Responses
In addition: this chapter wasn’t meant to get you to like or sympathize with the character. Which is also interesting because most authors would use this backstory chapter as a means to make you ‘sympathize with the undeserving’.
Considering that no one likes her and finds her annoying, proves this chapter to be successful.
You worded this very well
No cap, you should make a podcast
So often we find characters in books. The perfect woman who is kind and gentle, loves everyone, and everyone loves her. She is the Mary Sue. She is Ibeline.
What’s interesting about this chapter is what happens to a Mary Sue when all of her motives and who she is gets deconstructed. Outside the lines of the story where everything goes her way, who is she really when inconsistencies occur? When all her life, despite her ‘trials’, everything was expectedly easy street where men just fell into her lap simply because she existed.
The author took this chapter to show that the perfect Mary Sue truly isn’t perfect. Everything came to her on a silver platter. So this chapter shows us what happens to the character when it’s taken away. Who is Ibeline when she no longer gets what she wants?
Despite being on the manipulative side, unlike a truly manipulative villainess, she’s never used that to hurt people. It’s always ended up as a defensive mechanism. Because that’s what a Mary Sue inherently does.
She isn’t good or evil. She’s just never had to try to be a good person. Unlike literally everyone, she’s never had the experience of having to choose between sincerely good behavior or giving in to selfishness—until now.
I found this chapter to be an interesting read into her psyche that we don’t normally see from other characters.