something that i really wanna talk about is remy’s romantic ventures in main verse specifically. they are soft, until you look closer. this post speaks on his emotional codependency and why it is so strong, as well as its effects. obviously this is not universal and some interactions may be excluded, but this is the basic mentality for where he is currently and the most likely outcomes as a result. read more for themes of abuse, manipulation, etc.
this is probably interesting information for ship partners that intend to write realistically with me and explore the angst pit!
in the main verse i write in, he’s stuck after several years of on/off with rogue. he is stagnating and highly unstable when it comes to feelings, even if he seems reasonably solid and just bitter as hell.
this is very much in part to everything he’s been through. he has been seriously conditioned to be emotionally codependent. and in trying to separate himself from rogue? he is desperately in need of latching onto anyone else.
to explain why he’s like this, we have to really look back at bella donna. his first romance, and it was this very idealized romeo and juliet type thing - and it came with a lot of pressure. they started out as friends as, simply put, childish rebellion. and then they fell in love because their situations were similar, it was very ‘us against the world.’ no one else could really sympathize. they were the sole heirs to warring empires. and again, they were raised in closed environments; they didn’t really have other relationships to observe from peers their age.
and to say it’s entirely bella donna’s fault is unfair. it wasn’t. but she was a very big part of it. so they knew each other from ages ten and up. they got together at fourteen, romantically. and looking at bella donna, it’s really easy to see why a lot of things remy thinks are normal aren’t - it’s just what they did.
bella donna was an assassin. she was raised to kill people. she was angry, she was volatile, she was taking lives as a child and lashing out over her own moral dilemmas. she was competitive both with remy and herself, always pushing herself to be better. they were encouraged to fight each other, often with bladed weapons. physical pain coming from either of them was a standard. but bella donna took it outside of sparring, too. and obviously, they were children, and their moral standpoints weren’t amazing, given the environments they were raised in, but the aftereffects of some things go pretty much as you’d expect.
bella donna would hit him anytime he didn’t live up to her expectation. he didn’t get mad about it. she was a vicious little thing, and aggression was how she was taught to show people they cared, because it’s how her family showed her they cared. toughening her up. so she turned around to remy and did the same thing. she’d slap him, punch him, sometimes stab him. she was also verbally abusive, because she was trying to spur him on to his full potential, however fucked up the method was.
remy lebeau expects his partners to physically and verbally abuse him and does not resist it if they choose to do so.
and because they were so isolated, they leaned on each other. an incredible amount. on remy’s end, henri was already a fully grown adult by the time he entered the family. on bella donna’s end, julien was straight up incestuous towards her, which kicked her further away from her family and closer to remy. both their fathers cared for them quite a bit, but they were also at war with each other and career criminals tend not to win father of the year awards. (jean-luc was the bomb and cared a lot and tried very hard, but also tended to put remy in a lot of danger and saw nothing wrong with that. neither of them did.) they were entirely inseparable, to the degree that they both threatened suicide when the guilds tried to separate them.
they were so entirely intertwined throughout these crucial emotional and mental development stages that the guilds actually caved and gave up centuries of warring to arrange their betrothal because they had no other suitable heirs and couldn’t afford to lose them. they were that effective.
because of this, breaking up was not something that crossed their minds. they were completely immersed in star-crossed destiny bullshit and because they were so reliant on each other and so intimate, they also didn’t fight. remy never experienced a fight until he was with rogue, because he didn’t have any lasting relationships until her.
it was a mantra for bella donna and remy. always together. always. this carried on to the point that despite being banned from new orleans after their wedding, he didn’t annul their marriage for twelve years regardless of the near complete lack of contact between them. he was extremely volatile and additionally didn’t pursue any of his romantic interests during that time on any serious, committed level, because he could not detach the idea of himself from her.
this continued until he met and attached to rogue, which gave him enough of a base to start shifting his fixations. and he was legendarily quick to fall in love with her, we know. why?
she was a strong person who didn’t take his shit. boom. exactly the type he needed and had been looking for the entire time to substitute the original, while being interesting enough that he was convinced it was new love (and partially was).
remy lebeau does not know how to remain emotionally independent of a partner.
and with rogue, again, we see this unconditional dedication despite all the crap they put each other through. even when she fights with him, tells him off and bans him from her presence, he’s like this fucking lost puppy because he needs, needs, needs her to love and accept him, even if it’s only on a surface level. he has to have something to idealize and cling to.
rogue quite literally chucks him in antarctica to die and he blames himself for that. despite logically knowing he was mentally impaired during the events leading up to the morlock massacre, even knowing he tried to stop it and almost died, he blames himself. he one thousand percent thinks she tossed him because she took his own self-hatred from him and very stubbornly ignores the fact that at the time, he’d been genuinely hopeful and working his hardest to repent for all of it, and had (at least temporarily) recovered from suicidal ideation. he unconditionally forgives her because it’s easier to make everything his fault and convince himself she’s perfect that face the fact that she hurts him and likely doesn’t love him the same way.
