The Queen of Hearts

She rules the croquet ground by tantrum, sentencing three players to execution for missing turns while the game collapses into quarreling flamingos and fleeing hedgehogs. Her smile as she passes Alice is more frightening than her rage, because it shows she has heard the criticism and simply doesn't care. Alice's growing refusal to be cowed by her matters enormously to the book's middle arc, where a child's ordinary sense of fairness starts to look like real courage.