Widow's Weeds

"The Bird don’t like us talking about Victor. It’s why she wears black all the time, you know."

— Enoch about Miss Peregrine and Victor, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Using black clothing to demonstrate mourning a person who has died. Not only at the funeral service, but also any time she is visiting their grave, a woman in mourning is shown wearing a black dress and/or a black hat with a veil. Usually, this is the widow of the deceased, but it can be other close female relatives as well, such as their mother, sister, or daughter. Spear Counterpart is a man wearing a black armband to show mourning since men wear black suits in other contexts as well.

According to That Other Wiki, black clothing and veils were colloquially called "widow's weeds" during the Victorian era, from the Old English word "waed," meaning "garment."

Not to be confused with Black Widow, or with a widow cleaning her husband's grave of weeds. Or a widow carrying THOSE kind of weeds (or growing them). Its sole purpose is to communicate nonverbally that someone has died.

This trope is typical of Western cultures, especially among Christians and Jews. In Eastern cultures, the traditional color of mourning and death is white, in which case, see Ethereal White Dress.

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Examples:

Advertising

• As could be expected, the Scottish Widows insurance company made a lot of this effect in its TV advertising, using a striking woman in full Victorian widows' weeds to illustrate that catastrophe can happen to anyone anywhere - better be prepared for it by buying our insurance.

Anime & Manga

• In Chapter 10 of the manga adaptation of Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, Elizabeth is seen wearing a black dress, a black hat, and a lace veil during a Grave-Marking Scene for her fiance August, who just died from Soap Opera Disease. The implication is that, despite not having officially married (her parents issued an Parental Marriage Veto due to him dying), she considers herself married to August, and with good reason: she has his child.
• In the anime adaptation of The Secret Garden, Himitsu no Hanazono, Mary Lennox is initially seen wearing black clothes since she is officially in mourning for her parents. As soon as she arrives at the Craven household, however, she switches to a light blue dress.

Comic Books

• In the Where Were You on the Night Batman Was Killed? arc in Batman, Catwoman wears widows weeds to the Joker Jury trial being held to determine who deserves credit for killing Batman. She dramatically whips the weeds off to reveal her costume when she takes the stand. Several villains object to her making a show of mourning the Caped Crusader.
• Following The Death of Superman, all the attendant heroes donned black armbands with an S-shield at the funeral. Most of them were shown continuing to wear them in their own titles for that month.
• Josie and the Pussycats: In a "what if" Fantasy Sequence, Melody is persuading Alan M to let Josie help out more, instead of playing macho and doing it all himself. She describes a future in which Alan M and Josie are married, and Alan M works himself into an early grave trying to support her. "Before long, Josie is buying a dress she hadn't planned for." Josie is pictured in a black veil, shopping for the dress to wear to his funeral, while a sales clerk observes, "Basic black? We've been selling a lot of those lately." Seen here

Eastern European Animation

• Ersatz: The woman at the beach momentarily pictures herself in these after the man dives into the ocean to catch a shark.

Fan Works

• Chapter 56 of Apartment Gensokyo has Yukari wearing these ("dressing like a widow" complete with the veil), however, she isn't mourning, just shy, wearing these while trying to avoid the gaze of a male kitsune who's smitten with her. She becomes more receptive to his affections when she realizes that she feels more confident while wearing this attire.
• Done for Rule of Symbolism in HBBIC (Head Bitches & Bastard In Charge). On the day that Inspector Riera comes to confront Principal Damocles over how poorly he's been running the school, the Primaries wear nearly all-black clothing (complete with Marinette wearing a black veil) to mark the death of his educational career.
• In The Return-Remixed, when DEAR staged their mock funeral after Beth Phoenix surrendered the Divas Championship due to a concussion, all the members are dressed in black, but Trish Stratus was wearing a black skirt suit and a black hat with a veil.
• Despite not loving her husband anymore, Willow from RWBY: Scars still wore a veil during his funeral.

