Coriolanus Snow

Years after the war, the Snows still have their name but not their money. Coriolanus lives with his cousin Tigris and his grandmother and needs to win the Plinth Prize, a scholarship, to keep the family afloat. For the 10th Hunger Games, Academy students become the tributes' mentors, and he gets Lucy Gray Baird of District 12, who slipped a snake down the mayor's daughter's dress at the reaping and then sang to the crowd.

Snow realizes he can turn her into a star attraction. He sneaks her food, comes up with the idea of letting the audience send gifts to tributes and falls for her along the way. When he goes into the arena to retrieve his friend Sejanus Plinth, he kills a tribute in self-defense. In the final stretch, he drops a handkerchief carrying Lucy Gray's scent into the tank of snakes engineered by Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, and they spare her, so she wins the Games.

Dean Casca Highbottom finds out about the cheating and sends Snow off to serve as a Peacekeeper. He bribes an officer to get posted to District 12, where he reunites with Lucy Gray, and Sejanus comes along. There Snow catches his friend talking with rebels, records the conversation with a jabberjay and sends the recording to the Capitol. In a confrontation with the rebels, he shoots and kills Mayfair, the mayor's daughter. Sejanus ends up hanged for treason.

Snow runs off into the woods with Lucy Gray, but the trust between them breaks. He fires in her direction, and she disappears, leaving only mockingjays repeating "The Hanging Tree." Back in the Capitol, Gaul gets him pardoned and secures him a place at the university. Highbottom tells him he dreamed up the Games while drunk and that Snow's father made them real. Snow poisons the dean's morphling and begins his rise to power.

More than 60 years later, Snow is president of Panem and surrounded by white roses. At the 74th Games, he explains to Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane that the Games give the districts just the right amount of hope: a little works, a lot is dangerous. When Katniss decorates Rue's body and District 11 riots, he tells Crane to be careful. The berry stunt ends with two victors and a humiliation for the Capitol. Crane pays with his life: he's locked in a room with a bowl of nightlock.

Snow shows up at Katniss's house in District 12 and tells her flatly that her gesture in the arena has become a spark of rebellion. He demands she convince Panem it was all for love, or the district will pay. The tour calms no one, and he notices even his granddaughter has started wearing her hair in Katniss's braid.

With the new Head Gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee, Snow sets out to destroy her image and announces that the third Quarter Quell will reap tributes from the victors. The plan fails when Katniss destroys the arena. In response, he has District 12 bombed.

With the rebellion out in the open, Snow puts Peeta, a Capitol prisoner, in interviews with Caesar Flickerman calling for an end to the fighting. After Katniss visits a hospital in District 8, he has it bombed. When Peeta warns on live TV that District 13 is about to be attacked, Snow follows through, and Katniss finds white roses scattered through the rubble, a message that Peeta will pay for every provocation of hers. The rebels rescue Peeta, but the Capitol sends him back conditioned to kill Katniss.

As the rebels advance, Snow turns the Capitol's streets into a trap full of pods and opens his mansion to shelter residents, using children as a shield. In a meeting, he poisons one of his own generals. When the parachute bombs go off among the children, the war is lost for him.

Held in the greenhouse, Snow receives Katniss and tells her he never gave that order: Coin dropped the bombs to turn his own people against him. He reminds her they agreed never to lie to each other. On execution day, Katniss shoots Coin. Snow bursts out laughing, coughs up blood and is swallowed by the crowd surging toward him.

In the books, Snow's breath smells of blood, which he masks with genetically altered roses. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) is the only book told closely from his point of view, in third person, and it introduces the family motto, "Snow lands on top."