This is such a perfect addition (and more intellectually rooted in the text, which I thank you for, because I was honestly just bursting with love for her when I scribbled this out last night, but that overwhelmed my ability to really construct what I wanted to say, and you hit it exactly). It isn’t about defeat. It isn’t about destroying Erik (who, yes, is pitiable and tragic, but most assuredly beyond forgiveness), it’s about Christine having such a capacity for compassion and empathy that she draws back out the humanity in him, enough that he can let her go, even when she gives him what he desires by offering to stay. He expects her to cry, to protest and collapse, so that he may use it as an excuse to punish everyone, but instead, she astonishes him, she selflessly consents, in order to save everyone else from a terrible fate. It changes everything (Erik actually ADMITS that he goes from seeing her as dead to seeing her as living, as sincere and good). She treats him like a person (”I tore off my mask…and she did not run away!”), something he does not anticipate, and it allows him to extend some measure of grace back to her, not only through freeing she and Raoul, but in acknowledging her agency and her right to live. She remains resolute, and gentle, and walks in the light. Her kindness is the salvation of them all. “saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daae.”
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
areudirty
