Frau Totenkinder
Encyclopedia
Frau Totenkinder is a fictional character in the comic book series Fables, created by Bill Willingham
. Leader of the magicians of Fabletown
, Totenkinder (a pseudonym which approximates to "dead children" or "children of the dead" in German) represents many of the unnamed witches found in tales and legends. Her outward appearance as a rather frail old woman masks the fact that she is one of the most powerful Fables to have escaped the Homelands
. She has appeared throughout the series as an integral part of the Fabletown community, both defending it against the Adversary's mages and making her own deals with its residents.
era. Once she reached puberty
, she began to experience premonitions, initially weak, but growing in strength and accuracy, until the tribe made her their shaman. She became romantically involved with Aurac, the son of the tribe's chief who expected to marry her, until another nearby tribe invaded their lands. To avert war, the chief's son was married to the daughter of the other chief, leaving the newly pregnant Totenkinder alone. If it had become known that the two had slept together, both would have been banished, so Aurac denounced her, accusing her of consorting with demons, which led to her banishment from the tribe.
Realizing that she would need far greater power than she currently possessed in order to survive, Totenkinder ritually sacrificed her newborn son and was granted considerable power, which she used to take revenge on Aurac. She learned that, while sacrificing one child a year would keep her power, sacrificing two would prevent her from aging. Years passed as she heaped every indignity imaginable on the tribe that cast her out; ages passed and she remained unchanged, growing only in power and cunning. She assisted those who were kind to her, creating the three Billy Goats Gruff
to eliminate a bridge troll that was causing problems for a village that won her favor, and blessing those who she felt worthy. She took her revenge on the town of Hamelin
by giving away an enchanted flute that was used to lure away their children. Prompted by her experience with Aurac, she waged her own private war against handsome princes and men of wealth and privilege, during which she was responsible for the curses on Beast, Flycatcher, and Rapunzel. In order to stem her own physical desires, she allowed herself to age considerably. Finally, tiring of dealing with others, she retired to a cottage deep in the woods, interacting with others only when a child passed, when she would dress up her house with sweets to lure them in to be sacrificed to keep her power. Eventually, she encountered Hansel and Gretel
, who outsmarted her and burned her in her own oven. Surviving in horrific condition, she was eventually rescued by Snow White and Rose Red, running from the Adversary's forces. Telling her about the mundane world, Snow and Rose attempted to help her reach it, covering a considerable distance with her. However, they became separated while traveling and exactly how Totenkinder ultimately reached the mundane world is unknown.
Totenkinder has been instrumental in resolving several crises that have hit Fabletown. When the evil Max Piper visited Fabletown in the 1920's, she drove him away after a fearsome battle, and worked to restore the Fables' fertility after he released virus to sterilize the community. She defeated Baba Yaga in magical combat during the wooden soldier assault, much to the shock of the latter, who had always considered her opponent to be minor-league at best. She was also responsible for thwarting the plans of Yusuf, chief advisor to Sinbad of the Arabian Fables, when he released a d'jinn
, instructing it to eliminate all his opponents and bring him great power and wealth. Totenkinder anticipated this possibility and ensorcelled him, so that, unknown to him, he actually instructed the genie to kill all his accomplices, then himself (in the same drawn-out and painful a manner that he had intended for his enemies) and then return safely to its bottle.
She has established something of an alliance with Beast since his advancement to the position of sheriff; while this generally establishes itself as a quid-pro-quo arrangement of mutual favors, it remains to be seen if any darker reasons lie behind it. Totenkinder eventually reveals the nature of her spies in the Empire. She installed a magical brush in the woodcarver guild's tools which allows her to look through the eyes of any of the carved beings whose eyes are painted using that brush and to see what they see. Among her unwitting spies is Geppetto's pet owl. She has also been able to apply this spell upon Fabletown's zephyr spies, as per Prince Charming's request. This allowed for members of the Fables' magical community to see what spies saw, in order to make up for the zephyrs' lack of experience with solid beings.
In one conversation with Beast, she tells him nearly everything regarding her intentions in the then-upcoming war with the Empire. In her opinion, she says, Fabletown cannot win in war, simply because there is no war to begin with. To her, this is a personal duel between her and Geppetto, with their respective "allies" being their chess pieces. To mitigate Beast's horror, Totenkinder further insists that Fabletown and everyone in it is very dear to her, and she intends to get as many people alive out of it as possible. She explains that this drive to destroy Geppetto and wipe out all he created stems from a debt she believes she incurred when Rose Red and Snow White rescued and revived her after her defeat at the hands of Hansel and Gretel. In return for their "undeserved act of kindness", Totenkinder made their enemy her enemy and eventually decides to free the Homelands for them.
