Freudian Excuse/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Freudian Excuses in Literature include:

  • Wang Sau-leyan in Chung Kuo, ugly, fat and clumsy, was treated as a poor sequel to his brothers while he grew up. This is not presented as an excuse for his behavior, but it helps explain it.
  • Marco from Animorphs is a snarky survivalist early on. While Tobias exalts about how with great power Comes Great Responsibility, Marco snaps back that Tobias can't even go a day without getting his head flushed down a toilet. Once Tobias is stuck as a hawk, Marco's barbs begin to verge on actual cruelty. Later, we find out that Marco's mother supposedly drowned, and his father suffered a nervous breakdown; Marco is terrified of dying because he's afraid of what will happen to his father if he does. He fully admits to being a Sad Clown and that he makes fun of Tobias because what happened to Tobias scares him.
  • Isaac Asimov: The Mule is driven to conquer the galaxy because of a childhood of ostracism and abuse due to his physically deformed stature; he claims in his internal monologue that it is now "his turn." Appropriately, he is stopped by a master psychologist administering instant therapy with a bit of mind control thrown in for good measure. He spends the rest of his life happy -- and out of the way.
  • Subverted in Children of the Mind: In a backwards attempt to explain why she is so contrary, Quara reveals to Wang-mu that she was sexually abused at a young age by Quim, her soon-to-be sainted brother. When Wang-mu immediately believes her, she reveals it wasn't true, but points out the hypocrisy of people who would more easily believe the worst in a saint of a man like her brother than believe that some people are inherently, for no real reason, jerks.
  • Jack Chalker really liked this trope.
    • Subverted in one of the Dancing Gods books, wherein a) the character discussing his tragic early life is on the side of good, and b) it transpires that this tale of a sad past is complete and utter nonsense designed to throw the villain off his game. It works.
    • Played straight in Downtiming the Night Side: The Dragon joins the Big Bad because he blames the good guys for the loss of his father. Naturally it's more complicated than that.
    • Still later we have Coydt Van Haaz, the Big Bad of Empires of Flux and Anchor, who wants to turn a Lady Land into a No Woman's Land to get back at the priestesses who castrated him for a relatively minor offense.
  • Averted in Dostoevsky's novel Notes from Underground to the point of being An Aesop. Dostoevsky was concerned with the far-reaching consequences of certain ideas being batted around in his day - essentially, that despite humankind appearing to be fundamentally irrational and uncontrollable, using psychology and whatnot they'd one day be able to figure out exactly what makes people act the way they do, and could correct anti-social behavior easy as solving a math problem. (And then they could fix all their woes and achieve a socialist utopia, hooray). So he wrote a book featuring a maladjusted hero who's a miserable prick for no reason and will no doubt continue to be a miserable prick no matter what happens to him. Needless to say, it was not popular with Soviet critics.
  • In the Sherlock Holmes series, there is some evidence that Professor James Moriarty suffers from an inferiority complex because he has several other brothers, all of whom are named James, thus stifling his sense of individuality.
  • Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion: El Patron's ruthlessness arises mainly from the fact that he lived a dirt poor childhood, and was the only surviving child of a large family. The man was forced to live by his wits.
  • In Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, having seen "something nasty in the woodshed" isn't just Aunt Ada's excuse for being a domestic tyrant who never leaves her room, it's also how she does the tyrannizing: anytime anyone tries to leave, or do anything else she disapproves of, it "brings on her trouble". Flora finds this suspiciously convenient.
  • Hannibal Lecter lost much of his mystique when explanations for his actions were presented in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising during his jarring Badass Decay into a misunderstood Anti-Hero.
    • The author was all but forced to write Hannibal Rising, having been told that if he didn't provide a backstory for Dr. Lecter, some other writer would.
    • Jame Gumb and Francis Dolarhyde are given very detailed backstories in the novels, which works well to humanize them. Gumb was born to an alcoholic prostitute and lived in foster homes until moving in with his abusive Grandparents at the age of 10. Dolarhyde was born with a severe disfigurement to his face and was abused by his Grandmother, after being ditched by his stepfather's family which had the same structure as the families he killed. There is only one reference to Gumb's Freudian Excuse is given in the movie, however, which is "Billy was not born a criminal, but made one by years of systematic abuse." It works rather effectively.
