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At first glance, Christine and Lucy are obvious literary cousins: gentle, adored, emotionally sensitive, associated with innocence and vulnerability (and placed in a Gothic story where predatory male desire threatens to consume them)

Both inspire an almost frantic protective instinct in the men around them (Christine with Raoul, Lucy with Arthur, Dr. Seward, and Quincey). And of course, both have a certain softness that gets mistaken for passivity

BUT.

Christine’s interiority (particularly Leroux’s Christine in the original novel) is where Mina starts creeping in, imo.

I think readers underestimate how observant Christine is (mainly because they focus too hard on her pious, arguably naive belief in an angel sent by her father teaching her to sing).

However, once Christine KNOWS she being deceived? She plans. She conceals information from Raoul trying to protect him (and gets understandably frustrated when he refuses to listen to her)

Christine evaluates danger. She plans escape. She thinks through everything as much as she can (even if she does give in to daydreams when she and Raoul play at being engaged for a month– and doesn’t anticipate him destroying her plans by NOT going to the North Pole).

When she finally tells Raoul what happened to her? She does so in painstaking detail… and that is a Mina trait.

Lucy is taken too soon thanks to the narrative, so we don’t get to see if she would be as analytical as Mina is in the novel. But both Christine and Mina (and Lucy!) are armed with a very particular kind of compassion that we see them use with the villain/monster, whereas Lucy’s manifests a bit differently (“Why can’t they let a woman marry three men?” as she does not want to hurt any of them!).

Again, we don’t know if Lucy would have shared the same kind compassion that both Christine and Mina have for the villain, but I’d like to think she would have!

However, both Christine and Mina are both very analytical while compassionate towards the dark figures pursuing them. (Yes, I said Christine is analytical! Please stay with me!)

Mina remarks that she pities Dracula with all of her heart. She calls his case the saddest of them all. Despite violating her and causing immense suffering, she views Dracula as a tragic, soulless soul trapped in agony, urging the vengeful men around her to show him mercy

She’s called the light of all lights for a reason

Christine is very similar in her own way. She ultimately understands Erik deeply, far deeper than most even want to. And the climax depends not upon Raoul defeating the monster but upon Christine herself figuring out what kind of human response can reach him, and saving him with that very same human compassion.

And her compassion isn’t naïveté. By that point Christine knows exactly what Erik is capable of. She’s been terrorized by him. She’s seen his violence. She’s even furious with him, and points out flaws in Erik’s logic more than once.

Christine is still frightened and romantic and deeply compassionate, BUT she’s also surprisingly resourceful, and that’s something I think many overlook often

(And there’s a recurring “Raoul, I am begging you to understand that I really DO know more about this situation than you do” quality to her that Mina would absolutely recognize instantly imo!)