#leida mothma

[mrkestis]

✨Chandrilan fashion appreciation post✨

[conundrumoftime]

"My mother was drunk when I got married... I was so angry, I don't think I ever forgave her" || Andor 1.09 'Nobody's Listening', 2.03 'Harvest'

[voyaging-too]

The plotline about Mon Mothma's daughter's marriage walks a really precarious tightrope. She essentially sells Leida so that she can keep funding the rebellion. If she gave her teenage daughter to a grown man, against her will, then her actions would be obviously unforgivable. But that's not what happens. She merely allows her daughter to choose to marry her banker's teenage son. Leida doesn't know she's sold out for money, she doesn't know she's sold out for a rebellion that she hasn't even heard about, she thinks she's choosing something for herself in spite of her mother's wishes. And yet that doesn't mean this isn't a betrayal! If Mon wanted to do right by her daughter more than she wanted to save the rebellion, she would have forbidden Leida from the Chandrilan tradition of early marriage, even despite Leida's wishes, even if Leida hated her for it. The betrayal of allowing her daughter to choose wrong, the betrayal of allowing her daughter to believe she chose at all, when the choice was in fact made for her, is a truly morally compromised action.

(And I love her for it obviously.)

[inexplicable-lack-of-tinsel]

the relationship between mon and leida lives rent free in my mind because. it’s the way that leida resents mon for never putting her first, and is justified in doing so. it’s the way that leida rebels against mon by adopting the ultra-conservative traditions that mon hates, and thinks she’s committing the ultimate rebellion by getting married, when really the marriage is something mon arranged for her own rebellion. it’s the way that buried deep down (i think) leida does have doubts about the marriage, is terrified that mon might be right, can never admit this to anyone ever because she’s a teenager. a child, who is getting married for reasons she doesn’t even know of.

it’s the way mon, from the beginning, has chosen the rebellion over her family. it’s the way she sacrificed her daughter’s future for the future of the galaxy. it’s the way she would have done almost anything to protect leida, to stop her from being trapped in an unhappy marriage as a child just as she was, but not quite anything, because the rebellion has to come first. it’s the way that she’s both selfish and torturously selfless, and at every moment the guilt of it is tearing her apart. it’s the way that she watched as perrin literally gave leida away, to a marriage that she herself arranged, watched how close the knife came to leida’s throat, knowing that she may never again be able to protect leida at all.

it’s the way that their relationship reached its breaking point when mon gave leida the chance to cancel the wedding. because what mon wanted in that moment was for leida to assuage her guilt and leida refused. and what leida really wanted in that moment was for mon to reassure her, because even after everything she is still a child who wants her mother to tell her it will all be okay, and instead she was told she should want to escape. and she saw through mon’s offer, saw it for what it was, and saw that even in this moment mon would never put her first.

[darth-memes]

[solidsmax]

Andor 2.03 | Harvest

[ceruleanphoenix7]

Thinking about how Mon is trapped in a repeating cycle no matter how she tries to escape the same horrific traditions that led her to where she is.

She tries to protect Leida from those traditions, but her daughter walks right into them. The contrast between Leida crying over Stekan not wanting to hold her hand and Leida telling Mon "I wish you were drunk" is like a slap to the face.

Leida sees the flaws and imperfections but she does not understand what she is getting herself into. She's going through with this because this is what she thinks she wants, but she's never been given another choice. To her, this is both a connection to the home she barely knows and a way to rebel against the mother she despises. She balks when Mon offers her a way out, because of course her own mother tries to stop her happiness.

Mon is watching her daughter go down the same path that she did, and she is unable to stop it. She meant it earlier when she said, "I am so, so sorry". She is sorry for more than just Leida's first fight with Stekan. She is sorry for all of this, for making her daughter a political tool and allowing her into an arranged marriage.

It's a sad parallel when Mon reveals that her mother was drunk when she got married and then Mon downs multiple shots after Leida is married. She has to cope with not only the reality of her fourteen year-old daughter being married, but also that her childhood friend is about to be murdered, and she cannot stop it. She is a powerful Senator, but in this house she is powerless. She understands why her mother was drunk on that day because she too sees no other escape, and so continues the cycle as Mon takes a page from her mother's book and Leida, so keen to be anything but her mother, steps into the same role that her mother was forced into.

It's clear that generations of trauma have impacted the Mothma family. Left unresolved, this spills over into the younger generations, and of course no one talks about it, or to each other. Mon's mother being drunk was likely because she was horrified that her daughter was going through the same thing she did. And now Mon is in the same place.

People repeat and emulate what they know. In this case, the Mothmas repeat this cycle of trauma because it is expected of them, and they've never truly allowed themselves to imagine anything else.

[starlingkick]

Leida Mothma & Franz Kafka's unsent letter to his father.

insp: 1, 2, & 3