Not long after delivering Seeing Redd, book two in my Looking Glass Wars series to my publisher, I received an express package from London. Inside I found a sheaf of fragile, handwritten pages written in pale, lavender ink. The package had been sent by historian Agnes Mackenzie, who was assembling the Princess Alyss of Wonderland scrapbook of art, journal entries and letters. Her brief note informed me that through some of her arcane literary contacts that this lost interview had come to her, and she knew I would want to see them immediately. 

In essence, these pages were Lewis Carroll’s attempt to interview Queen Redd during her time in London to write the definitive book of her life and times. I need to share this literary windfall of Lewis Carroll’s grueling, handwritten efforts to please his harshest critic of all.

Lewis Carroll was an acclaimed author when he received a summons from the Queen to visit the grounds of the former Crystal Palace Exhibition in London on a gray February afternoon in 1873. With Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass published Carroll perhaps believed he had written all he had to say about Wonderland. But this was not to be the case, as Carroll was about to have his first meeting with Wonderland’s Imperial Viciousness, Queen Redd, Queen Victoria’s doppelganger.

Exiled and nursing a deeply wounded ego she had read both of Lewis Carroll’s books glorifying her despised niece (“whether you spell it Alyss or Alice she is still a BRAT”) and now demanded that he write a book about her. What this recently uncovered trove of written material reveals is that Lewis Carroll was detained and somehow imprisoned within a looking glass along with a hard chair, a writing desk, a stack of blank pages, a selection of steel dipping pens and several bottles of his favorite lavender ink. 

Redd did not trust Lewis Carroll to get her story right (look what lies he wrote about her niece!) and insisted that he write what she dictated with an occasional riddle or rhyme added since she rather enjoyed those and prided herself on knowing the answer to Carroll’s “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” (Because I say so!)

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self — On April 2, 1873

It’s a damp, drafty day in this vast conservatory built of glass. Why must this horrible woman live in such frigid accommodations? Surely a deposed queen can at least afford adequate housing in a proper hotel. Look at her seated on her glass throne nibbling at toffee creams like some monstrous Jabberwock queen. Is this a dream or have I somehow physically encountered the brutal inhabitants of a parallel world? Whichever the case, I am having a good deal of trouble accepting the fact that I am imprisoned INSIDE a looking glass without conceding madness. And yet I am in here and she is out there. Oh dear, she is staring at me with such a malevolent intensity. Is this the end?

Queen Redd:

“Lewis Carroll!!! I am ready to begin! Start scribbling for your life!”

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self — I wait, pen poised, as the woman begins to intone in a languid, cruel voice.

Queen Redd:

I, REDD the true Queen of Wonderland…am not a monster. I have known love. I have felt sadness. I know what it is to feel joy and pain. But at a young age I realized those who embraced and championed the accepted world would label me a monster because I saw life in a more…IMAGINATIVE…way and wished to live on my own terms. I was not born to follow. I was born to be Queen, and this is my story of how I set Wonderland free!

LEWIS CARROLL:

Could you perhaps describe Wonderland to me since you are probably aware that your niece felt I got it all wrong…

Queen Redd:

Now listen and listen close you stuttering little wretch. Wonderland is absolutely NOTHING as you described it. Wonderland is not a child’s vision of silly creatures and hideous heart clad dowagers. Wonderland is obviously beyond your ability to imagine so I must explain it to you in vivid detail. Images are not flat but multi-dimensional. In fact, everything is multi-dimensional including fragrances, tastes, moonlight, and cresting waves. It is a land of unlimited possibility and vision filled with an intoxicating energy that never let’s one rest and say “Ahhh. Good enough.” HAH! Nothing is ever good enough because you constantly envision what could be! And only I possessed the most powerful imagination of all for I could see what no others DARED to see.  I went beyond what eons of Queens had imagined and let loose all that had been hidden and suppressed. I freed Wonderland’s dark side, and it was magnificent!

Lewis Carroll:

I believe you mentioned having been in l-l-love. Did I hear correctly?

Queen Redd:

I was in love exactly ONCE. Alyss’ father, King Nolan, had sworn his love to me. But as soon as the throne was given to my sister Genevieve, so was Nolan. He tagged after her like a little spiritdane. After that betrayal, I knew that no one would ever love me for me. It was the throne they loved. And so, I shall rule as I have lived. Alone.

Lewis Carroll:

What was it like to rule Wonderland for 13 years?

Queen Redd:

My rule began with absolute vivid, chaos! I chose to have my coronation ceremony and masquerade ball held in the Valley of Mushrooms. Oh, how it must have rankled those ancient larvae to have their mystical realm invaded by my riotous, destructive celebration! We hacked and burned an infinite number of mushrooms to keep the bonfires going night after night after night! While this was certainly a highpoint, my destruction of the Millinery and the slaughter of the milliners was by far my most relished deed. Getting rid of the milliners was certainly a stroke of genius. Of course, my error was in letting one specific Hatter Madigan escape. My error was in believing the lies of The Cat! But that deserves a chapter of its own, The Cat’s lies, after all, are what have sent me here to this sad, dull world.

