Hi! I love your character analysis and stumbled upon this excuse to defend Marinette.
I was scrolling in TikTok and 99.9 percent of videos+comment defend Marinette, saying she traumatized, forced and blame every adult (sometimes Luka and Alya too) in existence to defend her actions. Since it was established that Gabriel didn't do anything to manipulate her and has no leverage on her to force (he is dead so), now blame falls on Natalie. People use her words in Mr. Agreste as proof that she forces Marinette to keep lying and I wanted hear your thoughts about it
"Forces" implies a continues effort on Nathalie's part to stop Marinette from telling the truth, which is wildly misleading.
Nathalie stopped Marinette once, when she impulsively and thoughtlessly was about to shout the secret to Adrien just to she could alleviate her own guilt. She also stopped Marinette from handing over Gabriel's letter to Adrien, which is objectively correct because why the hell are we allowing Gabriel to have a voice in this conversation?
Since then, Marinette doubled down on lying to Adrien and went far beyond anything Nathalie told her. To the point that Nathalie actually had to restrain Marinette's efforts to gaslight Adrien about his father in Lady Chaos. That nonsense was entirely Marinette's brainchild.
Marinette also stopped herself several times from telling Adrien the truth. This includes the end of Mister Agreste, Sadnansi and most notably, Heartfixer, where she outright says she's lying to Adrien because she isn't ready to deal with his reaction.
In order for me to accept that Nathalie is forcing Marinette to lie I would have to see Marinette actually showing consistent willingness and effort to tell Adrien. Something that goes beyond impulsive, emotionally driven moments that are entirely focused on her not being able to carry the guilt anymore.
More than that, I would have to actually see Nathalie doing anything other than arguing against Marinette in order to actually start consider it as "forcing". As in, I would need to see her actually trying to use some kind of force against Marinette.
Nathalie being an adult while Marinette is a teen doesn't automatically mean that she holds all the power in the relationship. Power is not some nebulous metaphysical thing you get once you turn 18 and always have. Power is your ability to make things happen in reality. So while an adult can make a lot more things happen than a teen, that doesn't mean they always have power over the teen all the time (for example, a teenage prince has power over his adults servants). Every situation has to be assessed on a case by case basis.
And when looking at this situation, you can see that Marinette holds a whole lot of power over Nathalie by virtue of being Ladybug. She can (and almost did) destroy Nathalie's life on a whim in a way that Nathalie simply can't do to her.
At any given moment Marinette can simply decide to tell Adrien or even the public the truth and there would be nothing that Nathalie could do about that. Nathalie has a bit of a deterrent in the sense that Marinette exposing the lie could drag her into trouble too, but since Marinette would be the one that tells the story first she would be the one controlling the narrative.
She could easily spin a story about Nathalie tricking her and messing with her memories (maybe Monarch akumatized her, maybe she used one of the miraculous Gabriel had, maybe she herself used the wish, take your pick for an). It was only now she discovered the truth and she of course immediately rushed to make up for her previous failure and share the truth with everyone she accidentally misled.
Sure, she won't escape the public reaction completely unscathed, but Paris forgave her losing 15 magical WMDs. This would be small potatoes in comparison.
More importantly, it completely poisons the well if Nathalie tries to reveal the truth. Nobody is going to believe Monarch's accomplice when she says that actually, she was completely willing to turn herself in and Ladybug was the one who convinced her to go along with the big lie.
The most Nathalie could do here is reveal Ladybug's secret identity. That may cause Marinette some trouble and she would have to give the earrings to someone else, but lbr, she's mostly going to receive praise and gratitude for everything she did.
Technically, Nathalie can reveal the truth first, but she stands to lose everything. Not that it would be all that effective either. If she reveals she's Mayura and tries to implicate Ladybug, her credibility is very dubious. So long as Ladybug comes up with a reasonable excuse for why she wasn't part of it (not hard considering she seemingly has no motivation to do so) the public would be far more inclined to believe Ladybug's side. If Nathalie doesn't reveal she's Mayura, someone else will and she would instantly lose all credibility.
And that's without going into all the influence Ladybug has and how the other members of their little conspiracy are far more likely to side with Marinette than with Nathalie.
Kagami has no reason to get involved so long as this doesn't affect her mom. Felix has plenty of reasons to hate Nathalie and go with Kagami. Amelie won't go against what Felix wants. And of course if any of them do consider siding with Nathalie, they risk their own necks by going against Ladybug. She has dirt against each of them and more public credibility than all of them combined.
Marinette being fourteen going on fifteen doesn't make all the power and influence she has suddenly disappear into thin air. I haven't even touched on any of the other bullshit she can pull with the miraculous and other heroes if it really came down to a power struggle between her and Nathalie.
The long and short of it is that Nathalie can't force Marinette to do shit if Marinette is truly against it. The only thing she can do is argue, reason or manipulate. And we've yet to see any manipulation tactics from her.
The only thing forcing Marinette to lie is her own neurosis.
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