My Favorite Flawed Female Character
Anastasia - Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
Kitsis and Horowitz are on my list of writers I don’t trust, but I have to give them credit for this character, whether because they wrote her or because they stayed out of the way of the person who did write her. Emma Rigby’s performance gets a lot of credit too, of course. It’s probably a blessing that the show was only one season so they couldn’t ruin her.
I love Anastasia because I can believe that she is incredibly selfish and incredibly caring at the same time, it never feels as if one quality is swept aside for the other. She is a character who, once she gets an idea into her head is consumed by it. She doesn’t like her life in the Enchanted Forest, so she goes to Wonderland, convinced it must automatically be better. When it’s not she seeks material comfort, losing Will in the process. When she regrets losing Will she does whatever she can to make him love her again. When she accepts that she can’t have Will’s love, she resolves to be a better queen. This is the start of her redemption arc, but I don’t think that she decided to be a better person for unselfish reasons. I think she decided that if Will couldn’t love her, she could at least get her subjects to love her. At the point of the show when she’s fully on the side of the heroes, it would be foolish of her not to be. She never really changes, she just finds herself in a place where doing the right thing is the most beneficial thing. But despite her selfishness and betrayal of Will, I never doubt that she truly loves him, didn’t even need the curse-breaking true love’s kiss to prove that to me (although it was certainly welcome).
To me, Anastasia is the perfect flawed female character. She has a backstory that explains how she is, but it doesn’t hand wave away her mistakes as not being her fault. Her faults belong to her, but they don’t ruin her likability or the audience’s desire to root for her.
