If Bella didn’t exist, what kind of partner do you see Edward being with and settling down with? Do you think he would eventually find someone or just be alone forever?
Sorry that I took so ridiculously long to answer!
The answer to this one is bleak.
Because why, exactly, does Edward fall in Bella? What makes her stand out from the crowd?
Famously, it’s her blood.
He smells it and just like that it became his highest priority in this world.
“I hadn’t imagined that such a scent could exist. If I’d known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have scoured the planet for. I could imagine the taste.” (Midnight Sun, page 12)
People tend to downplay a bit just how insignificant Bella’s scent is to Edward. This is past “she smells like freesias<3”. This is a predator who just found the greatest prey he’ll ever find. This is the core of Edward/Bella, and there’s nothing personal or romantic about it.
Further, Edward is a person who puts all his stock in reading people’s minds. It’s how he interacts with people, and he has based much of his personality and self-esteem on it. He fancies himself someone who knows and understands the people around him intimately. How could he not? He knows their every thought.
Enter now the girl he can’t keep his mind off because her blood is driving him mad. Chapter 2 of Midnight Sun opens with him trying to stargaze in peace, but he’s just thinking about Bella.
(...) a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn’t quite seem to banish it from my mind. (Midnight Sun, page 26)
Of course, this is intended to be because they’re mates and Edward is supposed to already be already in love with her. He just doesn’t know it yet!<3
Well, I don’t believe in mates, and this guy is not in love. He finds Bella plain (chapter 1), unremarkable (chapter 2), even her eye color is boring. Not to mention that he doesn’t know her at all and desperately wants to eat her.
Anyway, Edward ends up returning to Forks, and finds that he can’t read her mind. The girl with the irresistible blood that he is already obsessed with is now officially an enigma. It’s no longer just about the blood, it’s about the entirety of Bella Swan. Who is this girl his mind won’t stop circling around?
This is where the mess that is Edward Cullen comes in, because in spite of or perhaps because of his gift, Edward has a very poor understanding of people. He judges people based on what he gleans from their minds, assuming that his gift lets him see their true self. Taking Rosalie for an example, she thinks about her looks compulsively. Edward takes this to mean that she’s vain. He never asks himself why Rosalie would be like this, if perhaps she’s like this because when it’s what her family and everyone else in her life has valued about her, if it’s because she doesn’t feel she has any other value, or if she in any way has a reason for obsessing over her looks that runs deeper than vanity.
My point being, Edward doesn’t get people, and he doesn’t know that he doesn’t get people. He bases his understanding of them on what he reads in their minds.
And so, when he sets about getting to know Bella Swan, he does so by asking her a million questions, and analyzing every answer she gives him. One example, he asks her which CD she’s listening to, she tells him, he asks which tune she likes best, she tells him, he runs through the lyrics in his head looking for some kind of clue.
He asks her questions that ultimately mean nothing, but they allow him to feel he’s getting closer. The result here is that he doesn’t know her at all, but he thinks he does. More on that later.
We also get him observing her. She’s nice to others, she doesn’t do the shallow teen things he disapproves of like fawning over him or gossiping with Jessica Stanley, and it totals to him quite liking what he sees. More on this later as well.
So, we have three components here that draws Edward to Bella. There’s her blood, her mystery, and the fact that he likes what he sees.
And that last bit is what the whole ship hinges on, for obvious reasons.
But what exactly does he see?
When Edward is drafting out her personality, he draws conclusions based on what he wants to see. He likes Bella, and more, he wants her to be special. He ends up imagining someone who is of course much too good for him, who probably won’t even give him the time of day, a person who couldn’t care less about his inhuman beauty. He projects a persona onto Bella that is saintly, and honestly quite similar to Carlisle. This persona has little to nothing to do with who Bella is. A good example of how far removed Edward’s Bella is from the real Bella is that he’s surprised to learn she finds him attractive.
Cut to Twilight, and Bella spends 90% of the book fawning over his inhuman beauty, and being very much a mortal teenager who has a crush on a boy. It’s just that she doesn’t gossip with Jessica, and Edward can’t read her fangirling mind, so he never has to find out that his version of Bella is made up.
There’s also the fact that Bella is very much the ideal woman to Edward. Frail, ladylike, naturally beautiful without makeup, kind, nurturing, aloof and above the other, menial teens. Edward very much has a Madonna/Whore complex (look at how he treats Rosalie), and Bella is the ultimate Madonna.
Then there’s the fact that Bella is human, which is a whole other can of worms best reserved for another post. I’ll just say this, Edward is deeply disgusted by vampires, and would not have fallen in love with one.
So, I think Bella was a perfect storm. Delicious enough that he became obsessed with her based on that alone, being around her is torturous which in turn makes it a challenge he can’t resist, a hidden mind he can project whatever personality he like onto, and she’s the kind of woman he approves of. Even her taste in literature is something that a snob like Edward can agree with.
More, as you’ve perhaps guessed from this rant, I don’t believe Edward loves her. He thinks he does, and he wants to because he has this whole romantic fantasy he’s living with her, but he doesn’t. There are a lot of things he would have done differently in this series if he did, such as not taking her to that meadow in the first place when there was a good chance he could kill her.
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