->''"Y aquí me tienes... en esta celda donde pasaron los últimos años de mi vida, lejos de mis dos hijos, lejos de mi tierra, de mi casa, pagando por un crimen que yo no cometí mientras que el verdadero asesino debe estar entre ellos. (And here, you have me... in this cellar where I've spent the last years of my life, away from my two children, away from my land, of my home, paying for a crime that I never commited, whereas the true murderer... must be among them.)"''
-->--'''María Fernández Acuña''', Episode 2

''La Madrastra'' is a 2005 Mexican {{telenovela}}, based actually on a Chilean one from TheEighties. It stars Victoria Ruffo as María Fernández Acuña, an [[TheIngenue ingenue young woman]] who, due to a gross MiscarriageOfJustice, is incarcerated for twenty years for the murder of her friend Patricia, which she did not commit.

After being released from jail, María returns to Mexico City with three purposes: to exact {{revenge}} on her husband and friends who abandoned her to the Aruban justice system, to find Patricia's real murderer, and to be reunited with her children, who believe her to be deceased and, once she marries their father, think she is their stepmother.

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!!This show provides examples of:


* [[spoiler: AlternateEnding: In the AE it was not Demetrio the mureder, but Fabiola, who had been blackmailed by Patricia, who was about to tell everyone about the existence of Fabiola and Bruno's retarded son. In this ending, Fabiola is sent into a asylum and Demetrio is able to live a happy life reunited with his son.]]
* CaughtOnTape: Patricia's murder.
* CreepyCrossdresser: Shockingly not Bruno, but [[spoiler: Demetrio]]
* DeusExMachina: The convenient video tape of Patricia's murder, which despite ostensibly being home footage and not from a security camera, somehow involves numerous camera angles and cuts between the principle actors. Let's not even start on who is supposed to have recorded the footage...
* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: Ángel grows up believing that the entirely fictional "Montserrat" is his mother before learning that [[spoiler: his great-aunt Alba is his mother, only to finally discover that his other great-aunt Carmela]] gave him life.
* {{Guyliner}}: Bruno. And how...
* MonochromeCasting: Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Mexican population is mestiz@, the entire main cast is noticeably paler than average.
* MiscarriageOfJustice
* ParentalAbandonment: [[spoiler: Bruno and Fabiola abandon their newborn son after he is born with severe physical deformities. Demetrio and Carmela/Alba also abandon their son Ángel and allow Esteban to raise him as his own.]]
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler: Carlos and Ana Rosa.]]
* RichBitch: Especially Fabiola, Patricia, and Alba, but also Daniela and Ana Rosa to a lesser degree.
* SerialKiller
* TheUnfavorite: El Pulpo, whose WickedStepmother favored her natural son Servando.
* VillainousIncest: Alba's burning love for her nephew, Esteban, whom she raised following the deaths of his parents when he was young, brings this trope disturbingly close to ParentalIncest, too.
* WakeupMakeup: Largely subverted. Fabiola, for example, is featured in a number of episodes sans her normally heavy make-up after emerging from the shower or before going to bed (cf. episodes 41 and 90, especially).
* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: The final ten or fifteen episodes in particular, in which [[spoiler: Esteban and Daniela are tried jointly in Aruba for Patricia's murder, despite there being no assumption or implication that the two committed the crime together. The red high-heeled killer is eventually revealed to be none other than Demetrio, whose masculinity had been so badly battered by the women in his life that he became a CreepyCrossdresser who [[ReligionOfEvil worships la Santa Muerte]] and is generally crazy.]] WTF.
** [[spoiler: In the AlternateEnding, it was not Demetrio, but Fabiola, who had been blackmailed by Patricia about the secret of her retarded son.]]