SnowBaird

SnowBaird is the het ship between Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird from The Hunger Games fandom.

Canon
Snow saw Lucy Gray for the first time when watching the video of her Reaping, where she was shown releasing a snake to attack another girl (which would later turn out to be the mayor's daughter, Mayfair Lipp) and then calming the masses with her beautiful singing. Snow hated the idea of being assigned to a "throwaway tribute" at first, but soon changed his mind after seeing her show in the video.

As soon as the tributes arrived on the train to the Capitol, Snow boarded the train and went so far as to willingly join them in being imprisoned in the Capitol Zoo. Lucy Gray was also skeptical of her mentor at first, but him willingly boarding the train impressed her in turn. When the other tributes ganged up on him and tried to gut him, Lucy Gray told them to back off. Though he didn't enjoy being trapped with her in a cage, the experience brought them closer together and caught the attention of Capitol citizens, including sponsors.

Afterwards, Snow spoke very highly of Lucy Gray, claiming that she is "more Capitol than District" in a strategic move to get more positive attention towards her. Though secretly, he hated the idea of her losing her life in the games or going back home. He would've liked to keep her with him in the Capitol. Snow visited her in the zoo, telling her that she should sing for the Capitol audience, though she didn't understand why she should do that, seeing no benefit from it. Getting her to do an interview, with Lucy Gray being one of the few people who actually bothered to speak, she tells both the Capitol audience and Snow about her history: She was part of "the Covey", a group of bards who used to travel the Districts to sing for food, however, due to the new rules being set up in Panem, her group ended up trapped in District 12 with no way out. She was an orphan, her father being killed by the government for "speaking too freely", her mother being "broken" after trying to keep her family together. She had two older siblings, but they also died from unknown causes, her older cousin, Barb Azure, took her in. Snow was satisfied with the interview, though he only cared about her being an orphan, since he was also orphaned at a young age.

Before the Hunger Games could even begin, Snow worried about Lucy Gray's state, noticing that she looked malnourished. However, his fears were quickly made irrelevant by a rebel bombing on the Capitol Arena, where multiple tributes and mentors were killed or fatally injured. Snow however, while buried under rubble, saw himself getting saved by Lucy Gray who pulled him to safety. Snow showed his gratitude by asking how he could ever repay her, she responded by saying that she simply wishes he would believe that she could actually win the Games.

From that point on, Snow had changed his tune about Lucy Gray from merely wanting for her to be popular to planning for her to actually survive the Games. During Lucy Gray's performance singing a song while playing the guitar, Snow actually felt jealousy as Lucy Gray was singing about a former lover. While giving her a tribute token, intended for her to smuggle rat poison into the arena, Snow told her about how he felt. Lucy Gray reassured him that he is the only one she has a soft spot for and kissed him before going into the arena.

When the Games began, Lucy Gray immediately fled into safety instead of killing her fellow Tributes for weapons. Snow was concerned about her for a whole day, as she went into the part of the arena with damaged equipment, meaning he had little way of knowing if she was alright. On the second day, Snow was reassured that Lucy Gray survived, only to be immediately concerned again when he saw that she was chased by her fellow District 12 Tribute, Jessup Diggs, who had gone rabid from his time in the zoo. Snow, realizing that he actually knows about how rabies cause hydrophobia, decided to send in a stack of water bottles for her to defend herself. Jessup died by his own causes, Lucy Gray gave him a farewell, which Snow did not quite understand.

After being called into Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul's office, who told him about her plans of releasing her "snake muttations" into the arena. Snow, who already saw one of his classmates being attacked by the snakes (since they didn't recognize her scent) came up with a plan to save Lucy Gray on the spot. He snuck the handkerchief Lucy Gray gave him into the snake tank. Lucy Gray, who had already poisoned at least one tribute with the rat poison Snow gave her, started singing as soon as she saw the snakes. The snakes swarmed around her, but did not bite her. Taming these snakes is biologically impossible; the Gamemakers caught on to Snow's cheating.

Though Lucy Gray emerged from the Games victorious, Snow had to pay the prize for her. He willingly chose to become a Peacekeeper for twenty years, as the other choice involved him possibly ruining his reputation. The only silver lining he saw was potentially getting to meet Lucy Gray again, deliberately choosing to be enrolled in District 12.

