The Red Queen

The Red Queen: A Transcultural Tragicomedy, is a 2004 novel by British writer Margaret Drabble. Weaving together the life of an eighteenth-century Korean princess (based on a real historical memoir) and the mid-life crisis of a forty-something British academic, The Red Queen searches, according to the author’s preface, for “universal transcultural human characteristics.” The novel is the seventeenth by Drabble, most famous for The Millstone and Jerusalem The Golden, both widely regarded as major works of twentieth-century British literature.

On the evening she is due to leave for a conference in Seoul, Dr. Babs Halliwell receives an Amazon package she didn’t order. It is a book. Babs has no idea who sent it, but she slips it into her hand luggage in case she runs out of distractions on her long flight to South Korea. Deep into the flight, tired and bored, Babs opens the book and soon finds herself engrossed.

The mystery book is a memoir, written by the eighteenth-century Korean Crown Princess, Lady Hyegyong. The Princess begins her story by remembering her childhood longing for a red silk skirt. However, her childhood is interrupted when she is unexpectedly chosen to marry the heir to the Korean throne, Prince Sado, at the age of nine. For the rest of her life, she will not be allowed to leave the palace grounds. Sado gifts her a red silk skirt and calls her “my little Red Queen.”



As the memoir unfolds, it becomes clear that the book in Babs’s hands was written not by the living Lady Hyegyong, but by her ghost, who has spent the last 200 years learning about Western history and modern science. For instance, contemplating her relationship with her mother, Lady Hyegyong muses, " I suppose she was depressed. Was it a form of postnatal depression? Such a condition was not officially recognized or named in those days."

At first, Sado is fun and playful, if somewhat erratic, but as the young couple grows up, it becomes clear that he is mentally ill. He throws increasingly violent tantrums. King Yongjo, disappointed in his son and heir, beats Sado, which only worsens his condition.

As she becomes an adult, Lady Hyegyong faces new dangers in the form of court intrigues and conspiracies. The complex factionalism of the Korean court is mapped in precise dress codes: “Fabrics held destinies.”



Sado becomes violent. Lady Hyegyong notes that Prince Sado shares not only a name but also similar predilections with the French aristocrat and writer the Marquis de Sade, for whom “sadism” is named. She is powerless to defend herself, or other members of their household, from her husband. She devotes herself to raising her children, lacquerwork, embroidery, and writing. She explains the customs of the court in anthropological detail, remarking that she wishes she could have another life as an academic. When her oldest child dies, she copes with her grief almost alone.

Sado’s behavior worsens. Driven into a rage by the dress codes of the court, Sado destroys reams of clothing in a frenzy. Finally, he murders a palace eunuch and beheads him. King Yongjo, humiliated and furious, sentences his son to be locked in a rice chest until he dies of thirst.

With Sado dead, Lady Hyegyong’s position is precarious. The King is nearly as erratic as his late son, and the princess must use cunning and deft manipulation to secure her son’s status as heir.



Babs finishes reading the memoir on the plane, and lands in Korea intoxicated by the princess’s story, already resolving that she will skip as much of the conference as she can to explore the city’s historical buildings. She is accompanied—haunted—by the ghost of Lady Hyegyong, who suggests that she is affecting Babs’s subconscious to alter her behavior. The princess’s goal is to ensure that her memoir becomes widely known.

When a Korean doctor accidentally takes Babs’s luggage at the airport, she begins an affair with him. When Babs sneaks away from the conference, the doctor escorts her to the sites of Lady Hyegyong’s life. At the same time, Babs is inveigled into an affair with the conference’s star speaker, a Dutch academic.

As Babs explores the city and her two new relationships, we learn that she is at a crisis point in her life. Two great traumas lurk in her past, and they are eerily reminiscent of Lady Hyegyong’s: Babs, too, lost an infant son and had a mentally ill husband. Other similarities emerge: a taste for tortoiseshell and red silk; a dislike of dragons. Babs begins to realize that in other ways, too, her life resembles Lady Hyegyong’s. She is stifled by her career and the gender politics of the university, just as the Princess was stifled by the mores of her own time.



The Dutch academic—who has been battling his own demons—dies in Babs’s bed. Babs returns to England, still haunted by the princess’s story. She meets the novelist Margaret Drabble, who is revealed to be the author of the book.

Reviews of The Red Queen were generally positive. Publishers Weekly described the novel as an “elegantly constructed meditation on memory, mortality, risk, and reward.” Some reviewers were concerned by the lack of historical accuracy in the Princess’s narrative and the possibility of cultural appropriation in Drabble’s use of the material.