With Victoria being the main villain of the third Twilight movie Eclipse, why was her surprisingly sympathetic and in-depth backstory cut?
Twilight features a lot of complicated backstories, but one the movie adaptations could have benefitted from adding is the tragic tale of Eclipse villain Victoria. Beginning in 2008 with Twilight, a moody paranormal teen romance from Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke, the saga was a series of financially successful, critically abhorred supernatural fantasy movies. The franchise – adapted from the bestselling novels by author Stephenie Meyer – told the tale of Bella Swan, an average small-town girl, and Edward Cullen, her immortal vampire boyfriend.
The Twilight series also found time for a love triangle with Jacob Black, a local werewolf, as well as some complex lore about international vampire communities and endless backstories for its main cast. However, for the most part, the story of all five installments focused on Edward, Bella, and the constant contrivances conspiring to keep the pair apart. That said, fortunately for fans of the series, the movies were not without their compelling supporting characters.
The franchise was critically dismissed upon its initial release and, although Kristen Stewart and future Batman Robert Pattinson have since proven they are talented performers, in the case of Twilight the pair needed the help of their co-stars to keep the melodramatic source material from rendering the movies too self-serious. Fortunately, Twilight’s villains the Volturi, James, Laurent, and Victoria assured each of the movies had an agreeably hammy, occasionally genuinely threatening antagonist to make the story compelling. In particular, Victoria, the villain of both the original Twilight and its second sequel Eclipse, was an interesting baddie with a more complex background than most of the saga’s antagonists. Victoria is a complicated character with a surprisingly sympathetic backstory, although it is unfortunately never seen onscreen even though her character is central to two movies.
Victoria’s London Origins
Born into servitude hundreds of years before the action of the Twilight saga begins, Victoria and her sister Anne were lorded over for their early years by a cruel and abusive master. Eventually, the pair managed to run away and eked out a hardscrabble existence in 1500s London, becoming prostitutes to survive. Like many of Twilight’s bleak backstories, Victoria and Anne’s early existence were defined by betrayal and brutality – even after escaping their master. Soon after fleeing, the pair ran afoul of an abusive pimp. Anne was lucky enough to escape his clutches but left her sister to languish under his rule, with Victoria presuming she died in the pitiless outside world. Fortunately, Victoria eventually worked up the courage to escape her pimp too, but her hardship had only just begun.
Anne Returns For Victoria
Years later, Anne found Victoria living as a starving petty thief, surviving on scraps having escaped her captor. Victoria was shocked to find her sister had been turned into a vampire during their time apart but allowed Anne to turn her too to save Victoria from a life of fear and further hardship. With little reason to believe her lot in life would improve, Victoria became a vampire, and unlike the “vegetarian” Cullen clan, she and her sister regularly sought out human victims to sate their bloodlust.
Victoria And Anne’s Vampire Coven
Despite the pair now being vampires, Anne and Victoria’s lives finally improved somewhat in the years that followed, although this being Twilight, their good fortune was short-lived. They lived an idyllic existence for a few years as part of an all-female vampire coven who occasionally turned new members to make their brood bigger, but were aware this system couldn’t last forever. Twilight villains the Volturi, the most powerful coven of vampires, did not care for competition in the form of covens who grew their membership. As proven by the Volturi’s decision to attack and kill almost every member of the Romanian coven, the ruthless group was willing to slay anyone who could potentially challenge their leadership or lead humans to uncover vampires. Unfortunately, this side of the Volturi was something Victoria and Anne did not encounter until it was too late.
The Volturi Attack
The Volturi killed every member of the coven except Victoria, who escaped thanks to her ability to camouflage herself among humans. This portion of her backstory is vital to the saga’s overarching story, as the Volturi’s murder of her sister Anne makes them – the villains of Breaking Dawn and New Moon – into the enemies of Victoria, Twilight and Eclipse’s villain. Thus, this is the reason the villains never team up to take down the Cullens, although Victoria’s Eclipse-era vampire army and the Volturi could likely have won if they had let bygones be bygones and united against their common foe.
Victoria and James
Cam Gigandet’s Twilight villain James may have been a ferocious, murderous hunter, but for Victoria, he was the love of her life. Victoria found the closest thing to safety she’d ever known in her relationship with James, which began after she fled Europe to escape detection by the Volturi. The pair hunted humans and lived in relative peace for some years, with James returning Victoria’s affections even though – as a thrill-seeking hunter – he never prized the comfort and stability she sought out. This connection between the pair made James’ death at the close of Twilight the beginning of her revenge quest against the Cullen family, prompting her to build an army of vampires and begin a guerrilla war that culminates in the finale of Eclipse. This sees her die by decapitation after narrowly losing an all-out war with the Cullens.
How Victoria’s Backstory Affects The Twilight Saga
Like a lot of Twilight backstories, Victoria’s tale is one of hardship and struggle, and it makes the one-dimensional villain of the movies surprisingly sympathetic in retrospect. With an actor as talented as Bryce Dallas Howard taking on the part in Eclipse, it’s a shame 30 Days of Night director David Slade’s movie made time for most of the Cullen clan’s backstories but did not depict this poignant, brutal explanation for her villainy. With Rosalie and Jasper’s pasts making it into the sequel, a flashback that detailed Victoria’s past could have made the character a more fully rounded figure and a more satisfying Twilight villain as a result.
