Beatrice Baudelaire

For other uses of the name Beatrice, see: Beatrice.

Beatrice Baudelaire was the mother of the Baudelaire orphans featured in the book series, her children: Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. She was married to Bertrand Baudelaire, and it is unknown what her maiden name was before she was married. While her husband perished in a fire at their mansion, Beatrice survived for some time, ultimately dying in a fire at the Duchess of Winnipeg's castle.

Description

Every book has a dedication to her at the beginning, and there are frequent referrals to her as Lemony's beloved, specifically in The Beatrice Letters. Lemony proposed to her, but she refused, returning the ring that he offered her, and sending him a 200 page book explaining exactly why she could not marry him. This confuses even the most clever of V.F.D. members, particularly because Bertrand Baudelaire, her husband, proposed to her with the exact same ring as Lemony, and she accepted it. No one knows why she did not accept Lemony's proposal instead, and she never told her children about him. ^[3]

While growing up and training with V.F.D., Beatrice is noted as having participated specifically in theatre classes and classes that enabled her to be become a baticeer. She was gifted with the rare talent of being able to whistle with crackers in her mouth; she could perform Mozart's Fourteenth Symphony^[4]. She was also talented at lion taming, and is known to have trained one of the Volunteer Feline Detectives for V.F.D. While she was young, she and Lemony were inseparable, and were known for sneaking off for midnight root beer float rendezvous; he later proposed, though she refused him and later married Bertrand. The author of the sonnet My Silence Knot (an anagram of Lemony Snicket), during her school years she was close to R (also known as the Duchess of Winnipeg) who was also a friend of Lemony.^[5].

Among other things, Beatrice is known for having received a box of poison darts from her friend Kit Snicket during a performance of La Forza del Destino while the Baudelaire children were still young, which, in Book the Twelfth, The Penultimate Peril, was revealed also to be the weapon that left Olaf an orphan. Olaf implies that the Baudelaires helped in the killing of his parents. Kit describes what she wears for the performance: "Your mother was wearing a red shawl, with long features around the edges." Kit Snicket later named her daughter after Beatrice.^[6]

Beatrice is, through an unknown way, related to Ike Anwhistle^[2]

Trivia

Beatrice is allergic to peppermints, which she passed on to her children.
In the film, Helena Bonham Carter is credited as Beatrice Baudelaire.
The name "Beatrice" could be a reference to Dante's Divine Comedy, as each book begins with an inscription dedicated to the deceased Beatrice Baudelaire much like Dante frequently refers to his own deceased "Beatrice" throughout the Divine Comedy.
The name Beatrice could also be a reference to the poem La Béatrice, written by Charles Baudelaire. The first eight lines of the poem appear in the Author's Notes of The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition, for a line from p.162 that reads, "...just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so." The original poem, in French, with an English translation is as follows:

LA BÉATRICE

Dans des terrains cendreux, calcinés, sans verdure,

Comme je me plaignais un jour à la nature,

Et que de ma pensée, en vaguant au hasard,

J'aiguisais lentement sur mon coeur le poignard,

Je vis en plein midi descendre sur ma tête

Un nuage funèbre et gros d'une tempête,

Qui portait un troupeau de démons vicieux,

Semblables à des nains cruels et curieux.

BEATRICE

One day as I was making complaint to nature

In a burnt, ash-gray land without vegetation,

And as I wandered aimlessly, slowly whetting

Upon my heart the dagger of my thought,

I saw in broad daylight descending on my head

A leaden cloud, pregnant with a tempest,

That carried a herd of vicious demons

Who resembled curious, cruel dwarfs.

