The Queen's Castle

The Queen's Castle is a location featured in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Though externally the archetype of a fairy tale castle, its walls hide many dark and arcane secrets. It serves as the home to the Evil Queen and Snow White before the young princess is forced to leave her castle due to her stepmother's mad intentions to kill her.
==Places of interest==
*Courtyard: The Courtyard is the location of the wishing well; here, Snow White sings "I'm Wishing" as she cleans, attracting the attention of the Prince, who climbs over the wall to meet her. As he sings "One Song" to her, the Queen watches from the window of her chamber high above the lovers, and furiously closes the curtains, jealous of the Prince's affections for Snow White. The courtyard is the only area of the castle shown in the film which does not reflect the Queen's personality.
*Royal Chambers: The Queen's Chambers are elaborately decorated to suit her vanity. The Queen rarely seems to leave her chambers; she watches events unfold below her from her window. A spiral staircase leads to the dungeon below.
*Magic Mirror Chamber: The Magic Mirror is located behind a blue curtain in a special chamber in the castle. Every morning, the Queen approaches the mirror (sometimes closing the curtains after her, implying that the Mirror is a possession she wishes to keep secret) and asks who the fairest one of all is; when the Mirror names Snow White fairest of all, the jealous Queen plots to do away with her stepdaughter.
*Throne Room: The Throne Room is appropriately decorated with a relief of a peacock to reflect the Queen's vanity. The throne is raised; the Queen thus addresses all her subjects from above. Humbert the Huntsman is summoned to the throne room, and ordered by the Queen to kill Snow White and remove her heart.
*Dungeons: A spiral staircase connects the castle's lavish upper rooms to the rat-infested dungeons. This area of the castle is used by the Queen to house both her enemies (whom she starves to death) and most of her arcane magical artifacts. It consists of several levels, the lowest of which leads out into the water moat surrounding the castle.
*Laboratory: When the Queen learns from the Magic Mirror that the Huntsman failed to carry out her orders, she descends into her laboratory. Here, the Raven is perched on a skull. The laboratory is filled with potions and magical ingredients, which the Queen mixes in various glass tubes, vials, kegs and bottles. Here, the Queen transforms into the Witch, and prepares the Poisoned Apple to kill Snow White.
*Dock: A trapdoor in the floor of the laboratory allows access to a flight of stone steps, leading further into the dungeons. This chamber is lined with cells, the homes of many former prisoners. The Witch sees one skeleton in a final attempt to reach a jug of water, and kicks the now empty jug at the skeleton, shattering the skull. Another flight of steps leads to a stone platform, where a small boat is moored. The Witch rows the boat through a tunnel leading outside of the castle, and reaches the shore leading to the forest. It is likely that this secret way of entering and leaving the castle is used by the Queen and her minions to keep the inhabitants of the nearby town ignorant of many of her underhanded deeds.
==Behind the Scenes==
===Design===
The castle may have been inspired by in Spain. Buildings in Bavaria, the Rhineland and Cyprus are also alleged to have been inspiration. Though the castle was primarily designed, like all locations in the film, by Albert Hurter, Ferdinand Horvath also made hundreds of inspirational sketches of the building and its chambers, suggesting the decadence above and the horror below; similarities have been noted between Horvath's designs for the dungeons and Piranesi's Carceri etchings. Another possible inspiration for the dock in the dungeons is Gustave Dore's illustration of Charon at the entrance to Hell in "Dante's Divine Comedy".
===Abandoned Concepts===
==== Imprisoning the Prince====
It was originally planned that, jealous of the Prince's affections for Snow White, the Queen would have him brought to her, and she would have him locked in her dungeon. As the Witch, she would have made the skeletons in the dungeon get up and dance. She would have left the Prince in the dungeon, and he was to escape in the manner of Errol Flynn, enabling him to reach Snow White and break the spell. The idea was abandoned when it was realized how difficult it was to animate the Prince convincingly, and the character only appeared when he needed to further the story, which centered primarily around the relationship between Snow White and the Queen. However, comics released to promote the film include such scenes; the Witch locks up the Prince and tells him what her plans are for Snow White, telling him that she will win his affections, while the Prince is defiant. Later, as the animators became more experienced at animating human characters, a similar concept was used in Sleeping Beauty, in which Maleficent has Prince Phillip captured and taken to the Forbidden Mountains, where she shows him visions of the future she has planned for him.
