Why I think Isabella is a lesbian in the manhwa canon of I am the queen in this life + why it was handled poorly.
Yeah I'm not even headcanoning her as Bi anymore.
For starters, when has she she ever expressed genuine romantic feelings for men? If anything, she's almost always annoyed to be in the presence of the male gender. The only times she isn't repulsed by men is when they have something to offer her, such as wealth, noble titles or simply the chance to screw over her sister.
Secondly, whenever she's trying to manipulate one of her victims, Isabella is usually pretty obvious that she's being disingenuous, she tries too hard to act like she cares and it's pretty obvious when she's lying.
EX: Isabella trying to manipulate her family. Girl, calm down, you're not starring in Hamlet.
But when she's charming women, she doesn't have that piss poor "poker face", unintentionally implying that she means every word she's saying.
EX: Isabella sweet talking Leticia.
That is the most genuine she has looked in a while.
Now is Isabella good lesbian representation? Well, no, she actually checks off a lot of the boxes for negative stereotypes of lesbians. She hates men, she is shown to be a repeat sexual offender, and in the manhwa, there's an unnecessary panel of her groping her own sister. It's not necessarily that I think all queer characters HAVE to be the good guys, there are plenty of antagonistic characters who are also LGBTQ or LGBTQ coded that work beautifully in various media out there but Isabella is not one of them.
Regardless, it still stands that for some reason, the manhwa adaptation decided to include new scenes where Isabella is oddly flirtatious with and even touchy with other women on occasion. I don't really know why this change was made though, lesbian Isabella wasn't in the novel, and it doesn't really add onto the story or to her character in the manhwa, its just kind of there, and it feels really off putting that such a change was exclusively made for a one dimensional character who sexually assaulted people.
Was it intended to be homophobic? I can extend an olive branch the writers because its not like characters are claiming that Isabella's attraction to women is an explanation to why she's suddenly acting perverted, but it's still REALLY odd to me that the same people who altered the story to include lesbian Isabella were the same people who included a scene where she sexually assaults her sister.
If Isabella was meant to be closeted because of the catholic coded setting she lives in, that WOULD be a cool subversion of the evil white lotus trope. A reveal that one of the reasons Isabella is so nasty being because of her shame for finding women attractive while she was simultaneously being lusted after in her teens by grown ass men would certainly explain why she acts the way she does without justifying it.
There are ways you can do it! Hell, the gay/lesbian character being closeted by their religious family and society is a pretty common trope out there, just execute it correctly.
