here are few so maligned in all of pop culture, literature and fairy tale as the wicked step-parent. In a tradition that reaches all the way back to German folklore through to and the ‘wicked’ step-parent is often the go-to for domestic villainy – popularised by Disney in their early films. It has been theorised that the trope exists as a convenient means for children to manifest fear and hate against their own parents while simultaneously still pedestalling dear old mum and dad. Whatever the case, the wicked step-parent is generally typified by extreme jealousy and a tendency towards cruelty to those in their care, ranging from padlocks on basement doors to straight-up filicide. Taking in the lesser-known wicked stepfather (or mum’s horrible boyfriend, in some meets the grotesquely and deliciously wicked alike. Who’s the unfairest of them all?
