Thanks for your well thought out and engaging response! I love ranting about this kind of thing, so it really makes me happy when others engage on the same level. Like I said in my original reply, I’m not the most familiar with all the scraps of Eliza/Michael lore and where all those pieces of information are located throughout the series, so I actually didn’t know that Michael was canonically bisexual and in love with Eliza. That definitely updates my perspective a little, so thank you for sharing.
I think I didn’t necessarily do the best job of expressing some of my thoughts in my original post, so I wanted to try and expand a little. It was poorly phrased when I said that Robert was an unreliable narrator when it comes to Eliza’s political views- I think what I was trying to express was less that he didn’t understand the content of her activism and more that he didn’t understand Eliza’s philosophical views and how that impacted how she imagined these theoretical concepts would be executed should they be implemented. But this is much less because Robert is an unreliable narrator (although he is) and much more because he just had no way of actually knowing this information in order to be able to share it with the audience.
Now I certainly don’t understand Eliza’s inner world any more than Robert does. It’s just a fact that we have no information on this one way or another, and until we do, it’s all just speculation. And in all honesty, if we ever did get more insight into Eliza’s inner workings, the chances are that she would be presented as approaching Downworlder justice with the same fervor that she approached mundane justice, because TSC is geared towards teens and young adults and has never been that subtle or nuanced when it comes to splitting characters into “backwards and racist” or “enlightened and compassionate.”
But since we don’t have more Circle content and we aren’t really likely to get that much more of it, I always enjoy approaching character analysis from almost an entirely culturally informed lens. This by no means explains all of human behavior even in real life, and seeing as all of this is based on a fictional culture I didn’t create, it is certainly flawed. Nevertheless, it’s still the avenue I go down because I find it the most fun 😂
It’s true that Eliza is informed about real world issues that are affecting mundanes, and that her family has connections with Downworlders which leads to her having a kinder view of them than your average Shadowhunter. But realistically, she still grew up Nephilim, with all the removal from the mundane world that entails. Just a cursory glance over the topics she was giving impassioned lectures about reveals that she was probably getting all her information by getting her hands on Western mundane newspapers, because they are to a T all the topics that were sensationalized in Western media in the 80’s. Nuclear testing, Middle East oil tyrants, apartheid in South Africa, AIDS in America.
This doesn’t mean Eliza was being performative or that she wasn’t genuinely an empathetic person who actually wanted to make positive changes in the world. I think that she was. But I can’t help but wonder:
a) how much her understanding of the topics was shaped by the political angle of whatever news outlet she was getting her information from (not that this is inherently a bad thing- we are all influenced by the angle of the media we choose to consume, but for Eliza, who is pretty far removed from actual mundane life and issues, this could have a more dramatic effect.) A true political movement is born from legitimate concern and dedicated effort towards solving a specific issue… in other words, it makes the news, it isn’t born from the news.
b) what her solution to these issues could have actually entailed, seeing as there is very little way I can see that she could meaningfully engage with some of these issues. I mean, these are things Shadowhunters have not dealt with in their society for a thousand years. They don’t seem to be vulnerable to mundane diseases and homophobia impacts their society in a much different way, so something like the nuances of the AIDS crises would be difficult to grasp. Do Shadowhunters even use oil? They all use witch light to light their homes and the only Shadowhunter I’ve ever heard of that drove a car was Matthew Fairchild. And apartheid? Going back to the 1000’s the Shadowhunters have actually never segregated based on race, and any issues with racism they as a society have look so different from anything happening in the mundane world that I don’t even know where they would begin to approach this from. Eliza’s apparent concern about nuclear testing is actually what really seals the deal for me that most of her thoughts on these issues were regurgitated talking points from whatever she read in the news, because anti-nuclear sentiment in the 1980’s was specifically about reheated Cold War tensions- which isn’t something Eliza could possibly have had the context to take an informed stance on. She could educate herself by reading about these issues and of course she was smart enough to understand what she was reading- but that wasn’t going to give her a true understanding of the deep seated anxiety the threat of nuclear war causes a civilian population, or of the many years of propagandist separation between the two sides that made objective reporting on the issue impossible, or of the fact that some of this fear-mongering over nuclear war was a smokescreen to distract from the true struggle of who was going to be the world’s most dominant colonial power because hard colonialism had gone out of fashion with the general public. Giving a book report on a topic and actually being prepared to engage in meaningful activism that addresses that topic are two different things.
This lack of cultural context matters because if Eliza isn’t approaching this from a naive “let’s all hold hands” type of activism, then I would actually be nervous. The only other clear solution that involves a united front of Nephilim and Downworlders to solve mundane problems is essentially to go into places carrying a big magical stick- a “do what we tell you, or else.” This is also an approach that would probably make a lot of sense to someone raised in a warrior culture whose primary governing body utilizes fear of punishment as their primary strategy for maintaining order- but not only would this be terrible from a “terrorizing people into submission with the threat of violence is generally wrong” perspective, it would also be concerning because how would the Nephilim even decide who to deploy their force in favor of? Just based on how the Western news or local news reported on the matter? Or are they themselves somehow going to be the complete arbiters of justice for peoples they know nothing of? (Probably the latter, as that seems very typical of the Shadowhunter mo, but I digress.)