    • Between the level of detail that goes into the other serial killers' backstories, the recurring emphasis on psychology (as unreliable as it can be), and Lecter being, well... Lecter, it's likely that Lecter's seemingly inherent evil was meant as the exception, not the rule.
  • Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera gives an excuse for Erik's cold bloodedness: humanity hates him because of his deformity, so he hates humanity. The Phantom adaptation gives more of a Backstory to this: in addition to the deformity, his mother shows him no love and keeps him shut inside where he can't fully use his genius. Still a creepy guy for a protagonist.
    • There's a similar version in the 1990 TV miniseries. While the Phantom's murderous behavior is not condoned or excused, when we get his backstory, his mother is depicted as loving and adoring him despite his deformity, and it is appears that his passion for Christine is based on the resemblance between the two. Which is a whole other Freudian Excuse.
  • Notably averted by The Catcher in The Rye, as the opening quote reveals:

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

    • And then played straight, as you realise that Caulfield's deceased younger brother is a large part of the reason he's so unhinged.
  • Deconstructed in Lolita- Humbert's reason for being a pedophile is literally very Freudian (at age sixteen he was interrupted having sex with his childhood sweetheart who died shortly afterward) and he thinks about it in these terms. However, the author's point was that this is a poor excuse for his terrible actions.
  • The mostly sane (he hears voices in his head, but that's alright, one of them is his psychiatrist!) protagonist of Eric Nylund's A Game of Universe has a more subtle Freudian Excuse for his background. His childhood (born on a hellhole of a planet, dad killed his mom when he was born, dad whored out his brother to miners (a fate he only avoided by being too young at the time), then accidentally killed his brother while his brother was trying to rape him) doesn't mess him up that badly, it's only when this background leads him to panic over a misunderstanding and murder his mentor does he really start to lose it. (He spends the next few months hiding in a sewer, and then the next few years in a school based on Klingon Promotions.)
  • A kind of subversion, based on going into more details. In Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony we are introduced to Billy Kong (previously called Jonah Lee), and told that his teenage brother was killed when he was quite young. Later, we learn that when Jonah was young, his brother claimed that he was part of a secret group that fought child-eating demons, in an attempt to keep Jonah off the Miami streets while their mother was working, due to trouble his brother had been having with a gang at the time. When his brother was murdered, Jonah was convinced that demons did it, and he and his mother moved to Taiwan (where she was from) shortly after. Jonah is said to have later decided his brother had deceived him, causing him to become inherently distrustful and making it easier to hurt people, which combined with the environment he grew up in, turned him into a violent criminal. Shortly before the book begins, he is hired to help capture a fairy demon, causing Kong to start wondering if his brother had been honest after all. When Holly is captured while trying to save the captive demon and is being interrogated, she uses her knowledge of Kong's past to try and psych him out, and unknowingly feeds into his delusions by "confirming" the abilities that Billy's brother said demons had. This leads to Kong having a rather tragic nervous breakdown, and starts an obsession with destroying all demons, and killing anyone who gets in his way.
  • Inverted with James T. Kirk, whose tendency to Take a Third Option is explained in various Star Trek novels as being a result of surviving the mass executions on Tarsus IV (from the TOS episode "The Conscience of the King") as a boy. It also probably explains why he doesn't believe in the The Kobayashi Maru and the No-Win Scenario.
  • Pretty much every single villain from Warrior Cats.
    • Tigerstar: His father abandoned him at a young age to be come a kittypet, causing his irrational hatred towards kittypets, and he was mentored by an incredibly aggressive warrior whose personality traits seemed to rub off on him. Apparently, father issues, an aggressive personality, racism, and ambition combine to create the feline version of Hitler.
    • Scourge: He was constantly teased and excluded by his brother and sister until he eventually ran away from home, where he was attacked and almost killed by Tigerstar. He spent the rest of his life trying to prove that he was strong, and to get revenge on Tigerstar, which eventually lead him to being a mass-murdering psychopathic dictator.
