"Murder, martyr, monarch, mad."
Heartless, written by Marissa Meyer, is a YA novel that serves as an origin story for the Queen of Hearts. Catherine Pinkerton, daughter of the Marquess of Rock Turtle Cove, dreams of leaving behind her privileged life to start a bakery. Her sweets are well-known throughout the Kingdom of Hearts, even attracting the interest of the King.
Unfortunately for Cath, the King has also begun to express an interest in her. And her parents absolutely do not want her running off to open a bakery with her best friend when she could be the Queen of Hearts. When it looks like the King is about to propose to her at a royal ball, Cath flees into the gardens, where she meets his new court joker. A budding romance forms between Cath and Jest, and she must decide whether to pursue her passions or follow the life that her parents want for her. And to top it all off, there's a Jabberwock stalking the Kingdom...
The book draws from both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well as other literary references, i.e. Edgar Allen Poe. It is not, however, related in any way to Meyer's other series of fairy-tale retellings. It is also notable for including characters that often don't make it into other Alice adaptations, such as the Duchess and the Mock Turtle.
Heartless contains examples of:
- Abusive Parent: Cath's mother is controlling of what she wears and eats, forces Cath into a marriage she's been rejecting since the beginning, dismisses Cath's love of baking, unless it's to help gain the King's attention. There's even one point where she calls Cath stupid to her face. Her father's "better" in that he mostly leaves everything up to his wife and only starts showing a less than charitable side to him when Cath begins acting out of line.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Hatta is clearly envious of Catherine's relationship with Jest. It's only after Jest's death that he admits he loved him too.
- Body Horror: The victims of those who eat the pumpkins from Peter Peter's patch. The Turtle's transformation into the Mock Turtle is described in uncomfortable detail as he's screaming and flailing on his back in pain. And then there's Sir Peter's wife transforming into the Jabberwock.
- Because Destiny Says So: Shades of this through the novel. Time knew of a queen in Hearts with a heart passionate enough to help end the war in Chess but ended up sending Jest, Raven, and Hatta to Hearts before Catherine became the Queen of Hearts. And there's an implication that Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie influenced Catherine's dream of meeting Jest, pushing the two together and setting them on their path of Jest's death via beheading and for Catherine to become the Queen of Hearts.
- Break the Cutie: It may be easier to list the characters who haven't been broken by the end of the book.
- The Turtle starts out as a sweet, enthusiastic turtle. But his transformation into the Mock Turtle (with heavy emphasis on being a soup ingredient) has left him a melancholic shell of his former self.
- Hatta always had the madness that plagued his family over his head and tried to outrun Time in an attempt to avoid it. But Jest's brutal death and the indirect hand Hatta played in it has him borderline welcoming madness.
- Cath simply wanted to open a bakery, be renowned as the best baker in Hearts, and fall in love if it happened. Jest's death left her so broken she willingly gave the Three Sisters her heart to be rid of it and the heartache that comes with having one.
- Canon Character All Along: Several, which may or may not be a Reveal depending on your familiarity with the source material: Mary Ann is the same Mary Ann that serves as a maid to the White Rabbit, Margaret Mearle becomes the Duchess, and Raven becomes the Queen of Hearts' executioner.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Cath's parents spend the entire book denying her what she truly wants, insists that she must marry the King, and forbid her from starting her dream bakery. Towards the very end, after Cath has clearly gone into Sanity Slippage and is about to become the Queen of Hearts, her alarmed mother tells her that all they've ever wanted is for her to be happy, and asks if this wedding will truly make her happy. Cath bitterly points out that things could have turned out a lot differently if they'd just asked her that question from the beginning.
- Doomed by Canon:
- Jest has no apparently Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass counterpart. Though he is a Rook from Chess for the White Queen, the book makes it sound like the chess pieces are easily replaced if one dies, considering how easily Catherine could have been made a queen in Chess. So, unsurprisingly he ends up dying within the last third of the novel which sets Catherine on her path to becoming the Queen of Hearts.
