The Villian. The dictator. The grim reaper. The poisonous snake. All labels that can be attributed to President Snow. A silver haired murderer, cascading nothing of his venomous nature or the blood on his roses; except for his history with District 12, and life as an improvised orphan of the Capitol. Before he transformed into the snake, Coriolanus Snow once ran with the songbirds and the rebels.
A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes reveals the tale of the tenth hunger games, the theatric rebellion and love of district twelve tribute and the first mockingjay, Lucy Gray Baird and the making of a power thirsty snake, the colour of snow. It also begs the question of how is a Villian made? Are some people born evil or do they become that way through environment and encouragement of the darker sides of human nature? Is the venom in a persons heart easy to do or do rose times glasses gives the illusion that they are friends, lovers, and able to chose a different path. Good vs evil. Nature vs nurture.
In the original debut novel of the hunger games saga, all we find out about district twelve victors, is that there was a unknown victor before Haymitch, who’s no longer alive or did they go missing? The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is both a Villian origin story, a tragically violent prophecy of the rise of Snow and the turbulent ballad of what really happened to district 12’s first victor, covey songbird, Lucy Gray Baird.
Collins begins with the ballad of the young snake. Coriolanus is an orphan of the civil war, living in a crumbling apartment with his cousin Tigris and his grandmother. The once prolific wealthy house of Snow, was shattered when his father was killed in the war, years after his mother died in childbirth, along with his sister. Despite any disillusioned moments of hope and heart with Lucy and his “friend” Sejanus, and moments of contempt for the Captiol (that he envitably embraces in public, dooming the districts), Coriolanus’ descent into blood, greed and power slowly starts to burn to destroy hope rather than spark it like a mockingjay.
The only times the reader experiences the false hopes that Snow could have been good, is when he is with Lucy or Sejanus. Lucy Gray Baird soars into Coriolanus’ world, and his heart (if he ever had one) as he becomes enraptured by her songs and her spirit. This leads him to going into the tribute cage with her to make an impression to the Capitol, bringing her food, saving her life in the arena from snakes (ironically as Lucy being someone who also yields Snakes but for different reasons) after she saves his, the tearful kiss goodbye before she enters the arena, slighting her out when he’s later assigned a peacekeeper to her home district, and a misguided shared kinship of being orphans wanting to make their own names, and ballads. Snow was always going to chose a path of blood ash and destruction, Sejanus was once of his victims, Lucy ran that day in the woods to avoid becoming another, seeing his true nature.
Lucy Gray Baird is an artist, a performancer, a free spirited soul of hope and joy, who is forced to perform like a puppet for the Capitol, to hide herself in the conflict zone of the arena, and poison her opponents (with Coriolanus’ help, out of love or ambition to win on his part?) to stay alive. She believes his performance as a mentor and love for her is real, despite his Capitol upbringing and gains from their various relationships, until she realises that no matter how hard she hopes or tries, there was no changing Snow.
Yet her strong willed determination and perseverance to rejoin the convey, and like Peeta Mallory, remain herself in the games, the Capitol, and sing another day is a power it themselves. The first signs that a district twelve tribute could ruffle the Captiol’s feathers. Despite their summer romance, love wasn’t enough or perhaps as real, secure or lasting as she hoped. It wasn’t enough for snow to come around to her free spirited rebellion of song and love for life. The symbol of the white rose he gave her when they first met, its promise of partnership between them and the districts and the Capitol, slowly but surely turns to one of poison, double standards and corruption, such as when he gives and send those same roses as a message to the next mockingjay, Katniss.
Not to mention, Coirolanus accidentally “befriend” Sejanus by ignoring him rather than ridiculing him which Sejanus mistook for kindness and kinship. Snow always saw Sejanus, despite any brief inclinations towards brotherly affection, as Sejanus being different or an imposter for being a district two boy living as a life of a Capitol boy, always thinking about the connections and opportunities of Sejanus’ family, fuelled by jealously. Sejanus trusts Snow, voicing his private thoughts of rebellion and contempt for the Capitol, its poor treatment of the districts and its punishment of them and their children in the hunger games, leading him to follow and join Coirolanus when he’s forced to enlist as a peacekeeper. But snow is what led Sejanus lead to his death after being betrayed by his best friend.
So let’s not forget how Collins reminds us that despite Coirolanus’ struggles to keep up appearances at the academy and mentorship or affections for Lucy, kinship with Sejanus, nothing was ever going to stop the acceleration and corruption of the darkness already in Snow’s soul or the ever increasing blood on his hands. All misguided moments of hope for the reader that Snow could have been a better person as simply that. Even his wish for Lucy to be crowned the victor and later become “his” girl are filled by competition and ambition to obtain power, wealth and popularity over his Captiol peers and feed his need of control, he confuses for affection. These are his hopes in life, filled further by his later fears of fighting spirits of people in the district taking this away from him, he was never going to chose Lucy or Sejanus, despite any “love” he may have felt for them, even if it means dooming them to fate or removal from history.
Even though the likes of Head Gamekeeper Dr Gaul, had a hand in pushing Coriolanus on his dark pathway of destruction to the presidency, he was already on it, even if it appeared he didn’t know it, he did. The masterminded plans of Gaul for Snow, wouldn’t have been embraced by Snow if he wasn’t already capable and displaying the early signs of the President of fear and blood he would become, and if he didn’t already have an affliction to cause fear, and enforcement of control and punishment for the districts.
The fact that any care he had for Serjanus disappeared when he set that janberjay to record or that any love for Lucy evaporated as soon as he thought that she had figured out the truth of the blood on his hands. Not to mention assuming the role of heir and surrogate son to to the family of the friend (Sejanus) he got killed, was just the beginning of his hunger for power, that his hamartia , a flaw that proved fatal for not only district 12 but anyone whose hope was stronger than their fear, quickly were convinced otherwise.
After reading the trilogy, it became ever more clear, in the rise of Katniss as the mockingjay, that Presidents Snow’s loathing of district twelve and its mockingjays ran deeper than the venomous blood tainted surface. The Hunger Games and books have always been political, and this Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a statement book telling us of how a dystopian violent abusive system of politics and fear begins, as with the rise of President Snow, and with it the Captiols bloody tight grip on the districts and use of the hunger games as both punishment and weapon. As she continually reminds us in the book, despite brief interludes, and as Haymitchs says, Collins always remind us to turn against and “remember who the real enemy is” in the real and fictional worlds alike. In this case, Snow and the Capitol were it.
This was the story of snow, as it becomes ever tainted by ambition, competition and power. Despite hope, some stories are inevitable; such as the tragic bad of Lucy and Coriolanus, of the songbird and the snake.
the girl and the city of books 
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