✨️Felassan enjoyer✨️

He absolutely does have a habit of building people and groups up in his head in order to paint his actions with some tragic hero edge....weaponising them for sycophancy. Like he does with the natives...but in the end it's clear he didn't care.

And I do wonder how much of Annabelle is built up inside Dutch's head in order for him to paint himself as a kind of tortured, tragic hero figure. That it winds up erasing any trace of the actual person that she was.

The human being instead of the crutch of all of Dutch's hatred towards Colm. Like who WAS she beyond a victim to Colm? Beyond Dutch's lover who was killed and likely set him on a certain trajectory to the "charming leader' the gang all knows now.

The lack of characterisation for her feels more like a symptom of Dutch only remembering her when he remembers how he was "done wrong" by Colm than just...her being an off-screen character. (But both can be true at the same time)

You can see how Dutch treats the women he is with. Between binning off Grimshaw and abusing the fuck out of Molly only to then turn his gaze towards the younger Mary-Beth who he raised from a girl WHILE with and in front of, Molly.

But Annabelle almost gets this privilege of being Dutch's "true love" gone too soon. Shes like this mythical, mysterious person in Dutch's story.

But I think the only reason Dutch does this is because he can control the narrative about her now. She's dead, and no longer has agency. Which to Dutch could be some twisted benefit into enriching his own lore of which he gets to be the sole hand on the writer's pen even if he is characterising a REAL person.