Snow was at first miserable in District 12, he hated being a Peacekeeper, his only friend was his fellow mentor and "traitor", Sejanus Plinth. However, he heard about the Covey performing at the Hob and had no second thought about wanting to see them perform. At the Hob, he held his breath as Lucy Gray appeared on stage. He studied them for her former lover, but none of them were her age, easing his worries. He familiarized himself with Maude Ivory, Lucy Gray's little cousin, by giving her a treat. Maude Ivory ran up to her and showed her the treat, to which she asked where she got it from. Maude Ivory pointed at Snow and Lucy Gray made eye contact with him. She recognized him and smiled.

However, the atmosphere of the Hob was soon disturbed by the arrival of Billy Taupe, Lucy Gray's former lover. Due to fear of a fight breaking out, the Hob was quickly evacuated and Snow was denied a chance of seeing Lucy Gray again that evening. That did not mean that he was going to give up on her.

Plinth told him about Lucy Gray's whereabouts, he found out that she lived with the Covey in the Seam and offered to take him there. Though Lucy Gray was skittish about seeing Snow again, she also was very happy as she hugged him and they exchanged stories. She told him that she was worried sick in the arena, knowing that he gone in there to rescue Sejanus Plinth and could only relax after seeing the water come down for her, knowing that her mentor was alive. He admitted to her that he cheated and that he felt useless to her, but she assured him that he was incredibly important to her and that them saving each other was "written in the stars".

She took him to meet the Covey, her family. Maude Ivory, who already knew Snow from the Hob, welcomed him, but the other Covey seemed skeptical of him at first. Their first meeting since the games was once again interrupted by the arrival of Billy Taupe. Lucy Gray immediately told him to get lost and threatened to set the Peacekeepers on him if he ever showed his face again. Snow learned that Billy Taupe has cheated on Lucy Gray with Mayfair Lipp, the Mayor's Daughter, and that Mayfair asked her father to forcibly make Lucy Gray into a tribute. After Billy Taupe refused to leave, Lucy Gray bit him. In response, Billy Taupe told Snow that Lucy Gray had a "history" of flirting with patrons at the Hob. Lucy Gray denied this, saying that it's part of her job and she only has eyes for Snow.

She told Snow about how unsatisfied she was in the District and how she wanted to start a new life with him outside of it.

In the following week, Lucy Gray and Snow started having discussions about the meaning of "Lucy Gray" (the poem she was named after), the Capitol, the Games and freedom. They discovered that they have very different point-of-views about personal freedom, though Snow does cast some doubt about the importance of the Hunger Games. He said that he considers the Capitol to be incredibly important, claiming that it prevents the people of Panem from giving in to their "animal desires". In another one of Snow's meetings with the Covey, Lucy Gray commented on Clerk Carmine missing his older brother, Billy Taupe. Snow asked if she did, but she said that she had lost all trust in him after her Reaping, calling him a two-timer. After Snow asked if she could trust him, she said that she does, but would have to give it some thought.

At Lucy Gray's next performance, she and Snow stumbled across a secret meeting about fleeing the District between Plinth, Billy Taupe and a District rebel called "Spruce". Spruce was suspicious of the two, but Plinth covered for Snow while Billy Taupe lied about being Lucy Gray's boyfriend. Lucy Gray, seeing her chance at getting out of the District, decided to play along and made up a story about Snow being the boyfriend of her cousin, Barb Azure. However, Mayfair, Billy Taupe's actual girlfriend showed up and threatened to expose the group, taunting Lucy Gray along with it. Spruce threatened to shoot her, but after Billy Taupe knocked him down for it, Snow quickly grabbed his rifle and shot her instead. Snow quickly told Lucy Gray to go back onstage, but Billy Taupe claimed that she would go with him no matter what and Spruce shot him for it. Lucy Gray was stunned from shock for a moment, but then did what Snow told her to do and distracted the crowd from the corpses of her ex-boyfriend and his mistress.

