Lady Tremaine

**Lady Tremaine** (also commonly known as the "**Wicked Stepmother**") is the main antagonist of *Cinderella*. As the cold-hearted stepmother of Cinderella, Lady Tremaine doesn't harm her stepdaughter physically. Rather, she seeks to punish and abuse her psychologically, motivated by her jealousy of Cinderella being far more beautiful and graceful than her own awkward daughters, Anastasia and Drizella. 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 blood.

After being defeated once for all, Lady Tremaine and her oldest daughter were deprived of their high social status as socialites by instead becoming scullery maids and forced to work at the King's Castle for all of what they'd done. Because of her abusive nature she became one of the primary members of the *Disney Villains* franchise.

## Personality

Unlike most other Disney Villains, Lady Tremaine doesn't possess any magical powers (barring her use of the 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 frustratedly 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.

She holds a 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 authority of the household; she never *physically* abuses Cinderella and leaves that to her daughters instead. 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. She then cruelly bid Cinderella "good night" (since she couldn't go to the ball in rags), ultimately maintaining her ostensible fairness. By *Cinderella III: A Twist in Time*, however, Tremaine herself was implied to have become physically abusive; specifically towards Anastasia; Drizella briefly suggested she and Lady Tremaine beat Anastasia with a stick she 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 the guards into animals, and would most likely have done the same to the King had she succeeded.

Almost all of Tremaine's actions are motivated by a narcissistic hunger for prestige, as she wants to marry her daughters off to those on the top of the social ladder. Tremaine expects her daughters to be utterly obedient and is infuriated when they are not, as seen when Anastasia chose not to marry Prince Charming out of love.

## Bio

Lady Tremaine is introduced in the prologue of the film. Young Cinderella's father, a widower, desperate for his daughter to have a mother figure, married Lady Tremaine, who is described as "a woman of good family", with two daughters, Anastasia and Drizella, of her own, and a cat named Lucifer. Lady Tremaine showed her true colors when Cinderella's father died, mistreating Cinderella while spending extravagantly on her biological daughters Anastasia and Drizella in hopes of molding them in her own image but also spoiling them as a result.

After the prologue, it is revealed that Cinderella has become a coerced servant in her own home and lives in a small room at the top of the tower in her house. An incident occurs in which Anastasia finds a mouse inside her teacup (Lucifer deliberately caused this to happen when he chased Gus). Lady Tremaine responds by piling a further order of chores on Cinderella as punishment, silencing her harshly (twice) 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.

Lady Tremaine finally consents that Cinderella may attend the Royal Ball - that is, *if* she can finish all her chores *and* find a suitable dress. She then proceeds to heap chore after chore on Cinderella. Despite this, when Cinderella appears ready for the ball in a suitable dress (her mother's, altered to be more fashionable by her mice and bird friends), Lady Tremaine indirectly (but intentionally) points out that Cinderella is wearing Drizella's old beads and Anastasia's old sash that they threw away earlier in the day. This 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. This was because of a combination of their belief that Cinderella was at home with her dress in tatters, the fact that Cinderella's new dress was in a different style from her old one and the fact she was made up so very differently to her usual appearance. Another possible reason could be that the Fairy Godmother's magic prevented them from recognizing her (as revealed in the live-action film). Lady Tremaine does note a familiarity about her as she dances with Prince Charming close to her. She is not, however, permitted to study Cinderella long enough to make the connection, as 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. Lady Tremaine realizes that Cinderella was the mysterious girl who danced with the Prince at the Ball. She quietly follows Cinderella up the tower and locks her in her room, putting the key in her 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 mice 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 freeing Cinderella from her room despite Lucifer's delaying 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. Tremaine, however, remains determined to preclude her stepdaughter from trying the slipper on; she trips the Footman as he walks over to Cinderella, causing the slipper to fall off its cushion and shatter into pieces. Cinderella then reveals that she has the other slipper, and her stepmother watches in horror when it fits her foot.

## The timeline split

### Timeline in Cinderella II

In *Cinderella II: Dreams Come True,* Lady Tremaine only appeared in the "*An Uncommon Romance*" segment. Lady Tremaine is shown to be cold towards her own daughters. 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. (As before, Lady Tremaine's ambitions reflect her aristocratic narcissism, for she still wants her daughters to choose wealthy noblemen as husbands.) 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 boy she presumably will soon marry.

### Timeline in Cinderella III

In *Cinderella III: A Twist in Time,* 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 opulant lifestyle in the Palace, Tremaine uses the wand to reverse time and undo Cinderella's "happily ever after" (turning Cinderella back into her virtual slave). She also enchants the glass slipper to fit Anastasia so that Cinderella never gets to try on the slipper herself. She then uses the wand to enchant Prince Charming into forgetting Cinderella and marrying Anastasia instead. When Charming discovers the truth, Tremaine makes her most notable—and horrific—use of the Fairy Godmother's wand by transforming Anastasia into the mirror image of Cinderella, then teleporting the genuine Cinderella into a pumpkin (that becomes a nightmarish travesty of the original coach from the first film) to be killed off by Lucifer. 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 Anastasia's sudden conscience, Lady Tremaine and Drizella emerge from their hiding place, now intent on getting revenge on both Cinderella and Anastasia.

Angrily, the King tells all his guards to arrest Lady Tremaine, who 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 then tries 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. 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 wrongs 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 working in the palace as servants under Cinderella's authority as punishment for the cruelty they showed her and Anastasia.

However, she and Drizella were freed from this very fate by Diesel 10 who work with them if they pledged their loyalty to him in exchange for revenge against Thomas, Twilight Sparkle and their friends, which they did.

## Trivia

* Lady Tremaine become the main villain of *Thomas and Twilight Sparkle Meets Cinderella.*
* Lady Tremaine and Drizella guest star in Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's Adventures Series to get revenge on Thomas, Twilight and their friends.
* 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 (Susan Blakeslee) also voices Maleficent.
* Lady Tremaine can be assumed as one of the depraved villains for her many wicked deeds:
* Using Cinderella as a slave.
* Forcing her daughters to follow her into darkness
* Breaking up Cinderella and the Prince's marriage.
* Stealing the fairy godmother's wand.

## Gallery

Lady Tremaine's despair (1st film)Lady Tremaine's despair (2nd film)Lady Tremaine and Drizella Tremaine's defeat (3rd film)Lady Tremaine and Drizella turned into toadsLady Tremaine (Live Action)