The Bluebeard: Difference between revisions

Named after the [[Bluebeard (Literature)|famous fairy tale]]. Not to be confused with [[Red Right Hand]], although the [[Trope Namer|Trope Namer's]] beard fell under that category. Not to be confused with the character from [[Felidae]] either.

* ''The Haunt of Fear'' (one of the original 1950s comics on which ''[[Tales Fromfrom the Crypt]]'' is based) had a one-off story about a woman who discovers her new husband is Bluebeard's great-great-grandson and has indeed killed off all his previous wives. Predictably, he kills her as well so she can't tell anyone.

* The [[Bluebeard (Literature)|Bluebeard]] from the 1697 fairy tale kept murdering his wives, reasoning that they had fallen to their curiosity by opening the door he had strictly forbidden for them to open. Traditionally, the room behind the forbidden door contains the bodies of his previous wives. [[Values Dissonance|Earlier versions use this as a moral for women]] [[Warped Aesop|not to disobey their husbands]] [[Curiosity Killed the Cast|or get too curious]].

* The title character of the horror movie ''[[The Stepfather (Film)|The Stepfather]]'' marries women with children, only to slaughter them when they fall short of his expectations. He has ridiculously high standards, and so he goes through families fairly quickly.

* {{spoiler|The villain Barkis}} from ''[[Corpse Bride (Animation)|Corpse Bride]]'' fits this trope.

* Harry Powell from ''[[The Night of the Hunter (Film)|The Night of the Hunter]]''.

* In the original ''[[House On Haunted Hill (Film)|House Onon Haunted Hill]]'', eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren ([[Vincent Price]]) is currently on his fourth wife. The first one disappeared, and the second two died of heart attacks, despite being in their 20s. {{spoiler|At the end of the film, he literally frightens his fourth wife to death, but only because [[Gold Digger|she was plotting to kill him for his money]]. It's implied that her predecessors may have been similarly interested in becoming rich young widows.}}

* The Sultan in the framing device of the ''[[Arabian Nights (Literature)|Arabian Nights]]'' stories is this in the extreme, except that he makes no secret about it. He kills off all his wives after one night to prevent their becoming unfaithful. The stories are told by his latest wife, Scheherezade, [[Scheherezade Gambit|who uses a series of]] [[Cliff Hanger|Cliffhangers]] to keep him interested enough to delay her execution. By the time she runs out of stories, it's been years and she has birthed the Sultan several children, and he realizes he is madly in love with her.

* [[Angela Carter (Creator)|Angela Carter]]'s ''[[The Bloody Chamber (Literature)|The Bloody Chamber]]'' has a "[[Bluebeard (Literature)|Bluebeard]]" retelling.

* There's a short story called "Captain Murderer", in which the titular character keeps marrying women and, a month after the wedding, asks them to make him a pie... and when they're done making the pastry, he kills them and [[I'm a Humanitarian|uses their flesh as the pie filling.]] He gets done in when a girl whose sister was killed by him catches on to the plot, marries him, and, just before he kills her, [[Taking You Withwith Me|poisons herself.]] He eats her and dies from the poison.

* A [[Fractured Fairy Tale]] show put a twist on this trope -- the Bluebeard {{spoiler|sold his wives' souls to the devil, to represent the [[Seven Deadly Sins]]. In the end, his seventh wife [[Hoist Byby His Own Petard|catches him in his own trap]].}}

* Naturally, shows up on ''[[Tales Fromfrom the Crypt]]'', with the expected comeuppance: {{spoiler|his now-dead wives lure him to their graveyard, declaring they can't live... or die... without him}}.

* [[Joanna Newsom]]'s "Go Long" is a version of "[[Bluebeard (Literature)|Bluebeard]]".

* ''[[Modesty Blaise (Comiccomic Stripstrip)|Modesty Blaise]]'' fought one of these in '"The Bluebeard Affair".

* General Tarquin from ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'' has had ''nine'' wives: while we know that he simply divorced the first one ({{spoiler|Elan and Nale's mother}}), the ninth recently died 'of mysterious circumstances'. It's recently been made clear that {{spoiler|at least some of his former wives were coerced into marriage via [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] in the first place.}} It's also distinctly possible that {{spoiler|when he said he was going out of the way to keep from having children (he didn't want an heir), he meant he was killing his wives for getting pregnant.}}

* In ''[[The Venture Brothers (Animation)|The Venture Brothers]]'', [[Evil Overlord|Baron Ünderbheit]] has the heads of his seven ex-wives mounted on his dining room wall.

* Henry VIII, who had [[wikipedia:Wives of Henry VIII|six wives]], is often considered to be a Bluebeard despite the fact that "only" two of said wives (second wife Anne Boleyn and fifth wife Catherine Howard) got the axe, the first for failing to produce a male heir, the second for adultery.<ref>Although the king was [[Double Standard|no stranger to adultery himself]]. It wasn't producing a male heir that was the problem; it was producing a ''legitimate'' male heir who would actually be able to become king. This led to some zany schemes like planning to marry his illegitimate son to his legitimate daughter.</ref> Two of the others (first wife Catherine of Aragon and fourth wife Anne of Cleves) were divorced, the third (Jane Seymour) [[Death Byby Irony|died of natural causes after producing a male heir]], and the last one (Catherine Parr) survived him. His reputation in this area is augmented by the fact that he had plenty of ''other'' people executed over the political and religious complications involved in his [[High Turnover Rate]] of wives.