I think Donald Sutherland was really onto something when he said that Snow adores Katniss in a strange way, and she is a kind of window to what he could have been, and I would go further and propose he feels similarly about all four victors.
He loves their spoken and unspoken understandings, the messages he sends them (milk for Haymitch, roses for Katniss). He wants to possess them (golden cage for Haymitch, the wedding clothes, making Peeta his wartime mouthpiece). There’s a kind of hideous affection or intimacy to all of it. It’s why he laughs when Katniss assassinates Coin. That’s his (never his) clever girl. And it all begins with Lucy Gray, the ghost girl he loved, but not enough.
It’s like the mockingjays. He hates them to a degree that it becomes an obsession.
It’s such a deliciously twisted take on a villain.
