wmmap; breaking down claude's trauma and how it created a neglectful father
for the longest time, this fandom biggest gripe about Claude is about how he's being an absent father to Athy throughout her childhood.
In the webtoon, spoon changes the plot from the second season instead of following the original novel. Which imo was a decision to explore Claude's trauma and his relationship with Athy better.
Both Claude and Athy overcoming their family trauma together is what I think the true message of wwmap is about (even though I understand Lucas and Ijikiel are great eye-candy ikemen)
A lot of Claude's trauma really only makes sense after we get the backstory about Claude towards the end of his series
Initially, his trauma doesn't really click. Near the beginning of the series, we find out about the relationship between Claude and Diana. I mostly think this answers the question that Athy raises about whether Claude truly loved Diana after seeing the portrait of his ex-fiance, Penelope.
Again, Athy is misleading us, the audience, because she can be an unreliable narrator, especially in the early chapters (here if you want to read more)
Athy at this point, believes that all his neglect so far is because he doesn't love her or her mother, Diana. That his heart still lies with his former fiancée,
Which makes sense to her, because why else would he treat her so terribly, if he didn't love her mother and, by extension, herself?
but then athy collapses and sees the memory before she was born between them
So now it gets confusing, because clearly Claude had some sort of feelings for Diana. Athy realizes she wasn't a product of a one-night fling but he still clearly doesn't love her, even though he loved her mother, Diana.
She doesn't quite understand their relationship quite yet, but it's clear to her that Claude has some complications about Diana because of her birth even though he loved Diana before she got pregnant.
The only thing that is clear to her is that he doesn't love her right now. It's a firm belief she carries on with her all the way up to season 3, even though it's quite obvious to us by then that it wasn't true.
but here's the thing, Claude's reason for not being to love Athy was far more deeply rooted than just because Athy was the cause of Diana's death
Claude's trauma is about family and betrayal. Specifically, no one ever chose him.
Let's explore this by chronological order, first is Anastacius
In his childhood, his only family besides his sickly mother was Anastacius. Anastacius always cared for Claude in their childhood; in response to that, Claude relied on him a lot
Anastacius was the only person in his life who cared for him in his childhood.
The first betrayal was when Anastacius chose the throne over Claude.
Of course, we now know that Anastacius had his reasons and was led astray by Aeternitas. However, Claude doesn't find out about this until much later and lived with the belief that blood relations mean nothing in the royal family.
Then what about found family?
Penelope was the first person aside from Claude that he opened up to, but was later the second betrayal that he had to experience in his life because Penelope chose Anastacius over him.
In a way, she also chose the throne. She wanted to elevate her status and believed Anastacius was the right person for that. Do I think she could've chosen Claude if he were next in line for the crown? Yes, absolutely.
So that portrait in the office we see was never about longing or love. It was a reminder of his trauma and to not trust others again.
To Claude, the third "betrayal" was Diana.
After all that childhood trauma, he finally found love and could live a happy life again instead of being miserable prior to meeting Diana.
After all this, it reconstructs the scene earlier when Diana is dying from her pregnancy.
"Don't leave. Choose me, instead of the child that's eating at your life as we speak."
Diana's choice of giving birth to Athy and instead of choosing to live with him, which sounds insane, because she never chose Athy over Claude. This was always between her and Athy, Claude has nothing to do with this.
In her eyes, she loved Athy so much that she was willing to lay down her life for Athy to come into the world, but that's not how Claude sees it. Claude thinks this is all about him. Between him and unborn Athy and Athy ultimately won.
Which was the last straw that broke the camel's back because Claude was never anyone's first choice, he wasn't Penelope's and he wasn't his brother Anastacius' first choice either. They chose the throne over him; they both chose power, and when he finally thought he could let someone else in again, it was Diana, and in his eyes, he lost yet again, this time to Athy. He was so traumatized and scarred that he chose to turn to black magic and erase Diana from his memories, because to him it was easier to live that way.
So back to the question about Claude being a bad father. Was he a neglectful father? Unfortunately yes.
but this fandom doesn't really see it past that, the whole reason he couldn't see her was because he wasn't able to separate his trauma from Athy for the first 5 years of her life. He was struggling to separate his own trauma the whole time, and even after they met in season 1.
To me, this scene was the epitome of that struggle. He's still struggling with his trauma with the unhealthy urge to kill Athy, but he's starting to recognise her as an individual and loves her for it.
His trauma really severly worsened and cemented after Diana's death, she really helped him get past a lot of it, and I say this because of the scene where Claude finds out she's pregnant with Athy and he does this
god damn the pure joy when he finds out they were going to have a kid hurts me.
Like Diana single-handedly wiped away all that trauma he had with Anastacius, his experience with his own brother made him reject family ties from blood relationships.
But clearly, this is not the face someone would make if they were pessimistic about building a family.
To me, Claude indeed had his shortcomings about Athy in their childhood, but clearly not without reason. Should we really fault someone so much because of their trauma? I think we fail to recognise that Claude was incredibly broken and traumatised there's clearly something so much more tragic beneath his character than just an absent father
ok anyway that's it for this ted talk, I will probably make another one about how he overcomes it with his relationship with Athy!
wmmap; athy is actually an unreliable narrator (sometimes)
so it's come to my attention that Athy is much more of an unreliable narrator than she's lets on, it took me a few re-reads to notice, just because it's incredibly subtle and only applies to her younger days with Claude specifically
When Athy coughed up blood and was bedridden, she thinks that her dad is being heartless and forcing her back to sleep but that's not true because
its not that shes being noisy but before lucas pops up, this is all he knows to do to alleviate her pain. he doesn't want to her to be in pain and not because she was actually being noisy.
claude putting her to sleep was his way of caring for athy.
but athy doesn't know that, i guess she's in too much pain to listen to this conversation. but when we follow her perspective and her inner thoughts on things, we actually end up believing her narrative, and this builds up that claude is uncaring and cold
here's another early example;
again, we follow athy thoughts and she thinks that Claude thinks that he was referring that her being a fairy is nonsense
which makes claude seem cold and unloving again
which is suprise suprise actually untrue, if you look back a little earlier during the class the madam talks about something else,
he was actually referring to this, her putting athy down because of diana's commoner bloodline and athy not being a "pure-bred" aristocrat
you can see the panel where he thinks about it for a while, and Athy's little slip-up (because she doesn't like bringing diana up in front of claude due to her fear of abandonment) and she hesitates to actually say that the madam meant that she looks like her mom and not some fairy
claude knew, and he is shown to be well aware of the nature of nobles and how people think (which makes sense because it is canon that he is very intelligent).
he knew what was actually said to athy, and he's actually telling her to not care about the nonsense about what they say about her mom and implying she is not pure enough. he was trying to reassure her and made her feel better after she heard something terrible about herself and her mom
funnily enough, he doesn't deny that athy looks like a fairy when you realise what he was actually referring to
so, throughout most of her childhood claude actually showed love and affection in his own way, but it was never really acknowledged by athy, she has always misinterpreted it and missed the signs of it because she was scared that he was going to kill her eventually and didn't want to get attached
i think im going to write about how much claude is misunderstood in this fandom and break down his character tmr... anyways this is going to be where I write bl and my literature notebook :>
anyways claude is a really tragic and broken character and wmmap is literally about how athy and claude heal each other's trauma by bonding together as family which I don't think is talked about at all