    • Hawkfrost: Not mentioned often, but Hawkfrost was essentially an orphan and had to grow up living in his father's shadow until he eventually decided to follow in his footsteps. Also, his brother died, that might have something to do some of it... kinda...
    • Brokenstar: He had a horrible foster mother in his kithood, who hated him and always tried to exclude him, making him the Unfavorite. Due to this, he saw aggressiveness as the only way to prove himself, and eventually killed Raggedstar, his real father, to show that he could become a leader, and prove his greatness. This lead him to commit all sorts of atrocities, so that he could make ShadowClan the strongest Clan of them all.
    • Ashfur: Started out as an adorable, boisterous young apprentice, until his mom was killed indiscriminately by Tigerstar. Fell in love with Squirrelflight, only for her to pass him over in favor of Brambleclaw. Then he was forced to mentor their "son", whose very presence was a constant reminder of the mate that he lost. He eventually went insane and went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, attempting to kill Squirrelflight's "kits" to make her feel the same emotional pain that he felt when she rejected him.
    • And don't forget Mapleshade: Fell in love with a RiverClan warrior, but when she tried to bring her kits across the river into RiverClan territory (since her own Clan had driven her out), the kits drowned. Eventually, the tom she was in love with found another mate and had kits with her. She hated Crookedstar because he was her former mate's great-grandson.
    • And Sol has been given a backstory as well: His mother, Cinders, didn't really care for her kits - she hadn't even bothered to name them - and complained all the time. His father was never around. The only good part in his life was that she told them stories of "sky warriors". She eventually abandoned them at different Twoleg nests. Sol felt that if he could have been a "sky warrior", she might have been proud of him and stayed around. Then he discovered SkyClan, but after trying to train with them, they felt he didn't respect the warrior code, so they wouldn't make him a warrior. This resulted in his trying to get revenge on all the Clans, not just SkyClan.
  • Snape from Harry Potter was revealed to have had an abusive father and poor home life in Order of the Phoenix. In addition he was bullied by James Potter, thus explaining why Snape bullies James' son.
    • Oh, it's worse than that: Snape's only friend and love interest growing up was Lily Evans, but his poor lifestyle choices (hanging with would-be-Death Eaters and supporting their racist cause, even though that cause is racist against people like Lily) ended up pushing her away from him. Who'd she end up marrying? James Potter. Harry is not only James' son, but the son of James and the woman Snape loved, something Snape is always reminded of when looking at Harry (who has his father's face, but his mother's eyes.) To Snape's credit, Harry being Lily's son is also the reason he protects him, despite his bullying of him.
    • Voldemort also grew up an average orphanage but he already seemed to have chosen a life of evil. At age Eleven he had already killed other kids pets, taken up stealing the possessions of other kids, and horribly mentally scarred two fellow orphans.
  • Capricorn in Inkheart, though it certainly isn't an attempt to justify his cruel actions; we just learn from Fenoglio that Capricorn's father was extremely abusive, and beat him for offenses such as showing pity. It is implied that the abuse was at least partially what made him cold and heartless.
  • In the short story collection The Further Adventures of the Joker, the eponymous Joker gets a story devoted to a snapshot of his childhood with an abusive father (SMILE, I SAID!) as the centerpiece. That, and killing small animals and collecting the bones to make grotesque sculptures. Perhaps most notably, we get some insight into how his father got to where he is. Big surprise -- it involves his father.
  • Jane Austen's Mansfield Park contains a Take That at this trope: Edmund excuses every red flag in Mary Crawford's behavior as the result of faulty upbringing or the influence of bad friends. He finally has to admit he's been Loving a Shadow and the perfect woman he thought was spoiled by a crappy childhood in her uncle's house is a Rich Bitch who was hoping his ill older brother would die so Edmund would become the heir of the family and be rich enough for her to consider marrying... which makes him smarter than many readers.
  • The title character of the Wally McDoogle series writes a new superhero story in every book in between the action. Every one introduces the Villain of the Week with speculation as to what might have caused him to turn evil.
