#jennette margarita discourse

[ultramarine-spirit]

I don't think Jennette is Athy's foil. Their interests are somewhat opposed to each other, but Jennette is not dramatically different from Athy, nor does her character serve to highlight Athy's character.

A foil is a character that, from a narrative point of view, contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist), to highlight their qualities. The foil usually exhibits opposite or conflicting traits, and they serve to better reflect the other character's traits and motivations.

Claude, Lucas and in the manhwa Anastasius have ideas and values that are very different from Athy's, especially regarding family. However, Anastasius is clearly Claude's foil, and Claude is more of a deuteragonist than anything. I could kind of see him contrasting with Athy (because of reasons similar to Lucas', those being, how they chose to deal with their grief), but I think his role is to be Anastasius' opposite.

Lucas fits a little more. He has an extremely similar backstory to Athy's (rejected and neglected by his biological family, kept away from the main house, then abandoned by his teacher, he chooses to "go to sleep" instead of facing his depression). Because of his traumatic experiences, Lucas chooses to freeze his heart instead of risking getting hurt again, which is the opposite of what Athy ultimately decides to do: Accept that she loves Claude and considers him her father, get hurt over and over, but nevertheless try to build a healthy relationship with him based on honesty and trust. This is what changes Lucas, (metaphorically and kind of literally) melts his heart, and makes him fall in love with Athy. However, Lucas is never truly put in a position where he is opposed to Athy. On the contrary, he is the character that stays by her side unconditionally, helps her reach her goals and protects her. That's why his role is the love interest.

I have thought about this topic before, and I always concluded that Athy simply does not have a foil. However, while answering this ask, I realized that there's a much better candidate for that position: LP!Jennette is wmmap!Athy's foil.

They both wanted to be loved by their family, but while Athy wins Claude's heart (at first by acting but shhh) by the sincere feelings of love and the relationship they slowly develop over time, Jennette never truly wins Claude over, unbeknown to her. The thing that makes Claude "love" her is the manipulation of her black magic. Moreover, while both LP!Jennette and wmmap!Athy know that their own good situations hurt the other (LP!Athy, wmmap!Jennette), wmmap!Athy goes very far in trying to befriend Jennette and help her, which can't be said for LP!Jennette (to be clear, she was never actively cruel to LP!Athy, but she also never tried to help her). What reflects their contrast the best is that, both know or learn the truth of their parentage, but Athy ends up telling Jennette the truth. LP!Jennette stays quiet and acts as if she is ignorant (which, as she herself admits, further hurts LP!Athy), because she feels Claude owes her the family and good standing she has, as he killed her real father.

I think the fact that wmmap!Jennette explicitly tells Athy that, if she were in Athy's place, she wouldn't have done what Athy did (comfort her, reach out, and talk to her first), is the novel's acknowledgement of how differently LP!Jennette and wmmap!Athy acted. While both had innocent and understandable desires, and you could say both were selfish in their own ways, LP!Jennette always prioritized her interests over anyone's (this is another conversation, but she also knew Ijekiel didn't love her and was unhappy, but she still kept him as her fiancé because that was her desire), which is the opposite of that wmmap!Athy did. More extremely put: wmmap!Athy saves Jennette from being executed or punished in any way because of the black magic storm she caused at her 18th birthday party. LP!Jennette does not do that for LP!Athy when she is framed. LP!Athy is executed, the day of her 18th birthday.

[doomed-prophetess]

ACTUALLY I FORGOT speaking of jieun why do people need to make other girls enemies of the mc 😭😭😭 i don’t understand??? why they blame jennette for the things happening when she was being used by someone else and she’s a 14 year old who was being isolated and just wanted to have a family that loved her. i get that shes naive and selfish!!! but athy was also selfish both of them!!! and that’ ok? people can be selfish. they’re human. and it’s ok to be selfish sometimes (at least imho, you’re allowed to) 🥺 why do ppl ignore jennette thinking of athanasia constantly and wishing to see her again etc. even jumping in the water to catch her umbrella? buying presents for one another?? bc jennette wanted to be close to her sister????? (also don’t ever put blame on jennette for claude losing his memory 😭 this is all aeternitas PLEASE) i get that shes frustrating sometimes. but being surrounded by adults (including athy) and just people who are more mature than her like ijekiel of course she would look naive? roger obvs didn’t raise her like he did his own son. and athy in the first timeline made mistakes like those by being too kind and dumb (sorry) and she ended up dead. now she’s trying to survive which means sometimes you have to be selfish. idk if i phrased that well but you get what i mean 🏃🏃🏃

Second female leads give readers flight or fight response because they are usually white lotuses or villainesses. This hatred is born out of experience.

