#morality discussion

First of all, she follows the common archetype of "i feel nothing" she has extreme apathy even towards her own situations. Keep this in mind.

(Please pretend this is a cohesive literary transition)

When columbina is caught in a conflict, she leaves. She bottles up her emotions for hundreds of years until a minor disagreement or battle becomes the catalyst for her departure. Instead of telling the scions that their worship unsettled her, she endured it until she no longer could, and just left. Instead of telling dottore that she feels used and unvalued, she said nothing, and, you guessed it, left. And much more nuanced and obviously important to the plot, but in the first scuffle with dottore, she *leaves*. To avoid conflict, to avoid being captured, i dont know, but she does leave. Leaving, to columbina, is the solution to stress. If you dont like something, turn away, right? This is true, but also a path that leads to loneliness.

Talking about loneliness (here's our second topic!!) she seems to idolize the traveler. In a very familiar and friendly sense, but it is idolization all the same. She has so much love around her and so many friends that she cares for —and says she cares for— who care for her in turn, and yet the traveler is the one to open her eyes and show her true friendship. The traveler is the one who has taught her how to be a person, how to be happy. Not the hundreds of years spend with sandrone and rosalyne and even dottore at one point, but the traveler. It's hypocritical. She doesnt want the frostmoon scions to worship her and the things she does, yet she enacts that same "worship" upon the traveler, viewing their kindness as the light in the dark, how the scions saw her.

Third topic!! The scions are important in this story too. They serve the literary purpose of a native tribe being colonized. The colonizer? Sandrone, who columbina, patron god of the scions, is best friends with. This hypocrisy is very evident. She loves signora, yet does not care for the fact that the traveler helped in her death. She loves lauma and the scions, but does not care for sandrone's genocide upon them, nor for lauma's retaliation in blood. She loved dottore, once, and there is no world in which she was unaware of his inhumane activities. Yet still, in dottore's case, she only cared when it began to affect her

This trend of columbina only caring about things that directly and personally affect her is incredibly prevalent in the story. She does'nt care for the moon goddesses until she has something to gain from them.

And final point!! Columbina is an enabler. She, despite doing no direct harm, is complicit and even friendly about the abuse going on around her. she spent hundreds of years in the fatui, and didn't care. (Yes this also means capitano, despite being objectively the most morally good of the harbingers, is still also a bad person for enabling the fatui's behavior, but that's a different story) enablers are, hypothetically, (and i need you to understand hypothetically), worse than abusers. In practice abusers are the worst. They're the ones who do harm and ruin lives, obviously. There is no debate. But!! Enablers are the reason abusers exist in the first place. People sitting by and letting abuse happen are perpetuating the infastructure where abusers exist freely and can continue to exist freely. Abusers simply would not exist if there were not enablers around them letting them become an abuser.

Columbina is a horrible person, but politically and morally, rather than evil. She wont commit atrocities, but is content for those around her to do so.

Short tangent i couldnt include in the rest of the post because it only half fits:

About death: She sings at signora's funeral —and it's my personal headcannon that, upon sandrone's death, she sang to her as well.— demonstrating that her ideas and views on grief are inherently different from the norm. (A bit of a theory tangent, but i think her nonchalance regarding death is due to the moon goddesses' authority over death and the afterlife) despite her grief being flawed, she genuinely feels deep sorrow for her lost loved ones, and this can be seen in her dialogue.