  • Herod Sayle of Stormbreaker (renamed Darrius Sayle in The Film of the Book) came from a poor Lebanese background and was sent to a British boarding school after saving a wealthy English tourist couple (in the film, he was an American who lived in a trailer until his mother won the lottery), where he was bullied due to his background by several other children, many of whom became influential figures in British government (including the Prime Minister). His reaction to this is to invest in a multi-million dollar advanced computer system which he would donate to the British scool system, which secretly contains biological weapons which, when simultaneously activated, will kill millions of children, and probably thousands of other innocent people. Lampshaded in the movie.

Alex Rider: Alright so you were bullied; lots of kids are bullied! It doesn't turn them into mass-murdering psychopaths!

    • Same with Desmond McCain, who was bullied for being black and criticized in the newspapers. Still doesn't justify his evil charity and his love of killing.
    • General Alexei Sarov, from the third book. His son was killed at war, and then he lost the country that he lived for. That still doesn't come close to excusing him for his plan to cause a massive nuclear explosion.
    • In Scorpia Rising we have Julius Grief. He is a fifteen year old who gets pleasure from other people's pain, seems quite fond of murdering people, and is consumed by his hatred of Alex. However, considering he was created and raised so he would be evil, with no purpose other than helping Doctor Grief take over the world, and it is stated that he and the other clones got the cane if they shot a gun the wrong way, resulting in him being completely insane, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
      • Not really. He never experienced any sort of emotional pain or trauma in his childhood, and never spoke badly of his father. In fact, the fact that his own psychologist instinctively dislikes him seems to be a subtle hint that readers should not pity him.
  • Dr. No, in the novel of the same name, got where he is in large part due to his father's rejection of him. His beginnings in the crime world -- violence, destruction, and a general lack of empathy -- were largely a reaction to his father's treatment of him and a manifestation of his rejection of authority in general. Curiously, by the events of the story, he is plainly aware of this fact and doesn't hesitate to put it in those very words.
  • In Watership Down, General Woundwort's violent and un-rabbitlike behavior stem from his traumatic kittenhood, in which his father was shot, his siblings scattered, and his wounded mother killed and eaten by a weasel right in front of him. Adopted and nurtured by a kindly human, who'd nevertheless failed to keep his cat from menacing the young rabbit, Woundwort never learned to interact civilly with other rabbits, and his lapine psyche became warped, his natural flight-instincts supplanted by aggression.
    • Truth in Television, as captive-reared wild animals tend to develop behavioral problems and socialize poorly with their own species.
  • In The Silmarillion's, some of Fëanor's rash actions can probably be attributed to the fact that, in what was virtually paradise, his mother was the first person ever to die, that his father (however loving) remarried (which was completely unheard of and never happened again), had other children, and then was the first person to be killed in Valinor. Now, in the published Silmarillion, this is not belatedly revealed to excuse Fëanor's actions; in fact, it's not explicitly held up as an excuse at all. However, it is a relatively late addition to the Quenta Silmarillion: in earlier versions, Fëanor's just someone who obsesses over his jewels and hates his brother because of Morgoth's lies; later, he's also to be pitied, a bit.
  • In Violet Eyes, the reason for Dr. Frankenstein's cruelty is that during his childhood, he was jealous of his brother, who was more talented than he was.
  • This one depends upon your point of view. In "The Icemark Chronicles" Medea had a bad childhood because her parents didn't give her the attention that her sibling had. However there is a debate among fans as to whether this was her parents fault or her own.
  • Crenshinibon from the Forgotten Realms was originally an extremely powerful and dangerous but nonsentient artifact. At one point it fell into the hands of a sultan who overestimated its power and relied entirely on the crystal towers it generated to protect his land from invasion. He realized too late that the more towers that are created they weaker they are, and his lands were overrun. At the moment of his death, his tormented spirit merged with the Crystal Shard, and at last Crenshinibon was complete. The insatiable desire for power and control that Crenshinibon forces upon its wielders is the twisted reflection of a sad man's regrets of failing to protect his people.
  • The mystery villain of Janet Evanovich's Smokin' Seventeen engages in his killing spree because Stephanie's it's-complicated Joe stole his girlfriend back when they were all in high school together, so now he intends to steal Joe's girlfriend. With murder. Somehow.
