a changeling identical in every respect. We've moved on from that. We now believe, or at least some of us believe, that space aliens come in through the bedroom door at night, paralyze us, and then abduct us back to their spacecraft in order to inflict painful and intimately embarrassing scientific probes, while we lie there, wondering what these strange beings with their almost triangular faces, tiny lipless mouths, vestigial noses and huge almond-shaped eyes want of us...
The same description is reminiscent of a cat's face - which resonates with Magrat's vision of them: pretty and they make a nice noise when we give them pleasure, but vicious beyond human reason within.