The narrative is haunted by the reader’s knowledge that Cath will become the Queen of Hearts. Her journey is not an ascent but a descent into the eponymous heartlessness and cruelty that characterize Lewis Carroll’s original character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The narrative is overshadowed by this foregone conclusion and the fate that awaits its characters. However, at the same time, the narrative explores the question of whether a person can escape their fate, and how responsible they are for sealing their own fate.

In the novel, Cath is not the only one haunted by her future. Hatta is equally haunted, perhaps even more so, because he’s aware of his fate. In fact, Hatta is the one who first introduces the theme of escaping fate; in Chapter 31, he tells Cath of his history and his desperation to escape mental illness and reveals that the key to avoiding his fate is merely to stay ahead of Time. Hatta’s primary motivation throughout the narrative is to avoid the mental illness in his family history; his character, then, represents a race against Time and a battle against Fate to be allowed to determine his own destiny.