Serena Valentino Disney Villains 8

I needed a break from the Valentino Disney villains after Cruella. Oh, that one was like torture. 

I got a few chapters into this and set it aside. It's the same thing again. Will she ever write something where the villain isn't the victim? Still, I enjoy elements of this series. I like how she wraps everything together and we're once again back in the world of the Odd Sisters with this book. 

So Lady Tremaine is a wealthy London widow with two young daughters. She meets a lord/knight from the Many Kingdoms at a friend's party and they hit it off. He sweeps her into a very fast romance that has her making extremely poor choices, like leaving her entire household behind without saying goodbye or making sure everything is taken care of. He whisks her off to the chapel practically the moment she arrives at his door, then abandons her on their wedding night, rushing off to the castle on business. 

While he's gone, Lady Tremaine sets about hiring staff and refurnishing the chateau, as well as trying to befriend the knight's daughter, Cinderella. When he returns, he's pissed and it turns out he only married her so he could take her money. He forces her to get rid of all but two of the servants and makes her and her daughters do the housework. So the real story of the Tremaines is that they were tricked and turned into servants. 

Nanny is there as the nanny, of course, but she can't do anything to help, as the Odd Sisters' book of fairy tales is writing Lady Tremaine as the villain, getting her story completely wrong. She isn't villainous and neither Drizella nor Anastasia do anything wrong either. Their only crime is being afraid of the mice Cinderella is weirdly obsessed with. 

Rebecca, the servant who basically got Lady Tremaine into this situation, turns out to be Circe. She's also the one who stops the lady's letters from making it to her friend, as she and her sisters want to be the ones to help her. Circe's entire role in this book feels out of character for her. The sisters give Lady Tremaine the poison that kills her husband after all. Yes, he's the real villain, but that's what turns her into the villain the fairy tale claims her to be. After this is when the events we know take place. Lady Tremaine blames Cinderella for a betrayal she likely didn't even do.

At the ball, the Odd Sisters and Circe battle with Fairy Godmother, who's overprotective of Cinderella and refuses to listen to Lady Tremaine's pleas for help. Fairy Godmother sends them all away, which leads to the tale ending as we know it, and the Tremaines being locked in their home. Lady Tremaine goes mad and forces the girls to wear wedding dresses, cutting off their hair and hurting them if they try to stand up for themselves. 

Finally, Fairy Godmother and Nanny step in to stop her and then play the role of fairy godmothers for poor Drizella and Anastasia. 

Essentially, Lady Tremaine was never a villain. She was forced into the role by the Odd Sisters and their obsession with following the fairy tale book. Then when they tried to help, they couldn't, and she ended up the villain after all. She's too far gone at the end and is turned into a statue to live forever in the attic where she forced Cinderella to live. 

This one wasn't horrible, but it was frustrating. Sad to see a smart woman make such poor decisions and fall victim to the patriarchal backwards ways of an unknown land. She was a pawn of the bigger characters the entire time and not truly a villain. And Cinderella was just weird. Her mouse obsession was never explained. I did enjoy Anastasia and Drizella, and I liked the Fairy Godmother finally wasn't a total asshole in the end. She's never been an enjoyable character in this universe, but she's coming around.