I also have a lot more respect for Signy, this go round. She said her marriage to Siggeir would end poorly, and it did. No one listened, and things went south.
Yes, she sent no less than four of her own children to her brother to be murdered, and also slept with him without his knowledge purely in order to create a child who could kill her husband. (Side note: Gotta wonder why that sorceress was willing to change shapes. Hot king? Just wanted to sleep with a king? Sleep in a sick feather bed? Or was she also trying to beget a specific sort of revenge baby?)
But what really gets me on her side is that, when all’s said and done and literally burning around her, she goes, “You know what? I have done too much awful shit to keep living. My entire life has been focused on revenge for the last thirty-some years, and I do not see myself coming out the other side of that mindset.”
I don’t know if I respect her for making that decision/having that degree of self-knowledge, or pity her because she is committing suicide after just... so much, or if it’s just that I recognize this storyline as one that men get, and there’s generally someone (a woman) around to say, “No! You can change! You can be better! Let me show you how to live!” and this instance does not play out that way.
But something about a girl going, “I have no regrets, but I cannot go on living as the person I have become,” and walking into the flames burning her husband and greatest enemy alive - something about that gets me.
