Misjudged Characters

The Dark Allure Of Bellatrix Lestrange

Bella's Devotion: Exploring the Enigmatic Love of Bellatrix Lestrange

She seems like a total psychopath, but we haven't seen her before Azkaban, so she might have actually had morals at some point. She was a product of her upbringing, and was raised to believe in pureblood supremacy. While she married Rodolphus, it was clear that she only married him to please her family. She seemed to be genuinely in love with Voldemort. What she saw in him? I have no idea. But I guess you don't really need a reason to love someone as long as you know for sure that you love them. And part of her insanity could be blamed on the fact that she knew that Voldemort could never see her the same way. She would do anything for him, but he wouldn't spare her a second glance unless it benefitted him. I think I've read enough fanfiction to know that unrequited love really sucks, and the fact that the person she loves is Voldemort must make it so much worse for her. The fact that Voldemort ridicules anything to do with love must also be part of the reason Bellatrix turned her heart to stone and let go of her morals. It's ironic really- she turns her back on love, for love. And in spite of all her flaws, you can't deny that she was extremely loyal. Loyal to the wrong side, but still loyal. And why shouldn't she be? Unlike so many of the villains that got a redemption arc in the end- Snape, Grindelwald, the Malfoys... she owed the light side nothing at all. They gave her nothing, why should she be obligated to fight for them? For them, against what she was raised to believe. Against the people she loves.

Voldemort gave her both power and protection- and sometimes even approval. Voldemort even trusted her enough to keep a part of his soul safe- and Bellatrix did everything in her power to keep it safe even though she had no idea what it really was. Voldemort was one of the only people who was as insane as she was, and now that I think about it, that's probably why she liked him so much- she could connect to him, and she probably felt like he understood her. Like we see in so many cases, Tom Riddle did have that effect on people. He made them feel understood, like they could tell him anything. Bellatrix probably needed that at the time, and Tom Riddle's charm worked on her better than it worked on everybody else- because in Bella's case, she hadn't just fallen for Tom Riddle, she had also fallen for Voldemort. Voldemort was executing what her family raised her to believe in. Joining the dark side got her both her family's approval and Voldemort's. And apart from being sent to Azkaban, she was actually pretty happy with the dark side. I'm actually glad JK Rowling didn't give her some stupid redemption arc because she didn't need one, it would have made the story really boring and cliché. "Not my daughter, you bitch!" made a way better ending for her than any redemption arc ever could. And no, I'm not saying she was a good person because she was not. Yes, I hate her for killing Sirius, torturing Alice and Frank to the point of insanity, almost killing Ginny and several other things. Yes, I hate everything that she did to Harry and his friends. Yes, I think she's insane- but at this point- who isn't? I really do hate all the things she did but there's something beautiful in the complexity of her character which makes it impossible to hate her.

A lot of people would argue that the most well written character is Snape, but I believe it's Bellatrix. Yes, Snape had an interesting backstory which is why it took up an entire chapter. But Snape got a chance to tell his story- even if it was towards the end of his life. Bellatrix never did. And the mysteriousness of Bellatrix's untold story, which leaves it open to interpretation, only adds to the complexity of the character and makes it even more beautiful. That's the whole point of a villain, isn't it? A victim with an untold story. That's why Bellatrix was the best villain. Even Voldemort, the main villain would have been uninteresting if we weren't told his entire backstory. And that wasn't something we could possibly have figured out if we weren't spoon-fed the information. With Bellatrix, we receive fragments of information which when strung together can create not just one story but multiple stories depending on the perspectives of the people stringing it together. Those fragments of information tell us all we need to know, if only we think about them enough. Reading Harry Potter for the first time, Bellatrix is Voldemort's psychopath sidekick and nothing more. When you've read enough to be able to thoroughly analyse each character and give them all individual importance, we see that she too is human like all of us, a person with her own battle to fight. A broken person with a story of her own. Azkaban definitely played an important role in her character arc. You could argue that she had lost her sanity even before that considering she had tortured Neville's parents, but even then, she did it because she was grieving. Voldemort had just "died"- and that too at the hands of a child. She'd just lost the person who gave her life meaning, who gave her a sense of purpose. It was a big loss for her and the only way she knew how to deal with her feelings was taking it out on other people. And then when she went to Azkaban, the dementors probably made her relive that over and over for 14 years which is what turned her into the soulless psycho that we see in the books who is willing to use dark magic to an unspeakable extent and even goes on killing sprees for the fun of it. Rowling says that the dementors were a metaphor for depression. She spent like 14 years in a prison with depression personified- how is it surprising that she went insane? Depression can screw up your morals terribly, especially 14 years of it. I think I mainly like the fact that Bellatrix is fanfiction material. Don't get me wrong though, I only like Bellatrix and Snape as characters- not as people.