To me, it's the immediacy of it.

Elijah was born mere months after Dahlia took Freya away. The pain was still fresh for Esther. And then instead of the golden haired daughter, she got a dark haired boy who was calm and quiet, much like Dahlia. She hadn't even gotten the chance to mourn her daughter when they moved to an unknown land with unknown people and she had Elijah quickly after. Kol wasn't born for years after that. And he was born after Klaus, which, in Esther's own words, healed their family.

Esther was in a much better mental place when she had Kol. She had Klaus and Ansel and had settled into her place in the new world.

I also think Finn and Kol's hair darkened as they got older, just based on these two photos up top. Elijah appears to be the only one that grew up with that dark hair. Kol's hair as a kid was still brown, but not as dark.

But to your point about personality, I think Elijah reminded Esther more of Dahlia than Kol did. From what we can see, Dahlia was a parental figure to Esther, just as Elijah was to his siblings. Dahlia wasn't wild and reckless like Kol. Rather, she was willing to do anything for family and loyal to a fault. Kol is a lot more free-spirited and thrill seeking, while Dahlia didn't like that in Esther. Kol likely reminded Esther of a younger version of herself, while Elijah was the younger version of Dahlia.

Thanks for the ask!

First of all, thank you for reading TGW! I love hearing feedback and I'm so glad you've enjoyed it. I really wanted to give the characters more closure and happier (if not just as angsty) storylines. I can't wait to start posting the sequel!

But yes, Season 5 was an absolute mess for so many reasons, but mainly because the writing was just so bad. I know they lost their main producer and JP had to take over. I don't think she cared to follow the show's own lore. She just wanted to end it quickly and dramatically. If you read my story, Don't It Just Break Your Heart, I don't fully resolve all of the issues, but I do discuss how it wouldn't make sense for Klaus and Elijah to die with the Hollow. We saw other characters get killed with the Hollow inside and she just comes back, it doesn't kill her. They completely dropped the Labonair connection in Season 5 which was such a pivotal point in Season 4. Simply killing her on the one plane didn't solve anything as she just ended up back on the ancestral plane and come back.

Also, yes, where did that stake come from? Freya searched for any trace of the white oak in season 3 and only came up with the one bullet. How did she not find the one that Klaus kept hidden? Why would Klaus keep a stake that could kill him and his family hidden? None of that made sense. Like you pointed out, there was still a way to kill him, Marcel's venom. It would be kind of iconic for Klaus to be killed by both of his children -- Hope doing it to kill the Hollow but using Marcel's venom.

Very little about Season 5 made any sense. It was all just for rating and to launch Legacies.

Thanks for the ask!

Hi! Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed them.

I think it was very clear that Legacies ruined The Originals. To the extent that even the cast discussed it. Daniel Gillies was always very open about this, which is why (in my opinion) they did what they did to Elijah's character. He mentioned rushing through the last couple of seasons in this interview. I used to be more into the cast and would watch interviews, but I unfortunately never saved them so I don't have all of the receipts. But here are some quotes by Daniel regarding TO:

There is also a video interview where I distinctly remember Daniel talking about feeling abandoned by the producers, but I can't find it. We do know that Michael Narducci left after Season 4, as well as a lot of the crew. Daniel talks about a lot of upheaval on set that I find hard to believe was just normal business. He also complains about so many new characters in Season 5 which cut into the main characters storylines. With actors who have devoted years of their lives to these characters, it must have been difficult to watch them get ruined by the writers.

It is clear that none of the actors were happy when they left, which is why so many of them refused to come back. Phoebe even refused to sign off on them using her likeness and was only a "guest role" in Season 5.

I also think it is very telling that there are so many rumors that TO was supposed to be more seasons. It had good ratings and yet they decided to not even give us five full seasons. JP was definitely rushing to get to Legacies. That was always her goal, TO was just a means to an end. Season 5 wasn't about the TO characters, rather about launching Legacies. So much of Season 5 made no sense.