Films — Animated

• In A Christmas Carol (2009), in the Bad Future sequence, the Cratchit family wears black armbands following Tiny Tim's death.
• In Disney's Encanto, Abuela Alma wears a black shawl most of the time, which represents her mourning for her husband Pedro, and the fact that her grief for him and fear of losing the rest of her family is the cause of the harmful pressure she puts on them all to protect the miracle. She finally stops wearing it in the end, when she finds healing through her reconciliation with Mirabel.
• In Disney's Frozen, the king and queen leave on a journey. They perish when their ship capsizes during a storm, and Anna is shown wearing a black dress afterwards. Elsa is not, but she's so depressed she can't control her powers, so she can't even leave her room.

Films — Live-Action

• At one point in The Assassination Bureau, Miss Winter and a female antagonist have a montage showing them dressing in competitively glamourous mourning - both are rather too fashionable by the end of it for the intended sentiment to apply, but it's a very ironic movie overall.
• In Cinderella (2015), after the death of Ella's mother, little Ella and her father are shown wearing black as they walk across the field just before the Age Cut which brings us to the film's main timeline. After her father's death, a deleted scene shows the stepmother and stepsisters wearing lavish black gowns, but the increasingly abused Ella is only given a black ribbon for her hair.
• The title character in Enola Holmes briefly dons a set as a disguise.
• In Flesh and the Devil, Felicitas is shown primping in front of a mirror. Then she puts on a veil, which is how the film lets the viewer know who won the duel between Leo and von Rhaden.
• Scarlett O'Hara buries two husbands and a child in Gone with the Wind and wears mourning on all three occasions. By the sequel Scarlett, she wears it for her sister-in-law Melanie and later fakes being a widow to avoid any scandal about her technically out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
• In The Great Train Robbery (1978), Miriam wears this as a part of the robbers' scheme to persuade the conductor that her supposedly deceased husband's coffin may travel inside the train's secure vault.
• Male variant in It's a Wonderful Life, with George and others at Bailey Building & Loan shown wearing black armbands after Peter's death.
• In Jaws, a grieving mother angrily confronts Chief Brody because he didn't close the beach, and now her son is dead. She is wearing a black hat with a veil.
• Kull the Conqueror: Queen Akivasha wears a black veiled dress after arranging King Kull's "death".
• Sonia is wearing the standard black dress and veil at the beginning of The Merry Widow. This doesn't stop Captain Danilo from wooing her, but it does stop him from recognizing her when they meet again in Paris.
• In My Reputation, Jess is forced by her mother to only wear black dresses, but she eventually pulls away from her domineering mother and dresses normally.
• Implied in The Princess Diaries. After Amelia's dance lesson, Clarisse turns off the music. Joseph turns it right back on, then pulls Clarisse close to him, telling her, "You've been wearing black too long." She had buried both her husband and her son.
• The Punisher (2004). Livia Saint is shown only from the back as she faints after receiving the news that her son has been killed, then at the funeral in a black dress and a veil which she removes to reveal her face to the audience when calling for Frank Castle's entire family to be killed in retribution, setting off the plot.
• Romeo and Juliet (1968):
  • Juliet's mother wears a black veil during Juliet's staged funeral.
  • In the final scene, all the Capulets and Montagues alike wear black during the real joint funeral of the two lovers.
• Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Marianne's mother wear these in Sense and Sensibility. The progress from all-black back towards lighter colors marks the progress of months. Her daughters also wear black accents initially.
• In Stage Fright (1950), Charlotte's insincerity and lack of remorse over the death of her husband is shown when she is primping and preening while putting on widow's weeds.
• In They Died with Their Boots On, Libby is wearing the black dress and veil when she makes her dramatic appearance in the last scene, her husband George having been killed at the Little Bighorn.
• Subverted in Thunderball. While James Bond is watching the funeral of SPECTRE agent Colonel Jacques Bouvar, he sees that Bouvar's widow is wearing a black dress, hat, and veil. Then he realizes that the widow isn't a woman at all... but a man, Bouvar himself, who was Faking the Dead.
• In Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, Aunt Roo dresses like this when she sings to her dead daughter's skeleton.
• William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Juliet's mother wears a black dress and veil during Juliet's staged funeral.

