Im not sure if this is a rude question, but I was wondering why you didn't put much reason behind Crielles villany other than 'shes inheritantly evil and must do evil things'. We don't get a backstory or much about her past except the fact that she has an evil lineage. I've never read any of your fae stories, but I've read all the underline the rainbow and spoils series up to date. I am planning on reading them because your my favorite author and I love your stories, so i'd be thankful if the answer was simply 'go read my fae series.
Thank you so much for all the stories you share with us!!
Hi anon,
Not rude at all! And a good opportunity to talk about how quite a few shitty people in the real world also have no reason behind their villainy, so it's a good time to talk about human psychology.
As to the concrete specifics: The Fae Tales canon absolutely does answer why Crielle is the way she is, though it's not because of how she's raised, and the answer doesn't apply to any of her human iterations either. Like, it won't explain the actions of Underline Crielle, because the answer in the Fae Tales canon is literally 'a magical curse.'
But some quick talk about people's actions and their motives behind their actions ->
Some people are actually just not very nice even if they haven't been through trauma. As an example, around a third of serial killers have a stable, healthy family home and no aberrant experiences in their lives. There are people who just...for whatever reason, due to whatever their genetics and brain chemistry are doing, become obsessed with and compelled to do evil things.
Not every character's evil actions has an "answer" or a "reason" you're going to find satisfying, anon (I know this, because Crielle's motives do have reason behind them, they're just not one you feel justifies the extent of her actions). This falls into the idea that's dangerously close to just world fallacy, which is the idea that everything has a proportionate reason behind it. (This is used to explain why bad things happen to "good people" - they can't actually be good, but it runs kind of parallel to the idea that "bad people" have equally bad things that caused those actions).
I like villains that I don't need to put "reasons" behind, just as I love complex villains, because imho, people like this exist in reality too. I hope you never meet one of them, but absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt, some people will do incredibly evil and horrendous and monstrous things and there is no explanation other than that they enjoy doing those things. And there is no explanation for why they enjoy it other than they just do.
Even Crielle's reasons in the canon have literally zero to do with how she was raised. If anything, she was of such an extreme level of monstrousness to her immediate family that she took steps to eliminate them, when brainwashing them wasn't enough.
Some people are inherently compelled to do evil things, anon. I don't know what to tell you. Not every person who enjoys doing very bad things has a background of abuse. In fact, some people just do those things because they're fun, they like them, and their brain doesn't do the empathy thing alongside how much fun extreme sadism is.
There is a reason for Crielle's motives and actions -> her motives are right there on the page for anyone to see: She is genuinely living her best and most fulfilled life when she's being awful to others in controlled circumstances. She enjoys ruining lives, extinguishing life, causing pain and suffering, and finding excuses for that which makes it a game for her. And she enjoys sadistic games. And while that often turns our expectations on their heads - that someone must have a reason relating to injury or abuse to cause these things to others for the joy of it - sometimes "it's fun and it feels good!" is the sole reason someone commits to certain awful actions.
That is, after all, a motivator for a lot of us, it's just our actions are very different. If we can accept that we do certain things for fun, and because they feel good, it also becomes incumbent upon us to accept that certain other people do things that make no sense to us because it's fun and feels good. That applies to people who are forever trying to eat the spiciest food in existence and cause themselves physical harm and immeasurable suffering in the moment (we don't say these people went through abuse to reach this point, we just accept some people are like this), it applies to some serial killers, and it certainly applies to Crielle ferch Fnwy.
She exists to deliberately turn the idea that all villains have a reason beyond the joy of monstrousness on their heads, because quite a few don't.