  • In The Pale King, The unnamed narrator of Chapter 23 has issues with regards to his self-worth. He remembers a presentation he did on The Iliad in the eleventh grade, and he freely associates it with his family. He likens his family to Achilles, in that his seemingly perfect brother is Achilles's shield, while he is the heel. He even develops a fixation on people's feet.
  • In Death: Played straight and averted across the series. Some of the murderers have this, and some of them were always Complete Monsters. Either way, Eve and Roarke do not consider the Freudian Excuse acceptable, considering the Abusive Parents they had.
  • Max Barry's Machine Man has the excellent example of Lola, whose father deliberately self-maimed himself in a series of industrial accidents to collect insurance and pay for Lola's Heart Trauma replacement. As a result, Lola as an adult finds men who've lost body parts irresistible, and works in prosthetics.
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Averted for the most part across the series. Practically none of the bad guys have a single excuse for their behaviour. With that said, Senator Webster from the book Payback and John Chai from Vendetta may be exceptions. The Senator had good parents, but he distanced himself from them and basically disowned them because he was ashamed of them and the fact that they were so low-class! John Chai is the son of a diplomat and an ambassador, and he may have gotten feelings of entitlement and being untouchable from being born in all that power, wealth and position.
  • The narrator/protagonist of Letters Back to Ancient China (a time travelling mandarin from medieval China) compliments a western woman on her breasts. She rationalized his odd behavior by concluding that he wasn't breastfed enough.
  • Many Inheritance Cycle villains have these. Sloan is such a jerk because his wife died, and, of course, Galbatorix was partially motivated by the death of his dragon.
  • In Septimus Heap, Merrin Meredith's nastiness is explained by Word of God as coming from his bad life with DomDaniel, and it's mentioned In-Universe as well.
  • The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: After Serial Killer Martin Vanger's death, Mikael mentions how, given his extremely Dark and Troubled Past, the boy "never had a chance". Cue absolute outrage from Lisbet, claiming that childhood trauma doesn't excuse his actions as an adult. The fact that she herself experienced a Trauma Conga Line of her own as a girl and that Harriet Vanger, despite going through the same upbringing as Martin yet emerged an entirely functional human being, certainly backs her argument.
  • In Richard Condon's "Manchurian Candidate" Raymond's mother is a seething pool of Freudian motives. She had an incestuous relationship with her father. Hated her mother as a sexual rival and complained that she could not understand how he could lie down with such an ugly woman (people said that as an adult she was nearly a twin for her mother). When her father died, her older brother claimed leadership of the family and she swore that she would follow him into any profession he chose to outdo him, and crush him. He chose politics.
  • In The Belisarius Series, Empress Theodora's obsession with power (both the trappings and reality thereof), gut level distrust of anyone with a working penis[1], and overall mean streak is quite fully explained by her being sold to a pimp at the age of twelve... by a father who had started raping her when she was nine.
  • This is part of the basis for A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk at the story's beginning, but the Ghost Of Christmas Past takes him back to see the various Freudian Excuses that made him that way. His mother died at a young age, leading his father to abandon him at boarding school and never return home, even at Christmas, which taught him not to empathize with his fellow man. When he became a workaholic obsessed with getting ahead, his fiance realized he cared more about money than her and left him. He hates Fred, his good-natured nephew and only living relative because his beloved sister died in childbirth. And all of these events happened over Christmas, making him despise the holiday. None of these excuses really serve to justify Scrooge's cruelty or selfishness, but do highlight his chance at redemption.