Lewis Carroll:

Why did you trust this cat?

Queen Redd:

The Cat was my answer to Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan. I imagined a beast that would act as not only my personal bodyguard, but as an assassin. The Cat was the key that opened Heart Palace, carried in by the Princess herself. It arrived as a tiny, mewling kitten held tight to the bodice of her lavish birthday gown only to swell and mutate into a monster of claw and fang! Genius!  But my love for my own creation allowed me to believe it’s treacherous, self-serving lies that Alyss had been killed. I loved it so much I gave it 9 lives. And now only one remains. Who shall take my only offspring’s last life?

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self — The monstrous feline she describes lies just inches from my looking glass prison miming sleep while no doubt ready to pounce, shred and snap should I attempt to flee. As terrifying a creature as it is I must acknowledge both my curiosity and shame in the same breath. The Cat is exactly as the poor child described, down to every vicious, coiled claw. How it must have terrified her! As I observe the creature it appears to be as real as myself or anything else conceived in this world. This realization sends my mind spinning by the possibility that all the child’s fantastic tales were indeed true. 

Lewis Carroll:

How did you come by your battle cry of “Off with their heads!” Is it true you collect these heads once they are…off?

Queen Redd:

I have been misquoted out of context so many times now that I am feeling rather raw and annoyed. It’s not that I in any way, shape or form COLLECT heads. NO! NO! NO! I have simply found beheading to be a quick method of extermination and identification. While I did revolutionize the technique and the chant is undoubtedly a brilliant Reddism (“Off with their heads!” Simple and succinct.) I, in fact, enjoy many, many ways of dealing with my enemies and have often issued orders such as “Drown them all!” and “Trample them to death!” 

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self — She is utterly mad! I fear for my life and suspect that when I write my last line, she will issue yet another of her Reddisms on the order of “Hurl him from the top of Big Ben and smash the scribbler to bits!” But while part of me desires nothing more than to escape, a much larger part must discover how this end. I never could stop in the middle of a good story, especially when I am writing it!

Lewis Carroll:

Why did you break with the Wonderland custom of sending Imagination to other worlds?

Queen Redd:

When I realized how much of Wonderland’s imagination was being given away to this world I was incensed! I had known that the tedious Inventor’s Parades would send trinkets and bad poetry off to somewhere ‘out there’ but had no idea of the magnitude of imagination being lost. When I took control of Wonderland, I issued a decree that I wanted it back! I wanted all the imagination that Wonderland had been blithely spewing through the Heart Crystal since who knows when. Easier decreed than done! Since I have been marooned here in this dull world, I now realize that I can simply think of it as another avenue of resources. All the black imagination that festers here awaits my guidance. The spheres have opened for me, and this world will soon know my rule.

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self — I hold a HORRIFIED GASP deep inside me! What does she mean? I must find out.

Lewis Carroll:

You intend to rule this world as well? But what of our Queen Victoria?

Queen Redd:

Who?

Lewis Carroll:

Our beloved Queen Victoria. She is England’s Queen.

Queen Redd:

She is…for now. One of my great skills of imagination is body snatching. Once I re-establish my rule in Wonderland I intend to, as you say here, return to COLONIZE this little gray world and rule over both realms simultaneously for infinitum. But for now, I think I’ll assume your queen’s body as my own. This book that you are writing will serve as my introduction to the earth’s masses. It’s only honorable to warn them as to whom they will be dealing with. No?

Lewis Carroll:

Note to self – April 7, 1873

I am home once again in my living quarters at Christ Church College. The furnishings, the light, the windows and even the view all appear to be as usual, but I know that nothing will ever again be the same after my “adventure” inside the looking glass. I continued writing and recording and suggesting proper wording as Redd intoned her monstrous memoirs and ambitions. I decided that if I was not already completely mad the sound of her grating voice screeching endless descriptions of mayhem and murder would soon lay waste to what was left of my sanity. But then, quite suddenly, it all ended.  I glanced out of my looking glass prison one morning as the light began to fill the exhibition hall and saw that Redd, The Cat and her strange gathering of criminal outcasts had all departed. Nothing remained of their presence but the stack of pages I held in my hand. I gathered all the pages closer to me and held them tight, for these words were all I now possessed of Wonderland.

Lewis Carroll’s disbelief would in the end serve him much better as an author than having to admit that Wonderland was real. The whimsy and the freedom of a world he had imagined now reformed into the terror and reality of a place far beyond a sane man’s limits. Despite Carroll’s determination to turn Redd’s memoirs into a third book in his Wonderland series, he could never overcome the fact that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

At this point, Lewis Carroll alone knew that the girl named Alyss must somehow stop her Aunt Redd from conquering not only Wonderland, but our world as well. The desire to help Alyss and make amends for his literary betrayal haunted him like an unanswerable riddle.