I just read Stephanie Garber's Caraval, and I'm having a lot of feelings. In particular, feelings about a character that I know I'm supposed to like, but I absolutely don't. The title of this essay is, "Scarlett Dragna is the best sister in the world, and she deserves a better sister than the one she's got..."
SPOILERS
I love Scarlett so freaking much, and I know she loves Donatella wholly and unconditionally. So I'm supposed to love her too. I know Tella loves Scarlett and that the point of the game was to win freedom and security and happiness for both of them and to get Scarlett out of a terrible marriage. Tella had Scarlett's best interests at heart from the beginning. And I don't think Scarlett would argue that the dangers and the prices she paid in the game weren't worth the end result. They were. But that doesn't give Tella the right to act as though no cost was paid. I could accept the “ends justify the means” rationale and forgive Tella for her scheming and even the fact that she shrugs off the 100% real risk of permanent death she exposed herself and her sister to—if she had just validated Scarlett's trauma once it was over.
Scarlett has just been through Hell. A particularly sick, twisted version of it. She has just suffered the murder and suicide of the only two people in the world she loves, and she loves them with everything she has. She loves them to the extent that Scarlett has no idea who she's going to be without them from that moment forward. Scarlett is finally having her first moment where things are calm enough for the shock to set in—still caked in their very real blood—and Donatella pops up with a cheeky grin, crowing her own cleverness, and announces, "Surprise! It was all a game!" It's insensitive to the point of being sociopathic. (And it has serious Peter-Pan-praising-himself-for-reattaching-his-shadow-while-Wendy-stands-there-holding-the-needle-and-thread vibes.) I get that Tella is excited about their victory. I get that she's proud of her cleverness and relieved that it's all worked out. But Scarlett doesn't know any of that, and Tella blithely drags her sister into her wake without giving the poor girl so much as a minute to catch her breath.
How the hell can Tella stand there, knowing everything her sister's been through in the last five days--and especially the last hour—and insist that Scarlett put on a ball gown and go to a party? The girl hasn't even processed that her sister died, let alone that she's alive again. Who the hell would be in a mood to celebrate? If I were in Scarlett’s shoes, I just might push her off another balcony.
Tella has known all along that the deaths would be undone (except for hers and Scarlett's). But that doesn't mean they didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean game wasn't real. Everything Scarlett felt and everything she endured (both physical and emotional) was real. And just because magic has fixed the physical damage doesn't change the fact that internal wounds are still bleeding. Tella has no right to act like her choices have no consequences just because she got the outcome she wanted.
I love Scarlett to death, and she deserves every good thing. She's more than earned it. But as I look at the prospect of now reading a sequel that's going to force me into Donatella's POV and try to convince me that I should cheer for her happily ever after, I hope Scarlett suffers. I want Scarlett to have nighmares of Caraval over and over and over. I want her to wake up nightly in fevered, shrieking panic, believing Julian and Tella are dead all over again. I want her to constantly doubt what's around her—for her to no longer feel sure of what's real and what isn't, because she's been wrong before. I want Scarlett to no longer be able to trust anything she’s told, not completely, and perhaps especially when it comes from the people closest to her. I want Tella to watch Scarlett struggle to build a relationship with Julian—the love of her life—over top of the knowledge that when Scarlett thought she could only bring back one of them, she didn't choose Julian. I want Donatella to see that her scheme wasn't a game, that there were very high prices for her cleverness, and her sister is the one who paid—and continues to pay—for it.
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