Literature

• White mourning appears in Anne of Avonlea; Anne wears white dresses during the two years the book takes place, it is specifically mentioned that the green dress she wears toward the end is the first color she has worn since Matthew's death.
• In the "Little Sister" spinoffs of The Babysitters Club, the old woman who lives next door to Karen's father, Mrs. Porter, dresses like this. Karen thinks it means she's a witch.
• A Christmas Carol:
  • Belle is described as wearing a mourning dress when she breaks off her engagement to young Scrooge. Who she's in mourning for is never specified (in an earlier draft, and in the 2009 film, she describes herself as an orphan, so presumably it's for one or both of her parents), but it suits her romantic heartbreak as well.
  • Subtly alluded to when the Cratchits are mourning Tiny Tim's death in the Bad Future sequence. Mrs. Cratchit and the girls are sewing and Tim's death is revealed when Mrs. Cratchit tries to hide her tears by saying "The colour hurts my eyes," at which the narrator comments "The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!" The implication is that they're sewing their black mourning clothes.
• In the Circle of Magic universe, Traders (Family-based merchant caravans that travel on land or sea) wear red when loved ones die. Daja eventually adopts a red armband in memory of her family, instead of wearing the all-red clothes all the time. Sandry wishes she could do the same, but because she is a noblewoman, social expectations require her to wear full mourning for far longer than she likes; she thinks that her parents, who were fun-loving pleasure-seekers, would find it silly for her to be wearing all black for years after they died.
• In Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, after Dora's death, at one point David is asked about his mourning armband and informs the questioner that it was his wife who died.
• In the Deryni novels by Katherine Kurtz, the widowed Queen Jehana wears all white (suitable to royal widows) for several years after her husband's death. Her quasi-nunlike apparel is also a form of protest against her son's open use of magic and his close relationships with other mages.
• In the Discworld spin-off Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, Nanny describes the various stages of mourning (from all black to adding grey and lavender, to being allowed to wear white with black trim, a process that takes three years). Nanny's view is that it's fine to just wear black underwear, and if she'd waited around for three years after her husbands died, she'd never have got anywhere.
• Elemental Masters series:
  • In The Serpent's Shadow, Dr. Maya Witherspoon is introduced as wearing a black outfit in mourning for her parents, who died a few months previous. It is mentioned that she intends to prolong the year of mourning as long as possible as a form of protection, as she is of mixed British and Indian descent and even a brute would hesitate to insult a woman of mixed race that is in mourning.
  • In The Gates of Sleep, Marina Rosewood is, following the death of her parents, outfitted with a new and all-black wardrobe by her Aunt Arachne. Marina wishes at one point that her aunt didn't require her to be dressed in the strictest possible interpretation of mourning, as normally young unmarried women could wear mauve, lavender, or violet during mourning without offending anyone. She even thinks to herself that she would end up looking like Queen Victoria or a would-be Gothic poetess before her period of mourning is over.
• Subverted in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie is expected to dress in mourning after the death of her second husband, but because he was abusive and possessive (such as forcing her to cover her hair and wear plain dresses for twenty years so that other men wouldn't look at her), she's all too happy to wear carefree colorful clothing again. This is mentioned in The Movie as well:
  Phoeby: (sarcastically) What shade of black is that?
  Janie: The same shade you've got on!
• In The Goblin Emperor, protagonist Maia arrives at court after his father's death in ill-fitting second-hand clothes that have been dyed black after having been another color originally. This unflattering outfit is one of the many signs of how his father, the late Emperor, neglected him. All the courtiers he meets wear black, if the colour of their clothes is mentioned. The late Emperor's widow, who is not much older than Maia, wears an excessive amount of black jewels.
