#that im clearly at a small child writing level and not like......a 22 year old

[urproblematicfav-arsonk]

Carmilla finds a way for sinners to have babies so she can start a army of tiny babie spiders and also just Have more kids.

Rosie finds out and decides she wants to participate so she goes to Alastor and says they can just turkey baster it and really dejectedly Al sighs and says "no.....I'll do it myself"

[ghost-in-the-stalls]

your hc about mary please🤲🏻🤲🏻

Aw thanks so much for asking!! Idk if you're the same anon that asked about Tilda or a different one, but I appreciate you just the same 😍 no one has interacted with the Tilda post yet from what I can see so idk if people care about this in general but im glad you do! And I'd love to share regardless.

Once again this'll probably be long so it's going under a cut. Cw for normal aftg stuff but then also a little human trafficking mention in the beginning and general abuse/neglect both physical and emotional.

And once again this is in no way to excuse Mary's shitty behavior. She and Tilda were both abusive and terrible mothers and this is more just an exploration of the character and her mentality than anything else. I just love character depth.

Finally, I apologize if this isn't very well worded. I'm pretty tired but I dont like editing myself lmao I'd rather just get this out now. I think I get my points across clearly enough so I don't care as much about how good or bad the writing is

So Mary's mother was a woman who I consider not only having married into the Hatfords but who was basically like... sold to them as a child. Like maybe she was the illegitimate child of some other wealthy family who happened to owe some kind of debt to the Hatfords. And the Hatfords had only one son and were struggling to have another, but were desperate to keep the family line going. So they took this baby in exchange for forgiving a debt, and raised her to one day marry their son.

So this girl (whose name I've decided is Marion for some reason) is raised as a member of the family but like... slightly less. Treated as more of an object than a person. They basically only gave her enough of an education for her to get by, and made sure she knew from a young age that her sole purpose in the family was to marry their son (let's call him Samuel).

So you can imagine she didn't grow into a very happy woman. But she filled her role. She married Samuel Hatford, gave him 3 kids, and then pretended to stay out of the way. Stuart was the oldest, Mary in the middle, and I hc they had a younger sister as well. Don't ask me why. That just popped into my head one day and now I can't imagine otherwise.

So this family dynamic was fucked from the beginning. See Marion filled her role, but she had plans. In raising her children, she gave a great deal of care and attention to Stuart as he was the eldest and the only son. He was to inherit the family business upon his father's death or retirement. And she wanted to make sure she was taken care of properly in her old age. So she made Stuart feel as loved and doted on as she could.

Her daughters served her no purpose, so they got very different treatment. Mary especially was affected by this. The youngest daughter was able to generally slip under the radar and find her own niche in the world (married into a powerful wealthy family through a man she genuinely loved and that was already more than anyone needed or expected from her).

But Mary. She felt her mother's cold shoulder on a very deep level. Their father wasn't exactly a family man- couldn't be bothered. And here was her mother, so plainly and openly playing favorites. Stuart would get hugs and soft words while Mary would- on a good day- get slapped for even opening her mouth. See Mary and her sister were never meant to have any real power in the family. So what did it matter to Marion what grudges they held against her?

So enough years go by and Marion decides its taking too long for her husband to retire. So she takes matters into her own hands. Starts slowly slipping poison into his meals in very small doses until he's too weak to fight back when she slits his throat. She doesn't hide what she did. She doesn't need to. When Stuart takes over at 22 years old, he can't find it in himself NOT to protect her.

But I'm getting carried away. So Mary was now in a pretty weird spot. Stuart being in charge gave her a bit stronger footing in the family (they'd always had a very close relationship despite their mother's attitude), but she was still lower rung. She still suffered at the hands of her mother's emotional neglect and manipulation. And she was getting tired of it.

In comes Nathan Wesninski. See the thing I imagine with Nathan is that he is actually incredible charming. His knives can only get him so much when there are people he can't reach to cut up. And when his rising empire starts doing business with the Hatfords, he and Mary latch onto one another very quickly.

