Line #88 Main/FairestOfThemAll


1	->''Mirror, mirror, on the wall,\
2	Who is the fairest one of all?''
3
4	Every villain does what they do for a reason. The CardCarryingVillain wants to be [[EvilIsCool evil and cool]]. The DiabolicalMastermind wants money... ''more'' [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney money]], most likely. The StalkerWithACrush "wants" TheHero. The EvilOverlord wants to TakeOverTheWorld ([[Film/StreetFighter Of Course!]]).
5
6	The VainSorceress? She wants to be beautiful.
7
8	But she doesn't stop at wanting herself to be beautiful. She has to be ''[[GreenEyedMonster more ]]''[[GreenEyedMonster beautiful]] than [[WorldsMostBeautifulWoman any other woman in the kingdom, on the planet, or in the universe]]. How can she achieve this? By taking out the competition. There are two ways to do this:
9
10	# Supernatural Means: Essentially [[LiquidAssets suck the beauty or youth out]] of every woman and girl within your scope. The side effects for the victims can range from simply becoming unattractive to aging rapidly to [[TransformationTrauma inhuman mutation]].
11	# Traditional Means: Good old-fashioned murder. Recommended if you only consider one person as a threat to your beauty.
12
13	A SubTrope of DrivenByEnvy, this [[{{Plots}} plot]] is OlderThanFeudalism. Long before the days of Creator/TheBrothersGrimm's jealous {{Wicked Stepmother}}s, Classical goddesses had a habit of getting ''very'' jealous if a mortal was considered more beautiful than them. Psyche, for one, became a target of Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love and Beauty herself, but, as usual, was saved by ThePowerOfLove.
14
15	There's also the StageMom variation, in which a woman wants her daughters to be more beautiful than some other girl, usually her [[WickedStepmother stepdaughter]].
16
17	Very rarely will you find this situation {{Gender Flip}}ped, but the occasional SissyVillain does have this motivation.
18
19	May actually entail SoBeautifulItsACurse for the person who is deemed a threat. She seldom whines about it, though; perhaps because she is too busy trying to ''stay alive''.
20
21	The BloodBath is often a method a character may use to attain this.
22
23	A modern and mundane equivalent may involve cosmetic surgery. If FrozenFace ensues, the character will get no sympathy; then, since she has her looks, she doesn't want any.
24	----
25	!!Examples
26
27	[[foldercontrol]]
28
29	[[folder: Anime and Manga]]
30	* In ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'', the villainess Ranamon is considered the Digital World's [[WorldsMostBeautifulWoman most beautiful inhabitant]], but she gets murderously jealous of Izumi and Izumi's Spirit Evolutions, seeing them as threats to her title. In one scene, the villain Mercurymon deliberately says he thinks Izumi is more beautiful, knowing it would rile Ranamon up and make her fight harder.
31	* Theanime Adaptation of ''Snow White'' ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirayuki_Hime_no_Densetsu Shirayuki Hime no Densetsu]]'' (''The Legend of Princess Snow White'') has the wicked stepmother trying a GrandTheftMe instead. And it's not her first time.
32	* In ''Anime/SailorMoon'' Queen Nehelenia became obsessed with staying young and beautiful forever, and when she saw in her mirror her old and ugly future self, she decided to steal dreams from people, turning them into [[EmptyShell living dead]], and she intended to implement it everywhere.
33	[[/folder]]
34
35	[[folder: Ballads]]
36	* In the Literature/{{Child Ballad\|s}} ''Literature/YoungBeichan'', when the porter declares that the heroine is more beautiful than any woman he's seen, the bride's mother in some variants is in a snit because he didn't except her, not the bride.
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder: Comics]]
40	* In Zenescope's ''ComicBook/GrimmFairyTales'', one story focuses on a cheerleader's step-mother who is told [[{{Grimmification}} a darker, more violent]] version of Literature/SnowWhite. It turns out that the step-mother has been poisoning her daughter because she's jealous of both her beauty and her fame on the school's cheerleading squad (back in her youth, the step-mother was the best cheerleader).