Appearances

The Dismal Dinner (mentioned only)
The Bad Beginning (mentioned only; supposed death)
The Reptile Room (mentioned only)
The Wide Window (mentioned only)
The Miserable Mill (mentioned only)
The Austere Academy (mentioned only)
The Ersatz Elevator (mentioned only)
The Vile Village (mentioned only)
The Hostile Hospital (mentioned only)
The Carnivorous Carnival (mentioned only)
The Slippery Slope (mentioned only)
The Grim Grotto (mentioned only)
The Penultimate Peril (mentioned only)
The End (mentioned only)

Non-canon

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sources

↑ According to Lemony Snicket in The Austere Academy, Chapter 11: I once attended one of the famed masked balls hosted by the duchess of Winnipeg, and it was one of the most exciting and dangerous evenings of my life. […] As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I’d been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years. “Beatrice,” I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, “Count Olaf is–”.
Later, Lemony, in The un-Authorized Autobiography, page 144, writes: Attending your Masked Ball is impossible. […] They’re searching furiously for the survivors of Dr. Montgomery’s collection, but imagine how furiously they’ll search for me. This implies that the masked ball that Beatrice and Lemony are at is after the events of the Reptile Room and that Beatrice does not perish in the same fire that killed her husband.
Earlier in the same biography, on pages 28 and 29, Snicket writes: I hurried out of the blazing mansion into the snow, dressed in my pajamas and clutching a handful of photographs that I had been looking at before I fell asleep. […] How content that young woman looks, don’t you think. How content, and yet how flammable. implying that this fire, occurring after the Reptile Room, killed Beatrice. As well was this, Lemony says that he's been waiting "fifteen years" to tell Beatrice a message; Beatrice's eldest daughter is 14 at this time, implying it is sometime after the events of the Reptile Room, as Monty is already dead, but is before The Grim Grotto as Violet does not turn fifteen until the events of that book.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Whistling with crackers is stated to be a family trait, meaning that both Beatrice and Ike are related in some biological way
↑ Violet, Klaus and Sunny read this in the book they read on The Island in The End which states that, if Violet had been a boy, she would have been named "Lemony".
↑ Revealed in The Wide Window
↑ These events are revealed in several books throughout the series, which reveal that Beatrice - with the help of Bertrand - was the one to kill Olaf's parents at the opera.
↑ PROSE: The End

[1] According to Lemony Snicket in The Austere Academy, Chapter 11: I once attended one of the famed masked balls hosted by the duchess of Winnipeg, and it was one of the most exciting and dangerous evenings of my life. […] As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I’d been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years. “Beatrice,” I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, “Count Olaf is–”.
Later, Lemony, in The un-Authorized Autobiography, page 144, writes: Attending your Masked Ball is impossible. […] They’re searching furiously for the survivors of Dr. Montgomery’s collection, but imagine how furiously they’ll search for me. This implies that the masked ball that Beatrice and Lemony are at is after the events of the Reptile Room and that Beatrice does not perish in the same fire that killed her husband.
Earlier in the same biography, on pages 28 and 29, Snicket writes: I hurried out of the blazing mansion into the snow, dressed in my pajamas and clutching a handful of photographs that I had been looking at before I fell asleep. […] How content that young woman looks, don’t you think. How content, and yet how flammable. implying that this fire, occurring after the Reptile Room, killed Beatrice. As well was this, Lemony says that he's been waiting "fifteen years" to tell Beatrice a message; Beatrice's eldest daughter is 14 at this time, implying it is sometime after the events of the Reptile Room, as Monty is already dead, but is before The Grim Grotto as Violet does not turn fifteen until the events of that book.

[RelatedtoIke-2] 2.0 ^2.1 Whistling with crackers is stated to be a family trait, meaning that both Beatrice and Ike are related in some biological way

[3] Violet, Klaus and Sunny read this in the book they read on The Island in The End which states that, if Violet had been a boy, she would have been named "Lemony".

[4] Revealed in The Wide Window

[5] These events are revealed in several books throughout the series, which reveal that Beatrice - with the help of Bertrand - was the one to kill Olaf's parents at the opera.

[TE-6] PROSE: The End

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