Lady Tremaine

Lady Tremaine is the main antagonist of Disney's 1950 animated feature film Cinderella. As the cold-hearted stepmother of Cinderella, Lady Tremaine does not harm her stepdaughter physically. Rather, she seeks to punish and abuse her psychologically, motivated by her envy of Cinderella being far more beautiful than her own awkward daughters, Anastasia and Drizella (although her abuse later extends towards them). Lady Tremaine was also a socialite, determined to gain higher status by marrying one of her daughters to Prince Charming or another bachelor of noble or royal blood.
==Background==
===Development===
Lady Tremaine was voiced by Eleanor Audley, who also provided live-action reference for the character. She was animated by Frank Thomas.
Thomas commented that Lady Tremaine was the driving force throughout the film and that she had to be believable, even though she was far from human, to be considered a serious threat to the realistically animated Cinderella. The fights between Lucifer and the mice could be seen to reflect the (much less physical) conflict between their human counterparts, Lady Tremaine and Cinderella.
Like all the character animators for Cinderella (excluding Ward Kimball, who animated Lucifer and the mice), Thomas used live-action footage as a reference when drawing the frames of animation. Eleanor Audley, dressed as Lady Tremaine, was filmed performing every action the character was required to make; the individual frames from this footage were then placed under animation paper. The actions were not traced exactly but used as guidelines.
Whenever the photostats were followed too closely or a piece of human action was directly copied, the results seemed to the animators to lose the 'illusion of life'. Therefore, the live-action reference was used primarily to suggest to the animator movements and mannerisms; he may not have thought of otherwise. These were then applied to the animated character within their context. Thomas praised Audley's cold, regal performance, the inspiration for his animation of the character.
===Personality===
Unlike most other Disney Villains, Lady Tremaine doesn't possess any magical powers (until she finds Fairy Godmother's wand in A Twist in Time) or exert any physical force. She strongly believes in maintaining grace and self-control, reminding her daughters of this when the two fight during their music lesson. The only time she herself breaks this rule is, ironically, at the point when Cinderella interrupts the music lesson to bring Lady Tremaine the invitation to the royal ball (at which point she frustratingly slams her hands onto the keys of the piano). She has a sinister glare and is very cruel to Cinderella; an example is when she silences her harshly twice when ordering Cinderella to do chores in the château. She even does the same to Anastasia and Drizella occasionally, implying that she's not much better towards her two biological daughters than she is towards Cinderella.
Lady Tremaine holds great envy towards her stepdaughter simply for her beauty and wholesome charm, so she treats her stepdaughter like a servant in her own home. A tyrant who employs subtle methods, she is deviously manipulative in controlling Cinderella by maintaining a sham benevolence in her household authority; she never physically abuses Cinderella and instead encourages her daughters to do so, while Lady Tremaine herself opts for verbal and emotional abuse. For example, when she slyly noted that Cinderella fixed up her dress with the help of Drizella's beads and Anastasia's sash, her daughters took the initiative to rip Cinderella's dress to shreds. Lady Tremaine also makes sure she never has to keep her promises, especially those she makes to Cinderella since she wants to make sure Cinderella is never happy, while simultaneously remaining true to her words. This is done when she falsely promises Cinderella that she can attend the ball if she can find something suitable to wear, and once she manipulates her daughters into tearing up their stepsister's dress, Cinderella is reduced to rags, leaving her unable to attend the ball. Her stepmother then cruelly bids Cinderella "good night", ultimately maintaining her ostensible 'fairness' in her side of the bargain.
By Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, however, Lady Tremaine's personality and overall aura took a darker turn, as she herself was implied to have become far more openly abusive towards her two biological daughters, specifically towards Anastasia, when Drizella briefly suggested she and Lady Tremaine beat Anastasia with a stick the latter had found. Her newfound violent nature was unleashed during the climax when she tried to turn both Cinderella and Anastasia into toads when the latter refused to marry Prince Charming, having already turned some of the guards into animals, and would most likely have done the same to the King and everyone else if she succeeded, as her aim to seize the kingdom may have also been fuelled by a lust for power.