41	* Doctor Doom is a rare male example of this trope (Type 2), although it's only one aspect of the many-layered GreenEyedMonster that drives his hatred for Reed Richards.
42	* In ''Comicbook/TheMightyThor'', Amora The Enchantress is considered the WorldsMostBeautifulWoman, but she often gets jealous of female superheroes and the girlfriends of male ones, seeing them as threats.
43	* In a ''ComicBook/RichieRich'' comic book story, Reggie Van Dough asks his MagicMirror who's the richest kid of all, and the mirror answers Richie Rich while trying to guess where to place Reggie in the ranking of rich kids. Reggie didn't like this, as this magic mirror was the creation of a Dr. Nimblebrain who was under his employ, and apparently the scientist found out that the mirror was programmed to be too honest with its reply.
44	[[/folder]]
45
46	[[folder: Fairy Tales ]]
47	* Literature/SnowWhite's WickedStepmother, [[TropeNamers of course]]. ''Modus operandi'': Hitman; when that didn't work, strangulation; when ''that'' didn't work, poisoned comb; and last but not least, [[TemptingApple poisoned apple]]. In the Grimms' first edition, she was a wicked ''mother'' instead.
48	* In "Literature/TheLaidlyWormOfSpindlestonHeugh", the stepmother, out of jealousy at her beauty, turns her stepdaughter into a dragon; she is disenchanted by her brother.
49	* In “Literature/GoldTreeAndSilverTree", the mother, Silver Tree, feigns illness and pretends to need to eat her daughter's heart and liver to get well; then she tries, twice, to poison her.
50	* In "[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sixswans/stories/twelvewilducks.html The Twelve Wild Ducks]]", the stepmother is [[GreenEyedMonster jealous]] of her stepson's bride's beauty and tries to have her killed.
51	* In "Literature/KateCrackernuts", the stepmother has her stepdaughter's head turned into a sheep's head, because she was more beautiful than her own daughter. Unique in that the titular character is said stepmother's daughter and she, in no way, agrees with her mother.
52	* Literature/{{Cinderella}}'s WickedStepmother was determined to prove her daughters were the Fairest Of Them All.
53	* A GenderFlip occurs in the Armenian folktale "Literature/AraTheHandsome", which is about a king of Armenia who is the most handsome man in the land, and the Queen of Assyria goes to war with Armenia just to have him, after he declines to marry her because he was already married.
54	[[/folder]]
55
56	[[folder: Films -- Animated ]]
57	* ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' parodies this with Lord Faarquad asking a Magic Mirror, "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, is this not the most perfect kingdom of them all?"
58	[[/folder]]
59
60	[[folder: Films -- Live-Action ]]
61	* In the BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy fantasy ''Film/TheBrothersGrimm'', the BigBad responsible for the disappearances of village girls by various means is a VainSorceress who cast a spell on herself hundreds of years ago to live forever when plague ravaged her kingdom -- not realizing that the spell couldn't prevent her from aging and rotting. She needs the girls so she can enact a complex ritual involving an eclipse, a mixture of blood samples from each, etc. to steal their beauty and restore her own. [[spoiler: Her first words once she's lovely again are "Who is the fairest of them all now?" The poor, "sleeping" beauties are saved first by her defeat and second by TrueLovesKiss.]]
62	* Subverted in ''Film/SnowWhiteATaleOfTerror''. Claudia isn't so much wanting to be fairest in the land as to be more beautiful than Lilli for two reasons: first, because she can surpass the shadow of Frederich's first wife, second, because her beauty is all she has left as a wife after a stillbirth leaves her barren.
63	[[/folder]]
64
65	[[folder: Legends & Mythology]]
66	* In the [[OlderThanFeudalism The Judgement of Paris]], Eris ([[AlwaysChaoticEvil goddess of strife]]) throws a golden apple with 'For the Fairest' on it into a wedding party. After ''years'' of fighting (as in, the son of the bride and groom has grown up into the world's greatest fighter), Zeus finally picks a very handsome mortal to act as the judge between the three finalists - Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Long story short, [[EpicFail the Trojan War happened.]]