You're absolutely correct. Hayley, Elijah, and Klaus all dying was simply so Hope would be orphaned. Although they should have just killed the entire family because how the rest of them abandoned Hope was terrible. But, Hayley, Elijah, and Klaus would never have done it. There was no way Legacies was happening with those three around. It goes to show just how much of a parental figure Elijah was because JP also wanted that same pattern for Legacies. All three shows' lead woman is an orphaned teen thrown into the chaos of supernatural. Hayley and Klaus were never going to survive TO because JP wanted that for Legacies. Elijah got thrown in because in no world does he abandon Hope. I guess they could have left him with amnesia, but she wanted more drama than TVD.

But yeah, JP can deny it all she wants but she rushed the best show in the TVDU to create the worst. She wanted to create her own legacy (pun in tended) by creating a never ending spinoff universe.

Thanks for the ask!

Also feel free to send me the interviews if you can find them!

Hi!

First, I love your fancast. I think each actress fits the characters so well.

This is such a fascinating idea. I think it would change the dynamic a lot. I've said before, they would remain largely the same character as gender doesn't fundamentally change who they are, but how they are treated due to their gender would.

Elijah would get even more hate from his parents than he did as a boy. He would remind Esther of Dahlia, the sister who had just stolen their golden child. Esther would have trouble giving Elijah love and attention as the mere sight of her reminded Esther of Dahlia. While Mikael would resent her because she was a reminder of the daughter they lost simply for being a daughter. He would also have looked forward to a warrior since at this point Finn has proven he was not one, likely due to the trauma of watching his sister get stolen. Elijah would largely be ignored by both parents, much like he was in cannon.

Klaus would be largely ignored by Mikael. Mikael took interest in Klaus simply because he saw him as a little warrior. But here, by the time Klaus was born, Mikael wouldn't resent Klaus just for being a girl, but wouldn't care for him as he would have a boy. This would likely save Klaus a lot of pain and allowed her to grow up a very different person. While Esther would adore Klaus. She would be a reminder of Ansel and also be protected from Mikael as Mikael would have had less say in raising a girl. There would be less fear of her triggering her curse and the necklace that weakens her wouldn't cause so much havoc. Klaus would be the daughter she lost and would be so precious to Esther. Klaus would likely become the mama's girl that Finn always was, spending much of her time with her mother.

By the time Kol was born, Mikael would be annoyed each time Esther got pregnant. Convinced that he wouldn't get a son. He would be even harder on Finn as he is the only chance at a warrior son. Poor Finn would likely suffer much of the abuse that Klaus missed out on. Kol would be loved by Esther as the only witch, but never as loved as Klaus. But Kol wouldn't care. She was always wild and independent. She would get into all kinds of trouble behaving in ways women weren't supposed to. She and Rebekah would be close and would drive Elijah mad as she attempted to cover for them and all of their adventures.

Rebekah would largely remain the same. She would love having so many sisters. I think she would be less petty and, for lack of a better term, "pick me." She wouldn't feel the need to tear down women to impress her brothers. She would be much more comfortable just being herself with so many sisters to learn from. But I think she would still be a bit of a brat as the youngest sister. Her sisters would still baby her. Esther would love her as the last daughter, especially because there is such a gap between her and Henrik. Mikael wouldn't pay much attention to her. But he didn't really in cannon either.

There would be so much pressure on Henrik to be the perfect warrior. Mikael would neglect all of the children once Henrik was born, devoting all of his time to make sure Henrik was the best possible warrior he could be. Henrik would likely not be the happy, carefree boy we saw in flashbacks. He would be much more like Klaus. He would try to find happiness in his siblings, but would suffer abuse and feel resentful that he was the only one being treated that way. He likely would have a lot of resentment towards Finn for not taking any of the heat off of him from Mikael.

I hope this helps! Let me know when you post, I can't wait to read!

This is so interesting to think about!

I think it's safe to say Klaus would not have been born and none of the other younger children. The butterfly effect and all that.

So we would have had Finn, Freya, Elijah, and some unknown children.

For Mikael, it's really hard to say because we don't get to see much (or really any) of him before they lost Freya. We get vague descriptions from Esther and Freya. But Freya was a small child and Esther basically just said he was "better" and they were "happy." This could really mean anything. But, giving them the benefit of the doubt, that losing Freya broke Mikael, I still think he would be a problematic husband and father.