Almost all of Tremaine's actions are motivated by a selfish hunger for prestige, and potentially even a lust for power and domination, as she wants to marry her daughters off to those on the top of the social ladder, most likely as a means of gaining access to the palace. Tremaine expects her daughters to be utterly obedient and is infuriated when they are not, as seen when Drizella almost divulged their plan as Cinderella was being exiled, and more notably when Anastasia chose not to marry Prince Charming out of love.
In the Kingdom Hearts games, she is also shown to be quite reckless when she doesn't get her way, as evidenced by her summoning an Unversed to kill Cinderella and Aqua; apparently, neither being aware nor even caring if the Unversed in question harms her or her daughters in the crossfire.
===Physical appearance===
Lady Tremaine appears to have aged well, with sharp facial features, including a notably large, hooked nose with pronounced creases on both sides. She has gray hair (brown in her youth) worn in a high heart-shaped pompadour, with a small lighter gray streak in the middle. Her green eyes are fierce and evil-looking when she is either angered or harboring evil thoughts, and her green orb-shaped earrings contrast her eye color. Her casual and most commonly seen set of clothes consists of a large crimson gown with a golden brooch near her neck that has a green gem in it, and the gown has a high purple collar with extended purple sleeves (She wears a purple version of this outfit in the third film). She wears a large green ring on her right ring finger that matches her earrings and brooch, and in the finale, certain close-ups show her nails are painted a lavender hue to compliment her sleeves. When sleeping, she wears a long-sleeved blue nightgown with a light blue collar and a pink hairstrap with azure straps. Her formal attire (which she wears to the ball) is a long purple gown with short sleeves. She usually carries an ebony cane with an inlaid stone, more for aesthetics than physical support. During a mid-credits sequence in Cinderella III, she sports a maid gown that highly resembles Cinderella's.
In the live-action re-imagining of the original film, despite being the mother of two fully-grown daughters, Lady Tremaine is a beautiful and elegant woman with red hair and blue eyes and is much younger in age than her animated counterpart. She is always fashionably dressed; for example, for the royal ball, she wore a gown made of emerald green taffeta with gold inserts, a pair of gold satin gloves, and her hair was embellished with three golden feathers.
==Appearances==
===Cinderella===
During Cinderella's youth, Lady Tremaine, a widowed noble with two daughters (Anastasia and Drizella) marries Cinderella's father, a widowed gentleman who is desperate for his daughter to have a maternal figure in her life. Following the sudden death of Cinderella's father soon after this, Lady Tremaine, who is jealous of the fact that Cinderella is more charming and beautiful than her own daughters, shows her true colors, mistreating Cinderella and forcing her into servitude while exhausting the family fortunes on spoiling Anastasia and Drizella in hopes of molding them in her own image.
One day, Lucifer (Lady Tremaine's pet cat) chases Gus (one of Cinderella's mouse friends), who hides inside Anastasia's teacup. When Anastasia finds the mouse she becomes horrified and reports the incident to her mother. Lady Tremaine responds by readily holding Cinderella responsible and punishes her with extra chores, silencing her harshly when she attempts to object. She then, as a sense of poetic justice on Lucifer, adds onto the pile the request to give the cat a bath.
Later that day, Cinderella interrupts Lady Tremaine and her daughters' music lesson to inform them of an invitation to a ball at the palace that night. Lady Tremaine agrees to let Cinderella attend, but only if she finishes all of her chores and finds a suitable dress. Cinderella decides to restyle an old dress of her late mother's to wear to the ball. However, Lady Tremaine has no intention of letting Cinderella go and proceeds to give her stepdaughter more and more chores throughout the day. Unknown to any of the Tremaines, Cinderella's animal friends fix up the dress for her, using beads and a sash thrown out by Anastasia and Drizella.
