Something that makes me so emotional about book Elphaba is the incredibly subtle ways she shows her love for Glinda, so on par with Elphaba’s character and so subtle that if you blink you miss it.
Elphaba kisses Glinda on the carriage, that’s explicit, but before that she nearly misses it because she was buying food. For Glinda. Elphaba knew very well she wasn’t going back to Shiz that day, yet she still bought Glinda food with money she definitely needed for herself just so that Glinda wouldn’t be hungry on the way home.
Then you have the way she visits Saint Glinda’s shrine, Glinda’s namesake. Elphaba is not religious whatsoever, she’s very vitriolic towards the idea of religion in the book, yet she visits a Unionist shrine of all places that just happens to have statues of her “best friend’s” namesake.
She also asks the most questions of all about Glinda when Fiyero visits her, and asks about her first to add to that. Elphaba wants to know the most about Glinda. More than her father, Nessarose, Shell, the people who are her family (said loosely). More than even Fiyero, and he’s sitting right in front of her. She couldn’t care less about Fiyero’s wife yet is thoroughly offended when she finds out Glinda “only” married a baronet.
When Fiyero asks if Elphaba is married, she says “yes, but not to a man” and breaks down in tears. In the book water does hurt Elphaba, including her tears, so it stands to reason she doesn’t cry often. But the thought of being “married” to someone that isn’t there, that she can’t be with, is enough to cause her to harm herself even if it’s inadvertently. It would make sense for it to be Glinda, for Glinda is the only person to ever have even brought her close to tears.
And finally, this one is just silly, but the way Fiyero makes a comment on how Elphaba didn’t bleed the first time they have sex and the way she just blows him off by saying “well I’m not as virginal as you think” one hundred percent means Glinda was her first time.
I also do think that Elphaba really does love Fiyero, and I do mean romantically. But in the end he’s still just a distraction, a balm for the fact that the one person Elphaba truly wants is the person she can’t have. And that person is Glinda.
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