Character Relationship Chart: Anne of Green Gables
Me and my pal google translator bring you a translated version of the official Japanese diagram! 👒🍃🏡
Edit: Anne and Diana's bond is labeled as "confidant" but I've learned that's what the Japanese translation they're using calls "bosom friend" so I've updated it to the proper English name!
The unspoken laws and loyalties of bosom friendship notwithstanding, Anne has been inching nearer and nearer to the edge of her patience with every subsequent Post-Date Diana who enters their humble apartment.
"Oh, Anne," she says the first time, admittedly Diana-ish in the rosy, stalwart flush of her cheeks. "I just had the best time. We got spaghetti, and he held my purse, and I think I laughed all night long."
Fred Wright is nowhere near funny enough for Anne to believe this a sustainable laughter, but Diana is happy, and if one isn't expecting a date to go anywhere -- which Anne is not -- the best outcome of the whole thing would be an enjoyable old time. Anne says, "A grand old success, then," while Diana goes, smiling, to the bathroom to get unready, and that is that.
So Anne thinks, anyhow.
"Anne," says Diana after the second date. "Oh, I keep thinking about him. He's got such nice eyes, and such lovely hair --" (It's so very flat and straight, which Anne has never found alluring, but she holds her tongue) "-- and gosh, Anne, all I could think of was how desperately I wanted to kiss his nose. I felt like a heroine from a romance, Anne, I really did!"
This is less like the Di Anne knows, but she allows that years of being exposed to Anne might have predicted such behaviour -- his nose, really! No one has so alluring a nose that you'd want to kiss it, let alone Fred's flat and snub one -- Diana's is so much more aristocratic -- but Anne manages to smile and nod. She has twelve readings due tomorrow, so she decides -- whilst on a semi-regular video call with recent chum Gil Blythe -- that she'll deal with it later.
"Diana's sensible," Anne tells him, stoutly, while she braids her hair for bed and he squints at his Anatomy 412 flashcards by the sink with a toothbrush in his mouth. "Not like I am, Gil -- she'll grow out of this Fred thing. I mean, she has dreams, for God's sake, and Fred is so -- so -- Fred."
"Fred's a nice enough guy," Gilbert says, muffled around his toothbrush. He spits. "Accounting's got steady income. And, you know, Diana's mom's got to like him -- not like the last few guys."
It's true, of course, that Fred Wright goes to the same Korean Church the Barrys have patronized for years, but Anne sees this as immaterial to Diana's dreams of becoming a self-made creative marketing director in the modern age of womankind.
"We've got exams in a week," Anne says with confidence. "I'm sure she'll be back to herself in no time."
The third date comes and goes, and Diana admits -- after a whole two days of secretive private sighing -- to a make-out session of the most agreeable kind. There was over the clothes action. Anne howls with such violent shock that her prized 2014 MacBook almost flies across the room.
"And it took you two days to tell me?" she shrieks.
Diana is only a very little bit repentant.
Anne becomes convinced. She is losing her closest friend in the world -- to a man.
To Fred Wright. And his perfectly average nose!
Oh, calamity!
"Anne," says Gilbert, for the tenth time, a week after Diana's gone on her fifth date. Well -- they're not really dates anymore. Anne's been informed that her best friend is in a whole relationship with the dreaded Fred. After three days of a stiff upper lip (she had two papers due for women's studies) she has broken down in tears in Gilbert's dorm. Thank God Josie and Moody left an hour ago, because Anne doesn't think she could've borne the humiliation of Losing It in front of them.
Gilbert, somehow, is different.
"Anne," he says once more, gently. She can feel his hands rubbing carefully against her back, and it is helping, really. She hiccups a few times.
"I'm just -- we had these dreams together, Gil. What if she goes off and gets married before me and never becomes duchess of digital marketing, and I'm left alone and friendless and -- and -- alone -- and, oh, I haven't even started my third term paper. Alone!"
At this, Gilbert sighs fully and pulls her into a hug. Anne hiccups weepily for a while longer against his chest, which is surprisingly solid. She supposes she ought to have expected this -- just as she ought to have expected Diana's romantic escapades -- because, as evidenced by the old football jersey he's currently wearing, Gilbert the pre-med student was until very recently something of an athlete. Anne tripped over her own feet the last time she tried running, and so has long since given up the stuff. This noted contrast is suddenly and inconveniently allowing a queer feeling to enter her stomach.
"Anne," Gilbert says a third time, somewhere around the vicinity of her forehead. "You're not alone. You goose. As if Diana would ever forget about you."
"But things might change," Anne says.
It comes out in a far smaller voice than she intends it to. And then, as if inspired, she looks up.
She doesn't mean to, and perhaps she is compelled by some greater force; in that moment, she comes the closest she ever has to Gilbert's own nose. It is far nicer than Fred Wright's, Anne's mind manages to notice. Long and straight and brown, and -- well, there is a freckle or two there, from the sun, but they're much sweeter than Anne's own and something about their proximity is making her stomach flip. His arm is warm against her side.
She could kiss his nose, pops the thought into her head, so very unwanted.
"Not all change is a bad thing, Anne," Gilbert says, his low voice scattering that awful intrusion to the four winds. He is as quiet as she had been, but more steady, somehow. Gilbert is often steady, these days, and steadiness is something Anne has never thought, actively, to crave before, but she has -- well, she has.
Anne takes a deep, querulous breath and pretends her head isn't spinning. Gilbert's expression shifts; she stops staring at his nose. A very small part of her, perceptive in spite of herself, thinks that he is about to take pity on her.
He does.
"C'mon," Gil says, untangling them and helping Anne to her feet with a decidedly chummy arm up. "You've got your paper and I've got this bellringer. I'll put on some tea, we'll focus, and then I can come with you tomorrow to stage a Diana Intervention."
And it won't really be that -- Anne loves Diana too much to want anything but the best and happiest for her -- but she is comforted, all the same.
What do you think of AI-generated art? This one was created by a friend of mine. She got the idea after reading volume III of the Diary of Gilbert Blythe.
I personally prefer to support real artists and she shares this opinion, but I can't deny the result here is quite nice. That's Anne and Gilbert right after their engagement at the end of AotI, and Diana and Fred, who by this point were already married with a kid (little Fred Jr.). This picture is supposed to have been taken right before the four of them went for a last A.V.I.S. appointment. I quite liked it!
