Catarina Claes and Low Self-Esteem - A Ramble
Here's a draft I was saving for after I wrote my Plurality of Catarina Claes post, but I haven't done that and don't feel like it, so I'm posting this anyway...
I was thinking about Catarina while scrolling through the Crunchyroll comments describing her as denser than a black hole, which while funny the first time, and the second, starts to wear on you by the hundredth.
I mean, I get a community having running jokes, but I'm talking literally every episode has at least one person saying this, and sometimes multiple.
The thing about these comments is... they're not wrong. Catarina can be really dense and oblivious. It's one of her defining character traits. Everyone knows it...
But... I think there's more to it than this where it concerns her love interests.
Catarina, in my opinion, doesn't recognize that people love her because she sees herself as unlovable.
Putting Ourselves In Catarina's Shoes
Imagine for a moment that you've always been the strange girl at school.
You have one close friend. You've never had a romantic partner. You're a disappointment to your parents who see you as just some lazy girl. And then, at 17, you die completely unaccomplished. A failure.
You get a new life though. You're reborn with no memory of who you used to be.
And the person you are now... is a brat. A spoiled rich brat who hurts everyone around her. Then you get hit on the head and have memories from your last life flood your brain.
Now there are two very different lives in your head, but there are common themes in them.
In both, you have a mom who puts you down at every turn. In both, you haven't really known love before.
And on top of all of that, you realize that your new life is as a villain. A rival who is supposed to compete with the heroine for a man who doesn't love her. Someone who only agreed to be engaged with her to avoid other offers.
This is your destiny.
And it confirms everything terrible your parents told you about who you are across two lives.
By the time she enrolls in the magic academy, she's had over 30 years to internalize her sense of worthlessness, and nearly a decade to internalize her destiny as a villain who exists only to be a rival in someone else's story.
Catarina Isn't Just Oblivious. She's In Denial.
She's built an entire self-concept around being the unlovable villainess that she literally cannot fathom anyone having genuine romantic feelings for her.
Even while she loves her friends (platonically), she's still convinced through the series that they're going to kill or exile her in the end.
No matter how many times people drop hints or even outright tell Catarina they love her, she can't accept that.
All in all, I feel dismissing Catarina's obliviousness as her just being dense (which again, she is) does a disservice to the character.