To Play the Game
So the cover art to Breaking Dawn has been leaked. I'm not posting any links since it's not officially released.
A chess board with two pieces. A White Queen in the foreground and a Red Pawn further back in the shadows.
I love all the Twilight Series covers and for the most part accept that they don't have much meaning regarding the plots. However, I do believe they have meaning regarding general shape of things to come.
The Fruit represents knowledge and Bella's first introduction to the realization of the existence of a whole other world including the vampires.
The Flower represents the loss of innocence, the beauty in the breakdown, and how life goes on.
The Ribbon represents the thread of life spun by the Fates. It's so tenuously hanging on and about to be snipped.
The Chess Pieces represent the endgame. We all know this is to be the last of this series.
Although the red and white objects could merely dismissed as following in the trend of the previous covers, I find the use of red/white to be the most spoilerly element. I instead believe a a clue to look towards Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass.
So here follows a very spoilery meta analysis of cover art, specifically regarding usage of objects as red/white.
Okay, this is actually EXTREMELY SPOILERY and your last warning. I don't know how Stephanie Meyer could not have read and been inspired by AIW/TTLG and Alice's encounters with the Red and White Queens.
The beauty of art is that one thing is never confined to representing only one thing. All elements are interchangeable and equally logical.
TO PLAY THE GAME
I. The Queen represents power in chess. In Twilight, vampires inarguably have the power. They control people's lives and even other vampires. The presence of the chess Queen on the cover represents the Vampires. Chess represents life and the Game that the vampires play with it because they exist outside of time.
II. Early in Through the Looking Glass, Alice first meets the Red Queen and is introduced to the Game:
It's all a great huge game of chess being that's being played - all over the world - if this is the world at all, you know. Oh what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a pawn, if only I might join - though of course, I should like to be a Queen best. - Alice to the Red Queen
From the very first of Twilight, Bela was intrigued by the vampires. She wanted into Edward's life and confidence. She didn't even mind to lose her own life in order to protect Edward's secret when they met in the meadow. Not to mention Bella herself has called herself as a powerless pawn to the powerful vampires.
While as much as Bella loved Edward, simply being with him wasn't enough. She wanted into his world and to share in his power as an equal. Bella knew she was an inconsequential pawn. But knowing she was at least in the game, was fine with her, because she knew her place in the world. That even if she didn't have power, she had a purpose to those that did, and perhaps the opportunity to rise to that power.
She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, "That's easily managed. You can be the White Queen's pawn..." - Red Queen to Alice
Bella indeed considers herself with the vampires, whether the Cullen clan or simply Edward. And in that line, one interpretation of the cover is that the White Queen is Edward and the pawn is Bella. So dubbed pawn by the Red Queen, Bella only awaits Edward to take her and make her his both by love and by blood.
While the conclusion of Edward and Bella consummating their love is more likely a given, Bella's transformation to vampire is further foreshadowed by later passages of TTLG.
III. In the final chapter of TTLG, the White Queen joyfully celebrates Alice's completion of the game and her being crowned Queen.
The presence of the White Queen symbolizes the ascension from pawn to queen. Bela's wish to become a vampire and rise from pawn is finally at hand.
IV. At this point, the Red Queen cautions the value of Alice's victory.
"It's too late to correct it," said the Red Queen. "When you've once set a thing, that fixes it. And you must take the consequences."
The rules of chess are that no move can be taken back. Becoming a vampire is something that is one way. There is no going back.
However, it is important to recognize the rule is also if a piece is merely touched it must be moved. Bella has already been touched. She was touched in the very first book. The Volturi confirmed it in New Moon that she was in play and couldn't just be ignored. She could either be removed from the game or go forward as a vampire.
Although Bela may not be vampire yet, she has already entered the game and its ultimate conclusion. Her fate was set much earlier, and the unfolding of events merely ceremony to be reveled by onlookers.
Her victory becoming Queen should be celebrated rather than mourned. It has consequences but since the choice cannot be made, lament is of little value.
The illumination of what she would lose was not a warning, but instead only a reminder that her path is redefined and she should come to terms with it.
V. Finally, there is simply the symbolism of transmuting from red flesh and blood to the marble white beauty of vampire. Out of the darkness and into the forefront of time and the world. The first cover was about the temptation and first knowledge of power, this cover may very well be her finally grasping all aspects of that knowledge for herself.
The Red Pawn was Bella. The White Queen is Bella.
VI. The Red Queen makes one more remark, this time about the White Queen:
"She means well but she can't help but say foolish things as a general rule."
No truer words could be said of Bella. So full of heart, but still so young and wondering in the world. Her wonderings sometimes comes to voice as foolish. What makes logical sense within the confines of her own mind, do not always resound with the same good logic when said aloud. But to consider Bela a simpleton or malicious would be to the miss the point. That her caring so much for others, leaves her blind to the obvious.
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