Savannah Shakespeare: The Tragedies of Scar and Zira

‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’

Once upon a time in the sun-drenched savannah, where animals inexplicably burst into song and never go to the toilet, there lived a lion. Actually, there were quite a few lions. Some good, some bad, and at least one who had clearly studied the Collected Works of Shakespeare in the original Swahili and thought, 'You know what this place needs? Regicide.'

Yes, Uncle. Usurper. Collector of dramatic shadows… Scar. The Lion King's resident aesthete-villain.

Learnèd persons have compared Scar to Claudius, Hamlet's ear-poisoning uncle with a fondness for thrones and sneakiness. It's a neat parallel: both kill their royal brother, eye the queen with varying degrees of subtlety (Scar doesn't quite marry Sarabi, but he lounges suggestively enough), and both (Scar and Claudius) end up dead, crushed under the weight of their own ambition and, in Scar's case, the literal ecosystem he ruined. 

Oh, spoilers, by the way.

But Scar isn't just Claudius with a better mane. He's also got a touch of Iago, not the parrot, the other one. The snake-tongued puppet master from Othello who ruins lives mostly for the intellectual fun of it. Iago's motives range from 'professional jealousy' to 'the salad was soggy' to 'because the author needed someone opaque and irredeemable.' Scar, similarly, seems driven by a cocktail of envy, theatrical flair, and the fact that nobody ever told him he was special enough.

He doesn't get the queen. He doesn't get the admiration. He doesn't even get decent henchmen. (Pro tip: if your army giggles and eats your leftovers, they may not be a long-term strategic asset.) He simply ends up perched on a throne of bones while the weather performs a slow-motion judgment montage in drought.

It's quite telling that what Scar seeks isn't practical power, but validation. His is the narcissism of the thwarted theatre kid, the one who didn't get cast as Hamlet and decided instead to be Hamlet's uncle and sabotage the production. He doesn't want to rule; he wants to be seen ruling. As he growls: 'I'm surrounded by idiots,' which in Disney-Villainese translates to 'They won't clap when I monologue.' And those famous green eyes? Shakespeare would've approved. 'O, beware, my lord, of jealousy…' Especially when it's feline, regal, and voiced by Jeremy Irons.

But where Scar simmers with aesthetic resentment, Zira, from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, or Romeo and Juliet, But With More Claws, boils with righteous fury and ideology. If Scar is Hamlet's uncle, Zira is Lady Macbeth with fangs. Or maybe Tamora from Titus Andronicus on a particularly vengeful day. 

She doesn't want power for herself, she wants to reinstall a worldview. Scar's legacy, carved in fire. Presumably with a commemorative statue, a national holiday, and perhaps a line of premium, warthog-free dinnerware. Her politics are grievance-fuelled, her identity forged in trauma and soaked in ideology.

She's not trying to marry into power, she's trying to consecrate it. Her chosen messiah is Kovu, a moody lion with bedroom eyes and all the charisma of a YA anti-hero. She grooms him like a narcissistic pageant mum from hell, draping him in the myth of Scar like a too-large crown that still smells of hyena. Whether Kovu wants to be Scar's heir is irrelevant, Zira needs him to be. He's a political project, not a son.

And like any good ideologue, she takes betrayal personally. When her children begin to question the gospel according to Scar, Zira doesn't introspect, she declares war. Her final act isn't madness; it's devotion. She doesn't slip, she refuses help. Because if her story ends with compromise, then it was never a holy cause to begin with.

Scar falls because he wanted admiration without responsibility. Zira falls because she turned responsibility into a cult. He burns out. She burns down.

Which brings us, of course, to Simba. Ah, Simba, the golden child with a guilt complex the size of the Serengeti and a musical number about how badly he wants to wear his dad's crown. Ironically, he's not so different from Scar. Both crave legitimacy. Both carry the psychological debris of Mufasa's shadow. One rebels and kills. The other rebels, runs away, and then gets therapy from a mandrill.

And yet, Simba grows. Sort of. Eventually. After some celestial cat-dad pep talks and several increasingly exasperated lectures from Nala, who deserves the 'Most Patient Lioness in History' award. In contrast, Kiara, Simba's daughter, doesn't inherit the same self-destructive tendencies. She builds bridges. She does not, and this is important, let an entire ideology explode just because someone told her she was wrong.