- Likewise Sir Peter doesn't seem to be based on any character from Caroll's works. Instead, he's influenced by the Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater rhyme. Due to killing Jest, Sir Peter is the first person Catherine calls for his head after becoming the Queen of Hearts.
- Lady Peter is either this or Canon Character All Along given that she's the Jabberwock.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Lady Peter is introduced as sickly, weak, and pitifully meek, while her husband is introduced as rather controlling of her and is later shown to have a dangerous Hair-Trigger Temper. Were it not later revealed that Lady Peter is the Jabberwock this could be a very clear case of Domestic Abuse.
- Foreshadowing: A lot of the oddities going on in Hearts have one thing in common
- Sir Peter received his title after his wife won a pumpkin eating contest. She's supposedly so sickly looking due to eating bad pumpkin. What's more she has an unnatural craving for pumpkins.
- When the Jabberwock first appeared Cheshire's fur had turned orange from eating pumpkin pasties. It's later suspected he may have smelled of pumpkins.
- The pony from the Lion's hat was found Sir Peter's pumpkin patch.
- The Turtle was the only one who ate the cake Cath made with a stolen pumpkin from Sir Peter's patch.
- The Three Sister's drawings advertise how the book ends.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: The last page solidifies Catherine as this sort of queen as she overrules the jury's ruling of Sir Peter and immediately sentences him to death.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Sir Peter is shown to be very scary when angered, to the point where he outright grabbed Catherine in the middle of a masquerade ball. He's fully willing to feed innocent people to the Jabberwok when Lady Peter is apparently stuck in that form and was fulling willing to kill Catherine after she killed the Jabberwock.
- In Love with the Mark: Jest was supposed to bring Catherine to the White King and Queen to steal her heart. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he ended up falling for her.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: Catherine steadily becomes more jaded as the novel continues when her dreams of her own bakery are thwarted at every turn, no one but her seems concerned about the Jabberwok, only for this trope to completely overtake her as the result of Jest's death.
- Marriage of Convenience: Catherine's marriage to the King of Hearts ultimately boils down to this. She barely cares for him as a person and has been trying to get out of his good graces since the very beginning. She only marries him to give the Three Sisters the heart of a queen and get revenge on Sir Peter.
- May–December Romance: While his age is never outright stated, it's implied the King of Hearts is at least twenty years older than Catherine.
- Never My Fault: Downplayed. Catherine does notice that the Turtle was the only one who ate her spice pumpkin cake just before his transformation into the Mock Turtle. A few days later she notices Hatta has the Turtle's bowler hat he made him and starts accusing Hatta's hats of being dangerous. Hatta quickly shuts this down by pointing out that he also noticed that the Mock Turtle was the only one who ate Cath's cake and so have others. Because Cath is fated to become the Queen of Hearts it's difficult to tell if this is her future persona bubbling to the surface and she's trying to shift the blame onto someone else or if Cath's just in denial and eager to find another explanation.
- Off with His Head!: Fitting given it's an origin story for the Queen of Hearts. Three notable examples include the Jabberwock/Lady Peter, Jest at the hands of Sir Peter, then Sir Peter himself. The novel even closes with this line.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: It's an origin story for the Queen of Hearts, so the reader gets to see Cath go from a Nice Girl to the tyrannical Queen of Hearts. Catherine does show several hints of the person she will become by the story's end.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Cath has some shades of as the novel continues and it becomes increasingly obvious that very few are taking the Jabberwock seriously. It isn't until after Jest's death and Cath becomes a bitter and jaded individual that she fully believes she's surrounded by idiots.
- Tagline: "Before she was the Queen of Hearts she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love".
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: A lot of heartache could have been avoided had Hatta not haphazardly thrown his pumpkin seeds away in Peter Peter's pumpkin patch.
- The Weird Sisters: Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie serve as this. Their little songs "Murder, martyr, monarch, mad" and "Peter Peter pumpkin eater" end up revealing several key plot points in the latter half of the novel.
- Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Averted; Jest has yellow eyes, but he is a good person. Granted, he's not entirely forthcoming about his motives for coming to the Kingdom of Hearts, but he genuinely loves Cath.
