Character Analysis: Blue Diamond
I kept trying to make the juxtaposition post between Blue and Yellow Diamond work, but I really needed a foundation before I started comparing their characters. It was turning into a huge section for each character and less like certain aspects of them were being analysed. It never turned out acceptable enough to me, and I was taking longer and longer to write just one post. So I decided to break it down (again) into a character analysis post for each character, and I’ll be following up with their juxtaposition before talking about PD’s shattering.
I want to start with Blue Diamond first, if only because I’ve touched a little on Yellow Diamond before . Blue Diamond is a relatively new character in the show, in that her presence hadn’t been confirmed until Steven’s Dream. Before that, all we had to go on were the Ziggurat and Moon Base murals and Garnet’s story in The Answer.
BD is a very complex character. On the surface, she appears as a victim, a foil to the “harshness” of Yellow Diamond (more on her in the next post). She is a very visible and obvious embodiment of Homeworld’s humanity, that they too have been hurt by the war and the conflict that underlay it. At the same time, though, there is a feeling of guilt about her that reveals she wasn’t totally ignorant of the said conflict going on. Moreover, by her own words, she has not only been dwelling in grief, but also has been searching for answers.
Blue Diamond then, is not a helpless mourner in distress and under duress. She is a capable and intelligent ruler, trying—and failing—to put aside personal pain in order to continue ruling. And that makes her similar to Yellow Diamond in more ways than one. Like their civilisation, she is trying to heal but a focal point of her healing is finding out what really happened the day PD was shattered. The way she deals with her stress and sadness, as well as the way she interacts with the gems around her, reveals a lot about her character. Let’s get to that.
1. BD dances the line between power and helplessness
What is striking about BD is how she looks like the quintessential ruler, a cross between the archetypes of mother goddess and queen. She is altogether very regal and dignified. She speaks deliberately, slowly compared to some of the other dialogue on the show. Combined with her crisp diction, her words always feel weighty. One of my favourite instances is her reply to Yellow Diamond in the Trial. YD almost annoyed asks whether examining Blue’s palanquin is necessary and Blue quietly but firmly says, “Isn’t it?” In that line, it was as if the room collectively held its breath, and even YD paused for a moment.
Blue Diamond possesses all of the attributes that we would normally associate with a leader. Her presence, from her first appearance in The Answer, spoke of someone who literally stood above others. Even while crying or angry she manages to look elegant and composed. Like the classical leader, she is introduced not with her generals but her Sapphire, analogous to leading with wisdom rather than brute force.
This picture of BD reaffirms the concept of a Diamond. In What’s The Use of Feeling (Blue), Yellow Diamond reminds Blue how each gem has a role, and when she gets to BD, she says the needs to be a leader. This is a very telling line, because we begin to understand how the socio-political hierarchy is understood on Homeworld. It isn’t a lie told by the Diamonds to placate lower-ranking gems in society. They themselves fully believe in their role as rulers. They honestly feel that “every gem in her place” is the only way for their civilisation to function properly.
That “truth” becomes a huge limiter of the supposed power that comes from being the unquestioned ruler of an empire. The Diamonds can technically do anything, but they are situated in a particular context, embedded in particular social roles, like any other character in the story. In the rigid social structure of Homeworld, they are expected to lead. So they can do anything, in so much as they do as leaders do. This explains why YD had to drop everything and run after Blue in The Zoo and That Will Be All. Ideally, they can’t just do anything they want because they are fully aware of the huge waves the ripples of their actions will cause around them.
The operative word here “ideal.” One thing to note is that all these rules are enforced by a social structure. That means social roles and expectations do blur and how to act within this structure is largely informal. There probably aren’t written rules that say how far behind a Diamond one should walk, when exactly a Pearl should speak, or how much shoulder-punching is too much shoulder-punching among soldiers.
Much like ours, their society is governed by these informal rules as much as the formal written laws. The Diamonds may have a formal set of responsibilities, but so many other social factors intervene in the way they are perceived. Things like power, class, and even height difference factor into how they are perceived by other gems. This means that a structure in which everyone is supposed to have a place, may not be as easily enforced, especially as gems go higher up the social ladder. Discipline, particularly at the Diamond-level is largely self-enforced.
So it doesn’t mean they don’t break these unspoken rules—we’ve seen them arbitrarily use their power when they’re upset or stressed. It so happens though, that in the show so far, all we’ve seen them feeling is indeed upset and stressed.
The idea that Blue is a powerful, at times unquestioned leader, is countered by how crippled and paralysed she feels in the face of Pink Diamond’s shattering. Blue has so much to offer gem-kind, not only as their leader, but also, as Peridot pointed out in Message Received, someone with abilities that surpass those of any other gem.
Yet she is unable to fulfil her role. In her most vulnerable, while she’s on Earth, she entrusted her safety to only her Pearl. For emphasis, Blue touched down on a Homeworld-hostile planet with no guards, and no Sapphires. The only gem with her was her Pearl. Given my old theory on PD’s shattering, and even the theories floating around now, that whoever shattered PD would’ve had to be close to her, it shows how exposed she is right now.
Blue is a force, but she’s also presented as a character who is flowy, flexible, rounded, and very sad. Were she the same size as the average gem, she would appear weak, not a fighter, and unable to defend herself.
BD seems very much like the archetypal leader, the only Diamond we’ve seen hold court and carry with her the formalities traditionally associated with leaders. But she’s also immobilised by grief. There is a paradox in her looking so willowy and bendable but deeply emphatic and firm about her beliefs, in this case, her search for answers.
In Blue we have a character seemingly transparent, showing everyone her tears and her breakdowns, but at the same time so opaque, as she makes decisions behind closed doors (or closed palanquin, as in The Answer) and has been searching for answers with a resolve YD didn’t even know about.
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