She leaves, telling Ozma she's now the leader of the witches and wizards. The fate of defeating Mr. Dark is left to her and she'll not see anyone again. She and Dunster then leave for parts unknown.
While generally acting in the best interests of Fabletown, Totenkinder is something of a schemer and often seems to be playing her own game. Her help usually comes with a price, such as the many "favors" Cinderella owes Totenkinder for the enchanted items she provides (although what those favors are have yet to be revealed). Very little escapes her attention in Fabletown; she was the only one to be aware of Snow White's seventh child, for example, and knew of the arrest of Trusty John, despite attempts to keep it quiet. Her intelligence network in the Homelands is extensive, as she has access to the sight of many of those running the Empire.
When she came to Fabletown, Frau Totenkinder ostensibly stopped killing newborn infants for her power, instead merely taking a little blood from each newborn Fable. However, during a conversation with Kay, it is revealed that she this is just a ruse to ease the minds of the Fabletown community, and she still secretly sacrifices children to maintain her power, only now it is many more than two a year. How she manages this is unrevealed, but she maintains that what she does is legal in the mundane world even though it would be frowned upon by the Fable community should they learn of it. While there is a popular fan theory that Totenkinder could be financing abortion clinics, none of Fabless writers or artists have weighed in on the matter.
In Fables #88 its revealed that her rocking chair is also the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel, the stone tower from Rapunzel and the stone on which she killed her baby. She gives some of its names as "Capture" (in its gingerbread form) "Refuge" (in its Rapunzel's tower form), and "Burden," "Damnation" and "Regret" (in its original altar stone form).
In the same way that Jack
represents many of the different Jack tales, Totenkinder is "just about every witch in fairy tales", according to Willingham, as long as that witch was unnamed in their story. Therefore, Frau Totenkinder is not any of the Witches of Oz. In his online Fabletown forum, Willingham clarified that Totenkinder and Cinderella's Fairy Godmother are two separate characters (later confirmed in Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love.), and that the story from 1001 Nights of Snowfall
was probably a nonspecific story similar to that of the Witch archetype. She is also not any of the named witches of Arthurian Legend (e.g. Morgan le Fey, or the Lady in the Lake) but she did make contributions during that era. She introduces herself to Dunster Happ as "Bellflower", which is her original name from childhood. Interestingly enough, in "Peter And Max : A Fables Novel", she states that she does not rely by one name alone, because it could be used against her, if she used one long enough to consider it her true name. This is the same reason why Mrs Someone refuses to give her real name to anyone. However, Ozma not only recognized her in "Rose Red", but, amazingly, also showed that she already knew "Bellflower" was Frau Totenkinder's oldest name.
Bill Willingham
Bill Willingham is an American writer and artist of comics.-Career:Willingham got his start in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a staff artist for TSR, Inc., where he illustrated a number of their role-playing game products...
. Leader of the magicians of Fabletown
Fabletown
Fabletown is the fictional, clandestine community of "Fables" resident in New York in the Fables comic book universe. It exists in two locations, one being Bullfinch Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the other on a large farm in upstate New York, protected with magical spells that...
, Totenkinder (a pseudonym which approximates to "dead children" or "children of the dead" in German) represents many of the unnamed witches found in tales and legends. Her outward appearance as a rather frail old woman masks the fact that she is one of the most powerful Fables to have escaped the Homelands
Homelands (Fables)
The Homelands are the mythical lands from fairy tales, folklore, and nursery rhymes in the comic book series Fables. The majority of those listed have been conquered by the mysterious Adversary, as he has conquered most of the European Fable lands...
. She has appeared throughout the series as an integral part of the Fabletown community, both defending it against the Adversary's mages and making her own deals with its residents.
Pre-Fabletown
Totenkinder was born a beautiful girl into the Fog Mountain tribe and grew up there, apparently during the PaleolithicPaleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...
era. Once she reached puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
, she began to experience premonitions, initially weak, but growing in strength and accuracy, until the tribe made her their shaman. She became romantically involved with Aurac, the son of the tribe's chief who expected to marry her, until another nearby tribe invaded their lands. To avert war, the chief's son was married to the daughter of the other chief, leaving the newly pregnant Totenkinder alone. If it had become known that the two had slept together, both would have been banished, so Aurac denounced her, accusing her of consorting with demons, which led to her banishment from the tribe.
