19 most dramatic and over-the-top Disney villains

Queen Grimhilde — Snow White

Mirror, mirror on the wall, show me who is the vainest of them all.

Kudos to Queen Grimhilde (did you know this was her name?). In a list of Disney villains whose foibles range from irrational FOMO to nigh-on incapacitating arrogance, she still manages to be the one who thinks the most highly of herself.

Again, like Yzma, it’s perhaps not entirely her fault. In a world that rewards youth and demonizes age, particularly in women, who can blame her for being furious that her magic mirror (which somehow conducts polls on the regular) deems her stepdaughter Snow White more attractive? A lifetime of building her up, to take just a moment to knock her back down.

Grimhilde’s problem is that she takes it out on the wrong person. Society needs to stop pitting women against other women, but alas, Grimhilde internalizes that medieval misogyny and tries to kill Snow White. Not wanting to get her hands dirty, she employs a huntsman (with a truly awful haircut) to do the dastardly deed.

It’s all very cloak and dagger (literally), but Grimhilde isn’t content with a ridiculous murder plot based on advice from her mirror. No, she must have her victim’s heart in a box too. (A gift real special, so take off the top; it’s Snow White’s heart in a box!)

Who even knows what she planned to do with it, and were it not for her weirdly omniscient mirror (where is it getting its intel?!), she would never even have known it was a fake. What was even the point if not simply drama?

Anyway the main lesson here is not to trust reflective glass, especially if it speaks to you. If Arthur Weasley taught us anything, it is this: “Don’t trust anything that thinks for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”

It is something Grimhilde could have done with learning herself, before trusting a wall hanging to be her life coach.