Queen Vanessa is an enemy encountered in A Hat in Time, as the lone living resident of Queen Vanessa's Manor at the center of Act 4 in Subcon Forest.
Queen Vanessa's backstory can be discovered by reading the notes scattered around her Manor, using the Dweller's Mask in the Basement and Attic, and by collecting all pages of the Storybook in the Sleepy Subcon Time Rift.
The letters and diary entries depict her story of her being completely enamored by her Prince to the point of obsession. In her diary and scattered pages, Hat Kid can read about Queen Vanessa's jealousy when her Prince was being educated by a female tutor, making several exclamations that the tutor got all his time while she only received letters. In his absence Vanessa states that she wishes she could keep him in her manor so that he'll never leave again, but admits that she couldn't just keep him chained up in the basement. This serves as intense irony, as after the letter was written, the Prince would end up just like that.
The Storybook of Sleepy Subcon is a different part of Vanessa's story. In the Storybook, Vanessa sees her Prince holding hands with a florist lady and she runs away heart broken. The next page shows that the Prince had just been handing the florist a coin to pay for flowers to bring to Vanessa. When the Prince goes to bring her the flowers, Vanessa has already flown into a rage and she chains him up in the basement. It may be possible that the events of the Storybook happen when the Prince returns from his tutelage and plans to surprise her with flowers when he goes to see her, although Vanessa being love sick, rushes to see him and everything falls apart. This could also serve as the instigating factor where Vanessa's intense enamor for the Prince transitions to the point where she locks him up out of spite for his supposed betrayal.
Another clue the storybook provides to Vanessa's backstory is its explanation of how her powers over ice began to manifest. On the fifth and sixth pages specifically, after fleeing from the false betrayal of the Prince, Vanessa is shown visibly crying as the Prince interacts with her. The tears themselves however begin to resemble ice crystals, as well as her hands becoming more sharp and hooked, her skin becoming more dark and her hair wicking up a dark cloud, becoming a light brown from the golden blonde hair of prior panels. The sixth panel further emphasizes the complete transformation to her current form, developing a slight hunchback, covered in shadow and her hands now more than ever turning inwards like claws or talons.
These clues suggest that Vanessa's uncanny ability to freeze her intruders as well as her shadowy appearance stemmed either from a dark energy that corrupted her when she was most emotionally distraught, or it was her heartbreaking that caused the darkness to manifest and the distress itself to cause such visible and tactile alterations. In later story book pages added by Seal the Deal, it shows that her dark energy resulted in the freezing and death of all who lived in her kingdom, going as far to leave all the children's souls trapped in what is now Subcon Forest.
When using the Dweller mask near the basement's back wall, the silhouette of a man becomes visible, having been shackled to the basement wall until death. It seems reasonable to assume this is the same silhouette as the Prince, since the same tragic pose can be seen being made by the Prince as depicted in the Storybook.
Though it is not confirmed explicitly in the game, the eighth panel where the Prince is chained to the wall shows his body changing in the darkness, heavily implying that the Prince would soon become The Snatcher. This, alongside several of the many comments made by Snatcher during Death Wish Mode about coldness, death and love heavily implies that Snatcher and Queen Vanessa were once lovers, but are now bitter enemies.
Range: Standard Melee Range, a couple of meters with Telekinesis, Kilometers with Ice Manipulation (Froze the outside of her entire mansion along with an entire town)
Standard Tactics: Vanessa will chase after the opponent and try to envelop them in darkness or attempt to freeze them as shown by several of her ice statues in her manor.
