There's a sequence in Code Name Verity where one of the main characters, called "Queenie" here, is compared to the Red Queen. The time period is WWII. A future version of Queenie is the one "writing", though through Maddie's viewpoint. Queenie and Maddie have recently become acquainted. The air base they work at is being bombed by Germans.
The first direct comparison is here:
Maddie stood facing her new friend by the table they had just abandoned, people around her whirling into action. She felt as though she were at the eye of a tropical storm. The still point of the turning world.
"Come on!" Queenie cried, just like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, and grabbed Maddie by the arm to pull her outside. "You go on duty at one; what have you got"—she glanced at her watch—"an hour? A quick nap in the shelter before they need you in the radio room—pity you haven't brought your brolly along. Come on, I'll go with you."
pg. 64
A little later, after they've commandeered an antiaircraft gun:
They both ducked instinctively as something exploded at the other end of the runway. Queenie squeezed Maddie around the waist and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "'Kiss me, Hardy!' Weren't those Nelson's last words at the Battle of Trafalgar? Don't cry. We're still alive and we make a sensational team."
Then she hitched up her hair to its two-inch above-the-collar regulation point, swabbed her own tears and the grease and the concrete dust and the gunner's blood from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and she was off running again, like the Red Queen.It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.
pg. 68
Both quotes pulled from the section headed "ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER", within the chapter stamped "Ormaie 11.XI.43 JB-S". Emphasis is mine.
As someone who cannot remember reading or watching any version of the Alice story, but who knows a few things from cultural osmosis, I can only pick up some surface-level comparisons. The most obvious being the "Queen" in "Queenie" (the nickname is due to a claimed relation to Mary, Queen of Scotspg. 58). Then, there's the idea of the Red Queen's Race which ties into the running that Queenie does. It's beyond that which I was wondering about. What else am I missing in this comparison? I assume it to be important somehow, because it is explicitly brought up twice during this pivotal scene in the main characters' friendship.
Is there anything deeper about the comparisons between Queenie and the Red Queen?