- "I told you we should have rescued the boy first."
- —President Alma Coin on Peeta Mellark[src]
President Alma Coin was the President of District 13 and the leader of the rebellion against the Capitol by the people of the districts of Panem. While President Snow is still the antagonist of the series, she is the hidden but true main antagonist of Mockingjay. She was first introduced when Katniss Everdeen met her in District 13.
Mockingjay Part 1
Coin was presumably raised in, and served as the leader of District 13 and the rebellion. She had a husband and a daughter, who both died during the pox epidemic in District 13. Due to Katniss Everdeen's unique position as a symbol of rebellion to the districts, Coin had Katniss, along with Finnick Odair and Beetee rescued from the arena following the 75th Hunger Games, after Katniss destroyed the force field surrounding the arena. This action effectively prompted the Capitol to bomb District 12. However, she was not able to rescue Peeta Mellark, Johanna Mason, and Enobaria. With Katniss safe in District 13, Coin was forced to cooperate as she recovered from her physical and mental traumas, although she was rather impatient. Like the other rebels, Coin needed Katniss to don the label of Mockingjay, and help fuel the districts into rebellion.
Physical description
President Coin is described as being about 50 years old. She has grey hair that falls in an unbroken sheet to her shoulders, her eyes were a pale grey, described by Katniss as looking like "all the color was sucked away" and "slush that you wish would melt away".
Death
During the execution of President Snow, Katniss remembered the conversation she had with Snow and realized President Coin was behind Primrose Everdeen's death, along with the death of a great number of rebel medics. So instead of shooting Snow, she turned her single arrow from Snow to President Coin and shot Coin instead, partly to avenge Prim's death. President Coin fell off the balcony as the people looked on in fear and horror. It is possible that she didn't die from the arrow but from the fall itself. This resulted in Katniss being taken away and declared mentally unstable. President Snow also died from coughing up blood from "the many mouth sores that will never heal" when he drank poison that let him rise to power. Katniss also realized that President Coin's rise for power, which made her very power hungry even more so than President Snow, also changed her ideas. When Katniss first began to fight the Capitol, President Coin's stance was to end the Hunger Games and there would never be another one, securing Katniss' support. However, after defeating the Capitol, Coin asks the remaining victors about using Capitol children for one last Hunger Games, and Katniss realizes this was her plan all along, betraying the trust of her and the rest of the victors who truly wanted The Hunger Games to end, despite their vote for a "yes". Katniss also uses this reason to kill President Coin.
Alma Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee
Personality
Not much is known about President Coin initially, but Katniss soon realizes how power-hungry Coin is, even more so than Snow. Coin was egomaniacal, manipulative, cynical, murderous, callous, sociopathic, cruel, malicious, power-crazed, bitter, impatient, misanthropic and emotionally detached to the extreme. She was deceptively intelligent, to the point of arrogance, and was able to outthink President Snow himself, who didn't realize her plan until it was already in action. She possessed extraordinary degrees of Machiavellianism, in that she was flawlessly able to influence the whole of Panem into civil war so that President Snow eventually dies, allowing her to become president of Panem.
She is devious, unmoving, and will do whatever it takes to attain her goals. She makes it clear that she views Katniss as an inferior and a mere icon for the rebellion, and is miffed when Katniss makes demands, and is forced to go along with them in the face of the public. She was an evil official who did nothing for anyone except herself. Coin showed signs of being a psychopathic megalomaniac who was completely power-crazed, but showed more signs of being a sociopath, such as: manipulation, sadism, independence, ruthlessness, high intelligence and an unhealthy degree of selfishness.
Even so, Coin viewed Katniss as an eventual threat, and meant to have her die and become a martyr, inspiring the rebellion with Katniss' supposed "sacrifice". This would have aided her in her plans in that she would be rid of Katniss, who was too independent and selfless to control, and she would be able to take charge of the rebellion without Katniss' intervention. Nevertheless, President Coin possessed a massive amount of patience, in that she was prepared to wait years before she was in a position to seize power in Panem.
In the end, after the rebellion is victorious, Coin attempts to secure the remaining victors' loyalty with the proposal of a final Hunger Games, using the children of the Capitol higher-ups, and in her arrogance she believed herself to have secured Katniss' loyalty. This shows that her self-obsession and narcissism knows no limits, but on the other hand it proves to be her undoing: Now that Snow is finally at her mercy, she becomes overconfident and unaware that Prim's death has traumatized Katniss against Coin, especially when it is discovered that Coin was the one who had Prim murdered. She saw no hesitation in executing President Snow, since Snow's death would finally grant her absolute, unlimited power.
However, Katniss had realized the supposed Capitol bombs that rained down on the Capitol refugees and Coin's own medic corps that killed many, including Katniss' sister, Prim, was ordered by Coin, and turns her arrow on the President of District 13, ending her threat before it truly begins.
Trivia
- In the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Prim mentions to Katniss that Coin lost her husband and daughter during a smallpox epidemic in District 13, providing a partial explanation for her cold, controlled nature.
- In the book, Katniss is shown to hate President Coin but in the film adaptation, she is shown to like her and Coin doesn't really show her dark side.