#eguthrie

vane / eleanor memory week

I’m condemned to love people who are disliked to the fandom! Is it my fault if I love people with defects and in difficult positions? *sighs* However I have just finished 3x09 of Black Sails! Wow!! . What do you think of Eleanor’s behavior? Because I’m a bit confused…

Good question! I find Eleanor’s behaviour pretty plausible although we didn’t get enough introspective scenes with her in S3. But there are enough hints to piece it together. I wrote a lengthy meta post about Eleanor after that episode aired (my first meta, I don’t write them often): → post-3x09 Eleanor meta

It begins as a comparison between Eleanor & Madi and the roles of their fathers and then devolves into a discussion of the effects of a patriarchal society on the characters lol

I don’t know why people still talk about Eleanor as if she was some sort of pirate queen who has now inexplicably sided with the British. She was always interested in making Nassau a legitimate business place, their own haven, but the pirates themselves didn’t value her efforts to establish a legitimate trade with the outside world (which is necessary to maintain their illusion of freedom~ and independence because there’s no real independence, they still rely on commodities from outside civilization). They actually threw her to the wolves. Why should she be loyal to them? Or Vane, for that matter? Eleanor has always adapted to her surroundings and in S3 made the decision to say fuck to everything and side with the one person who was decent to her (aside from her father figures Mr. Scott and Flint, the latter of whom she initially still believes can be reasoned with and she’s right in so far as Flint was never really interested in the fates of the pirates either, except for how they could serve his ends). So her goal of withstanding a British rule with a rule of their own (which she and Flint were unable to establish) shifted to managing the British rule and rejecting the chaos and debauchery that she found liberating until it turned out that it wasn’t liberating her at all, actually the opposite. It spit her out and left her to die.

So in S3 she recognizes her own characters flaws, brought on by the amoral environment in which she grew up, and she attempts to atone by helping Rogers restore order and civilization (we have to remember that she comes from a different background than the other pirates, which is why she gets along so well with Flint, and that there are actually a lot of civilians living in Nassau that suffered under the neglect and lack of protection from her father).

And also Eleanor is of course maligned by fandom for actions that, if she were a man, she’d be praised for as an intriguing anti-hero or villain.

2.03 ~ This isn't about taking sides. It's about protecting the fort, protecting Nassau.