Him being a problematic husband seemed to come from the time period. I'm not excusing it, just saying it didn't fully have to do with Freya's "death." I do think he blamed Esther for Freya's death and it caused an anger in him that never died. But I also can't see him being a kind and doting husband. He would have found a reason to be angry with her. Whether it was because none of the boys were strong enough or something else, he would have found a reason to be angry. But again, it's hard to say.

He may have been better to his daughters, but a lot of his abuse to his sons was to 'make them warriors.' He may have been less severe because he didn't have the pain of already having lost a child, but he tells Davina that he was training her like he was trained. Even without a necklace keeping Klaus weak, there would still be a weakest child. I think this child would bare the brunt of Mikael's abuse. But it probably wouldn't be to the extreme that we saw.

Finn would have done well not being the eldest sibling. To me, he never stepped up because he always remembered he wasn't the eldest. Him stepping up would erase his big sister. So Elijah had to. Freya would have relieved Elijah of that duty. We would have seen a much more relaxed Elijah. We see a lot of who Elijah would have been without the burden of his family when he erases his memories. He would have been much more like that, enjoying just being a middle child. He still would be protective of his younger siblings, but out of love, not necessity.

Finn and Elijah probably still wouldn't be close because Finn would have been jealous of Freya's attention to Elijah. Freya was already excited about Elijah while Esther was pregnant. She was likely too young to really understand Finn's birth, so Elijah was the first sibling she really got to baby. Freya and Elijah would have had a close bond. Different than Finn and Freya, but just as close.

Freya and Elijah would have loved taking care of their younger siblings together. I also think Freya would have been able to protect them more from Mikael. First because Mikael adored her in a way we don't see him adore another child, until Klaus initially. Second, because she was a powerful witch. Freya loved Mikael like she did because she didn't see what he did to her siblings. If she had, she would have protected them against him.

They all likely would have had a much better life, remaining in Europe and no one being killed by wolves. They would have lived and died as humans.

Thanks for the ask!

I loved that they acted together since we never got to see Mikael with her. Which is probably for the best. As you said, he likely wouldn't have tried to save her in anyway. He wouldn't have even considered her his grandchild.

I would imagine Hope has met Nik, but like you said, it doesn't seem like it. I actually did watch the Jo episode and loved it! I loved Jo! I actually watched the first like 7 episodes of Legacies before TO. I thought Hope had been an orphan since she was a baby based on Legacies and I assumed all of the Mikaelsons died in TO since she was abandoned. But, from what I've heard, I agree. Legacies was only good when it pulled on old storylines. I hated the random monsters.

I wanted to see Rebekah's story play out, but I actually liked how they moved forward given Claire needed to leave the show. Freya was a needed addition. I agree she did give more depth to the family. I hate how everyone paints a lot of the "Mikaelson" family as black and white. They are all complex, yes even Mikael. I do wish they would have kept her more of the "non-toxic" sibling and fight against Klaus and Elijah more like she did in the beginning. She unfortunately did start becoming like them. Either way, I love Freya and I'm glad they brought her in!

I've talked about this so much! Just because Klaus is the only one who talks about the abuse, it is very unlikely that he was the only one who suffered under Mikael's hand. This is emphasized considering the reason Mikael gives for abusing Klaus is because he was trying to make him a warrior. So it would make sense that he treated all of his children like that. We even see how aggressive his training is with Davina. Like you point out, Mikael did not hesitate to swing at Rebekah.

To me, the reason it's not talked about is because the show centers around Klaus. Everything, including flashbacks, are told through a Klaus centric POV. We don't get any flashbacks that don't center around him. Even Rebekah and Elijah's flashbacks are only shown to center Klaus. We don't see Elijah turn Tristan or Elijah creating the Strix, because it doesn't center Klaus. Kol was gone for decades meeting with witches, but we don't get any of these flashbacks because Klaus has nothing to do with it.

Not only are the flashbacks used to center Klaus, but how the characters talk. In TVD, Elijah states that Klaus loved Tatia as much as he did, centering his Klaus even in his love for Tatia. This is also something we don't really see. Klaus essentially SA'd Tatia and that is the only interaction we see. Very far from love.

All of this just shows that the language and POV of the show is to center Klaus. Just because we didn't see the abuse the rest of the siblings suffered, doesn't mean it didn't exist. Klaus was either just unaware or felt his abuse was worse so he only spoke about that. In reality, it's not mentioned because it would undercut the entire justification to Klaus' behavior. He didn't actually have it worse, but he still behaves worse.

