The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes reveals the person who created the Hunger Games in Panem as a way to punish the 12 Districts. Katniss Everdeen first participated in the 74th annual Hunger Games, so the cruel competition had long been ingrained in her society. However, the prequel movie, which will follow a young Coriolanus Snow through his teenage years in the Capitol, explores how the Games looked entirely different in the first decade after the District's first rebellion—and how they came to be in the first place.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes occurs during the 10th annual Hunger Games when the female District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, was given Coriolanus Snow as a mentor. At this point, the event looked very different from The Hunger Games series since the tributes were not showered in food or paraded through the streets in eccentric gowns. Instead, the Hunger Games existed in only their rawest form. They had a specific purpose, and it wasn't to treat the tributes with any sort of kindness as was later seen (though this was only a guise). The idea was to keep the Districts in line, and it had been thought up long before their rebellion even started.
Casca Highbottom Created The Hunger Games (With Help From Snow's Father)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes introduces Casca Highbottom, the dean of Panem's Academy and the one credited with creating the Hunger Games. It is quickly evident that Highbottom despised Coriolanus Snow, though the future president of Panem had no idea why. At first, it is assumed that he was just a thoroughly miserable person who made no effort to hide his addiction to morphling. Highbottom also seemed to take no pleasure in the Hunger Games he created—and it's later revealed that this is because he had never intended for the terrible events to become a reality.
Years before the Districts rebelled against Panem's Capitol, Casca Highbottom attended the Academy with his good friend Crassus Snow (Coriolanus' father). The students were given a hypothetical project by one of their teachers, Dr. Volumnia Gaul. Their task was to devise a political punishment for a nation's conquered enemies that would ensure they could never forget their past crimes. Highbottom then worked out a plan that took advantage of humanity's basic instincts of predator and prey to keep an enemy focused on itself and therefore ensure they were powerless against the conquerors.
Dr. Volumnia Gaul Was Really The Person Behind The Hunger Games
Highbottom was hailed for his genius, but Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes revealed that he had never intended for the Hunger Games to be used. In fact, he hadn't planned on turning the project in. This was the work of Crassus Snow. The future President Snow's father had gotten Highbottom drunk to lower his resistance to conceiving such a brutal plan for their assignment and turned it in against his friend's wishes. This demolished their friendship, and Highbottom could do nothing but try to forget the atrocity that he had created. However, after the Capitol defeated the District Rebellion, Dr. Gaul pulled out Highbottom's idea and became the first Gamemaker.
Gaul was cruel and vindictive in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes book. She knew fully well that Highbottom was ashamed of the scheme that Cassus Snow had turned in all those years ago, which is precisely why Gaul ensured that her old pupil got all the credit. The year that the first Hunger Games went into effect was when Highbottom began using morphling, and the addiction grew from there. Really, Gaul was the one in charge of the Games and ionately believed that they brought out humanity's true nature. Highbottom was only forced to take part.
Why The Hunger Games Happened & Why They Lasted For So Long
Dr. Gaul believed that the Hunger Games were the perfect tool to remind the Districts and the Capitol of the devastation of war. She believed that Highbottom's idea of forcing children to fight to the death reflected humanity's basic impulses. It demonstrated how even children, seen as the most innocent in society, turn to vicious killers when resources become scant. In a sense, the Games allowed the war to continue in a controlled environment, perfectly demonstrating to the world why totalitarian control was so important—without it, the real world would become the Hunger Games.
However, Casca Highbottom wasn't the only one disgusted by the Games he had created. Leading up to the 10th Hunger Games, most Capitol citizens refused to watch. So, Dr. Gaul recruited Capitol students to be mentors and used her cruelty to teach them why the Games were so important. Among these was the young Coriolanus Snow. He despised the Hunger Games at first in Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but as Dr. Gaul helped Snow see his own evil nature, he bought into the idea that they were a necessary evil—and helped build them into the lasting spectacle they would become.