That night, when Cinderella appears ready for the ball in her mother's dress, Lady Tremaine, still unwilling to let her stepdaughter join them, recognizes her daughters' beads and sash on the dress and indirectly prompts Drizella and Anastasia to viciously tear Cinderella's dress apart, leaving her unable to attend the ball. When Cinderella, with the help of the Fairy Godmother, nevertheless attends the ball, her stepfamily does not recognize her, due to the Fairy Godmother's magic having drastically altered her appearance, though Lady Tremaine does notice a similarity on Cinderella as she dances with Prince Charming. Before she can study the mysterious girl long enough to make the connection, the Grand Duke closes the curtains to give them privacy.
At the news that the Prince will marry the girl whose foot fits in the glass slipper left behind at the ball, Cinderella becomes quite distracted and falls into a dreamlike state, dancing and singing "So This is Love" to herself. It is through this that Lady Tremaine finally realizes Cinderella was the mysterious girl who danced with the Prince at the ball. She quietly follows Cinderella up the tower and locks her within her room, putting the key in her dress pocket.
As the Grand Duke then arrives with the glass slipper, Lady Tremaine instructs her daughters not to fail her. She watches as both Anastasia and Drizella try their hardest to force their enormous feet into the slipper. While this is happening (the stepsisters prolong the process with their repeated attempts to get the slipper to fit their feet), Cinderella's two mouse friends, Jaq and Gus, steal the key from Lady Tremaine's pocket and bring it to the door of Cinderella's room. The mice succeed in allowing Cinderella to free herself from her room despite Lucifer trying to delay them. When Cinderella appears and calls to the Duke, Lady Tremaine insists to the Duke that Cinderella may not have attended the ball as she has been a household servant, despite having deduced that she has. The Duke orders Lady Tremaine to step aside by reminding her his orders were that every maiden in the kingdom will try the slipper on. However, in one underhanded, last-ditch attempt to shatter her stepdaughter's hopes, Lady Tremaine trips the herald as he runs over to Cinderella, causing the slipper to fly off its cushion and shatter into pieces. Just when Tremaine smiles confidently believing that will be keeping her stepdaughter in her home for the rest of her life, Cinderella reveals that she has the other slipper, and Tremaine immediately goes from being proud to horrified when she sees it.
===Cinderella II: Dreams Come True===
Lady Tremaine made her second film appearance in the Direct-to-DVD sequel Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, although she has much less screentime than the previous film. In this film, she appeared exclusively in the "An Uncommon Romance" segment, which is the third and final story of the film. Lady Tremaine is shown to be cold towards her own biological daughters, implying she hasn't treated them much better than she treated Cinderella.
Now that Cinderella is no longer living with them, Tremaine is now focused on marrying off both of her daughters to wealthy and noble bachelors at Cinderella's ball that she has invited them to. When Anastasia falls for a common baker, Tremaine harshly forbids her to do so much as speak to him again or even enter his bakery again. Thus, Anastasia must defy her mother's wishes for the first time, and the segment ends with her attending Cinderella's ball with the baker she presumably will soon marry.
===Cinderella III: A Twist in Time===
Lady Tremaine's most significant role to date has been in the second direct-to-video Cinderella sequel Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. Unlike in the first two films, she is far more evil and physically abusive not only towards Cinderella, but also her two biological daughters (particularly Anastasia).
With Cinderella gone, Lady Tremaine forces Anastasia and Drizella to assume all the housework, resulting in the kitchen being filled with masses of pots and pans due to their laziness. Lady Tremaine acquires the Fairy Godmother's magic wand after Anastasia finds it. Intent on ruining Cinderella's happy ending and stealing it for her own daughter to gain access to an opulent lifestyle in the palace, Tremaine uses the wand to reverse time and undo Cinderella's "happily ever after" (turning Cinderella back into her virtual maid). She also enchants the glass slipper to fit Anastasia, so that Cinderella never gets to try on the slipper herself. When Cinderella tries to prove she was the one who danced with the prince, even showing the other glass slipper, Lady Tremaine gaslights her into believing that it was all a dream before shattering the other slipper. At this point, Lady Tremaine then estranges Cinderella, although she gives her some freedom, she coldly forbids her from going to the palace or speaking to the Prince. Before leaving the chateau, she slyly instructs Cinderella to clean up the broken glass, reminding Cinderella of her maid status.
