If my eyes don't deceive me

[rivkat]

I have book reviews, but first I want to talk SV fic. I just reread Lanning's excellent Agenda. I love the Identical series, I love Eli (though I doubt he'd call a man a yenta as he did Jonathan, but maybe that's just the way my family uses the term), I love the twists and turns and the way Lionel loves Lex, after his fashion. Yet I discovered

Comments

[silveraspen]

Concerning Lillian characterization on the show, chalk me down opinion-wise with those who think that we're getting a lot filtered through Lex's eyes. She died when he was just a child, too, so it'd be quite easy to channel a lot of the dissatisfaction with current affairs into the "if she'd lived, things would have been different" sort of view. (Not to mention that while she was alive, Lex could have blamed lack of interference with his father, or whatever, on her illness.) It'd be interesting to see if there is anything on the show that shatters that pedestal

[rivkat]

I agree with everything you've said, with only the addition that, unless further information develops, I don't understand why Lillian needed Lionel to protect her and therefore I think she made a serious mistake that has caused immense damage to Lex. Lionel's money doesn't seem significantly more than hers -- the Eduoards clinked glasses with the Rothschilds, we're told -- and his power, well, we don't know what it was in his youth, but it probably didn't extend to Europe where Lillian's troubles seem to have been. Surely Lillian could have found a rich idiot to marry, and a woman of her apparent calculating nature could have exercised power on her own. Until I hear why Lillian couldn't protect herself, I think this is an excuse rather than an explanation

[j_bluestocking]

Just speculating. If Lillian was in so much trouble she needed billionaire-type wealth to protect her, it seems reasonable to me that she needed more than wealth; i.e., she needed someone capable of using that wealth in dark and ruthless ways, to pressure/remove/whatever her enemies, with an infrastructure that would permit easy movement. (That is, a worldwide business empire with employees in different places -- and Lionel's empire could, I think, have extended to Europe, and even if it didn't, he would certainly have formed many contacts there, because the movement of money breeds those

[rivkat]

Well, frell. LJ ate the first version of this, so let's pretend I was much wittier the first time around

[corinna_5]

The Eduoards have at least one Mossad-quality retainer.

Who wasn't enough to save Lillian's father's life.

I don't think she was still in danger so much as that she was utterly traumatized by the experience of getting kidnapped and having her father murdered as a result. "Agenda" suggests that Lex is very much like Lillian's father -- it's possible that Lillian was attracted to Lionel in part because of his ruthlessness, because she knew he wouldn't take a threat as unseriously as her father had, to his detriment.

My SVFF assignment is "Lillian and Lionel, the early years," so I'm thinking about some of these issues for myself, and I think my idea of Lillian isn't a woman born to wealth, any more than I think Lionel was. But more of that when my story's done...!