• In Andre Norton's Ice Crown, the heroine dreams of the court after the king's death. Another character realizes it was a true vision because she described the (heavily purple) formal mourning, which she has never seen.
• The Legend of Anne Bonny: After Calico Jack Rackham is hanged, his mother shows up at Anne Bonny and Mary Read's trial dressed in black.
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:
  • At a visit to Aunt March's, Amy is shown her jewelry, including "the jet mourning rings and pins." (Jet is black, the only color of jewelry allowed to be worn during mourning.)
  • When Laurie and Amy meet again in Europe, it is shortly after Beth's death. Laurie notes how poignant Amy looks, partly because of her mourning and "the black ribbon that tied up her hair."
• In Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novel Unnatural Death, a lawyer definitely realizes that a woman who asked him a question — for a friend — had actually asked for herself, when he sees her again, and she tells him that the woman she had asked about, purported a friend's great-aunt, had died, and she herself is wearing mourning.
• In Mary Cary, Frequently Martha, Mary tells of a widow who wore a veil that reached the hem of her skirt after her husband's death, then cut in half after everyone had seen it enough, then discarded it for good shortly thereafter, and was ''gay as a girl."
• In Les Misérables, the first new clothing that Jean Valjean gives to little Cosette when he adopts her is black mourning garb to honor her dead mother Fantine.
• L. Frank Baum's Oz series:
  • In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy thinks she has to go back because they can't afford mourning, among other reasons. "My greatest wish now," she added, "is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it."
  • In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Dorothy sees, in the magic mirror, Uncle Henry and Auntie Em in mourning, thinking she had been killed in the earthquake.
• The male version occurs in Persuasion with Mr Elliot. Enough time had passed that he wasn't in full mourning, but he maintained a black crepe around his hat. The conversations about his (inevitable) marriage to Anne tend to involve the phrase "after a decent interval," even though it's also well-known that he and his late wife were unhappy together.
• In Peter Pan, when Wendy and her brothers resolve to leave Neverland and go home, Wendy thinks to herself "Perhaps Mother is in half mourning by this time." In Victorian culture, half mourning was the later phase of mourning dress, when people would gradually start to wear colors other than black again; what Wendy means is that maybe their mother is missing them less and less, and will forget about them if they stay away much longer.
• In Playing Beatie Bow, one of Abigail's fleeting visions of the Bow family upon returning to the twentieth century is of a slightly older Beatie in black. She assumes it's for Beatie's sickly brother Gibbie, but it turns out to be for either her brother Judah who died at sea, or her cousin, niece, and grandmother, who died in an epidemic.
• In The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox usually wears white. She is officially in mourning for her parents, but her guardian insists an all-black wardrobe is too much for a child.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: There is a male example in Aegon III Targaryen, who always wore black since he was a kid. Having outlived all but one of his brothers, his father, and his mother (who was burned alive and fed to a dragon before his eyes) during the Dance of the Dragons, he was constantly in a state of mourning throughout his life.
• Temeraire: The protagonist receives word of his estranged father's death while he's on deployment with the Aerial Corps. For the rest of the book, he wears a black armband, as it's setting-appropriate mourning attire that doesn't conflict with his need to stay in uniform.
• The undertakers' custom in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is to charge eighty percent of the insurance payout for the funeral, allowing the rest for mourning clothes. For Johnny's funeral, Katie gets herself a black hat and three-foot veil, according to Williamsburg custom, and Neely a black suit with long pants, as befitting his position as the man of the house. Francie just gets the shoes she has been needing anyway and has a black armband sewn on her old coat. Francine is relieved rather than jealous since she hates black and was afraid Katie might put her in deep mourning.

