Imogen in CR s3e13
I got up at 2.45am to watch live. I need to get some more sleep. But I need to get this out of my head before I do. Have some sleep-deprived Imogen meta, you lucky, lucky people!
Imogen was for sure GOING THROUGH IT this ep, but it feels like that experience was on a number of different levels, all of which speak to who Imogen is.
Expectation vs. Reality
First of all, her initial frustration and growing anger at the role she found herself playing. I phrase it passively like that, because it wasn’t like she was forced to play the servant role, but neither did she choose it. It just kind of... happened. And it wasn’t what she wanted out of this evening.
Of all the gang, Imogen was one of the ones who was most initially hyped at the thought of going to a ball. She denied it of course, and hedged, but clearly she liked the idea of dressing up and going somewhere fancy. And this is a new experience for her. She’s never been in even sniffing distance of a big society event like this. She’s never had the chance to dress up fine and mingle with lords and ladies. And I wonder if some part of her didn’t just really want to be a princess for an evening. Dress up fine and dance, and feel special.
And instead, she’s... well, she’s standing forgotten at the back of the group. No fine dances for Imogen. She’s the Help for the evening.
Control
Imogen is all about control. Her entire life is a battle for control of her powers, herself. That extends to needing to control her environment. She needs to control how many people she’s around, where she chooses to go, and in the social sphere this encompasses her need to control the narrative. Look at her different behaviour when she’s the one who’s chosen the narrative, versus when she’s suddenly having to follow someone else’s choices. Look at her easy lies with Dorian in the hotel room, with the warehouse keeper... occasions when she has created the story she’s following. Some of those stories are absolutely snap inventions, but that doesn’t matter. They’re HER creations, and that means she’s confident in them, and lies smoothly and with ease. Then look at how she is with Bertrand in the inn, or with the guards in the grounds of the manor. Someone else has come up with the story, and she’s having to follow someone else’s cues. The ease and confidence has gone.
So in this evening, control has been systematically stripped away - again, not by anyone’s particular choice, but here she is. She has had chosen for her, in order: her role (servant), her name (Maude - no offence to any Maudes out there, but this name is not especially beautiful or lyrical, and Imogen clearly responds to it as jab), her course of action (how to get the ring). Which leads us to:
Goals
This is another of Imogen’s defining features. She is goal-oriented. The only thing that will get her to break her iron self-control, or bring her out of her shell, is her desire to achieve her goals. Often these are about knowing things - and manifests as relentless pushing to learn what she needs to know.
Here the goal is to get that ring. She has a plan to get it. It’s a good plan. She knows it will work. And nobody will listen to her. Or if they do seem to be listening, they then just forget, and go off and do their own things.
That psychic confrontation with Dorian is so telling for both of them (quite outside of the dynamic between the players - because I think this is an in-character confrontation). Imogen is blunt, insistent, increasingly fractious. She’s right! She knows she’s right! She knows what needs to happen! Why won’t anyone listen to her?! She’s literally in their heads, and they’re still not listening to her! She’s anxious, surrounded by the oppressive thoughts of others, painfully aware that her walls could be crushed down at any point. She doesn’t know how long she can do this, and it’s all going to shit. And then Dorian literally shuts her out.
Where Dorian is in all this is its own source of fascinating, but I’ll restrain myself here to just say that he is wildly outside his comfort zone. He didn’t want to be here playing this role either. He hates the person he had to be for his family, and now here he is all over again. He’s just trying to get the job done, and Imogen shouting in his head is NOT HELPING. It’s distracting, and frustrating, and his reaction is to bring his own walls up.
Unfortunately the result of this is that he misses Imogen’s genuinely good point, and everything is suddenly at a fever pitch of wildly stressful.
So in order, Imogen has had all of these things snatched from her:
her dream of what the evening might be
her control over the narrative, and to some extent over herself, given the horrifying number of people and the mental pressure they present
her ability to influence and work towards her goal
And she doesn’t even have Laudna alongside her to calm or reassure her. Yeah, she is going THROUGH it. And I for one cannot wait for the fallout.
