What I always find most fascinating about Zarina is that her indulgence is a mask. It's a mask that hides the hollowness, the cold, the pragmatism, the void that needs to be filled. Indulgence is human, indulgence is flawed, and indulgence is something that takes mind off things. But when Zarina is stripped clean off the masked indulgence where she stands alone in silence with only her own thoughts, she longs for permanence that has never been present in her life. Behind indulgence and playfulness, there is a winter longing for an embrace instead of drowning. There is a winter who wants to have some semblance of life to exist within its cold, cold embrace.
She wants a family (a home to come back to), she longs for someone to accept her, and she longs for safety that she's never experienced as a child because it's always 'survival of the fittest' in her life. How can one feel safe when safety hasn't been there since her childhood? And yes, her family is her [safety] but even they make Zarina put on the appearance of a strong person because Sokolovs must be strong to protect the family. It's all about family and family values, it's their culture and it's their leading core values.
So is Zarina's. Her core value is family, her core value is love of family and the protection of family before her own self. Her own self and her own indulgence, her selfishness comes a step below family. She is a greedy and selfish individual who lives for herself, but she also values her family more than anything else. She is the older sibling, the oldest child, the progidy child with her brother. There are too many eyes to ever feel safe. Others watch, but they do not [see] her. They see the title and the reputation, but nothing real. And the indulgence is a mask they witness all too brightly; thus, calling her in degrading manners from slurs to nicknames she hates more than anything 'princess'.
But at the very end, no one sees that at her core Zarina will always be [lament]. A wintry lament, because at the very end of her jounrey, if she does not change, she will always be left alone in winter. Because in winter all dies and all becomes silent, and her strongest flaw remains in how she doesn't expose her hollowness and her yearning desire to be human yet watching her humanity slip. There is desperation in her existence, there is desperation in finding a permanent home and safety that has never been there. Her family is her family, and she loves them dearly, but they are not her [personal] home and there is still guards up as the oldest child who has expectations placed upon her. She wants to find someone, platonically or romantically, who will look at this hollowness and this lament she represents and still reach out, dragging her into their embrace and say that she can rest within their embrace even if the icy edges cut into their skin.
It's selfish, it will be like pulling teeth, but when you do go through it? When you break through the ice cold clutches of winter? She'll be there to bare her heart and soul to you. In all her coldness, in all her hollowness, in all her stubbornness. But will you be able to withstand the winter or will you, too, abandon the idea or wither within her frigid embrace? That's the question.