  • The Villains series is a franchise of novels that suggest some of Disney's most notorious examples of Pure Evil were, in fact, deserving of compassion; things are not always black and white:
    • Snow White's evil stepmother Queen Grimhilde had an especially tragic past, as detailed in Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen. Her father was a famous and renowned craftsman who made mirrors - and was a horrible man. His wife died giving birth to their daughter, and he blamed his daughter for killing her, often calling her ugly and worthless. The book does not go into detail on how he died but it happened while she was relatively young and when Grimhilde met the man she would marry, Snow White's father, she knew happiness for the first time in her life. It was truly a fairy tale romance, the only bad part being the wedding gift he gave her - a mirror made by her father. Still, she didn’t let that ruin her wedding, stashing it away and forget about it. She was even a kind stepmother to the then four-year-old Snow White, and even when her happiness was dashed due to her husband's death in a battle against an enemy nation, she still was close to her stepdaughter. After all she was the only family she had. One day, however, three strange women came to visit, took an instant dislike to Snow White and started bullying her. Grimhilde was furious of course, and demanded that they leave. But as shown in several other books of the series, the Odd Sisters are petty, cruel, and vindictive creatures. They sent Grimhilde a special gift, the mirror she had gotten from her husband, and when she looked at it she saw a face in it that she quickly recognized. Her father's soul was now trapped In the mirror, a punishment for everything he did in life, and was now beholden to answer any question his daughter asked to her, as honestly as possible. (Yep, that's right, the Magic Mirror on the Wall was the Evil Queen's father!) Given how often he had insulted her looks and worth, she decided to ask one simple thing and spoke, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” As stated, he was forced to answer honestly and told her it was her. Finding joy in finally getting him to admit this to her, she asked every day and eventually, she became obsessed with it - and her appearance. However, when he told her a servant girl had surpassed her in beauty, she was angered, and had the servant girl sent to a far away country to work for someone else. Eventually she became vain and obsessed with her beauty, and when the Mirror told her Snow White was fairer than her, well, you know the rest.
    • As shown in Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy Maleficent was abandoned by her parents, left in a tree somewhere in Land of Faerie, where she survived only due to a generous flock of ravens (foreshadowing her dark future). Nobody knows why, but it is presumed her horns and dark wings had something to do with it. While many adult fairies knew she was there, most refused to help, believing she was an evil thing; in fact, she got her name from what they called her. Eventually, she was taken in by a kindly older fairy known only as Nanny. When Maleficent was a young child she was an eager learner at a school for fairies and had a bright future ahead. Even if she was a little dark herself. Simply because she had horns, she was teased by the other students (including Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) and her teacher - the Fairy Godmother - didn't like her much either, and encouraged this bullying.[2] Eventually, Nanny decided to home-school Maleficent, but she had to return to the school in order to take the fairy test, which would, in effect, make her a "licensed" fairy godmother. She did excellently, coming in first in her class, an accomplishment that angered her fellow students and the headmistress (though in all fairness, Fairy Godmother was plenty angry at Maleficent's three classmates for unfounded accusations of cheating). Eventually, after a lot of debate and consideration (and Nanny's intervention) Maleficent's test score was acknowledged, but Fairy Godmother told her flat out it wouldn't matter - she would always be evil. It was too much for Maleficent to take, she snapped, assumed her dragon form for the first time, destroyed the school, and well, you know the rest.
    • As shown in Cold Hearted, Cinderella's wicked stepmother Lady Tremane was a tragic story of an abused woman who became an abuser, as shown in . When her beloved first husband (Anastasia and Drizella's father) died, her grief was inconsolable. In such a vulnerable state, she fell in love with Lord Edward, the first man to woo her, Cinderella's father. She eventually married him, moving to his home in a distant land. But as hard as it might be to believe, Cinderella's father was a misogynist, and a cruel man, who not only abusive to her but everyone in his household other than Cinderella, and she only seemed to be spared his abuse because she reminded him of his first wife, whom he was obsessed with. He had only married Tremaine so he could have a servant and nanny for his daughter whom he didn't have to pay. Even worse, for me was ostracized by the rulers of Edward's home, who seemed to think all stepmothers are potentially evil (You Can't Fight Fate is a recurring concept in these books that is propagated by the true villains of the series.) When Edward died from illness, Tremane had become cold and bitter, viewing Cinderella as a reflection of the cruel man she had once trusted, and well, you know the rest.
      • One could even see this as a Freudian Excuse for Anastasia and Drizella too. Cinderella had to endure the death of her father, yes, but they endured the loss of two father-figures.
