Snow White and the Huntsman/Headscratchers

• Ravenna didn't know that eating Snow White's heart would give her eternal life/youth, judging by "I should have killed her" and her reaction after the Mirror tells her what's what. So why did Ravenna just leave Snow White in that cell for years? At the very least, killing her would completely eliminate the original Royal Family, removing an icon for a potential rebellion to rally around.
  • Probably she was kept as a future "fairness snack", as a further insult to the king. We see she only drains teens, so she may have just been waiting for her to cross an invisible threshold of maximum fairness.
  • Also it is likely that Ravenna on some subconcious level identified with Snow White, having both lost their mothers while very young and having lost everything they held dear due to an invasion. Leaving her alive was sort of a hint of lingering humanity. Still Ravenna was more than willing to kill Snow White when she would either be a threat or be useful to her.
• How did scarring their faces prevent those women from being candidates for magical draining? If they were attractive to begin with, it's not like their 'beauty' is contaminated or something, and anyway, wasn't Ravenna actually feeding on her victims' youth? Greta didn't suddenly become a monstrous hag after being drained, she just aged to being an old woman, and it makes sense that draining the youth/life is what allows Ravenna to extend her lifespan. So, was the scarring just superstition on the part of the village women?
  • My interpretation was that Ravenna was taking their "fairness" which gave the appearance of aging the victim. When the spell was first cast on Ravenna, her mother said something about how her "fairness would protect her" so as long as she remains beautiful, she is immortal. The scars ruin the villager's beauty, and effectively save them from Ravenna's wrath.
    • The spell seemed intended to give Ravenna power over men; there's nothing to indicate that her beauty is initially linked to her extended lifespan, though now they go together because Ravenna's lived for so long that her real beauty/youth is gone. It seemed as if the 'draining beauty' was just Ravenna's issues: She was stealing life, and since she was beautiful when she was younger, regaining life through draining others made her beautiful again. She could have drained the scarred women, human soldiers, random peasants, ect, and it would have worked fine, but because Ravenna was focused on the idea of Beauty (having it, losing it, stealing it, keeping it), it never occurred to her. ^[1]
• Theoretically, Ravenna has pulled her kingdom-stealing ploy more than once, has a bent on world domination, and has lived for "twenty lifetimes." So how is it that she seems to have such a small range of influence? From the look of things, she's only got the one kingdom, and not a very big one at that, when she should have something more resembling The Empire. Granted, she could just be completely out of her mind and making things up.
  • It's implied that all of the kingdoms she steals falls to ruin, so presumably she moves on when they're used up; it would be thematic to Snow White's "her presence brings life" thing. It's also possible that she has other kingdoms, but because they wind up like Tabor, she moves to the most recent conquest; and if all the other lands are also decimated, they wouldn't be much help once all they have to offer is mud and peasants.
• How did Snow White learn how to fight like that? She seemed rather young to have been trained before her father died.
  • We don't see her fight before the Huntsman teaches her self-defense in the forest, so maybe there were more, off-screen training sessions? And in fairness, she doesn't exactly go from neonate to Xena-level swordmistress.
• Ok... So is William Snow White's brother or not? I was under the impression that they were brother and sister, but she seemed all too eager to make out with him ( actually Ravenna in disguise) in the woods.
  • William is the son of the Duke, who seems to have been the King's most trusted retainer, which is presumably why Will was allowed to run around with the Princess. They're like brother and sister, in that they grew up together; if they were actually related, it would probably have been brought up by the plot.
• Did Snow White actually know that it was Eric's kiss that woke her up? The film does nothing to clarify it for us so all we can do is guess. Judging by the way she smiles at him near the end, it's possible she knows, but if she did, how is that possible when she was dead while he gave his heartwrenchingly beautiful speech? Magic, I guess.
  • She also says "I have seen what she sees," or something to that effect, upon her resurrection, and since that doesn't seem to be referring to Ravenna's 'Only you can kill me' thing from the woods, it does seem like there was something more than just death. So yeah, magic. Or maybe she was just in a coma, rather than dead? Comatose patients who recover supposedly hear things happening around them while they're comatose, so maybe that's how Snow White knew.
    • Thanks, that does sound at least a bit more reasonable.
• Who the hell was Whiteheart (the giant white buck in the fairies' dwelling) and why did they bring him up at all? He just shows up, gets shot with an arrow, and disappears. He didn't help anyone in any sort of way, and if his role was to symbolize how Snow White united nature, she already proved that with the troll. So is he part of the Snow White mythos or did they just make him up to use some more of those admittedly awesome effects?
  • White stags feature into a number of cultures' mythology and folklore. This scene seems to be lifted from Princess Mononoke.
• On that same thread: what the hell was up with the super convenient horse on the beach at the beginning? Why was there a horse on the beach at all? It essentially served as a means for a quick escape (and some trailer bait), but it made no sense whatsoever.
  • The fairies engineered her escape. Recall the black and white birds that led her to each step of her escape (the nail, the sewer grate, the horse, etc), then later revealed themselves to be inhabited by fairies.
• The Queen's brother has a prominent scar on his forehead, yet it's made clear that he's sustained by his sister's magic, which heals his injuries without leaving any scars.

1. ↑ Like Elizabeth Bathory, who only bathed in the blood of beautiful young woman; theoretically any blood would have helped, but since she believed the blood would transfer the girls' beauty to her, her psychoses insisted the "donors" be attractive to reflect her ideal.