===Deleted Scenes===
====Stirring the Cauldron====
A very short sequence involving the Witch stirring her cauldron was fully animated and completed, and was among the scenes cut from the film by Walt Disney at the last minute. In the sequence, the Raven looks on as the Witch stirs the cauldron with a huge bone. She pauses to see that the smoke rising from the brew is shaped like skulls, and adds a drop of an unknown ingredient to the concoction:
:"Boil, cauldron, boil. Boil, cauldron, boil. Death within your depths I see, for one who dares to rival me. Through the magical recipe, boil, cauldron, boil."
At this, smoke from the cauldron fills the room. This sequence would have occurred immediately after the scene of the Seven Dwarfs going to sleep in their cottage; the sequence would have been followed by the scene in which the Witch dips the apple into the brew to make it poisonous.
==Disney Parks==
The Queen's Castle is the primary setting of Snow White's Scary Adventures and serves as the attraction's entrance at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris.
==Trivia ==
*The opening shot of the castle, half in shadow, half in sunlight, has been interpreted by some as a symbolic of the presence of both good (Snow White) and evil (the Queen) in the castle. Notably, when Snow White no longer inhabits the castle, it is shown in complete darkness, at night. It can also be assumed that because of the Queen's death, the castle was left abandoned, and since there was no one left in the royal family to rule (save for Snow White, who married the Prince and began to live with him), the kingdom of the Evil Queen had fallen.
*In the Disney Princess franchise, this castle is the one that is closely associated with Snow White.
*The castle was appropriately used as the backdrop for the film's poster to suggest the genre and nature of the film.
==Gallery==
Queen's-Castle-2-(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).jpg
Snow-white-disneyscreencaps.com-32.jpg|The Queen in the magic mirror chamber.
Snowwhitemaid.jpg|Snow White in the courtyard.
Snow-white-disneyscreencaps.com-200.jpg|Snow White at the wishing well.
File:SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs19374KHearWhatIHaveToSay.png|Snow White's balcony window.
Window.jpg|The Queen spying on Snow White and the Prince from her balcony window.
Queenthrone.JPG|The Queen in the throne room.
Queens Castle (evil).png|The castle at night.
Snow-white-disneyscreencaps.com-5494.jpg
Snow-white-disneyscreencaps.com-5603.jpg|The Queen storming downstairs.
Witchdungeon.JPG|The Witch in the dungeon.
Witch boat.jpg|The Witch rowing away from the castle.
Snow White deleted scene - cauldron 1.jpg|The Witch and her raven in a deleted scene.
Snow White Poster.jpg
Castledoors.jpg|The castle's gates in "Snow White's Scary Adventures".
Spookydungeons.jpg|Spooky dungeons.
Castlecourtyard.jpg|The courtyard.
Witch66.jpg
Witchesbrew.jpg
Gustaftenggrendungeon.jpg
Swvinyl3.jpg
CandycdBKwCU2.jpg
CandycdBKwCU1.jpg
CandycdBKwall.jpg
Once Upon a Time - 2x02 - We Are Both - The Evil Queen's Palace.PNG|The Queen's Castle in Once Upon a Time
Evil-Queen-castle.jpg|Evil Queen's castle during morning
Once Upon a Time - 6x10 - Wish You Were Here - Dark Palace.jpg|The Castle in the Wish Realm
File:SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs1937ConceptArtwork4.jpg|Concept sketch of the castle by a Disney Studio Artist (1).
File:SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs1937ConceptArtwork1.jpg|Concept sketch of the castle by a Disney Studio Artist (2).
Hovarthstaircase.jpg
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs concept - Balcony hovarth.jpg
Queen at Mirror Visual Development.jpg
Queen at Mirror Visual Development (2).jpg
8ac34cb749c827906e4f8d2e7f1a01f3.jpg|The Wicked Queen's Castle Throne, Is The Throne Where The Queen Was Sitting
File:Snow White Redesign 9.jpg
Disney Princess Snow White's Story Illustraition 2.jpg
DisneyPrincessCastlePins23.png|Disney Princess castle pins
The Queen's Castle - Mirror Chamber.jpg
SnowWhiteCastlePuzzle.png
CastleCollectionQueensCastleFigure.png
DPrincessHomePins24.png|Disney Princess pins
Snow White (2025) official trailer (4).jpg|The Castle in Snow White.
Snow White (2025) - Evil Queen Magic.jpg
Snow White (2025) official trailer 2 (10).png
Snow White (2025) official trailer 2 (15).png
==See also==
*The Queen's Castle (Once Upon a Time)
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es:El Castillo de la Reina Grimhilde
fr:Château de la Reine
it:Castello della Regina
pt-br:Castelo da Rainha Má
ru:Замок Королевы
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Category:Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs locations
Category:Castles
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Category:Once Upon a Time locations
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