    • Rapunzel clearly had a troubled childhood, but it was nothing compared to that of Mother Gothel as detailed in Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch. Gothel was one of triplets, and their mother being Manea, an evil witch called the Queen of the Dead. She was really bad news, practicing Necromancy and making deals with many villagers, promising to leave them alone in exchange for the corpses of their dead. Manea always told Gothel and her sisters Primrose and Hazel that they were disappointments to her because they were not identical triplets, something they obviously had no control over, but nonetheless, was their Evil Mentor in teaching them dark magic. Gothel’s dark nature first manifested when one village refused to comply with her mother’s demands, so Manea created an army of zombies to slaughter them, sparing only one to act as a living witness to dissuade other from crossing her - while Primrose and Hazel were visibly frightened, but Gothel was not. Eventually, Manea told her daughters they were ready to receive her powers, led them to the cultivated Rapunzel flowers that she used as a focus of her power, summoned a horde of zombie children, and told her daughters that they would have to drink her blood. Primrose and Hazel freaked and tried to flee, but were restrained by the zombies, as their cruel mother prepare to force them to drink it - but Gothel finally stood up to her. A fight started, leading to a fire and all the flowers but one were destroyed and due to her link to them, Manea was killed, turning to dust. While killing her own mother was clearly her Start of Darkness, Gotham was not yet beyond redemption and tried to raise her sisters on her own while cultivating the blossoms. But they got sick with a strange illness, and despite her best attempts to cure them, they died. Out of grief, Gothel entered a magical sleep, never intending to wake up, but a dark power convinced her well-meaning servant Jacob to transport her and the bodies of her two sisters to a remote cottage, while he searched for more of the flowers, hoping to cure Gothel and possibly bring her sisters back to life. Gothel woke up, and was trapped in that cottage with the bodies of her sisters for years; Jacob's search ultimately failed, and he was killed by highwaymen, leaving Gothell with only one remaining flower. Gothel at this point prayed for death, but then those same dark benefactors visited her with a vial of her mother's blood, offering to complete the ceremony she rejected years ago. It didn't give Gothel her mother's powers, but she quickly realized the Odd Sisters were playing to steal the flower; harnessing the forbidden magic her mother practiced, she created an army of zombies to kill the Odd Sisters - they fled fear, unable to control their pawn any longer, but the damage had been done. Her sanity now destroyed and the one remaining flower her only remaining link to her family only way to continue her unholy existence, well… you know the rest.
    • Cruella Deville; they say if she doesn't scare you no evil thing will, but as detailed in Evil Thing: A Tale of That Devil Woman her own past was clearly a horror story. As a young girl she truly loved her father, and was loved by him, but again, he died when she was sixteen. One thing he left her, however was a pair of earrings, which unbeknownst to him, was cursed. Wearing the earrings made Cruella more assertive and confident, and she became a Bully Hunter towards some classmates who were abusing a girl named Anita, and a friendship between the two started. Unfortunately, her mother didn't approve of her being friends with someone of a lower class, (and was not keen on her daughter getting into fights), so she forbade young Cruella from seeing her new friend. On her birthday after this occurrence, she got a Dalmatian puppy named Perdia, a gift that had again been arranged by her father, and her mother made a really bad joke about having the puppy turned into a muff. Anita showing up uninvited seemed to calm her, but the earrings made her aggressive towards her friend, and when the puppy urinated on Cruella's fur coat, she furiously threw Anita and Perdita out of the house. As an adult, Cruella marries a man named Jack and forgoes her inheritance to her mother, but Jack dies in a fire (implied to be suicide, due to massive debts he could not pay) leaving Cruella homeless and penniless. She eventually tried to reconcile with Anita, who has now taken custody of Perdia who is now a full-grown dog with a litter of her own puppies. With the earrings still guiding her, Anita's happiness makes her angry from jealousy, and decides to kidnap Perdia's litter and turn them into a coat as a gift for her mother to regain her favor; her mother is horrified by the idea, disowning her daughter, this final rejection driving Cruella to madness and giving her a burning hatred of animals, and again, you know the rest.
Back to Freudian Excuse
  1. ↑ (she is honestly devoted to her husband Justinian, but trusting him fully is another matter)
  2. ↑ Yes, just as the book series shows that supposed irredeemable villains had tragic pasts, it portrays many supposed Good characters as flawed; a recurring theme is that not everything is black and white.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Freudian_Excuse/Literature?oldid=2029566"