Even if they didn't directly experience abuse, which I find unlikely, they still lived in an abusive household which has great impacts on development.

I never noticed the change of the name but I love that headcanon. Sometimes we just have to ignore the lack of effort the writers put into planning.

Lucifer is such a good combination of Klaus and Elijah. And I completely agree, Linda and Cami would be such great friends. Cami really needed some non-supernatural friends. I know one of my mutuals does Lucifer/Elijah cross overs but I don't think there is anything with Cami and Linda yet! It would be so good.

Thanks for opening up this discussion!

I've talked about Klaus and Rebekah several times, but I don't think I've ever really talked about Klaus and Freya. I've talked about Klaus' abuse to Rebekah, his lack of respect for Rebekah, and how Klaus has issues with women, which are all relevant here.

People like to paint Klaus as being a protective brother, but in reality he is possessive, not protective. He isn't protective over his sisters because he loves them, he is possessive because he doesn't want to be alone.

I'm not saying he doesn't love them, he does in his own way. But he's actually incredibly abusive to both of them. I think it's fascinating how the fandom holds Klaus and either sister up as these "close bonds" when in reality they are so forced by the writers.

Klaus and Rebekah

Klaus and Rebekah at least have their childhood to explain Rebekah's devotion to her brother. Just like Elijah, she has a twisted need to defend Klaus through everything. In TVD, she did it even more than Elijah. Klaus abused her over and over again and she continued to defend him. A lot of this can be a symptom of abuse. He made her feel so lonely and afraid that if she left him, she would have no one. He made sure she had no one by continuously robbing her of any relationship outside of him. Anytime she would fall in love, he would kill them.

To me, I don't find their relationship sweet because even when they are having their "sweet" moments, it just reminds me of how abusers will apologize and promise to be better. But Klaus never really does better by Rebekah. They just stop being in each others lives. Klaus exiles Rebekah because of the one time she actually tried to defend herself. Then he only calls her back when he needs her to take care of Hope. Once again, we only see them interact when Klaus needs Rebekah to offer herself up to Esther. He compels Marcel to kill her witch body, forcing her back into her vampire body. Then they have brief sweet moments when Rebekah is in and out of their lives until he dies. He doesn't even contact her when he is on a bender for years.

At the very end he "gets" her the cure, although it is not his to offer or promise. Rebekah had the same ability to get it from Elena and Damon. It was just a way to "fix" their relationship without putting in any effort. He never really feels remorse for putting her through hell for a thousand years. Rebekah stated she never got a chance to live and it is because of Klaus.

I get that Claire was out of the show for most of TO which prevented them from repairing their relationships, but given how little effort the writers put into Klaus' familial relationships, I don't think it would have made a difference.

Klaus and Freya

Klaus didn't trust Freya in the beginning and I don't fully blame him for it. But his abuse to her didn't just end with him killing her and tormenting her over her dead unborn child. For most of their relationship, he only spoke to her when he needed a witch or a babysitter. The shift in their relationship comes out of nowhere and is essentially just Freya moving on from the abuse and Klaus continuing to undermine her without apologizing for anything.

They, like with Rebekah, have moments of tenderness from Klaus, but they are few and far between. For the most part, they either don't interact, or when they do Klaus is usually demanding and rude. Freya at least stands up to him more, but it does little to change Klaus' attitude.

I also feel like Klaus just uses the same line with all of his siblings. You have the "You are my sister" moment with Freya which mirrors the "You are a Mikaelson" moment with Kol. He is essentially dismissing their complaints about his abuse because they are family and he loves them. He's all words but no follow through. He promises that family means everything to him but has a thousand years of evidence to say the opposite. I wish Freya had remained more like season 2 Freya with Klaus. The Mikaelsons desperately needed an older sibling to actually protect them against Klaus. Freya would be perfect for this since their relationship started off so bad and she didn't have history with him. Freya initially was, but the writers couldn't let anyone stay mad at Klaus for too long, lest they actually have to hold him accountable for things.

My problem with Klaus and his family or really any relationship, we are told to like their bond more than shown why we should. The only person we see him spend extended amount of time with is Cami. Everyone else he just seems to use and they love him for some reason. But we don't really see him treat them well or earn that love. He just gets unconditional love from his family, which is ironic considering how much he complains about not having that.