rogue never realized that he is seriously damaged from his early years from bella donna past the obvious weirdness that their relationship was from the outside. as a result, she didn’t realize that her continual rejection was pretty much wrecking his mental and emotional stability far more than the norm, and she didn’t realize that he required care and perception and actual help to unlearn shitty behavior. she was not entirely intentionally abusive, but they both could’ve made a lot better choices. she also didn’t try to figure out why he was so strange in certain aspects of dating.
by the time all this gloss around the idea of rogue is fading for him and we hit the main timeline i write in, he’s endured several more years of abuse around the clock and his dependence has been being absolutely battered by the on again, off again, on again. he is frayed at the edges and still very strongly attached to rogue, but also looking for something else to cling to subconsciously.
i’d like to emphasize he isn’t aware of his damage in these regards past the way he knows he latches onto people and it seems to be kind of strange to them. he isn’t really aware that it’s unhealthy, because he doesn’t have a reference point to begin pulling the logic to analyze his behaviors from, but if he did he’d likely willfully ignore it.
which means it’s very easy for him to transfer his affections. he is now the epitome of ‘i met them two hours ago and they are the one.’ it’s really, really bad. he logically tries to resist forming attachments, because he’s still partially anchored to rogue, but also his emotions are absolutely screaming at him to jump into someone else’s lap before he loses his shit entirely.
remy lebeau requires a partner to remain functional and sane.
this means that even somewhat understanding he is very bad for those he’s involved with, it isn’t hard to twist his affections and loyalty to you. this is very bad, because he’s morally gray - he’s just as vulnerable to good and bad people convincing him they will care for him and that he should stay with them.
this is doubly bad, because even though he’s a smart cookie and may recognize that they’re lying and/or have bad intentions, he’ll buy it and put on blinders because he needs to to stay alive, pretty much. he’s entirely open to being manipulated and changed in the name of a partner.
this is why there is a very consistent pattern when it comes to main verse ships of you don’t want me, a mild amount of arguing about it, and then if the person continues to push and insist they do in fact want remy, we see him fucking crumble in record time and instantly enter the honeymoon phase. he immediately becomes affectionate, tries to insert himself into their life as much as possible (within reason), and is constantly attempting to undertake pleasing/placating actions because even if you’re used to getting hit, you’re gonna unconsciously try and prevent it. he cooks, he tries to provide surprises for them, etc.
remy lebeau attaches far too quickly to romantic prospects because he is emotionally codependent like you wouldn’t believe. this means he makes extreme commitments very fast despite any personal misgivings, up to and including marriage provided the opportunity.
and then, provided the partner is actually a healthy choice for once? he starts to self-destruct because he has never experienced a healthy partner, given long enough. there isn’t abuse, so he’s convinced he’s doing something wrong or that the emotion there isn’t as strong as it should be and he’s deluding himself that he’s worthy of love. and that leads to him beginning to panic, pull away, and in general start back on his bullshit.
his drinking will hit an overtime, his smoking habit will once again be fucking awful, his self-care will go down. he may start missing testosterone shots, won’t cut his hair or dress to his usual standard. he will also begin taking on more and more dangerous heists, solo, particularly if they are jobs that no one, even him, should attempt alone. he gets more reckless during fights, and his responsibilities at the mansion start getting dropped without explanation.
provided the partner doesn’t leave him, which would send him crashing directly into suicidal tendencies, if they want him to survive and understand that all the shit he expects to happen is indeed bad shit that shouldn’t happen, it’s almost impossible to fix him unless they really ask and go deep, deep, deep into his past relationships. they have to talk to jean-luc, talk to remy, ask him things that start to paint a picture of why he is the way he is because he doesn’t know why. he doesn’t have the knowledge base to understand.
he is an intelligent person, and provided the knowledge and comparisons to actually figure out these things, he will do so with assistance. if allowed to come to the realization there is something he needs to recover from, he is capable and willing to do it. if not, he will continue to wallow.
if a partner doesn’t realize that his shitty, stupid behavior and anxiety and general breaking down is rooted in his abusive past, they’re likely going to get worn down to the point they split anyway, pretty much. it’s almost inevitable.
remy lebeau can’t function in a healthy relationship after a certain point because he doesn’t understand that it is, in fact, healthy, and expects to be abused. lack of abuse means to him that he’s doing something wrong, and unless his partner realizes he’s acting based on past trauma and actively works to recover him, the relationship is eventually fucked.
