The first in a series of threads about Haphne.

Let's start with the basics. What does Daphne Greengrass look like?

Back when Daphne first took over from femBlaise as the go-to non-Death Eater Slytherin love interest, I always imagined her with black hair, no doubt because that's how femBlaise was generally depicted.

But over time, my mental image shifted to blonde, no doubt influenced by the increasingly prevalent "ice queen" depiction / Elsa comparison. And also because this distinguishes her better from Pansy.

Perhaps due to the Elsa comparison, I always imagined her as quite pale blonde - silvery rather than golden. I have made several conscious efforts to shift my mental image to a more golden/warm appearance, including writing her that way in Victoria Potter, as an effort to better distinguish her visually from Fleur. However this has been largely unsuccessful and I still instinctively imagine her as silvery blonde.

As regards build, despite the large number of fanfics which try to tell me that Daphne has big, jiggly tits, I inevitably imagine her as slender, more of a fashion model look than Sports Illustrated. Again this unfortunately means she overlaps a lot with my mental image of Fleur.

 

From this point forward I'm imagining her with Alysa Liu's hair. Except its natural.

 

So she's a racoon animagus?

 

Ginger/rotund

 

Everyone knows there are only 4 types of gingers in the Potterverse: Lily Evans, Newt Scamander, curvy Hufflepuff girls, and Weasleys.

My mental image of Daphne Greengrass is basically just Serena van der Woodsen (yeah I saw the first season of Gossip Girl, fuck you).

 

Wasn't there a picture of Taylor Momsen in a white dress that someone used as a fanart of Daphne like 15 years ago? Makes me feel old.

 

I've always pictured her as dark hair and blue eyes lol. I've always found that combo striking and rare, meaning she'd stand out.

 

The snow white look.

 

She's of Welsh descent from her grandfather's side and Jaimaican from her grandmother's, who was a powerful voodoo witch resembling Grace Jones. So mixed race, tall and slender with green-brown eyes.

 

We discussed this on Discord but just to repeat: I would say platinum blonde and slender, but short. Not extremely short, just a smidge or two below average height. This contrasts her with Fleur, who's also platinum blonde and slender but tall and willowy.

The real question is the haircut, though.

 

Blonde hair & blue eyes to fit the Ice Queen trope, ala Emma Frost or Elsa.

 

I'd agree with the (a little faded) blonde and slender. I'd put her face as shorter and more delicate-looking than Fleur's.

Found this image that matched it in the Haphne server

 

I'm going buck the trend and say slightly mousy dark hair.

And I like this so im going with it.

 

It's interesting to see people having this vision of Daphne's hair as being blonde because of the Ice Queen trope whereas that trope long predates Frozen and is predominately about personality rather than looks. An Ice Queen being considered a cold and detached/aloof person (Ice) from an outside perspective and not something related to any physical attributes except general/exceptional beauty (Queen).

Daphne as the replacement fem-Blaise predates Frozen and Elsa by years so people who like to have a visual for their characters in their head would of had a picture of Daphne before Elsa existed, yet now because of the cultural impact Frozen has had some people see the Ice Queen title in relation to characters and construct a vision with parallels to Elsa. I wonder if people who view the Ice Queen title now in relation to Elsa remember how they viewed people with the Ice Queen title before Elsa existed.

What other impacts has fiction and media not related to Harry Potter had on how people view certain characters in the series, beyond the main Dumbledore/Gandalf comparisons.

As for how I see Daphne I'm going to be boring and say she is such a side character how the author portrays them is how I view them, I've only ever taken the Ice Queen title at face value for its personality traits and never assigned physical descriptors because of it. I don't see Ice Queen and see blonde, I see Ice Queen and see cold. Although I do always associate her as being beautiful.

 

As I mentioned, Emma Frost is another Ice Queen example, and she predates all the rest of this by decades.

 

Or the Snow Queen from the Snow Queen or Jadis from Narnia.

 

Well, if y'all gonna be so literal about the ice thing... here, have some Oglaf (NSFW):

https://www.oglaf.com/snowqueen/

 

I also imagine Daphne as having blonde hair. Specifically long, pale yet golden blonde hair falling down her back and held back by a headband. I headcanon her as having green eyes because "Greengrass" and so I like to think everyone born in the family magically has green eyes regardless of genetics. Never really thought much about her appearance more than "pretty, aristocratic-looking, pale" and a normal to slightly higher than average height.