Realizing that she would need far greater power than she currently possessed in order to survive, Totenkinder ritually sacrificed her newborn son and was granted considerable power, which she used to take revenge on Aurac. She learned that, while sacrificing one child a year would keep her power, sacrificing two would prevent her from aging. Years passed as she heaped every indignity imaginable on the tribe that cast her out; ages passed and she remained unchanged, growing only in power and cunning. She assisted those who were kind to her, creating the three Billy Goats Gruff
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Three Billy Goats Gruff is a Norwegian fairy tale. The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr, first published between 1841 and 1844...
to eliminate a bridge troll that was causing problems for a village that won her favor, and blessing those who she felt worthy. She took her revenge on the town of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin , Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied clothing, leading the children away from the town never...
by giving away an enchanted flute that was used to lure away their children. Prompted by her experience with Aurac, she waged her own private war against handsome princes and men of wealth and privilege, during which she was responsible for the curses on Beast, Flycatcher, and Rapunzel. In order to stem her own physical desires, she allowed herself to age considerably. Finally, tiring of dealing with others, she retired to a cottage deep in the woods, interacting with others only when a child passed, when she would dress up her house with sweets to lure them in to be sacrificed to keep her power. Eventually, she encountered Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel
"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...
, who outsmarted her and burned her in her own oven. Surviving in horrific condition, she was eventually rescued by Snow White and Rose Red, running from the Adversary's forces. Telling her about the mundane world, Snow and Rose attempted to help her reach it, covering a considerable distance with her. However, they became separated while traveling and exactly how Totenkinder ultimately reached the mundane world is unknown.
The mundane world
Since arriving in Fabletown, Totenkinder has kept a relatively low profile. With the general amnesty absolving her of her past sins, she has assumed leadership of the various magic-users present in the mundane world and has shown an interest in helping others, including, with some irony, her old foe, Gretel, in studying the magical arts.Totenkinder has been instrumental in resolving several crises that have hit Fabletown. When the evil Max Piper visited Fabletown in the 1920's, she drove him away after a fearsome battle, and worked to restore the Fables' fertility after he released virus to sterilize the community. She defeated Baba Yaga in magical combat during the wooden soldier assault, much to the shock of the latter, who had always considered her opponent to be minor-league at best. She was also responsible for thwarting the plans of Yusuf, chief advisor to Sinbad of the Arabian Fables, when he released a d'jinn
Genie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
, instructing it to eliminate all his opponents and bring him great power and wealth. Totenkinder anticipated this possibility and ensorcelled him, so that, unknown to him, he actually instructed the genie to kill all his accomplices, then himself (in the same drawn-out and painful a manner that he had intended for his enemies) and then return safely to its bottle.
She has established something of an alliance with Beast since his advancement to the position of sheriff; while this generally establishes itself as a quid-pro-quo arrangement of mutual favors, it remains to be seen if any darker reasons lie behind it. Totenkinder eventually reveals the nature of her spies in the Empire. She installed a magical brush in the woodcarver guild's tools which allows her to look through the eyes of any of the carved beings whose eyes are painted using that brush and to see what they see. Among her unwitting spies is Geppetto's pet owl. She has also been able to apply this spell upon Fabletown's zephyr spies, as per Prince Charming's request. This allowed for members of the Fables' magical community to see what spies saw, in order to make up for the zephyrs' lack of experience with solid beings.
In one conversation with Beast, she tells him nearly everything regarding her intentions in the then-upcoming war with the Empire. In her opinion, she says, Fabletown cannot win in war, simply because there is no war to begin with. To her, this is a personal duel between her and Geppetto, with their respective "allies" being their chess pieces. To mitigate Beast's horror, Totenkinder further insists that Fabletown and everyone in it is very dear to her, and she intends to get as many people alive out of it as possible. She explains that this drive to destroy Geppetto and wipe out all he created stems from a debt she believes she incurred when Rose Red and Snow White rescued and revived her after her defeat at the hands of Hansel and Gretel. In return for their "undeserved act of kindness", Totenkinder made their enemy her enemy and eventually decides to free the Homelands for them.
