I like to read aloud. 

It forces me to slow down and absorb every word of a text. Also, I have a distinct flair for the theatrical and I like to perform. However, reading aloud to oneself is a strange and oddly lonely endeavor, so I have a habit of roping my loved ones into listening to me. This usually starts with initial resistance that soon turns into (at times unwilling) investment. What can I say, I’m usually good at curating books to my audience. 

All this is to say that a few years ago, I was reading Howl’s Moving Castle to my mother. 

She liked it – she tends to like whimsical children’s’ fiction – but halfway through she stopped me. 

“This is a bit disturbing, isn’t it?” she said. 

I was a bit confused. It was a children’s’ novel, and a pretty tame one at that. Definitely not a Tales of Despereaux or Coraline situation. 

“I mean the Witch,” she clarified. “What she’s doing is super creepy.”

This led to a discussion on what the Witch was actually doing, which was not something I was ashamed to say I’d ever paid a whole lot of attention to. In my defense, the Witch of the Waste is a rather opaque figure in the novel. She’s not even named. She gets a lot more fleshed out in the movie (I will get to the movie at some point). 

The Witch mainly sticks out as the impetus that kicks off the plot by cursing Sophie and continues the plot by continuously attacking Howl, who she wants for her own reasons. The focus of the novel is not really on her, not in the way that Voldemort is in Harry Potter, for example (fuck Rowling, by the way), where his mindset and actions are shown in explicit detail and he overshadows most of the books – she’s not even really the true antagonist of the series in my opinion, which is also something I will get to. 

But once you get into it, the Witch is in a much darker book than Sophie is in. 

So let’s look at her story, her goals, and the methods she uses to achieve them. 

About a year before Sophie’s story starts, Howl and the Witch were together. Given Howl’s modus operandi, it was likely a whirlwind romance where he pursued her incessantly. She was overjoyed, she felt like she’d found a partner, an equal she could delve the depths of dark magic with who would be with her for eternity. Remember, both she and Howl had independently done deals with fire demons and were, functionally, immortal.

Then Howl – again, given his modus operandi – abruptly grows cold and breaks things off. Remember again, this is Ingary, which seems to have more antiquated mores than we do. People didn’t do casual dating back in the day. 

The Witch is distraught. She’s heartbroken, no pun intended. She probably takes some time to lick her wounds and then she comes up with a plan. 

She’s going to make herself the perfect man. A man with the best qualities of all her crushes and none of the flaws. A man who will never leave her. 

So she kidnaps Prince Justin and Ben Suliman, chops them into pieces while they are still alive (this may or may not be a painless process, we’re never told either way) and jigsaws together a body (and possibly a personality?) that’s a composite of both of them, with space left over for Howl’s head (and charm). She then makes a spare man (Percival, who Lettie later falls in love with) with the leftover parts because she was bored apparently, and releases him into the wild like an unwanted pet. 

Her plan after she gets Howl’s head is to overthrow the king and install herself and her patchwork boyfriend as the new monarchs. 

So yeah, that’s what the Witch of the Waste was up to while Sophie was making hats and cleaning Howl’s bathroom.