She and Snow got away with it undetected, but Plinth was ratted out by Snow earlier and was sentenced to be hanged for treachery. Snow was overwhelmed by both guilt, for having a hand in killing his best friend, and fear, for possibly being exposed for attempting to help the rebels. Later on, Snow asked if Lucy Gray was alright, she told him that while she was horrified at the death of Billy Taupe and thankful for Snow killing Mayfair, she was also under a lot of pressure by the Mayor, who was fully convinced that she killed his daughter. They made plans to leave the District up north, with Snow ignoring the news that he passed his Peacekeeper exams and would be leaving District 12 for District 2 anyway. They said their goodbyes to District 12 and Snow admitted that he wouldn't miss anyone, accidently letting it slip that he killed more than two people. He quickly brushed it aside.

After resting in a shack where the gun Snow used to kill Mayfair was stored, Snow considered that he should destroy the evidence and make a new life for himself. As Lucy Gray left to find some katniss for them to eat, his thoughts started to race and the accusations Billy Taupe made about her started to weigh on his mind. As Lucy Gray hasn't returned to him, he realized that she must've figured out who the third person was that he killed and as he found her scarf laying in the woods, he was briefly reassured. Only to be bitten by a snake as he tried reaching for it. He connected that she would've gone back to the shack to get more weapons and tried firing in her direction, but missed. As Snow tried to make a last-ditch attempt at patching things up with her, she started singing "The Hanging Tree", the song she wrote about the hanging of a man who killed three people in a rebel bombing: Snow's fears that she realized the truth were confirmed. The mockingjays picked up her song and covered for her and he tried shooting into every direction, but couldn't find her lifeless body.

To Snow's surprise, he was actually brought back to the Capitol and was told by Gaul that all records of the 10th Hunger Games, and Lucy Gray, were erased. The Covey were banned from performing at the Hob and everyone in District 12 believes that Mayor Lipp killed Lucy Gray, though they couldn't find a body either. Though Snow was shocked at first, remembering the sweeter moments between the two of them, he eventually deluded himself into believing that Lucy Gray made him weak. He told himself that they were too different for things to have worked out between them and considered marrying someone he hates instead, to make him stronger. Snow would end up butting heads with another girl from the same district, dying with an eternal hatred for District 12.

Songs

 * Down in the Valley
 * The song Lucy Gray sang at the Hob, it was written specifically for Snow
 * Pure as the Driven Snow | Rachel Zegler
 * The second song Lucy Gray dedicated to him, she sang it during his mental breakdown
 * Can't Catch Me Now | Olivia Rodrigo
 * Describes how Lucy Gray's legacy haunts Snow

Fanon
SnowBaird is not very popular in the general Hunger Games fandom, although its popularity rose after the movie was released in November 2023. It is the most popular ship for the book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. As of November 2023, there are 386 fanworks on AO3 for the TBOSAS fandom, 158 of which are tagged as SnowBaird. Fans of the ship often explain the unpopularity of the ship with the book being very different from the main series, being a 500-page doorstopper instead of being a light 200-300 page reading and that the premise of "The sympathetic origin story of Coriolanus Snow" is a hard sell to many Hunger Games fans. The fact that the franchise's peak popularity had been a few years before didn't help either.

Indeed, many people were surprised at how Suzanne Collins managed to give sympathy to an otherwise monstrous character and actually succeeded in giving him at least one canon ship that fans genuinely support.

Though criticisms about the nature of shipping a borderline-sociopathic megalomaniac with one of his would-be victims have cropped up, many fans of the ship acknowledge that Snow is a terrible person, yet ship him with Lucy Gray anyway, citing their many cute moments and impressive chemistry, with some even outright wishing that things could've worked out between them.

Since Lucy Gray is often headcanoned/theorized to be related to Katniss Everdeen from the main series, there are some AUs where Snow and Katniss are related through her. Fics that write Lucy Gray as her paternal grandmother often retcon Snow to be her grandfather, fics that have Maude Ivory as her grandmother have him be Katniss' grandcousin-in-law.

Interestingly, the suggested canon Snow ship, Coriolanus/Livia Cardew, is actually a rarepair in the fandom. The biggest competitor to SnowBaird is Coriojanus, the slash ship between Snow and his former best friend, Sejanus Plinth. The ship is also commonly shipped alongside Everlark, largely because people noticed many parallels between them, with both Snow and Peeta being upper-class boys who fall for the unassuming girl from the Seam with a talent for singing.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

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