In the end, The Lion King and its sequel aren't just Shakespeare for the furry set. They're meditations on trauma, narcissism, legacy, and the curious fact that nobody in Pride Rock ever tries to install a constitutional monarchy.

Scar and Zira, the schemer and the zealot, represent two faces of villainy: one shallow and embittered, the other deep and terrifyingly purposeful. Scar wants the spotlight. Zira wants a myth. Scar dies alone and unwept. Zira dies defiant and misunderstood. Both are tragic. Neither is truly free, because without their grievances, without the stories they tell themselves, neither knows quite who they are.

And somewhere, in the great circle of literary adaptation, Shakespeare is nodding, quietly proud that even in a cartoon with meerkats, his ghosts still walk.

But the most tragic character here?

Nuka.

Like Scar, he's jealous of his stronger brother. Like Scar, he's insecure. But unlike Scar, he's erratic, eager to please, and desperate for love. He's the passed-over child, not because he lacked loyalty or willingness, but because he lacked narrative symmetry. Zira needed a chosen one. Nuka was just... born first.

And, he's not wrong.

He is Zira's oldest son. He is loyal. He is willing to risk his life. Kovu, notably, is not. But Nuka isn't chosen. He doesn't fit the myth. He's scrawny, twitchy, inconvenient. And in the end, he dies — crushed under the literal and symbolic weight of unmet expectations, parental pressure, and internalised failure. His last words?

'I'm sorry, Mother... I tried.'

So, how are Scar and Zira narcissists?

Scar's grandiose narcissism is obvious. He struts, sneers, monologues, and wants the world to watch. Zira, however, is a covert narcissist, harder to spot, but more insidious.

Her identity is built entirely around grievance, a belief that she and her cause have been wronged. She doesn't reject Simba's rule out of ideology, but because his existence invalidates her reality where Scar was the rightful king and she, his keeper of the flame. She reframes exile as persecution. She's not 'outvoted,' she's 'betrayed.'

She lives vicariously through Kovu, not just as a proud parent, but as someone staking her entire meaning on his future. This is narcissism by proxy: 'If I cannot win, my child will.'

Let's not forget: Kovu is not Scar's son. And Disney goes to pains to ensure we understand that (otherwise, hello, incest plot). But Zira treats Scar's anointment as more legitimate than Simba's bloodline. That's narcissistic logic: bending reality to preserve your myth.

And if her plan had succeeded? Simba gone, Nala gone, who’s next? Kiara, the actual heir. She'd need to be removed, too. But Zira doesn't think that far. Ideologues rarely do.

Her obsession isn't with Scar. It's with herself, through her children.

Zira's love is conditional. She grooms Kovu, denies him autonomy, punishes him for disloyalty, and projects greatness onto him without listening to who he is. When her plan falls apart, she doesn't just lose a strategy. She loses her constructed self. Her rage becomes feral.

Zira and adult Simba are more alike than either would admit. Both control under the guise of care. Both carry prejudice they've named 'protection.' Both are traumatised, and neither knows what to do with it.

The Downfalls

• Tamora consumed her children before being killed by Titus.

• Lady Macbeth dies by suicide, offstage.

• Iago survives, silent and unrepentant.

• Claudius is killed by Hamlet.

• Scar is undone by his own manipulations, abandoned by the hyenas he betrayed, just like Laertes is killed by the poison he prepared.

• Zira was originally written to die by suicide, refusing Kiara's help, but the film softened it to an 'accidental' fall.

Still, the symbolism remains. Zira refuses help. She's given chances, more than once, to walk away. To live and to heal. She doesn't take them.

She doesn't want survival. She wants legacy.

And when the world refuses to write her story in the ink she demands, she writes it in blood. Not petty victory. Not fleeting power. But righteous martyrdom, at least in her mind.

While Kiara, and Kovu, avoid the narcissistic whirlpool entirely by being emotionally competent and unafraid of dialogue. They fixe what all these parental ghosts broke, not with violence, but with compromise.

Radical idea, that. Someone should write it down.