67	* Psyche was so beautiful that people started worshiping her instead of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty herself, who naturally became extremely jealous. She sent her son, the god of love, to make her fall in love with a horrible person or creature. Instead, her son fell in love with Psyche. Oops.
68	* Countess UsefulNotes/ElizabethBathory reputedly [[BloodBath bathed in the blood of young women to regain her beauty.]]
69	[[/folder]]
70
71	[[folder: Literature]]
72	* [[Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray Dorian Gray]] wished he would remain young and [[{{Bishonen}} beautiful]] forever while his new portrait aged instead. BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor...
73	* There's a short story by Matthew Hughes in which a man wishes to be the richest, most intelligent, and most attractive person around and the being granting the wish responds by making everyone else poorer, stupider, and uglier.
74	* An interesting variant in Gail Carson Levine's ''Fairest'', with voice being the desirable quality.
75	* In Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/TillWeHaveFaces'', it's implied that some of the misfortune in the story is caused by the goddess Ungit being jealous of the princess Istra's beauty. It's a retelling of the story of Myth/CupidAndPsyche from Myth/GreekMythology example.
76	* Famously parodied in ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'', where there is apparently a list of the world's most beautiful women, and it is revised every year. Much of the narration about Buttercup's adolescence is about her progress up the list's rankings.
77	* Played with in the "Literature/SnowWhite" adaptation ''Literature/WhiteAsSnow''. Arpazia is more interested in her lost youth, which she believes her daughter Coira represents. But she does want to be beautiful, i.e. find the girlhood that was stolen from her.
78	* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''. In "A Feast of Crows" the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister, up till that point famed for her beauty, is starting to show the signs of middle age and becomes obsessed with bringing down the future Queen Margaery, because of a prophecy Cersei heard as a youth that she would be overthrown by a younger and more beautiful queen.
79	* In Lucy Daniel Raby's ''Literature/NickolaiOfTheNorth'', the WickedWitch Magda is pretty obsessed with power too, but her chief priority is her matchless beauty [[spoiler:which can be maintained only by sucking out childhood from children and turning them into obedient marionettes with no feelings]].
80	* In ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'', the former Queen of Kei banished all the other women from her kingdom so that she would be the most beautiful and there would be [[{{Yandere}} no chance of Keiki paying more attention to them than to her]]. Those that would not or could not leave were executed.
81	[[/folder]]
82
83	[[folder: Live-Action TV]]
84	* Done twice on ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'': First, by a witch who ran a beauty salon and had to kill 3 of her young female employees every so often in a ritual to keep herself young and beautiful. The second woman just stole girls' faces and enslaved them.
85	* ''Series/DenshiSentaiDenziman'': The BigBad, Queen Hedrian, ruler of the Vader Clan, travels around space with her minions ruining planets because she wants to be the only beautiful thing in the universe. All the monsters she creates are ugly, asymmetrical beasts. She even has a servant with the ability to transform into a mirror for her to ask "Whose the fairest?" to. In one episode she sends out a tooth monster to ruin the teeth of children for having nicer teeth than her.
86	* Used by ''Series/FridayThe13thTheSeries'', in which a cursed mirror could steal a person's beauty, killing them in an accident shortly thereafter.
87	* ''Series/KolchakTheNightStalker'': In "The Youth Killer", Helen of Troy's motivation is to remain forever young and beautiful. She achieves this by sacrificing beautiful young women to Hecate in in exchange for eternal youth and beauty.
88	* Averted in ''Series/OnceUponATime'' of all places. Despite the rivalry between Regina (the Evil Queen) and Snow White being one of the main plot points, this trope is never cited as a reason for it ([[SeriesContinuityError aside from a mention by Snow in the first episode that's then ignored by the rest of the series]]). Regina actually wants Snow dead because she holds her responsible for the death of her true love, and subsequent loss of happiness. There's never even any indication that Snow is supposed to be more beautiful than Regina, personal preferences aside anyway.
