This conflation has persisted for nearly a century. Ask a random person: “Who is the Good Witch of the North?” They will answer, “Glinda.” But Baum’s first book is explicit. After Dorothy’s house crushes the Wicked Witch of the East, a small, elderly woman in a white gown approaches. She is not Glinda. She is Locasta Tattypoo , the ruler of the northern quadrant of Oz: the Gillikin Country.
Unlike Glinda, who is beautiful, young-seeming, and aloof, Locasta is grandmotherly, wrinkled, and deeply engaged in the daily governance of her people. She knows the name of every Gillikin farmer. She adjudicates disputes between the talking animals of the northern forests. She once personally marched into the Nome King’s tunnels to negotiate a mining treaty. She is not a fairy-tale princess; she is a bureaucrat with a wand . locasta tattypoo
And that is precisely why later Oz authors marginalized her. The post-Baum Oz canon (especially the Thompson and Neill books) favored glamour and spectacle. A elderly, pragmatic sorceress who does paperwork? Give us Glinda, with her chariot of rubies and army of maidens. Locasta faded into footnotes, appearing only in adaptations that respect Baum’s original text, like the 1985 film Return to Oz (where she appears briefly in the background of Mombi’s hall) or the 2007 comic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. Locasta’s most revealing scene occurs not in the first book, but in Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz (the second novel). When the young boy Tip flees the wicked witch Mombi, he seeks refuge in the North. Locasta receives him not as a supplicant, but as a queen receiving a political refugee. She listens to his story, then delivers a chilling line: This conflation has persisted for nearly a century
That is the quiet heroism of Locasta. She empowers others. She sets boundaries. She admits her limits. And then she waits, trusting that her small act of protection—a charm, a kiss, a piece of advice—will be enough to change the course of a kingdom. She is not Glinda
The Wicked Witch of the East ruled the Munchkins with terror. The Wicked Witch of the West ruled the Winkies with fire and wolves. Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, ruled the Quadlings but was largely isolationist. And Locasta? Locasta held the North—a buffer zone against the most dangerous threats from the western mountains.