They each have their own intentions in the relationship and neither of them are blind to that. But it wasn't an arranged marriage. See Mary saw Nathan as her ticket up and out. She knew he was vying for power and she knew he was fully capable of getting it. I wouldn't go as far to say they were ever in love- I don't think either of them were ever really capable of that- but Mary definitely had some strong faith in what their relationship could be.

Now, when she looked forward, she finally saw herself on top. She saw her and Nathan standing side by side. That power that had always been out of reach for her? It was now in sight, and she definitely was blinded by that. She didn't see what Nathan really was until she was in too deep.

Stuart and the younger sister had disapproved of Mary and Nathan being together from the beginning. Being in business with him, Stuart knew what Nathan really was and how much he could drag Mary down. Their younger sister had just learned to be much better at reading people. But it didn't matter what they said. Mary had her plan and nothing was going to take it from her.

Mary's commitment to marrying Nathan and Stuart's blatant disapproval of him created a deep rift between them. They had always been very close, but Mary saw his interference as an attempt to keep her in her place. She was stubborn and refused to back down. By the time she and Nathan got married, her and Stuart were barely on speaking terms.

Now the thing is, Nathan knew what he wanted out of Mary. And he also knew that once he had her, she wouldn't be able to go anywhere until he got what he wanted.

It didn't take too long for Mary to come to understand that what they had was never and would never be a partnership. She was a tool to him. And by the time she had Abram, he was already beating her into submission and openly fooling around with Lola on the side.

But now she was stuck. Their marriage may not have been arranged, but it was still a business deal. And even if it wasn't, Nathan wasn't going to let her go anywhere.

Once it became clear that Abram wasn't going to make an appropriate heir for the Wesninski business and Nathan tried to sell him to the Moriyamas, Mary decided she'd had enough. She was going to get out one way or another.

Now here's the thing. We know what Mary was like with Neil when they were on the run. We know how abusive and controlling she was. And she could say it was for his own good all she wanted. But ultimately, it was all about power. She had been beaten down from the very start of her life. She'd been left in the dust, bloody and bruised, while those around her rose to a power that was always just out of her reach.

But now it was just her and her son. And they may not even have the luxury of being real people anymore, but damn if she was going to lose the one thing she was able to call hers- the one thing in the world she actually had power over.

Because that's really all it's ever about isn't it? Mary Hatford wasn't capable of loving anything or anyone. The people who'd raised her and made her who she was had never taught her how to do that. And maybe the fierce protectiveness she had over Abram was the closest she could get to it. But really she just ultimately became the same thing she had always been fighting against. Now it was her own heavy and swift hands doling out punishment to a misbehaving child. Now she herself was the one getting the last word and making all the decisions. Now she had someone following her every command.

It eventually became clear to her that she very likely would die sooner or later at the hands of Nathan and his men. She could only run so far and for so long. But even in her death, she knew she would never let them take what was hers. She never took Abram to Stuart because the break in their relationship was beyond repair at this point. But she still would prefer Abram eventually ended up in his protection than at the end of Nathan's knife. But until these things came, she took Abram and kept running. The more days they ran, the more days she had of power over him and freedom from everything else. The more able she was to ensure that Abram would keep running after her death; that he'd never fall under anyone else's power and that her voice would be the only one left in his head at the end of each day.

If she could see where he'd ended up, she'd be furious (and she'd be surprised at her own fury, as introspection wasn't something she indulged in often). He was never meant to live. He was never meant to move on from her memory or to leave her dying request behind.

But, at the same time, good for him for finding his own strength and place in the world. Because of course it could only happen once she was gone.

---

So thats my take on Mary. Once again, she was a piece of shit just like Tilda. This is not to do anything other than explore the character and give her complexity. I do genuinely believed she "loved" Neil in the only way she could ever be capable of loving anyone. But it wasn't love. It was possession. And good on both him and Andrew (and Aaron and Nicky for that matter) for being able to slowly learn to heal from the abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents.

Thanks so much again for asking!! It means a lot and I love to share my headcanons 😊❤