Chapter 1

Legend tells of a queen who lived many years ago in a small feudal province in what is today the north of France. She was known as the Red Queen because of her long, thick curls of strawberry-red locks, but what she was mostly known for was her absolutely insatiable appetite for decadent food and her resulting gargantuan size.

It’s been said that a curse was placed upon her when she was just a baby by a bitter and jealous sorceress who had tried to seduce the king in an attempt to gain power over the kingdom. When her efforts failed, she cast a spell making his only daughter so obese that no man would desire her, thus ensuring there would be no male heir to ascend to the throne and the kingdom would fall into ruin.

The veracity of said curse is unknown, but what we can know for sure is that the Kingdom of Auburn would thrive under the rule of The Red Queen - and she grow would become anything but undesirable.


Her name was Victoria of Auburn, and she was just nineteen years old when she ascended to the throne upon the death of her parents in an outbreak of the plague. Up to this point she had already gained a reputation for having a massive appetite, regularly eating enough food for an entire banquet by herself in one sitting. Indeed, as Victoria matured from childhood into young adulthood, she is said to have grown fatter and fatter with each passing year.

There are not many known portraits of The Red Queen, but the few that we do have from this particular time of her life depict her as being a very plump and voluptuous young lady. She had fair skin and a chubby face with rosy red cheeks, accented by two dark opal-colored eyes. She’s depicted as having at this time a modest but definitely round and protruding pot-belly, atop which sat her very well-endowed bosom.

Some texts were written about her by people who viewed her in a less than favorable light, describing her as being “The Pig Queen.” This moniker was bestowed upon her apparently not only for her voracious appetite, but because she also had a very distinct nose that was turned up and looked a bit like the snout of a small piglet. There was also much written about her table manners at her feasts that refer to her as “grunting and oinking like so much swine as she dost stuffed herself thusly.”

By and large though she seemed to be very well liked by the majority of her subjects. In spite of her apparent greed when it came to feeding herself, she was known to be quite generous and charitable among the people of Auburn, which of course made her very popular. She often gave public addresses to the kingdom from the grand balcony of her private quarters that overlooked the central court of the palace, and they were always very well attended.

There are accounts of her hosting many great feasts, featuring music and dancing and of course an overabundance of food. Everyone would eat and eat to their hearts content, but no one as much as the queen. In the private diary of the kingdom’s Grande Duke Ashton of Auburn, who had been willed by the king before his death to be his daughter's guardian and primary advisor until she was of age to marry and rule autonomously, he wrote of her feasts: “Guests are impressed and amazed by the young queen’s ability to ingest enough wine, meat and other provisions to feed a hundred hungry men; it’s as if her appetite has no end!”

Medical records from this period are not typically considered reliable sources of data due to the lack of knowledge about human physiology, as well as the crude and primitive procedures which were used at the time. However there are some journal entries from a physician who is said to have examined the young queen. According to these texts, Victoria stood at about five feet and one inch tall, and at the time she took to the throne at age nineteen she was approximately three hundred and twenty five pounds. By the time she reached the age of twenty one she would weigh over five hundred pounds - a staggering gain in just a few short years.

As time went on and the queen entered her early twenties, she is said to have grown even fatter and more rotund. While her appetite seemed to know no bounds, young Victoria is said to have become rather withdrawn and forlorn at this stage of her life. Reports of her public appearances and great feasts grew less frequent as she took to gorging herself in her private quarters almost exclusively. Perhaps it was the sadness of missing her parents, or perhaps the loneliness of not having a suitor, but her absence from public life only increased the mystique about her and the public's desire for more of her.

Clearly something would need to be done about this.