Hermione is the queen in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale who appears to die and later returns.
Hermione, queen of Sicilia and wife of King Leontes, is falsely accused of adultery with Leontes’s friend Polixenes. During her public trial, the oracle declares her innocent, but Leontes refuses to believe it. When their young son Mamillius dies, Hermione collapses, and Paulina soon reports that the queen has died.
The play then jumps forward sixteen years. Hermione has been kept in seclusion under Paulina’s protection, although Shakespeare leaves the precise mechanics deliberately mysterious. When Perdita is finally recognized as Leontes and Hermione’s lost daughter, Paulina unveils what appears to be a statue of Hermione. It begins to move, revealing the living queen.
A common mix-up is Paulina, who arranges the deception and announces Hermione’s supposed death, but is not the queen herself. Perdita is Hermione’s daughter, while Thaisa belongs to Shakespeare’s Pericles. The ending can be read as either a miraculous restoration or a carefully staged return from hiding.