RA Character challenge
5.) Least Favorite Female Character
Isabella
There may be other female characters who annoy me (Sarah Caulfield) or make me want to throttle them for their actions (Marian) but it’s Isabella that I like the least. Guy’s sister was the jilted sibling who morphed into the conniving villain as she exacted her revenge towards him and all men who held power over her.
but I saw her more as someone who was blinded by bitterness and let herself get jostled around amongst the politics that surrounded her. She thought of herself as a panther, slinking around in the shadows while she waited for her moment to strike, but really she was nothing more than a feral cat.
If she would have focused all of that anger maybe she could have accomplished something that was lasting, instead of constantly letting herself be sidetracked and ultimately getting nowhere.
If Isabella was a character who was confused, trying to come to terms with her brother’s callousness towards her situation when they were young, that would have given her some interesting layers that I could respect; but she came off as a spoiled mean girl who had no idea what she was doing. If she had a plan, was more predatory, she could have taken advantage of the men’s condescension towards her and used their squabbles amongst each other to her advantage.
Either be the Lion or the Lion-tamer,
you can’t be both.
Nowhere in Particular RA 
I can cut Isabella some slack because Guy sold her like an animal and her husband treated her like one for years.
Sarah Caulfield on the other hand, I have less patience for. We’re never given an adequate reason for her betrayal of (as Lucas puts it) her country and humanity. Connie, too, was a traitor, so I’d have to put her high on my list.
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by today’s standards Guy sold her like an animal but in that time period and in those circumstances I don’t think it was that despicable. he shouldn’t have wiped his hands of her like he did but she was female, we’re all lepers 😛
Sarah on the other hand, was an ambitious career woman trying to make it in the boy’s club. I don’t like her personality all that much (that god awful accent does not help matters 😯 ) but I do have some respect for her. Connie was a straight up traitor though, you’ll get no arguments from me there.
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that sounds like I actually like Sarah, so I must clarity 😛 you can respect someone that you don’t like and you can like someone that you don’t respect, so in this instance, I respect Sarah b/c she was determined and went after what she wanted. I think she was playing the game that the men played and got caught up in it, became misguided.
Isabella just seemed like she was throwing a tantrum
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RH was not exactly period-authentic, so I hold Guy to a higher standard 😀
Also on a number of occasions Isabella acted very admirably. That didn’t last long, but It did happen and it was almost entirely Guy’s fault fault that it ended and turned to hatred. If he had not rejected her so utterly, who knows what might have happened. For someone who so much hated to be betrayed himself (remember the torture death of innocent guard captain?) he sure didn’t show much loyalty to his own sister.
I don’t know that Sarah faced such a problematic past, present or future. She came from a culture and time where a woman could be ambassador, government minister, secretary of state, prime minister/chancellor (equivalent to president, and held by women in at 6 countries I can think of off the top of my head). She came from a privileged background in a wealthy country. Her main problem was (apart from the godawful accent) a sense of entitlement matched only by any sense of ethics.
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when you say Guy rejected Isabella do you mean when he essentially sold her and walked away, or later during series 3? I guess it was her unpredictability that bothered me the most, it might have been meant to keep us guessing as to her loyalties but it just made her seem irrational to me
with Sarah though, I’m trying to make her actions work w/in the framework that the show seems to give all the American characters: power hungry snakes who are only out for their own gain. if Sarah’s ambitions were poisoning her soul, the relationship with Lucas could have muddied those waters enough to make her question everything and act rashly in response. I’m reaching, I know, but I need it to make some kind of sense!
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Isabella’s pretty bad, but what about *Kate*? Bleeeeh.
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Kate = most annoying character in S.3 of RH.
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Kate doesn’t bother me as much. she is the perfect match for Robin 😛
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I didn’t like Isabella that much, though I do think she has plenty of reasons to be bitter, but she was perfectly cast – they really could be brother and sister!
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I agree that the casting was very well done and that she did have reasons to be bitter towards her brother, the writing just fell flat for me. if their goal was to make her similar to Guy in her actions, I guess they weren’t that far off the mark; I just felt like her potential as a compelling character was wasted.
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I agree. I felt a lot more could have been done with her character. It makes me wonder if it was RA alone (and not the writing) that made his character interesting.
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I may be biased but I think it was Richard’s doing 😀 It has been remarked upon by the creators that they were surprised at how popular Guy was and how he won the audience over so quickly. Also, Richard mentioned going to the writers often to discuss his character’s actions and reactions to certain plot points, etc. so I think we would have seen a very different Guy without Richard.
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My sentiments exactly, however much more eloquently expressed 🙂
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I think it was RA in the at first, and then it was his influence on the writers. The Guy of the 1st few eps of S1 is quite unlikeable. It is mostly RA’s performance and the fact that Guy is hotter than Mt Doom :-p (aka hotter than than those leather pants at the height of Hungarian summer!) that makes him watchable.
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I would’ve loved to see a reconciliation between the two siblings – and then see them take on the world and succeed. They might have been good together. As it stands, Isabella was really despisable, and even less redeemable than her brother.
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I agree, it would have been enjoyable to see them work together to achieve their goals 🙂 or even to become competitive and constantly thwart each other, like actual brothers and sisters do 😛
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Yes. The Siblings Gisborne would have been great to watch. (At last, a little brains for Guy’s brawn! You’ve gotta admit, Einstein he ain’t 😉 ).
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Cill – exactly what I thought, yet didn’t dare write :-D. Isabella could’ve been the brains of the operations, Guy the executor. Together they would’ve been lethal. They could’ve gotten their father’s inheritance back and then set about redeeming the family name. Could someone please write an AU fic *ggg*
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The Gisbornes Redeemed.
And Guy would still be alive!
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