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

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[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.)

True, she might have found an incredibly wealthy idiot and married him, but then she would have had to take the money and start creating her own infrastructure, which requires time. Also, I wonder if that's not a bit harder than it sounds, even for larger-than-life SV people. I mean, if you're not Desiree Atkins, targeting a rich man and then making him fall in love with you and marry you can be problematical. And, again, take time.

Pretending for a moment that I'm reading a hypothetical volume one, I'd see Lillian in some sort of danger; a crisis is at hand; Lionel already knows and wants her; and he walks into the... hospital room or hideout or nondescript hotel room on the Amalfi Coast that she's taken under an assumed name... and says, "Well, Lillian, things aren't going so well, are they? Here's my proposal..."

Anyway, for me it's not that I can't believe the scenario, it's more that it's a story untold. And I'm willing to accept that there's some permutation that would work for me.

Eli not removing Lex from Lionel's charge after her death is another story -- I have mixed feelings about that. Though I don't discount the sacredness of a sworn promise as a factor. There are people for whom keeping one's word is much more central to their identities than others.

[rivkat]

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

This is all quite enjoyable speculation. I can certainly see a narrative that makes this story work, but it doesn't leave Lillian the angel Lex and Eli like to remember.

To press, though: Why wasn't Lillian's power enough? The Eduoards have at least one Mossad-quality retainer. I also find it difficult to believe that young Lionel could wield that kind of power; even assuming he was heir to an empire, at the time, Lillian's best bet would have been Lionel's daddy. (Who, by the way, ought to be Gene Hackman as Leo.) And how could she have been in danger so long that she couldn't divorce Lionel or send Lex away when she was dying but Lex has never heard anything about it, or been kidnapped or otherwise harmed by the continuing threat? He's got a "hit me, I like it" sign on his back, as we know, so I'd kind of expect there to have been some sign of continuing crisis if such existed.

But I'll give you an Eduoard downturn, a Luthor juggernaut, and a lack of available alternatives, because they combine to make a good story for why Lillian chose Lionel, and then didn't leave him out of habit, or resolved the threat only as she was dying.

In that case -- was Eli mistaken to say Lillian was ever in love? Or did she love Lionel too? The latter appeals to me more as characterization, but it does make her less admirable to me because it smacks of the bodice-ripper heroine who's attracted to the dangerous man who stalks her. In fact, a loving but eyes-open, multiply motivated Lillian is exactly who I'd like to see, and certainly suggested by Lanning's choices thus far. It's just that pedestal Lex & Eli carry around that bemuses me.

As for Eli, I understand exactly why he kept his word. But Lillian's choice to make him give his word in the first place is to me evidence that she didn't put Lex's well-being first, or perhaps that she defined well-being rather differently than Clark does. And why should Lillian have been All About Lex? She was a person, not the Universal Mother.

[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...!