To be clear, I don’t think this is what Eliza’s platform was (although that would be endlessly fascinating as a concept) but that’s why I do think it wasn’t very well-thought through or action-based as a political strategy either. It smacks of Nephilim-saviorism a bit, and the approach to Downworlders seems to be “Downworlders are equal to us too and the Accords solved everything.” It’s far from the worst rhetoric out there, but it skips over major systemic issues in Shadowhunter society (that actually need to be addressed by Nephilim in order for the change to have any impact at all) in favor of focusing on issues beyond the scope of what the Nephilim could (or even should) reasonably address.
The thing is, that’s fine. Eliza isn’t required to have an actual solution to world problems or be a paragon of effective political action- she was a young kid too, let’s remember. The fact that she cared at all to attempt to raise awareness about issues in the mundane world no matter how unpopular it made her is admirable in its own right and shows us the kind of person she was. But that’s also why I think she would view The Circle as merely a rival political group in their Academy days, especially when their more extreme activities were mostly still under wraps and centered on Downworlders. Eliza may have come from a family that was friendly to Downworlders and believed in Downworlder rights in a broad sense. But the Rosewains having specific positive Downworlder relationships doesn’t equal them being Alec Lightwood. If Eliza had truly been digging into the meat at the heart of the systemic injustices that affected Downworlders, I’m willing to bet her activist focus would’ve looked a lot different. So when the Circle conducts a raid that no one else was present for and says: “it wasn’t because they were Downworlders, it’s because we had evidence that they had conspired to kill a family of mundanes that had done them wrong,” is Eliza really digging into that? Or does she just shrug and trust the Law to protect the “good Downworlders” and punish the “bad ones”?
So when Michael comes along, yes, he’s a Circle member- but he’s cute and funny and listens to what she has to say, and as far as she is aware he isn’t participating in a group whose views are incompatible with what she can tolerate in good conscience. The way I see this is more akin to how US Republicans and Democrats used to view one another 20 or so years ago. There was a lot on which they fundamentally disagreed, but they were still able to have respectful debates and successful mixed political marriages were definitely a thing. Eliza wasn’t about to join the Circle or concede on their points, but she could date a Circle member as long as they didn’t make it their entire personality. This wouldn’t have been the case if she would have actually understood the Circle’s shadow politics, but by the time she knew about that she already knew who Michael was as a person and that he didn’t subscribe to that ideology himself.
As for why Valentine didn’t approach her about joining the Circle, I think that’s fairly obvious- Valentine never approached people with stable senses of self-worth and the backbone to stand their ground when they disagreed with someone. For him, it was less about an individual’s politics and more about control- because let’s be so for real, 0% of the people he got to join his Inner Circle agreed with his most extreme views, but they were just going to ride the Valentine train until the wheels fell off. So if Eliza had been weak-willed and vulnerable to cult abuse? She could’ve actively been the most outspokenly pro-Downworlder individual on the planet and Valentine still might’ve tried to hook her into the Circle. This is also true in reverse- Eliza as she actually was was far too much of an independent thinker for Valentine to ever attempt to approach. She could’ve been Zara Dearborn in her politics and Valentine still isn’t touching that with a 10 foot pole.
I loved what you had to say about Michael though, and I think it changed my mind about some things. I wholeheartedly agree that he was sort of an enigma in the Circle, and that he probably distanced himself more before the end of everything but didn’t completely separate himself because of how dangerous Valentine was. It fits with how I’ve always seen Michael- not someone who is so desperate to belong that he will let himself be peer pressured into doing things he knows are wrong, but not necessarily the person who will loudly or bravely stand up for himself either. I personally think this is why Valentine was fine with him drifting away as well, and is even insinuated to have purposely created the rift between Robert and Michael- because he wanted Robert to be one of his closest people, but he knew Michael wasn’t someone who would ultimately be good to keep around if he wanted to continue to lead the Circle down a more extreme path. Usually Valentine deals with this kind of separation of ideals by killing the person who is drifting away, but in Michael’s case he didn’t seem too worried about him sticking his neck out to blab to the Clave as long as he had plausible deniability by not being too directly involved in any of their shadier activities.
By the end of everything, I think it’s clear that both Michael and Eliza knew how messed up the Circle was. Maybe there’s more canon I’m missing that contradicts this, but I thought it was implied that Eliza may have even died fighting Valentine’s forces at the Battle of the Accords Hall. I’m not coming for them or trying to insinuate that they were anything like Valentine or other Circle members. I just also happen to think that the political views that it makes the most sense for Eliza to have had as a Nephilim in the 80’s wouldn’t be perfectly in line with what we might see as overly progressive.
(Just because I’m someone that struggles with understanding tone especially in writing, I want to clarify I’m not being argumentative here- I loved your response and it raises so many important and interesting points. I just wanted to expand upon some details of my own perspective.)
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