Musketeers Meta: Milady de Winter, the living-dead assassin
The season finale of The Musketeers is over, it wasn’t as brilliant as I hoped it would be but was still quite good. I’m a little unsatisfied with how Milady was written; not that it was completely horrible, she’s still quite awesome, but.
But I don’t think she was fully developed, the way she was promised to be in the first few episodes - personnally, I fell in love with her in episode 2 where she was basically murdering people and stealing stuff and messing with people’s head for shits and giggles apparently, and I thought, “FINALLY! AWESOME! A Chaotic Evil female character!” And she was so efficient and amazing as an assassin and spy, I just loved her.
(gif source: http://deathwillbemybride.tumblr.com/post/80592357493 )
So I kind of developed a whole interpretation of her which I think turned out to be more headcanon than actual writing in the show, except for a few shining moments (the whole conversation she has with Richelieu in episode 7 about afterlife and Hell, for one, that fits my headcanon just beautifully).
Anyway, here’s a little meta (mostly headcanon) that I whipped up right after seeing the last episode of The Musketeers, about Milady de Winter (it’s a bit of a mess, I have lots of feelings, please bear with me):
I would have liked something developed around the fact that psychologically, Milady is living-dead.
"Dying" changed her, she’ll never be the same again, staying alive is to her an absurdity, which turned her character into something out of this world, "chaotic evil", if you will, a goddess of chaos. She lives to stir shit up, to see things happen, to have some kind of impact on the world which makes her feel alive (well as close to it as can be). Seeing people writhing, fighting, suffering around her, trying to save their skin, their reputation, their honour, their soul; all those things that seem so futile and meaningless to her, and about which she just doesn’t give a fuck anymore (it’s still fascinating to her though, watching all that, why it would matter to "them" so much, like watching insects’ unfathomable behaviour under a glass. Richelieu understands. People like insects fumbling around. Which is why she stays with him, even though he’s more attached to this world than she is).
(gif source: http://mercisnm.tumblr.com/post/79240634038 )
RICHELIEU: I’m afraid that if I die, I’d go to Hell.
MILADY: You’re already in Hell. Don’t you recognize it?
She’s not scared either; nothing, no one scares her anymore, not Richelieu, not anyone, she’s way past all that: she’s already been through the worst possible thing when the man she loved executed her. Granted, she knew she was a criminal, and she wasn’t sorry about it, but she still had love in her, so much love, it was probably the only thing she still considered “pure” about who she used to be, and Olivier de la Fère killed it.
Athos “died” too, back then, at the same moment and they both have suicidal tendencies but for different reasons. For Athos, it’s because he hates himself and remaining alive after killing his wife is his weakness and his abomination and he would like this responsibility to be taken away from him but that’s his cross to bear (staying alive is a form of punishment he inflicts on himself too), for Milady it’s because she lost this metaphysical fear of death, so she is completely reckless because she doesn’t care. They became mirrors of each other, not perfect copies, but similar in more ways than one, this is where their co-dependency (“The world seemed diminished without you”) comes from. The execution (murder Dumas insists) of Anne de Breuil created both of them, which is why Milady’s destiny is entwined with Athos’s, why she still seeks him out (in my headcanon, she didn’t kill him back in the burning castle because when she saw the locket she realised precisely this, that Athos (I should say the Comte de la Fère) had changed too, became another, and it wouldn’t be the same man who killed Anne (why would she kill someone who’s already dead?). She didn’t realise this when she orchestrated his execution in episode one, but after she discovered the locket around his neck, did you notice she stopped wanting him dead at all costs?)
In the end, Milady became a true psychopath, detached from her emotions, devoid of empathy, and the only thing that still hurts her is precisely the fact that she’s not able to feel anything anymore, for what she was is dead and it’s the only death she grieves.
But I don’t think she was fully developed, the way she was promised to be in the first few episodes - personnally, I fell in love with her in episode 2 where she was basically murdering people and stealing stuff and messing with people’s head for shits and giggles apparently, and I thought, “FINALLY! AWESOME! A Chaotic Evil female character!” And she was so efficient and amazing as an assassin and spy, I just loved her.
(gif source: http://deathwillbemybride.tumblr.com/post/80592357493 )
So I kind of developed a whole interpretation of her which I think turned out to be more headcanon than actual writing in the show, except for a few shining moments (the whole conversation she has with Richelieu in episode 7 about afterlife and Hell, for one, that fits my headcanon just beautifully).
Anyway, here’s a little meta (mostly headcanon) that I whipped up right after seeing the last episode of The Musketeers, about Milady de Winter (it’s a bit of a mess, I have lots of feelings, please bear with me):
I would have liked something developed around the fact that psychologically, Milady is living-dead.
"Dying" changed her, she’ll never be the same again, staying alive is to her an absurdity, which turned her character into something out of this world, "chaotic evil", if you will, a goddess of chaos. She lives to stir shit up, to see things happen, to have some kind of impact on the world which makes her feel alive (well as close to it as can be). Seeing people writhing, fighting, suffering around her, trying to save their skin, their reputation, their honour, their soul; all those things that seem so futile and meaningless to her, and about which she just doesn’t give a fuck anymore (it’s still fascinating to her though, watching all that, why it would matter to "them" so much, like watching insects’ unfathomable behaviour under a glass. Richelieu understands. People like insects fumbling around. Which is why she stays with him, even though he’s more attached to this world than she is).
(gif source: http://mercisnm.tumblr.com/post/79240634038 )
RICHELIEU: I’m afraid that if I die, I’d go to Hell.
MILADY: You’re already in Hell. Don’t you recognize it?
She’s not scared either; nothing, no one scares her anymore, not Richelieu, not anyone, she’s way past all that: she’s already been through the worst possible thing when the man she loved executed her. Granted, she knew she was a criminal, and she wasn’t sorry about it, but she still had love in her, so much love, it was probably the only thing she still considered “pure” about who she used to be, and Olivier de la Fère killed it.
Athos “died” too, back then, at the same moment and they both have suicidal tendencies but for different reasons. For Athos, it’s because he hates himself and remaining alive after killing his wife is his weakness and his abomination and he would like this responsibility to be taken away from him but that’s his cross to bear (staying alive is a form of punishment he inflicts on himself too), for Milady it’s because she lost this metaphysical fear of death, so she is completely reckless because she doesn’t care. They became mirrors of each other, not perfect copies, but similar in more ways than one, this is where their co-dependency (“The world seemed diminished without you”) comes from. The execution (murder Dumas insists) of Anne de Breuil created both of them, which is why Milady’s destiny is entwined with Athos’s, why she still seeks him out (in my headcanon, she didn’t kill him back in the burning castle because when she saw the locket she realised precisely this, that Athos (I should say the Comte de la Fère) had changed too, became another, and it wouldn’t be the same man who killed Anne (why would she kill someone who’s already dead?). She didn’t realise this when she orchestrated his execution in episode one, but after she discovered the locket around his neck, did you notice she stopped wanting him dead at all costs?)
In the end, Milady became a true psychopath, detached from her emotions, devoid of empathy, and the only thing that still hurts her is precisely the fact that she’s not able to feel anything anymore, for what she was is dead and it’s the only death she grieves.
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