Live-Action TV

• Batwoman (2019). After her sister Kate Kane is killed, supervillain Alice changes her white Alice Allusion outfit to black, even if the only thing she's mourning is that her Evil Plan to arrange Kate's demise has just been stymied by someone else.
• Blake's 7. The actress playing Servalan decided to invert Evil Wears Black by always dressing in white. However, she changes to black after "Children of Auron" where she tries to have clone children created, only to lose them during the events of that episode.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In "Innocence" after Angel turns evil, Buffy has a dream that she's at a funeral, during which Angel draws her attention to a woman wearing the mourning veil, which she lifts to reveal Jenny Calender, tipping off Buffy about her being The Mole.
  • In "Villains", Buffy changes into a black shirt after finding Tara's body. Willow has already done a black makeover, albeit for entirely different reasons.
  • And then when a redeemed Willow visits her grave in season seven, she's wearing a long-sleeved black dress.
• The Crown (2016). Elizabeth's father George VI dies while she is away on a tour of the Commonwealth, and her maid didn't pack a black dress, so when her aircraft flies into London Airport (as Heathrow was called then) a black dress is brought on board so the new Queen can change into it and be appropriately dressed when she disembarks. She later meets Queen Mary who has the most awe-inspiring veil.
• Daredevil (2015): Karen wears a black dress when she goes with Matt and Foggy to Grotto's funeral. She does change into a brighter print dress later in the day, prior to having her first kiss with Matt in the rain.
• In Deadwood, Alma Garrett is often seen in black, and when she eventually wears other colors they're still subdued, like dark green.
• Dempsey and Makepeace: Murel, the ruthless leader of the heroin trafficking operation in “Make Peace Not War” dresses in decidedly old-fashioned Widows black garments, complete with a black veil for seemingly no other reason than to be more creepy, causing Dempsey to remark upon seeing her if anyone died. This has led to them being known as the “Black Widow.” At the end of the episode, Makepeace steals the get-up to impersonate so that she can also be present for the heroin bust.
• Doctor Who: Madame Vastra's usual attire (when she's not wearing battle clothes) is a black dress and veil that fits the traditions of Victorian mourning attire. As Vastra is the only surviving member of her Silurian colony the choice to wear mourning attire is likely her way of honoring her lost family. The veil also helps to hide her non-human appearance whenver she goes out in public.
• Downton Abbey: Lady Mary wears them in Series 4 after Matthew dies.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Ellaria Sand switches to all-black outfits and cuts her hair short after her lover Oberyn Martell is killed. Technically, they were never married, due to Ellaria being a bastard while Oberyn is a high prince, but they clearly considered themselves married in all but name.
  • The trope is conspicuously averted during the first season when Cersei Lannister continues to wear her usual bright colors despite the death of her husband, King Robert Baratheon, probably because she didn't actually love him and covertly arranged for the Hunting "Accident" that killed him. Cersei only starts wearing black after Joffrey's death and continues to do so as more of her family die.
• Played for laughs on Get Smart, as Max dressed like this when he went to his own funeral in disguise.
• In The Golden Girls when Dorothy's cross-dressing brother dies, several heavily-veiled, black-wearing women appear at the funeral. They were the guys from his poker night.
  • Blanche subverts this by wearing red, though this isn't in disrespect—she wears it specifically because she sincerely (and probably correctly) believes, "Phil would have liked this dress." And she modifies it with several touches of black anyway—hat, gloves, purse, etc.
• Parodied in a The Kids in the Hall musical segment, "Terriers." During the instrumental break, Bruce McCulloch comes across two veiled women in black bikinis, dancing beside a grave. He asks them politely to leave because "You're scantily clad and have nothing to do with the narrative; therefore, it's sexist... Wow. That hurt."
• The Musketeers: Constance Bonacieux starts wearing black after her estranged husband is murdered. She didn't love him to begin with and had effectively left him for D'Artagnan, but she still insists on mourning him properly. After a conversation with Queen Anne about enjoying as much time as possible with loved ones, Constance decides to abandon the mourning clothes.
  Queen Anne: Where are you going?
  Constance: To change out of this stupid dress. Black has never been my colour.
  • Queen Anne herself dons these at the end of the series after King Louis and Minister Treville die.
• Murdoch Mysteries is set in Victorian-Edwardian era (late 19th and early 20th century) Toronto, Canada, so many characters who have deaths in their families observe this, and many widows keep their mourning black for years after the deaths that prompted the clothing change. Just after her husband Dr. Garland is murdered in "Crime and Punishment", Dr. Ogden doesn't immediately adopt black clothing, and during his interrogation of her, Giles calls her out on it: "How very modern." Julia does wear widow's weeds after this, particularly when she's planning to meet Darcy's parents at the train station and in court during her murder trial.
• In Once Upon a Time, Regina starts wearing black after the death of her husband and "kept it" as she went public with being "the Evil Queen," saying it suited her.
• AI Natasha of Other Space dons these to mourn the passing of Art the robot.
• The Punisher (2017): That Karen is mourning Matt is made clear by the fact that her wardrobe is primarily made of blacks, blues, and muted red clothes.
• The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Night in Sickbay" had Archer having a Dream Sequence where he and T'Pol were all dressed up in traditional earth mourning clothes for Porthos's funeral.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • "Come Wander With Me." As Mary Rachel narrates the events via the lyrics of a folk song, it becomes apparent to Floyd that he is stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. She begs him to stay with her this time. He leaves, but he turns to look at her one last time. She is draped in a black shawl. He knows he's screwed.
  • "The Hunt." Hyder Simpson and his dog have suffered an accident while hunting. He can't understand why nobody is answering when he speaks until he sees his wife wearing a black dress.