Post-Adversary
After the destruction of Geppetto's empire, two thieves accidentally release the physical embodiment of darkness. The entity who called himself Mr. Dark, declared a vendetta against Fabletown since one of the artifacts they used to fight the empire contained a portion of his power. In an attempt to defeat Mr. Dark, Totenkinder reverts back to her original youthful form, and set off on a journey to find more information on Mr. Dark during which, she meets Dunster Happ the leader of a group that initially contained Dark. After consulting Happ, she duels Dark, defeats him, and seals him in gold. Unfortunately, Mr. Dark subsequently breaks free, a rematch occurs and Dark wins by biting Totenkinder in the neck when both are in mythical forms. Though he defeated her in battle and apparently withered her away, she was not dead. Instead, in a desperate act she turned herself into a drift message and sent herself off to the Farm to meet with Dunster Happ, her lover. However, she was surprised to find Maddy and Ozma waiting for her as well, Maddy realized that she had survived the battle and both waited for her. While Ozma had hoped to use Frau's powers again to fight Mr. Dark, Frau reveals that the battle was her final attempt. She also tells them as of now, she's retired from all wars. She and Dunster have no plans to join the group in Haven.She leaves, telling Ozma she's now the leader of the witches and wizards. The fate of defeating Mr. Dark is left to her and she'll not see anyone again. She and Dunster then leave for parts unknown.
Personality, ability and identity
Frau Totenkinder's natural form is as a beautiful young woman, but she appears to be an old crone.While generally acting in the best interests of Fabletown, Totenkinder is something of a schemer and often seems to be playing her own game. Her help usually comes with a price, such as the many "favors" Cinderella owes Totenkinder for the enchanted items she provides (although what those favors are have yet to be revealed). Very little escapes her attention in Fabletown; she was the only one to be aware of Snow White's seventh child, for example, and knew of the arrest of Trusty John, despite attempts to keep it quiet. Her intelligence network in the Homelands is extensive, as she has access to the sight of many of those running the Empire.
When she came to Fabletown, Frau Totenkinder ostensibly stopped killing newborn infants for her power, instead merely taking a little blood from each newborn Fable. However, during a conversation with Kay, it is revealed that she this is just a ruse to ease the minds of the Fabletown community, and she still secretly sacrifices children to maintain her power, only now it is many more than two a year. How she manages this is unrevealed, but she maintains that what she does is legal in the mundane world even though it would be frowned upon by the Fable community should they learn of it. While there is a popular fan theory that Totenkinder could be financing abortion clinics, none of Fabless writers or artists have weighed in on the matter.
In Fables #88 its revealed that her rocking chair is also the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel, the stone tower from Rapunzel and the stone on which she killed her baby. She gives some of its names as "Capture" (in its gingerbread form) "Refuge" (in its Rapunzel's tower form), and "Burden," "Damnation" and "Regret" (in its original altar stone form).
In the same way that Jack
Jack Horner (Fables)
Jack Horner is a fictional character in the comic book series Fables by Bill Willingham. His first appearance was in issue #1 of Fables and continued as a regular character of the series until leaving the series for his own title, Jack of Fables...
represents many of the different Jack tales, Totenkinder is "just about every witch in fairy tales", according to Willingham, as long as that witch was unnamed in their story. Therefore, Frau Totenkinder is not any of the Witches of Oz. In his online Fabletown forum, Willingham clarified that Totenkinder and Cinderella's Fairy Godmother are two separate characters (later confirmed in Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love.), and that the story from 1001 Nights of Snowfall
1001 Nights of Snowfall
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a graphic novel prequel to the comic book series Fables written by series creator Bill Willingham with a variety of artists. It was released on October 18, 2006 by Vertigo....
was probably a nonspecific story similar to that of the Witch archetype. She is also not any of the named witches of Arthurian Legend (e.g. Morgan le Fey, or the Lady in the Lake) but she did make contributions during that era. She introduces herself to Dunster Happ as "Bellflower", which is her original name from childhood. Interestingly enough, in "Peter And Max : A Fables Novel", she states that she does not rely by one name alone, because it could be used against her, if she used one long enough to consider it her true name. This is the same reason why Mrs Someone refuses to give her real name to anyone. However, Ozma not only recognized her in "Rose Red", but, amazingly, also showed that she already knew "Bellflower" was Frau Totenkinder's oldest name.