89	* ''Series/PowerRangersLostGalaxy'': Trakeena had a monster go around stealing girls' beauty and putting it in a jar in the form of gold dust, which left their skin covered in purple and yellow squares.
90	* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'': A girl who was ugly until she got plastic surgery, and then her mother -- like Cinderella's WS -- went around attacking girls at her high school who were naturally good-looking.
91	* Partly gender-flipped in an episode of ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'', in which a man stole women's beauty by taking molds of their faces, to transfer to [[MummiesAtTheDinnerTable his dead and decaying wife.]]
92	[[/folder]]
93
94	[[folder: Music Videos]]
95	* The video for the Music/FosterThePeople's "Music/{{Best Friend\|2014}}" involves a model who steals the beauty of other models by literally devouring them.
96	[[/folder]]
97
98	[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
99	* Wrestling/ExoticAdrianStreet would not tolerate the existence of any men in professional wrestling who were prettier than he was. Fortunately for most of his opponents, Street had an inflated belief in how pretty he really was.
100	* Texas based valet Venus decided she wanted to become a wrestler and set out on a journey to wrestle in every part of the country. Along the way Venus decided she should be the only pretty person in wrestling, teaming up with men to help her beat up other women and attacking the faces of her opponents, although she made an exception when she found Serena Deeb, who aided Venus as her R.A.T.S. TagTeam partner.[[/folder]]
101
102	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
103	* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' 4th Edition ''Magic'' supplement has a spell called "Steal Beauty".
104	* The Fairest from ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' -- come on, ''it's right there in the name'' -- aren't ''all'' like this. However, the special attentions visited on them by [[TheFairFolk the Gentry]] have left them more prone to losing touch with reality in the face of a crisis, and a sidebar in one book hints that some Fairest stoop to rather desperate measures once age starts to catch up with them...
105	* One villainess from an early ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' module became one because she became insanely jealous of a fellow priestess who was slightly more beautiful (Cha 18) than she (Cha 17). Apparently being more beautiful than 98% of humanity just wasn't enough for her, so long as someone even better-looking existed.
106	[[/folder]]
107
108	[[folder: Video Games]]
109	* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'': Gruntilda the witch sought to be the most beautiful person in the world, and created a "beauty extractor" to that end. She then set off to kidnap the fairest maiden in the land--who turned out to be the hero's little sister, Tooty: a cross between Goldilocks and a bear. And when you get a game over, [[ItsAWonderfulFailure she succeeds]].
110	* One of the possible quests in ''VideoGame/{{Darkstone}}'' features Mika the witch, who placed a curse on a nearby village. If any of the women in the village ever became more beautiful than Mika, she would be turned to stone. Although Mika was very beautiful in her youth, by the time of the game she's about a million years old, so all of the women are stone. The player character must locate the Mirror of Lies, which will convince her that she's still beautiful; once she believes that, she'll undo the curse.
111	* ''VideoGame/HiddenCity'''s Mistress of the Manor is a renown beauty with many suitors who dislikes having competitors, and repeatedly threatens to turn her maid Juliette into a frog likely out of jealousy of her beauty. In the Christmas Crime case, she volunteers to help the heroes defeat the Snow Queen not out of altruism, but because she doesn't want the gorgeous Snow Queen to rival her.
112	* ''VideoGame/LivingLegends: Frozen Beauty'': The evil Queen not only wants to become the fairest in the land, she also wants to become the fairest for ''all eternity''.
113	* A male example is done in ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'', but with strength instead of beauty: Bass, Mega Man's [[TheRival rival]], thinks he's [[ArrogantKungFuGuy stronger than everyone else]], is completely [[{{Narcissist}} stuck-up]], and is [[DrivenByEnvy jealous of Mega Man's strength]] and wants to [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou eliminate him]]. Sooner or later, this will be done.
