Miss Battle-Axe

Miss Battle-Axe "You horrid boy!" Gender: Female Type: Painfully Strict and Sadistic Teacher Species: Human Portrayed by: Aiden Cook (TV series) Anjelica Huston (movie adaptation) Status: Alive Media of origin: Horrid Henry

Miss Boudicca Battle-Axe is a school teacher and one of the secondary antagonists of the Horrid Henry books and TV series. She teaches Horrid Henry, and many other students except Perfect Peter, Goody-Goody Gordon, Tidy Ted, Spotless Sam and Clever Clare.

Why She (Intentionally?) Needs To Be Axed

1. For starters, her character design (particularly in the TV series) is very mediocre and unappealing to look at
2. She once said that Henry's class was the worst she had ever taught all to spite her students, making her seem uncaring and selfish.
3. She once publicly humiliated Henry in front of the entire class in the episode "Horrid Henry's Underpants". She shamelessly revealed something personal as a way to humiliate Henry instead of respecting his privacy, making her very annoying and sadistic in the process.
4. She dislikes the class she teaches for such petty reasons and she enjoys giving her students detention for no reason but for her own enjoyment.
5. She even gave Henry two detentions for just having an unpopular opinion on a TV show Henry thought was overrated. Making her look prejudiced and obnoxious for others to have their entitled opinion.
6. She always keeps an eye on Henry, even when he is not being horrid at all. This can get creepy and concerning when it looks like she's the type of teacher who targets one student for her own sadistic pleasure.
7. She is often involved when Henry gets into a punishment that is just forced by the show: for example, when Henry and his friends made a mess of the school garden while searching for Peter’s bunny, and. battle Axe deduced that Henry was the culprit just from looking at a bucket of slime even though she saw Henry give her the slime as a replacement item for the time capsule after the incident occurred. While she her deductions were correct, the way she did her detective work is very unrealistic and Mary Sue-ish.
8. Hypocrisy: Though she catches Henry and Peter selling perfume on the school grounds and gives them double detention for that reason in particular, Miss Battle-Axe is still seen trying some perfume that Henry and Peter made which soon leads to her humiliation as seen below in RQ#4.
   • In the perfume fiasco, Miss Battle-Axe also undermined the authority of school headmistress, Miss Oddbod as Oddbod was completely fine with the perfume sales Henry ad Peter we’re doing on school grounds
9. Despite being one of the secondary antagonists to Henry, she is sometimes treated like a protagonist for the writers to make us sympathise with her. While making a merely obnoxious character have something sympathetic and likable about themselves is a great idea to make them less hateable, it needs to have a right amount of balance for her actions and how much character development she needs to get to make her a likable character. This, unfortunately, fell apart after she becomes more sadistic, annoying (intentionally or not), and mean-spirited even after we see how she dealt with her own mum.

Redeeming Qualities

1. It is well-established that she dislikes Henry for the reason of being horrid.
   • Some of the things she punishes Henry for are understandable. For example; being disruptive in class, beating up other students or breaking their things, refusing to cooperate with other students, etc.
2. The fact that she has an overbearing mother who greatly disciplines her, plus the fact that her students aren't exactly the most ideal students (Henry especially) can make viewers feel a little sorry for her. It can also be the very reason why she's paranoid and spiteful.
3. While disliking Henry mostly for his horridness in her class, she does occasionally do nice things for Henry.
   • She did praise Henry for saving his brother in the episode "Horrid Henry: Trapped" and she even brought him a somewhat wholesome card signed by other students. Even though Henry didn't really appreciate it due to how embarrassed he was over the circumstances from his situation.
4. She does sometimes get a level of comeuppance for her bad treatment of Henry. For example in the episode "Horrid Henry's Smelly Stuff", when she put both Henry and Peter in double detention after catching them selling perfume, she tries some on and when she sneezes, all of her hair comes off, leaving her completely bald where she covers her head with a book and runs out of the classroom humiliated.
5. Just like Miss Minchin and Denzel Crooker, She probably wasn't meant to be liked for being such a mean and strict teacher to begin with.
6. She at least doesn't physically abuse her students, unlike Miss Trunchbull or Dolores Umbridge.
7. She was likable in the movie, and improved a bit in season 5 of the show.
8. Aiden Cook does an awesome job voicing Miss Battle-Axe and her voice fits very well, and Anjelica Huston does a great job portraying her in the movie.

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