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'Titania' was the name of a character in William Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. In Shakespeare's play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters.
In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name. Shakespeare took the name 'Titania' from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', where it is an appellation given to the daughters of Titans.Holland, Peter, ed. ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (OUP, 1994)
In the Shakespeare play, Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. The marital quarrel she and her husband are engaged in over which of them should have the keeping of a changeling page is the engine that drives the mix ups and confusion of the other characters in the play. Due to an enchantment cast by Oberon's henchman Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a rude mechanical (a lower class laborman), Nick Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of an ass by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character (Which bears a resemblance to the story of Lycaon).
Oberon states in the play:
:''I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
''
:''Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
''
:''Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
''
:''With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
''
:''There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
''
:''Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
''
:''And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
''
:''Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in
''

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Other historical references

Modern References

References

Other historical references

Subsequently, Titania has appeared in many other paintings, poems, plays and even graphic novels.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe took the figures from Shakespeare's work to Faust I. Titania is married to Oberon, and the couple is celebrating its golden wedding anniversary in Faust I.
Titania is also the largest of Uranus's moons, among others that are also named after Shakespearian characters and those of Alexander Pope.

Modern References

★ She has occasional cameo roles in Neil Gaiman's ''Sandman'' comic series, and is a major supporting character in ''The Books of Magic''. In the mythology of those comic series, she is a mortal woman, who has lived and ruled in fairy land so long that no one remembers she once looked (and still is, under her magical seeming) human. It is hinted, though never outright stated, that she may have once been the lover of Dream, the protagonist of the ''Sandman'' series. It is eventually revealed that she is the mother of Timothy Hunter, the protagonist of the ''Books of Magic'' series. The character recently returned in her own graphic novel ''God Save the Queen''.

★ Titania, with Oberon, provides the characters of ''A Midsummer Tempest'', by Poul Anderson, with magical assistance.

★ In the middle-grade novel ''The Revenge of the Shadow King'', by Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis, Titania appears as the all-powerful and benevolent Queen of the Shadowlands of Faerie, who was given a Jewel that her husband Oberon is jealous of.

★ In Disney's ''Gargoyles'', Titania was a character voiced by Kate Mulgrew. She was the queen of the fairies, but a millennium before the main events of the series, she apparently greatly angered her husband Oberon, causing them to divorce and him to banish her and all other members of their race from Avalon to teach her to "grow up" (ironic, as in the present she seems far more mature than he is). It is possible that she manipulated Oberon into that action though, as she was shown to make several such clever feints and ploys during her appearances in the series. The royal pair eventually reconciled and remarried. This was all explained when it was revealed that Titania was the mother-in-law of the gargoyles' chief antagonist, David Xanatos.

★ Titania and Oberon also appeared as major characters in the novel ''Magic Street'' by Orson Scott Card

★ Titania is also mentioned in the Series in the Urza's Saga expansion pack as the embodiment of Argoth, a forest in which Urza and wage a final war against each other.

★ Titania is the queen of the Summer Court of the Faeries in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books.

★ In Frewin Jones's ''The Faerie Path'', Titania is the mother of the book's main character, Tania.

★ Titania is the Queen of the Fay in ''Dungeons and Dragons'' role-playing game.

★ Titania is a character in ''. She is the Deputy Commander in the Greil Mercenaries and a close friend of Griel.

★ In the ''Doubled Edge'' series by Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis, Titania is the High Queen of the Sidhe (elves) and the consort to Oberon. She is the patron and protector of the young magician Elizabeth Tudor. It is hinted that Titania is in fact Hera.

★ In Garry Kilworth's 1996 fantasy novel A Midsummer's Nightmare Titania appears as queen of the elvesfolk, which have to leave the sherwood forest in an old bus, to find a new home , their travel wakes up old fairy and magic folk, good and sinister ones, and as Titania falls in love with a human baby and steals /(borrows)it, their adventure becomes even more turbulent and funny.

★ In Last Guardian of Everness a 2005 fantasy novel by John C. Wright Titania appears as the queen of the fairies, the wayward wife of Oberon. It is hinted that Titania is an ancient earth-mother goddess, and Oberon a sky-father. It is Titania who, in her guise as Nimue, enchanted and imprisoned Merlin the Magician in the bole of an oak tree. She is also the mother of the protagonist Wendy.

★ In X-men TV series Titania is the name that latin american translators gave to Rogue.

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