Music

• The Beatles recorded "Baby's in Black," about a man pining after a woman who "dresses in black" long after her lover's death.
• "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss. In the video, the guilt-ridden ex-fianceé of the deceased is shrouded in a black shawl at the gravesite. Another woman, presumably his mother, is shown wearing a black veiled hat.
• Carrie Underwood sings "Two Black Cadillacs" about the funeral of a man who had left both a wife and a lover. One line in the refrain mentions how "the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry." Overlaps with Black Widow since it is suggested that the women teamed up to take revenge on him after discovering his two-timing.
  • In the video for "Just a Dream," widow's weeds make the Wedding/Death Juxtaposition explicit, with Carrie starting out the song walking down the aisle in a wedding gown and bouquet, only for it to morph into a black dress and black roses and all the guests into mourners as it becomes clear in the lyrics that they're at a funeral—the switch in the Bait-and-Switch of the first half of the song.
• "Long Black Veil" was originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell. The woman mourning for her deceased lover, who died for a crime he did not commit rather than expose their affair, wears the long black veil while visiting his grave.
• The Mars Volta: Referenced in a hypothetical context in "Cassandra Gemini."
• "Ballad of Forty Dollars" by Tom T. Hall. A man watching from a distance, but not actually attending his friend's funeral, hints at a desire to comfort the widow when he sees how attractive she is. He notes:
  That must be the widow in the car
  And would you take a look at that?
  That sure is a pretty dress
  You know, some women do look good in black
  -Later,
  He's not even in the ground
  And they say that his truck is up for sale
  They say she took it pretty hard
  But you can't tell too much behind the veil
• Tristania recorded a whole album called "Widow's Weeds" which focuses on mourning and grief for a lost love.

Poetry

• Walter de la Mare's Widow's Weeds puns on the trope. A poor old Widow in her weeds/Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds

Tabletop Games

• Unhallowed Metropolis features the Mourner character class. These members of the Mourner's Guild, usually women, are hired to watch over the bodies of the deceased until the funeral. During this time they must be ready to instantly decapitate the corpse should it re-animate, a common occurrence in the Neo-Victorian setting of the game. As part of their profession, female mourners are expected to dress in modified mourning wear at all times.
• In Warhammer 40,000's background, it's mentioned that the Adeptus Custodes took to wearing black cloaks after the Horus Heresy, to show their shame and grief for being unable to keep their master from being mortally-wounded and placed within the life-sustaining Golden Throne. This was in addition to forgoing their gilded Power Armor to go about in their helmets and simple leather breeches and boots.

Theatre

• The Adding Machine: Mrs. Zero wears a black dress ("I always look good in black," she says) and a heavy veil while visiting her husband on the eve of his execution. He scolds her about the cost ($64.20): "You'll be scrubbin' floors in about a year if you go blowin' your coin like that."
• Hamlet: the title character traditionally spends the whole play wearing black in mourning for his father.
• The Importance of Being Earnest: Jack wears full mourning dress when he announces the imaginary death of his imaginary brother Ernest. Almost immediately, Algernon turns up pretending to be Ernest, and comments on what ugly clothes Jack has on.
• Street Scene: Rose changes into a black dress after her mother dies. Her father notices.
• Twelfth Night: Olivia wears a black dress and veil due to the recent loss of her brother.

Video Games

• Barbara Jagger from Alan Wake wears widow's weeds, most likely in honour of her dead boyfriend, Thomas Zane.
• Ashe from Final Fantasy XII is shown this very early in the game, crying over the murder of her father and the death in battle of her husband.
• Never explicitly noted, but heavily implied with Almedha in Fire Emblem. Almedha was once a concubine of the Mad King Ashnard, Path of Radiance's Big Bad, and became queen dowager of Daein in the aftermath of the Mad King's War. She dresses in dark robes, is almost always seen with her veil up, and is noted to be quite fragile as an effect of all she's suffered through, to the point of going the God Save Us from the Queen! route for the sake of her beloved false son. Ironic considering that Ashnard never felt anything for her or their child (especially since it was discovered that their half-Dragon Branded child possessed no powers Ashnard could use to further his own ends).
• Love of Magic: Emily in the Alternate Timeline wears a black dress, in mourning for the Owyn of her timeline who died.
• Murder in the Alps: Irene Hoffman from Unforgiven wears black to show she's still grieving over her son Roberto Fiore who died eleven years earlier.
• In Persona 4, the Death Social Link is Hisano Kuroda, an old woman who always wears a black mourning outfit. The Social Link revolves around helping her get over her husband's death.
• Played for Laughs in Psychonauts: if Raz holds a bouquet of flowers while in the Milkman Conspiracy level and uses Clairvoyance on a G-Man, they'll see him as a weeping woman wearing a black dress, hat, and veil. They'll also see fellow G-Men holding flowers like this, due to them thinking holding an item means they're disguised.
• In The Sims 2, Mrs. Crumplebottom wears this, complete with pillbox hat. She's also quite bitter and seems to be particularly upset by Sims interacting with each other romantically as if she were jealous.

