Did Snow Actually Love Lucy Gray In Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes? It’s Complicated

Coriolanus Snow’s romance with Lucy Gray Baird fell apart rather quickly at the end of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so did he ever really love her? It’s difficult to tell in the movie since audiences don’t have the benefit of Coriolanus’ inner dialogue as they do in the book. The story starts out with it being in the Capitol boy’s best interest to care for Lucy Gray, but he admits that his feelings extend much further than this by the end. We know from The Hunger Games that President Snow is a despicable dictator who seems entirely incapable of love, and the events of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes don’t seem to completely negate this.

There is also the question of Lucy Gray’s feelings toward Snow. Like Coriolanus, it was in her best interest to care about her mentor, since he had the power to get her the help she needed in the Hunger Games. However, when the arena was bombed, Lucy Gray missed an escape opportunity to save Coryo’s life, suggesting she legitimately cared about the boy. However, like Coryo, it didn’t take her long to backpedal on the relationship when she realized she couldn’t trust him. So, was it genuine love for either of the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes characters or was their romance just a method of survival—until it wasn’t?

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Coriolanus Snow Believed He Loved Lucy Gray – But It Was a Possessive Love

Though it’s a little more complicated to tell without his internal dialogue in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie, the book reveals that Coriolanus legitimately believed that he was in love—especially when they were in District 12. In the Capitol, he knew they had no future together but wanted to see her get out of the arena alive just as much as he wanted to secure the Snow family’s future. In District 12, it was different, and Coryo fully allowed himself to see Lucy Gray as a lover. The greatest testament to his feelings for her was his thoughts when he believed he would be hanged for Billy Taupe’s murder. Though he mourned his own life, he considered how comforting it was to know that she would live on “for both of them.”

Still, Snow’s feelings for Lucy Gray weren’t as selfless as he told himself they were. There were several times in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes book that he became frighteningly jealous. He despised the idea of other men having access to Lucy Gray, especially Billy Taupe, and thought on several occasions that he had preferred it when she was kept in a cage at the Capitol because he always knew where she was and who she was with. His passion was real, but it’s difficult to say that this sort of love is true love. Still, it may have been all Coriolanus Snow was capable of.

Coryo Was Possessive Of Other People He Loved In The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Book Too

One of the most jarring aspects of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the reveal that Snow was very close and affectionate toward his cousin, Tigris. Not only was it shocking to see the sort of tenderness the future dictator of Panem was capable of, but Tigris was a Hunger Games character who was revealed to despise Snow and actively helped Katniss, knowing she sought to assassinate him. Neither The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes nor The Hunger Games ever reveals precisely what happened between Snow and Tigris, but the boy’s inner dialogue presents a few hints that even his love for his cousin was dangerous and possessive.

Early in the Hunger Games prequel novel, Coryo considers what would happen to his family if he couldn’t secure the Plinth Prize. He imagined that Tigris might turn to prostitution, and this disgusted him. He thought about how Tigris was “no great beauty” but that she had a “vulnerability that invited abuse.” This was a rather disturbing thing for Coryo to think about his cousin, and it seems to foreshadow their dangerous relationship in the future. Ultimately, the fact that Tigris later resembles a grotesque tiger suggests that Snow hoped to eliminate this vulnerability, ensuring that no one would ever touch her—because she was his.

How Snow’s Experience With Lucy Gray Changed The Way He Saw Love

Regardless of whether Snow ever felt selfless love toward Lucy Gray (or his family), he truly believed that his experience with the District 12 girl was a legitimate romance. This ultimately shaped the person he became in The Hunger Games and was a significant aspect of his perspective on Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. The ending of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes implies that Snow would have turned on Lucy Gray once he found the guns, regardless of whether she realized he wasn’t trustworthy. He had only settled on this romance because he thought he had no other prospects for a future, but the guns changed that.

Because Coryo’s love for Lucy Gray was disposable (and he saw her decision to escape from him as evidence that her’s was as well) he believed that all love must be dependent on convenience. It’s similar to how he thought that his own violent tendencies were proof that humanity as a whole was violent. He couldn’t understand genuine goodness or the sort of love Katniss felt for Peeta, only seeing a girl “indifferent” toward a boy for the sake of her survival in the arena. Still, Snow knew love was powerful and used people’s love as a way to control them. As President Snow said in both The Hunger Games and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, “It’s the things we love most that destroy us.”