Huh, Jennette being selfish? I’m surprised to hear this from a Jenne stan. If anything she is the exact opposite. Sis literally jumped into the lake and almost drowned trying to get Athy’s parasol (?) back. I don't get why people call Jennette selfish. She wants to be reunited with her family, she wants love. This is a basic need in humans. Contrary to Athy she does not try to monopolize Claude's attention. Instead she wants all three of them to be happy. Regarding LP! Jennette...we have not enough information about her. And the information we have has to be taken with a grain of salt as The Lovely Princess has been multiple times proven to be an untrustworthy source.

Let’s say, wmmap and lp Jennette are roughly the same person. If wmmap Jennette who saw Claude clearly favouring Athy, didn’t view Athy as a rival then why should lp Jennette who was the one being favoured feel threatened by her unloved sister’s presence? I’m assuming that lp Jennette had the same dream of them becoming a picture perfect family. My theory is that Jennette did try to improve the relationship between Athy and Claude, but it backfired. Claude resisted vehemently and opposed against the very idea of another daughter. There is a panel which comes to my mind which suggests this idea that Jennette might have tried to mediate between them.

This one:

The panel gives me the impression that Claude passed by his daughters, as always ignoring Athy, who looks as if she were wavering to say something to him, and he only turns around when Jennette tugs at his sleeve to stop him. I wonder what she was about to tell him?

Those are mere speculations. Jennette’s attempts to reconcile Claude with Athy might have caused him to hate her even more (I’ve heard the theory that the memory spell acted up and caused headaches whenever he saw lp Athy who looked like Diana). And Jennette who saw Claude get mad at Athy, eventually stopped attempting to repair their relationship as she feared Claude would potentially start to hate her too if she were to force him to spend time with a thing he hated.

[dolleyantoinette]

WMMAP Hot Take:

aka my opinion no one asked for but I have feelings about this

I don’t care if you don’t like Jennette for whatever reason, it’s your opinion and you’re allowed to dislike her, but I think the overwhelming amount of hate is kind of... hypocritical considering the fact WMMAP is about Athanasia, who in LP was a side character likely hated or disliked by the readers, and now that they’ve swapped positions, we all hate Jennette??? Like if you don’t like her personality or the way she’s written or whatever, that’s fine, I just find it’s werid when people interoperate her as this rude, clingy girl who wants to ruin Athy’s life when all she wants is a family and someone to care for her, the exact same thing Athanasia in Lovely Princess wanted.

IDK I just find it strange so many people hate her when she’s not really done anything wrong intentionally. Her tea party with Claude broke my heart, don’t get me wrong, seeing Athanasia watching that was like watching a puppy get kicked, but Jennette’s entire life is just the men around her manipulating her and I just find it kinda off that so many people hate a young girl raised to be a pawn considering our protagonist is so sympathetic because she once had a similar life of loneliness

[doomed-prophetess]

but also wasn’t jennette on a coma when athanasia was sentenced…? or is this just manhwa jennette? if so then it would have been out of her control anyways. i mean it’s still bad that she never stepped in for athanasia but regarding her execution it’s not really about her..

I assume we are talking about the novel Jennette =/= manhwa Jennette discourse since I got the ask around that time.

Lithium-15 commented this once on a post of the-girl-with-too-many-ideas (tumblr won't let me go to the main post because of their shitty new update, so I can't link it.) Remembering someone's post where they defended novel Jennette, I think novel lp Jennette was in coma too. I'm not 100% sure.

So either

1. Novel Jennette knew about Rosalia's plan to frame Athy for the poisoning and prepared everything so that Athy would get executed while she was in coma and she could fake ignorance once Athy's innocence was revealed to the public.

2. Or: she had her own plan in motion how to get rid of Athy and it coincided with Rosalia's.

3. plot hole

To be fair "to get rid of" is quite ambigious. Novel Jennette could have simply meant for Athy to get stripped off her status as crown princess and get send away, which was what manhwa Rosalia's was originally going for. But Lithium seems to be so convinced that novel lp Jennette was evil...I don't doubt it anymore. The timing was too suspicious. I'm starting to think novel Jennette really wanted to see Athy get hanged. Here's the meme post where Lithium mentioned LP Jennette was like Mielle. Apparently Jennette was an even better actress than Athy.