Freya naming her son after Klaus was so much fanservice. She clearly would have named her son Finn, you know the brother she had missed for a thousand years and that died protecting her. Even Klaus helping Elijah walk Freya down the aisle was just because the writers had to center Klaus in everything. But he was not the logical choice for that. Throughout the show, we see Elijah and Freya bonding over the hardships of family in a way we don't see with Klaus and Freya.

All of this to say, the writers really failed to develop Klaus' relationships with nearly every character in the show. They used his abusive behavior toward his sisters as the punchline of the joke half of the time. But because the writers throw in a couple of sweet lines, the fandom pretends that Klaus and his sisters were actually close.

Klaus had the ability to be close with his sister and probably had a lot in common with each of them. The writers just cared more about ratings and drama than to center a show about family around the actual family.

Thanks for the ask! Sorry, I kind of went on a rant.

ELIJAH MIKAELSON: The Patriarch of the Mikaelson family

No...?

It's hard because we see so little of their interactions.

We don't see any of their interactions in Dahlia and Esther's flashbacks in Season 2, which I think would have been the only time that Mikael did genuinely love her if he did. From what Esther tells Dahlia, it seems like Mikael and Esther were spending time together and he made her feel safe and loved. I do question if this love was genuine or if it was simply Esther's naivety. Esther had just watched her family be slaughtered and kidnapped by the village she was now being held captive in. She wasn't in the best mental state to be falling in love. She was also, I believe, fairly young and easy to take advantage of given everything.

It was clear that Dahlia and Esther were not fully accepted into the village given how they enslaved Dahlia. Just because we didn't see Esther being treated the same, doesn't mean she was welcomed. So I see it one of two ways. Mikael genuinely fell in love with Esther and was willing to face the consequences of marrying an outsider. Or, the one I think is more likely, Mikael was "encouraged" by his father/village leaders to marry Esther to secure Dahlia for life. This was fairly common for the time.

Esther does say that Mikael was better before Freya's "death," but that, to me, just means he wasn't physically abusive. There is a low bar with Mikael. I also think that any love for Esther he may have had died when Freya "died." It does seem that Mikael blamed her for Freya's death. The only joy he got back was after Klaus' birth when he thought he had found his warrior son. As Klaus got older, he became angry that Klaus wasn't the warrior he wanted him to be. Mikael never recovered from that anger. He may have felt fondness for Esther for giving him a warrior son, but that again would have disappeared as he grew disappointed in Klaus.

I don't even think Mikael's anger at Klaus killing Esther was about Esther really. Rather it was about Klaus taking what belonged to him. Even how they interact in TO doesn't suggest any love lost. I wish we could have seen them interact more in TO or TVD. A lot of Esther's backstory gets erased or told through other characters which causes the fandom to reduce her to a two dimensional character. Fleshing out her relationship with Mikael would have been really interesting, but they didn't do it because they didn't want to humanize Klaus' excuses. The show focuses on male villains as abuse victims, but tends to erase the women in these stories or even justify the abuse they suffered.

So the short answer is I don't know because the show didn't bother to give Esther a backstory. But to me, it doesn't seem like he did. If he did, it didn't last long.

Thanks for the ask!

Update Tags

I've had a few asks that I wanted to refer to old posts and had trouble finding them, so I went through and added tags to all of my metas and thought I would share if anyone wants to find specific metas I've done:

Main Tag: #andrea831 metas

Mikaelson Tags: #andrea831 metas elijah #andrea831 metas klaus #andrea831 metas rebekah #andrea831 metas freya #andrea831 metas kol #andrea831 metas finn #andrea831 metas mikaelson

TO Characters: #andrea831 metas hayley #andrea831 metas cami #andrea831 metas celeste #andrea831 metas davina #andrea831 metas jackson #andrea831 metas aurora #andrea831 metas josh #andrea831 metas antoinette #andrea831 metas hope #andrea831 metas esther #andrea831 metas mikael #andrea831 metas dahlia #andrea831 metas hollow #andrea831 metas lucien #andrea831 metas tatia