She then uses the wand to enchant Prince Charming into forgetting Cinderella and marrying Anastasia instead, making him believe that Anastasia was the girl whom the Prince danced at the ball the other day instead of Cinderella. When Anastasia shows her mother and sister a seashell she was given by the King, she scoffs at the gift and its symbolism, disregarding the idea of love and believing that the wand's power is much more superior. After having Cinderella banished, Drizella almost divulges the plan by saying that the Tremaine family has 'won', which prompts her mother to warn her to remain silent unless she wishes to join Cinderella. This is another notable example of Lady Tremaine's cruelty having become much more indiscriminate.
When Prince Charming discovers the truth, Tremaine makes her most notable—and horrific—use of the Fairy Godmother's wand by transforming Anastasia into a mirror image of Cinderella, then teleporting the real Cinderella into a pumpkin (that becomes a nightmarish travesty of the original coach from the first film) to be killed off by Lucifer, which she uses the wand to transform him into a human coachman. Fortunately, Cinderella manages to escape and returns to the wedding.
Ultimately, Anastasia is her mother's undoing; she comes to feel reluctant to marry somebody under false pretenses; the Prince does not love her, nor does she truly love him, and she cannot bear to live the rest of her life pretending to be something she is not (even if it means finally possessing beauty). Cinderella arrives back at the Palace, just in time to witness, to her amazement, and to Tremaine's fury, Anastasia saying, "I...don't". Angered by both Cinderella's interference and Anastasia's sudden conscience, Lady Tremaine and Drizella emerge from their hiding place, now intent on getting revenge on both of them for their defiance.
Angrily, the King orders some of his guards to arrest Lady Tremaine. Outraged that her plans into marrying the throne has been ruined once again, Tremaine refuses to concede defeat and instead, decides to seize the whole kingdom by force and defends herself by turning the guards into various animals — the guards coming at her from the front turn into chickens, the guards coming from the right turn into pigs, and the guards from the left turn into rabbits, so that they cannot arrest her. Tremaine is about to turn Anastasia into a toad until Cinderella steps in to protect her, not willing to let Lady Tremaine harm Anastasia for trying to fix her happy ending or use magic to terrorize the kingdom. An unfazed Lady Tremaine decides to turn them both into toads, but the Prince intervenes and reflects the magic beam with his sword, and it hits herself and Drizella instead. Anastasia then restores herself to normal before giving the magic wand to Cinderella so that she can undo all the wrongdoings that her stepmother has committed.
During the end credits, Lady Tremaine and Drizella have been restored to their human forms but are wearing scullery clothes identical to those Cinderella used to wear, implying that they will be forced to work as servants under the King's authority as a punishment for their cruelty towards Cinderella, Anastasia and the kingdom.
===Cameos===
Lady Tremaine was given a few cameos with her daughters and Lucifer in House of Mouse. In the episode "Pete's House of Villains", she makes Pete (who is dressed like Cinderella when the former was Tremaine's slave) clean the floors as punishment for attempting to take over the club, using her menacing glare on him, much to his fear. Other cameos include her sitting alongside the Evil Queen.
She made the same cameo in Mickey's House of Villains and probably even took part in the House of Mouse's takeover with other villains.
Lady Tremaine makes a cameo in the Who Framed Roger Rabbit Special Edition DVD on one of the menus but does not appear in the film itself. She can be seen pushing Baby Herman's buggy as he smokes a cigar. Considering that the film takes place in 1947 and Cinderella debuted three years later, her absence would make sense.
