just a smol JoJo

her character as a whole is a bit… one dimensional. she’s your classic rich mean girl, the foil to our mc.

but really this girl is a walking tragedy. i really want to focus on not only her being a foil to marinette but also being a parallel to adrien. the two have similar situations, the only difference is that adrien experiences parental love from both of his parents during the formative years of his youth. yes, his mom died and yes, his dad is neglectful, but they did love him and gabriel’s motivations are at least partially because of his love for his son. chloe’s doesn’t get this. her mother is absent at best, arguably abusive. she’s instilled this eat or be eaten mentality in chloé. that love is something you have to earn, that it is secondary to what people think of you. people who give love easily are weak or stupid or both. the only way to win people’s respect is to prove you are worth more. and who’s worth more than audrey’s daughter?

because chloé is an extension of her mother she has to be perfect all the time. she has made herself into her mothers carbon copy and given who her mother is, it’s not a good thing. now you might be thinking “but what about her dad? he clearly loves her”. and maybe he does but his unwillingness to fight against his wife’s abuse shows chloe she’s worth less than her mother. and his constant placating manner shows chloe love can be bought if the price tag is high enough. finding true, real love, even in a platonic space, has been hard for her because the examples she’s been given are atrocious. even her friendship with sabrina echos her parents relationship. it is toxic. sabrina cares about her in the same way her dad cares about her which is that they want her to be happy so they give her everything she asks for.

this is why she likes adrien so much. he is her friend but not because he has to be. he gets what it’s like to have a parent in the fashion industry, one with eyes on you and not wanting to disappoint them. he pushes back when she goes too far and she respects him for it. i think a lot of her crush comes from the fact that there is no other person who cares about her like he does. he was her first friend and that holds a lot of weight.

now does still have to work for her redemption. she’s got a lot to unlearn. because of how this au works, marinette doesn’t know who any of the miraculous holders are. in fact, in this au, no one knows that queen bee is chloé bourgeois. she gets a little taste of that freedom, of being respected and loved for her work as a superhero. and she revels in it, almost selfishly. she has to learn to not be the center of attention when fighting, which she does. she talks with the others like they’re all equals, she gets to escape her mother’s expectations and have a bit of fun. that is until her identity is discovered.

see… there is still another bee miraculous holder i need to draw. and honestly, chloé doesn’t make the best superhero. she’s in the game because she likes the attention, not necessarily because she likes helping people. but when hawkmoth has everyone cornered and ladybug is about to have her miraculous stolen, queen bee makes the most heroic decision of her career. she lets herself get caught instead and she gets unmasked instead. the fight ends with hawkmoth being defeated and the bee miraculous returned to the good guys but it’s too late. he knows who she is and how to get under her skin. queen bee is no longer able to fight and chloé has lost her outlet and most of her friends.

she goes through the five stages of grief, descending into the worst version of herself. at first she acts like she doesn’t care that it wasn’t even that big of loss, but she misses pollen. then she gets spiteful and resentful. why did it have to be her to lose everything? and when she finds out her half sister took up the mantle? she loses it. she teams up with lila and wreaks havoc. eventually she realizes how much harm she’s done, how many people she accidentally caused to be akumatized, and, her final breaking point, loses adrien as a friend. she leaves lila and she just stops caring, about everything. marinette’s the one who brings her back from the edge and through her friendship begins to turn her life around.

her redemption is so important to me. some people suck, like lila, because some people are inherently bad. but some people have the capacity to change, to be better. they just were raised wrong. chloé can be good, she was a superhero. her mom just sucks and instilled in her the wrong lesson. her friendship with adrien is also so important to me. her realizing she didn’t actually like adrien romantically really changes her whole perspective and she becomes a major part in his life. she always has his back and understands him in a way that his other friends might not be able to.