Visual Novels

• In Analogue: A Hate Story, *Mute describes doing this when a dear friend of hers passed away.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Beh'leeb Inmee, the widow of Case 3's victim, Tahrust Inmee, wears a black veil while carrying around a funeral photo of her husband. The game establishes that they both loved each other dearly, and she is even pregnant at the time of Tahrust's death. By the time the case is over, Beh'leeb takes the veil off, having said her goodbyes to her husband and deciding not to let the rebellion happen around her anymore, with her taking an active role instead.
• In Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, red is the traditional color of mourning in Revaire, and Revairan widows are expected to wear red for a suitable period after their husband dies. When generating an Ambitious Widow character, the player may choose whether she followed this custom, gave it lip service by wearing red only in public, or ignored it altogether.

Webcomics

• In Girl Genius Her Undying Majesty Queen Albia of England shifts her outfit to a long-sleeved modest dress and a black-veiled hat upon hearing that her sister queen Luheia, the immortal god queen of Skifander, has long since fallen in battle.
• In Namesake, in one flashback Alice Liddell is shown wearing mourning clothes after the death of her younger sister Edith.
• Parodied in Something*Positive. Attention Whore Kharisma Valetti attends theatre bigwig Avagadro Pompey's funeral in an outfit consisting of a sheer negligée over black cloth bands which barely cover her private parts.

Western Animation

• Justice League: When Superman is presumed dead in "Hereafter", the other Leaguers (except Batman, who refuses to believe that he's really dead) wear black armbands at his wake.
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • Dr. Hutchinson's mother, the Widow Hutchinson is always seen wearing a black dress and veil. Subverted when it's revealed that her husband isn't actually dead.
  • In another episode, "Old Fogey Froggy," Bev puts these on when holding a fake funeral for Ed, who's refusing to get out of bed due to a midlife crisis.

Real Life

• Victorian tradition gives copious details for how a widow is expected to dress after her husband's death, and for how long. To cease wearing mourning too soon was a sign of promiscuity. And it's not just one set of clothes either, middle-class etiquette dictated a set of three to seven dresses, from full black crepe to shades of gray to finally blue (just because her husband is dead does not excuse his wife from flaunting his wealth). It got to the point where the largest clothing store in London was solely devoted to selling mourning clothes. If you were poor, you could make do with dying your regular clothes black (that's how dyers in Victorian England made most of their money) or you could borrow mourning weeds from family (it's the Victorian Era, someone's always dying somewhere).
  • For a Victorian widower, a black hatband or armband was usually sufficient.
  • Queen Victoria herself wore mourning for the rest of her life after the death of her husband Prince Albert. This is part of the reason it went out of fashion in the 20th century, notwithstanding major world events that killed a huge number of people have shortened the mourning period, and led to the Little Black Dress.
• Jackie Kennedy Onassis at JFK's funeral, where she wore a black veil per Catholic tradition. Her widowhood lasted until her marriage to tycoon Aristotle Onassis five years later, and she wore a black leather jacket and sunglasses at Aristotle's funeral.
• Updated at the funeral of Michael Jackson with the women wearing dark glasses instead of a veil. The purpose is the same, to obscure the face and hide teary eyes.
• Mary of Scotland wore white mourning clothes after the death of her first husband, as that was the custom for French Queens at the time. While she eventually put off her mourning clothes for state occasions or other times the Queen of Scotland needed to dress to impress, she wore her full white veil for her second wedding, allowing the guests to each cut a piece off.

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