Recyling Bin Side blog

victoria chose not to marry the man she truly loved in order to marry the man who was more devoted to her and who would be obedient, a survival choice in the far more sexist time period she was married in, when a man's power to curtail his wife was far more complete. she never mentions the man she loved again and performs an empty devotion to the husband she chose in order to remain the master of her own domain. and her husband cannot see that. he can never see his wife completely and know that she chose him in order to remain in control. he must believe the whole time that she loved him more than the other, that they moved past it.

rachel's immediate reaction to the witness' explanation is that she is going to die, and we see why. throughout the movie, nicky does not listen to her once. he performs a caring spouse routine to his family's standards by constantly ignoring her wishes. he pressures her about children relentlessly despite her clearly stated preference to have NO children. he decides to drive 8 hours to search for a wedding dress rather than wait for their friends to call back against her repeated pleas to stay with her. the fact that he did not actually believe her about the airplane's doom in their meetcute story is stupid but it is also very significant. nicky pays lipservice to rachel's instincts and anxieties--just enough to calm her into compliance with his desperate attempts to mimic his parents' 'perfect' marriage. he hunts the fox doggedly all day because his father told him to, ignoring his fiancee and pretending to himself that her anxieties are nonsense (always nonsense) until she turns to nell for support. of course rachel does not turn to nicky, why would she? his immediate reaction to every situation is an attempt to disprove and change her conclusions.

nell knows that her soulmate is her own choice, and she is actively in divorce proceedings. she has decided to stop choosing a man that she loves but who is mean to her and who she knows will never ever change for the sake of her wellbeing. she can only look at the man who is convinced that they are meant for each other with shock and grief, knowing also that he must have loved his first wife with the same broken and impotent sort of love that he gave to nell. loving, in his mind, does not require any attempt to avoid causing pain to the one he loves.

So Nellie was fucking right, huh? You just have to believe that your partner is your soulmate.

I watched the show with my sibling, when the curse was passed to the Cunningham's we were confused as to why Victoria was dying and Boris was not. Then Portia starts going down late and it's like, oh, it doesn't hit everyone at the same time. It just hasn't hit Boris yet. But then it never does, why? They're both a part of Nicky's bloodline, Victoria didn't have him all by herself.

At the very beginning of the show, I believe first episode, one of the first things Victoria says to Rachel is "I'm sorry for what this will do to you both," or at least something to that effect. She's not talking about the curse, she can't be. She doesn't know about it yet, none of them do at that point. She's simply talking about the marriage. So the woman who idealized and romanticized marriage to all her kids is sorry for what marriage will do to them both. What does that say about her own marriage? She doesn't know Rachel, it's not some commentary on her, no it's marriage as a whole. She clearly doesn't believe in it, in her own even. She doesn't think Boris is her soulmate. So she dies. But Boris? Boris idolizes Victoria, he puts her up on a pedestal. He thinks she's perfect, his soulmate. That's why he lives while she doesn't.

Then that gets you thinking, Nicky lived too. It's easy to think he was in the same mindset as Jules and Nell at the end. Simply trying to pass the curse back for their families sake (not that I blame them, they have a child to think about, the needs of the many outweigh the few). But I don't think that's true. He fully thought they were soulmates, he thought it woild stop the curse for his family and her. Because they're soulmates so she shouldn't die, right? Except she no longer believes they are, after everything I don't blame her.

Marrying your soulmate doesn’t make a relationship perfect. It doesn’t mean there won’t be problems, or that it won’t require work, or that it won’t go through crises or even that it couldn’t end. What it does mean is that you’ve found someone who sees you and accepts you as you are, even when you’re a mess. But from that point on, you still have to build the relationship, work on it, maintain it, and understand that just because that person sees and accepts you doesn’t mean the path will be easy or perfect. If anything, it means that even in the worst crises, you’ll always be able to rely on each other, because at the end of the day, you’re partners. Jules even said it himself, before anything else, Nell was his friend, and that’s one of the keys.