I usually hate and ignore Klaus ship wars for the simple reason that I like all the girls individually, and it makes me so sad when people put any of them down because of a man who, let’s be honest, didn’t deserve any of them.
(Camille, Hayley, Aurora, Caroline... all of them could do way better.)
But I mostly hate it when people act as if Camille didn’t hold her ground against him. She did. And she did it as a HUMAN!
During the compulsion arc, she never, at any moment, accepted the position he was putting her in. She argued with him the whole way through.
After he revealed the supernatural world to her and began telling her about his monstrous acts, she remained unafraid to speak her mind. In episode 8, he told her about stabbing his siblings for disagreeing with him, and she immediately called him out. Anyone in that situation would probably rationalize that if he did that to his own blood, it would be best to stay quiet. But she didn’t.
In episode 6, he told her about Agnes’s death (the woman who killed her brother, by the way), and she SMACKED him.
A thousand-year-old hybrid walks in, telling you with a smile that he just participated in a murder, and you, a young human woman, slap him hard and threaten him. (I could never, my girl was so brave.)
All while she was secretly working under his nose to free herself from the mind control she knew very little about at the time.
When the compulsion was broken, she refused to let him have any form of control over her.
In episode 11, he told her over the phone to leave Rousseau’s when Papa Tunde was there. She didn’t. When he tried to stop her from helping Marcel, she went for it anyway.
"You don’t control me anymore, remember?"
During Father Kieran’s hex plot, he continuously told her she should accept it and let go. Even though he was right (and I believe deep down she knew it), she didn’t stop fighting for her uncle.
"I refuse to accept that. And you too, if you had any concept of family."
When she sleeps with Marcel, she refuses to let him shame her for it.
Honestly, I would say 90% of season 1 for Klamille consisted of Cami humbling him.
In season 2, he hurt everyone to defeat Dahlia, but Camille was the only one he apologized to and actually showed some remorse. She only accepted help him after he acknowledged what he did to her.
In the first few episodes of season 3, she firmly, and even harshly, made it clear to him that she would only truly believe in his change once he started putting it into action.
And she did the same toward any man who tried to intimidate or tell her what to do (Marcel, Finn, Kol, Lucien, her uncle).
She is SO far from the doormat people tried to paint her as.
She was compassionate, understanding, caring, lovable. But she was also smart, strong, brave, and assertive.
Anyway, I will always support the Camille O’Connell (and Leah Pipes) Deserved Better Club.
