#aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh

i’ll start ;w;

Because it’s not! She’s not doing it out of malice or spite or even as a punishment, really. It’s not just a question of controlling the family shame that is her only child failing to take on a role “befitting her station”.

The fact is, Caitlyn is wildly sheltered, and doesn’t really have a full and intuitive understanding of the dangers of the world--she demonstrably doesn’t understand exactly how ugly an actual Enforcer’s job gets, she had no concept of how deeply she would be hated in the undercity or why. And so of course her mother is legitimately concerned about her getting herself killed in what is very genuinely an act of rebellion. And...kind of a childish one at the core, when Act 2 opens.

(Of course, Caitlyn being that sheltered in the first place is not something she did to herself, but that’s honestly academic--the die has been cast.)

And none of that makes it any less creepy or controlling! It doesn’t make it okay! Fucking with her career, sabotaging her attempts at self-actualization, using political influence to prevent her from getting clearance to go anywhere but the most affluent and isolated parts of Piltover, none of that is okay! It just makes it harder to fight against.

At its core it also fundamentally misjudges Cait on a deep level--reduces her admittedly childish act of rebellion to nothing but. Her mother’s genuine worry totally elides the fact that Cait’s motivated by a bone-deep sense of purpose and need to actively help. Acting as though even early Act 2 Caitlyn is doing this just out of spite, to get back at her parents, Generic Rebellious Princess Syndrome In A Stupid Hat, is badly underestimating her intelligence.

She’s way more sheltered than she thinks she is, and not nearly as naive as her parents believe her to be.

And maybe if her mother had taken a few minutes to get to know her, instead of just trying to keep her safe, she might have figured that out. 

She did figure it out, actually. That’s what makes it awful. If she hadn’t come to the realization on her own that Caitlyn knew what she was doing and that this wasn’t just a phase, an acting-out, she wouldn’t have arranged an emergency Council meeting. She certainly wouldn’t have gone from trying to get rid of an annoying ‘bad influence’ in her wayward daughter’s life to giving Caitlyn that silent ‘go to her, I’ll do what I can’.