The Card Soldiers are the loyal servants of the Queen of Hearts, and the secondary antagonists in the 1951Disney animated feature film Alice in Wonderland. They make up the Queen's military force and obey her orders without question. However, they do so mainly out of fear of the Queen rather than loyalty to her.
Three card gardeners appear as Alice makes her way into the garden of the Queen of Hearts. She finds them painting white roses red. The cards explain that the white roses were planted by mistake and that they fear being beheaded if the mistake is not fixed. Seeing the seriousness of the situation, Alice offers to help them. Soon, however, the Queen appears and is shown to be angered more by the paint than the white roses. When none of the cards confess to the "crime," she orders them all beheaded. The three gardeners are then dragged off by card guards.
Other cards act as croquet hoops when the Queen challenges Alice. The cards openly cheat to allow the Queen to win; they move so that the Queen's ball goes through, but also make certain that Alice's does not. One card does not get to his spot in time, and so he is taken away to be beheaded.
During Alice's trial, anonymous card soldiers act as Alice's guards. They surround the defendant's box and prevent Alice from escaping. Later, they chase after her as ordered by the Queen.
The cards are minor characters in the series and appear sometimes heckling performers, like Timon and Pumbaa. In Mickey's House of Villains, they locked all the heroes in the kitchen as the villains took over.
The soldiers are present in the show with the Queen of Hearts and capturing the Evil Queen and the Mad Hatter when they visit Wonderland. However, they're not anthropomorphic cards, only disguised humans.
The Card Soldiers are unisex in the series. Throughout the series, they can be found either posing as hoops in the Queen's game of croquet or painting the roses red.
Alice in Wonderland wasn't the first time Disney made 'card soldiers'. The 1936Mickey Mouse short Thru the Mirror showed a similar army of cards. Like their Alice in Wonderland counterparts, they could fold on top of each other and were the servants of the Queen and King of Hearts.
According to their suit, the Card Soldiers (heart, diamond and spade) wield spears save for the clubs, who wield axes instead. In Kingdom Hearts, only heart and spade soldiers appear, and the latter ones wield axes, contrary to their movie counterparts.
In the original book, the three card gardeners are spades, while in the film they are clubs.