114	* One of the bosses in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening'' is the Baroness, a noblewoman who was originally beloved by the peasants she ruled... until she began demanding they sacrifice their children in order for her to sustain a magic spell that would keep her eternally young and beautiful.
115	* ''Franchise/StreetFighter'' has a male example in Vega, a Spanish ninja whose defining trait is narcissism and admiration of beauty, especially his own, to the point that he goes berserk if any damage is done to his face and tries to murder those he deems ugly. He retains these traits in the ''Film/StreetFighter'' live-action movie, ''Anime/StreetFighterIITheAnimatedMovie'', and ''Anime/StreetFighterIIV''.
116	* In ''VideoGame/CastleOfIllusion'', the witch Mizrabel is envious of WesternAnimation/MinnieMouse’s beauty and popularity. She kidnaps Minnie so that she can try and rob her of it, leaving her boyfriend WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse to go rescue her.
117	* ''VideoGame/SuperGemFighter'' has this as ''VideoGame/DarkStalkers'''s Morrigan's motivation. Morrigan wants to be the fairest of them all and Chun Li is in her way. After taking out Chun Li, she's still unhappy as she finds her "little sister" Lilith to be constantly flocked by men.
118	* ''VideoGame/TwistedWonderland'': Vil Schoenheit is directly based on the Evil Queen from Disney's ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', as such he works tirelessly to achieve worldwide popularity and is very bitter that he is often AlwaysSecondBest. This trope is also [[spoiler:the name of his unique magic, which allows him to enchant any object to curse any person or thing touching it.]]
119	[[/folder]]
120
121	[[folder: Web Comics]]
122	* ''Webcomic/HeadTrip'' "explored" [[http://headtrip.keenspot.com/d/20120625.html possible complications with such magic]].
123	[[/folder]]
124
125	[[folder: Western Animation]]
126	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'': Snow White was no better than her WickedStepmother. She had the dwarves abduct Dot for being the cutest of the all. [[spoiler:In the end, after Snow is defeated, Dot had the MagicMirror covered so it'd be no longer able to have anyone DrivenByEnvy.]]
127	* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': "[[WordOfGod Did Ozai scar his son so he wouldn't be a threat to his good looks?]] [[AllThereInTheManual No one can be sure what goes on in the twisted mind of the Firelord]]."
128	** [[TallDarkAndHandsome It]] [[MrFanservice didn't]] [[ChickMagnet work.]]
129	* Spectra from ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom''. In her first episode, she feeds off children's misery so that she'll remain looking youthful. Her second appearance is similar to the ''Totally Spies'' example below, except she used the parts for a body for herself.
130	* One of the most memorable of ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'' episodes "Janine, You've Changed" introduced a creature that feeds on vanity -- she grants your wish to be more and more beautiful but slowly drains your humanity in the process until you become one of them. Janine accepted its deal to make her "perfect" and [[BrainwashedAndCrazy was almost fully transformed]] before Egon pulled her back with ThePowerOfLove.
131	* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' episode "Beauty Is Only Smurf Deep", Periwinkle the pixie is so vain and beautiful that when her magic mirror shows Vanity Smurf to be just as handsome, she gets so jealous that she goes as far as to give her competition a lethal mud bath... but fortunately for her, Vanity is such an understanding soul when it comes to the burdens that she bears (of being perfect in a world of imperfection) that she allows the Smurfs to save Vanity without putting up a fight.
132	* ''WesternAnimation/SofiaTheFirst'': When Sofia arrived at the castle, Prince James told Princess Amber she'd no longer be the fairest of them all.
133	* ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'': The girls uncover a modeling agency that steals the most beautiful parts of other girls to make their models perfect, including Clover's legs, Sam's teeth, and Alex's hair.
134	* In the ‘’WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes’’ short ‘Broom-Stick Bunny,’’ Witch Hazel inverts this: she fears becoming beautiful, and feels threatened when an uglier witch (actually Bugs in a mask) appears at her door one Halloween.
135	[[/folder]]
136

Context Main / FairestOfThemAll