Great Fictional Villains: Jadis, the White Witch

Say what you like about C.S. Lewis (and a lot of his writing decisions and implied personal beliefs do look dubious or discredited coming back to his books as an adult), but he pulled off a vintage villain in Jadis, the White Witch, the Chronicles of Narnia’s most noteworthy antagonist. A sorceress and despot, the White Witch is portrayed as a physical and existential threat to the land of Narnia in her first appearance in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Not only has she imposed a harsh and illegitimate regime on the cowering Narnians, recruiting legions of fairy-tale monsters to be her soldiers and secret police and styling herself as legitimate ruler while brazenly usurping the established dynasty; she also uses her unmatched magical powers to swathe a fertile land in endless winter, a sign of deathly sterility to be swept away by the eventual return of paw-dragging Messiah Aslan.

Of course, in Lewis’ arguable laboured theology the Witch is a stand-in for Death and/or Satan, a seemingly all-powerful tyrant who crumbles with embarrassing speed the moment Aslan decides to really assert himself. She still gets to show off a notable talent for cruelty, manipulation and intimidation in the brief window before her regime abruptly implodes, however.

It’s in underrated prequel The Magician’s Nephew that Jadis really gets her chance to shine, as her back-story and the roots of her Narnian takeover are revealed. Jadis was originally the haughty royalty of a nameless humanoid race, the people of a world separate from Narnia and the “real” world entirely; mighty, decadent Charn. Charn was initially ruled by idealised kings and queens, echoing the Aslan-anointed Pevensies of Narnia. However, with each successive generation the dynasty grew harsher and more morally depraved, finally reaching its nadir in the ruthless Jadis.

Though she sports villainous virtues like a strong will, self-belief and an admirable work ethic (she can’t spend five minutes on another world without trying to take it over, and ran Narnia seemingly single-handed for a century), Jadis’ defining characteristic was a breathtaking, limitless arrogance that sealed Charn’s doom and might have put paid to Narnia as well. Charn’s overbearing empire was torn apart by an apocalyptic civil war for ultimate power between Jadis and her own sister, which ended with Jadis using a sort of magical nuke to wipe out all life on the planet apart from Jadis herself rather than concede defeat. She hibernated for an eon before a blundering English schoolboy on an inter-dimensional jaunt woke her up, and soon found herself in a newly-created Narnia, where she found immortality at the cost of having her impressive demeanour and fierce vitality (put across well by the original illustrations) wither away and leave her a pallid husk, still feared and powerful but soulless and ultimately doomed.

With his depiction of the descent of such a potent and lordly, yet callous and monstrous character, echoing Milton’s Satan, Lewis (whose intellectual and artistic gifts I personally find to be wildly uneven) managed to pull off the most effective commentary on evil his work ever managed.