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thatxfangirl-blog · 10 years ago

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Hi, Cassandra! Sebastian is a very interesting and complex character and it takes a lot of time to understand him and his backstory, which is probably one of the many reasons why he became my favourite character. I’m now reading City of Heavenly Fire and in a part of the book Jocelyn mentioned that she used to cry every year on his birthday and that she sometimes dreamed of a boy with green eyes and a boy who could laugh/love/etc, a human child and that this is the boy she cried over, though she claims he never existed. But my question is, isn’t it partly Jocelyn’s fault that Sebastian became who he is? It is obvious that most of Sebastian’s humanity was burned away by the demon blood, but if Jocelyn had stayed and helped raising him and gave him parently love and all the things he never got from Valentine’s side, would that have affected Sebastian’s feelings and actions in any way? Or would he still be the same? Because I think the demon blood damaged him a lot but also the cruel way Valentine raised him seems to have a lot of impact on Sebastian as well. I prefer him evil, obviously, I wouldn’t want to change him but I’m just curious whether there was a chance for him to be different or if he was irredeemable? If you do take some of your time to read/answer this I’m thanking you in advance! — palestiles

Ah, you subscribe to my friend Sarah’s “You’ve got to love your demon baby!” theory. :)

Every reader has their own interpretation of a story. For my own part, I believe Jocelyn is far less culpable in the tragedy of Jonathan’s life than Valentine is. Valentine did dangerous experiments on his wife and unborn child. He did this on purpose, knowing that the results might be terrible. He did this without Jocelyn’s knowledge or consent, and tampered with her memories to keep her loyal to him. He was an abusive, manipulative zealot who was basically torturing Jocelyn and erasing her memory of it. Was she supposed to excuse all that and stay with him, just so she could be a loving mother to the monster he made their child into? That would have been horrible for her, and would have given Valentine access to another child to experiment on and manipulate: Clary. Jocelyn cut her losses and got out of there. I don’t blame her for that.

I think it’s entirely up in the air whether Jocelyn staying around would have made Sebastian/Jonathan a better person. It’s possible, but it’s also possible it wouldn’t have made a whit of a difference. Jonathan himself indicates at the end of his life that there simply wasn’t enough good in him for anything to have changed how he turned out. I think in some cases, love can make a difference — but I don’t always think you can love evil away. I wrote a bit about what-ifs and Jonathan here: http://cassandraclare.tumblr.com/post/89868815509/sebastian-jonathan “I wouldn’t want to commit to a specific what if. There are too many factors that have gone into making Jonathan who he is. A Jonathan with demon blood, but not raised by Valentine is one thing. A Jonathan without demon blood, but raised by Valentine is something else. A Jonathan without demon blood and not raised by Valentine might be what we saw in Clary’s dream — that’s as close to a what-if as I think we’ll ever get.” “It is likely that if he had been raised by Valentine, Jonathan would have been affected by that upbringing even if he hadn’t had demon blood, yes, but he probably wouldn’t have been basically a demon in human form. Seb/Jonathan is a mixture of bad impulses and bad upbringing. Certainly I had no intention to imply that if he hadn’t had demon blood, he would have been an angel of light: we’ve no idea what he would have been like, and we never will know. What I intended to convey at the end of his arc was simply the tragedy of wasted potential. Jonathan himself says that he isn’t a real person after Glorious burns out the demon blood, he’s like Clary’s dream of him, a possible Jonathan that could have existed but never actually did.”

And I guess (depending on how much we want to indulge this what-if, and how cynical we are) I might add that being raised by Jocelyn for a time might have made Jonathan more manipulative. He’s not great at aping human behavior, and that’s good for the people around him. Some people do sense that something is off about him. Having Jocelyn around might have given him a better understanding of how humans relate… and that could have been bad for the rest of humanity. After all, what lesson would he learn from seeing his mother stay with a man who was abusive, manipulative and dangerous, out of a sense of duty?

Probably not a good lesson.

We’ll never know.

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