Laurel was the mother of General Woundwort.
She is not named in the book, but she is a minor character in the Watership Down TV series. She makes her first and last appearance in The Shadow of Efrafa, in a flashback, where she is with a younger Woundwort, in front of a weasel. She smiled at Woundwort before leaping at the weasel and fighting the weasel until she died.
Albeit her mate Hemlock being mentioned by almost everyone in Darkhaven, she isn't mentioned once in season three.
Background (book)[]
She gave birth to Woundwort, who was the strongest of a litter of five--in a burrow outside a cottage garden near Cole Henley. Woundwort's father, a happy-go-lucky and reckless buck, had thought nothing of living close to human beings except that he would be able to forage in their garden in the early morning. He had paid dearly for his rashness.
After two or three weeks of spoiled lettuces and nibbled cabbage plants, the cottager had lain in wait and shot him as he came through the potato patch at dawn. The same morning the man set to work to dig out the doe and her growing litter. Woundwort's mother escaped, racing across the kale field toward the downs, her kittens doing their best to follow her. None but Woundwort succeeded. His mother, bleeding from a shotgun pellet, made her way along the hedges in broad daylight, with Woundwort limping beside her.
It was not long before a weasel picked up the scent of the blood and followed it. Little Woundwort cowered in the grass while his mother was killed before his eyes. He made no attempt to run, but the weasel, its hunger satisfied, left him alone and made off through the bushes. Woundwort was later found by a schoolmaster.
Trivia[]
- She shares the same name as a character in the book.
- Ragwort and Milkwort would also be her children if the Miniseries canon is considered.
Gallery[]