An emoticon version of Lady Tremaine also appeared in the Cinderella entry of the As Told by Emoji short series.
==Printed media==
In one of the Disney Reading Series, Lady Tremaine and her daughters visit Cinderella and her husband at his castle. She keeps up the pretense that she no longer harbors any ill will towards Cinderella but is later shocked when her daughters inform her that Cinderella is apparently planning to supplant them with "special people" (unaware that Drizella and Anastasia were the special people she was referring to) and plotted alongside them to sabotage Cinderella's efforts.
===So This is Love (A Twisted Tale)===
Compared to her film role, Lady Tremaine serves a smaller role as a secondary antagonist (the main antagonist being the Grand Duke).
===Cold Hearted===
Tremaine acts as the protagonist in the eighth Disney Villains novel which shows the circumstances of her first meeting with Cinderella's father and how they eventually came to be married, along with her cruelty extending to Anastasia and Drizella in Cinderella's absence.
==Video games==
===Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep===
In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Lady Tremaine's role is identical to that of her film role. Treating Cinderella as a mere servant and showing no love towards her, the wicked stepmother does all in her power to see that her daughters are successful in life. She is upset by their constant sibling rivalry, also showing an extreme affection for her devious cat named Lucifer, despite the animal's cruelty to Cinderella's mouse friends.
After discovering the identity of the maiden that had won Prince Charming's heart at the royal ball to be none other than Cinderella, Lady Tremaine immediately locked her in her room when it came time for Anastasia and Drizella to try on a single glass slipper that had been left behind when the girl fled. Enraged when Cinderella was let out of her room by Jaq and the slipper fit her, Lady Tremaine used the jealousy in her heart to turn Cinderella's pumpkin carriage into an Unversed, the Cursed Coach, in an attempt to eliminate Cinderella and Aqua. Her scheme backfired when one of the fire bombs the Cursed Coach produced landed on her and her daughters, presumably killing them.
===Disney Emoji Blitz===
Lady Tremaine appears as a Villain Emoji, requiring the player to defeat her in her own Villain Event in order to unlock and upgrade her, or randomly obtain her from a Villain Box. When her Power is activated, Cinderella dashes across the screen, dropping a cracked glass slipper onto the board. When the slipper is swapped with another emoji or is hit by a powerup, it will shatter into a large area, and all emojis hit by the shards of glass will transform into Lady Tremaine emojis. Lady Tremaine is part of the Cinderella Villains collection (alongside Anastasia, Drizella, and Lucifer), requiring the player to unlock and upgrade all four Cinderella villain emojis to earn a free Villain Box to unlock / upgrade a different Disney Villain.
==Disney Parks==
Lady Tremaine occasionally appears in the Disney theme parks as a meetable character. She is known to be considerably vain and sarcastic to the visiting guest(s), just like how she treated Cinderella and her daughters in the film.
===Walt Disney World===
In Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular at the Magic Kingdom, Lady Tremaine is the last of the villains Maleficent conjures as one of the "frightful friends" to help the Sanderson Sisters with their Halloween celebration. Tremaine and the others join the sisters in singing "I Put a Spell on You" in the show's finale.
She can also be found in the Magic Kingdom for meet-and-greets and is fairly common during the seasonal events occurring in the park, specifically during Halloween alongside other Disney villains.
===Tokyo Disney Resort===
A picture of her was shown in the attraction Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour.
===Hong Kong Disneyland===
Lady Tremaine can be seen ominously walking down a staircase during the final scene of The Nightmare Experiment. She also made an appearance during the finale montage of Villains Night Out!
===Disney Cruise Line===
Lady Tremaine makes an appearance on Twice Charmed, a show on the Disney Cruise Line. Lady Tremaine grows a deeper hatred for Cinderella as the days go by and soon enough she gains her very own Fairy Godfather, a male counterpart of Fairy Godmother. Unlike Cinderella's magical friend, Tremaine's godfather is an evil and dark magician-like man. She uses his magic to reverse time to take control of the King's kingdom!
