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Catherine de Medici is the main antagonist of the French story of the 1916 D.W. Griffth film Intolerance.
She is the tyrannical queen-mother of King Charles IX who has the power behind him. She is based on the real Catherine de Medici, who started the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
She was portrayed by the late Josephine Crowell.
What Makes Her Pure Evil?[]
- As part of her tyrannical rule over France, she as a deep hatred of the Huguenots' race, although she'd hide the bitterness under the guise of the Catholic Religion. She would later claim that hundreds of her and her people's faith perished at the hands of the Huguenots, and so their lives would depend on their demise and extermination. However, she later turns out to be a a giant hypocrite as she pretty much abandons her goals of avenging her people and just wants to please her own desire of having the Huguenots slaughtered.
- She was never shown to genuinely care about the people of Paris and would often send mercenaries to spy on various people.
- She forces her son Charles IX -- the current king of France -- to unwillingly order the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre against the Huguenots. When Charles rightfully refuses to endanger his own people, Catherine points at him and ends up persuading him to sign, along with other persuasive councilors. Charles would even throw a massive fit at this, and after reluctantly signing an order to take down the Huguenots, he'd angrily shout at his mother and her followers despising them to what they made him do.
- Her plans for the massacre interfered with plans for Brown Eyes and Latour's wedding, leading to hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting Huguenots getting unsuspectedly slaughtered, forcing the family to post-pone the wedding and escape for survival. Eventually a group of mercenaries finds Brown Eyes and her family and murder them all, and Latour willingly allows himself to get shot to join Brown Eyes in death in the afterlife, making Catherine an extremely rare case were the villain successfully kills the lead heroes.
- Catherine briefly shown surveying at all the dead bodies around her she was indirectly responsible for via her mercenaries -- including children and a baby, no less -- most of which had no business with her whatsoever. Not only does she not does she not show remorse or guilt for anybody's demise regardless of their age, she's completely satisfied with everything that's happening as she's shown with an evil smile as she progresses. Plus she gets away with all of her atrocities and is never seen trying to interact with her King-son again. or patch things up in anyway.
Trivia[]
- With her film being released in 1916, when the film industry was still relatively new, Catherine's one of the earliest examples of a Pure Evil villain coming from a movie.
External Link[]
- Catherine de Medici on the Villains Wiki.