tOo Many ROmAnaAs

unholy love triangle of livia/narvin/romana where livia is deeply infatuated with romana in a way wholly different from narvin, there's an absence of devotion, it's purely attraction to the person romana is rather than just the ideals and state she represents (which is worse, in some ways, because romana isn't a person to be idolized). narvin, of course, is the parish priest devoted to his god who doesn't understand that his faith is his love, and he can only love as a sacrament. and then there's romana, who is so emotionally stunted and abrasive to any positive affirmation from people not named leela that she doesn't even realize both her president/prime minister or her subcoordinator draw little hearts around photos of her in red ink

fucks me up that romana's trauma is a known quantity that no one knows about. everyone knows that the president of gallifrey was kidnapped and tortured for twenty years. most people even from time to time connect it with that blonde cranky liberal running their planet. every main character - the doctor, leela, brax, narvin, and so on - all of them know that something happened to romana. but not one person knows what happened to romana. she has to deal with a traumatic backstory, but she doesn't get to keep it a secret. her tragic backstory is common knowledge! and yet no one understands the weight of it. not one person grasps that it fucked her up, never mind the extent to which it fucked her up. everyone knows romana has issues. but i don't think even her friends really get that there's a reason she acts in the messed up ways that she does.

@twojamie-o-clock