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*An early design sketch of Madame Leota for the Haunted Mansion attraction shows a striking resemblance to Lady Tremaine, featuring the same facial structure and exact hairstyle of a Victorian hair bun. This is most likely due to the fact that Eleanor Audley also provided the audio recording for Madame Leota as well.
*In the 2015 movie, she is a noble, which is the reason Cinderella's father married her in the first place.
*Lady Tremaine was nominated for a place in 'AFI's 50 Greatest Villains list', along with the Evil Queen, Stromboli, Man, Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, and Ursula.
*In the original French story, the stepmother receives only a very minor mention in the beginning; it is the stepsisters who are noted throughout the rest of the story.
*Lady Tremaine's name is only mentioned once in the film, during the ball: when Anastasia and Drizella are getting ready to meet the prince, the court announcer says, "The Mademoiselles Anastasia and Drizella Tremaine, daughters of Lady Tremaine". This is the only time that her name is referenced in the original film or the animated film trilogy. All other times, Lady Tremaine is addressed only as "Mother" by her daughters, "Stepmother" by Cinderella, and "Madam" by the Grand Duke. Her name is mentioned much more frequently in the 2015 film.
*In the opening of the 1950 film, Lady Tremaine is depicted with brown hair in her younger years, a trait which Drizella's brunette hair color somewhat resembles.
*Eleanor Audley, who was the voice of Lady Tremaine in the original 1950 film, also voiced Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. It can be easily perceived because the two villains had similar mannerisms and voice tones. In fact, her performance as Lady Tremaine was partly the reason why she was given the role. Similarly, her succeeding voice actress (Susanne Blakeslee) also voices Maleficent.
*The Into the Woods official website at one point implied that Lady Tremaine would be the Wicked Stepmother role in the live-action adaptation. However, this was later revealed to be an error, and Disney confirmed the characters would not be.
*In the original film and Dreams Come True, her dress is crimson. In A Twist in Time, her dress is purple, implying that she had more than one dress in her wardrobe.
*Tremaine is a Cornish surname, as well as a village and civil parish in Cornwall. This might suggest her family is of Cornish descent.
*Lady Tremaine's eyes briefly turn yellow when she locks Cinderella in her room, clearly showing how far on the path of evil she has gone.
*Lady Tremaine breaks several laws in the first film but is not punished.
**She did not sending Cinderella to the ball despite the king's order that "every elgible maiden" attend.
**Destroying the glass slipper before Cinderella could try it on could be considered an act of treason, since she was also trying to prevent the prince from getting married. Tripping up the herald would also be assault.
*Lady Tremaine is one of only three main antagonists in the Disney animated canon to be a biological parent, being mother to her daughters, Anastasia and Drizella, with the others being Robert Callaghan (father to Abigail) and King Runeard (father to Prince Agnarr). However, while Lady Tremaine and Runeard have no love for their respective children and only see them as pawns to their images and ranks in society, Robert genuinely loves and cares about Abigail (and his belief of losing her is what temporarily turns him into a villain). Lady Tremaine is also the only one of these three antagonists whose children are also bad (though nowhere near as evil as she is), since Abigail and Agnarr are good people, unlike their respective fathers.
==See also==
*Lady Tremaine (Once Upon a Time) 
*Cinderella's Stepmother
*Lady Tremaine (Cinderella 2015)
*Lady Tremaine (Descendants)
*Rapunzel Tremaine
*Trey
==External links==
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de:Böse Stiefmutter
es:Lady Tremaine
fr:Madame de Trémaine
it:Lady Tremaine
ja:トレメイン夫人
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pt-br:Lady Tremaine
ro:Doamna Tremaine
ru:Леди Тремейн
vi:Quý bà Tremaine
zh:崔梅恩夫人
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