TO Ships/Relationships: #andrea831 metas haylijah #andrea831 metas celijah #andrea831 metas camlijah #andrea831 metas gilijah #andrea831 metas haymille #andrea831 metas klamille #andrea831 metas haylope #andrea831 metas klope #andrea831 metas haybekah #andrea831 metas klarcel #andrea831 metas jayley #andrea831 metas klaurora #andrea831 metas klelijah

TVD Characters: #andrea831 metas bonnie #andrea831 metas elena #andrea831 metas stefan #andrea831 metas damon #andrea831 metas caroline #andrea831 metas enzo #andrea831 metas katherine #andrea831 metas matt #andrea831 metas tyler #andrea831 metas lexi #andrea831 metas kai #andrea831 metas heretics

TVD Ships: #andrea831 metas forewood #andrea831 metas bonenzo #andrea831 metas stelena #andrea831 metas carenzo #andrea831 metas elejah #andrea831 metas kalijah Legacies Characters: #andrea831 metas lizzie #andrea831 metas josie

Anything Related to my stories has this tag: #long live the mikaelsons

My Ongoing Stories: #haylijah in every episode #elijah ships song series

Essentially if you are looking for something I've posted, put my tag and then what you're looking for.

Hope this helps!

This is one of those topics that I'll admit some biases. With most of the characters in TVDU, we get hints of the past but we don't see the full thing so it's up to us as an audience to fill in the blanks. This is why I think there is so much debate in the fandom. Everyone fills in the blanks differently and to a different extent.

So for me, Kol was not a character that I was drawn to so I often didn't spend a lot of time thinking about his past outside of what we are explicitly told. From the show, we are explicitly told that he was a witch and he clearly still feels very attached to his witch side. We also know that when he turned he no longer was a witch.

What we don't know is how he was as a witch (I know he called himself a child prodigy, but I'd be curious to know how long he was practicing) or how exactly it impacted him to lose that side of him. Unlike Klaus who blamed everything on losing his werewolf side, we don't hear Kol explicitly say he became such a menace because of his loss of magic.

I don't think anyone would really argue that it didn't hurt him to lose that part of himself. But I personally don't think him becoming a heretic would have made him much more of a stable person. Even with Klaus, there were numerous reasons he became such a monster. Esther's lies, Ansel's death, Mikael's hate, losing Aurora, etc. on top of his werewolf side being suppressed. None of this justifies the things he does, but none of them can be said to be the direct or only reason he became what he was.

The same thing applies to Kol. It wasn't just losing his witch side, but also losing his home, losing his chance of being human, running from a murderous father, his mother's death. All of these things happened simultaneously and affected him. We also have zero idea of what kind of person Kol was as a human. He is in none of the human flashbacks. We know that he fled as soon as Mikael began to hunt them, destroying their village. He quickly reunited with his siblings and seemed to already enjoy killing very early in. I think at some point Kol said he enjoyed the "rush" being a witch gave him, so it seemed like he transferred that to killing as a vampire. But it could also just be that he loves adrenaline and would have still gravitated to that side of vampirism even with his magic still intact. Again, it's hard to say since we don't see him as a human.

But what we do see is how he is as a witch in TO. Now, I've said this in another post, TO Kol doesn't make a lot of sense to me compared to TVD and even the flashbacks. Sure, maybe it was just him having access to magic which made him better, but we can't forget that the first scene we have with him as a witch is him SAing a woman by using his magic to make her flash the entire street. Kol, as a witch in TO, likes to use his magic to have power over others, much like he used his vampirism. Again, it's hard to say if he was always like this or if this was as a result of him losing his magic initially.

To me, this is probably how I would imagine Kol as a heretic since this is the best evidence we see of him as a witch. Not necessarily any less violent than we saw him as a vampire. In my opinion, a lot of what caused Kol to behave the way he did was feeling excluded rather than losing his magic. While he often runs off and leaves his family, it always seemed that he caused chaos to get his siblings attention. We are told Kol is this intelligent person so I have to imagine he wasn't just acting dumb and attracting Mikael every time he was undaggered. But he knew it would get his brother's attention. This can make sense for the character since he was turned at like 17 years old. He behaved like a teenager attempting to get his older brothers to pay attention. Even when he knew their attention wouldn't be positive and often was being daggered.

I could see him being a heretic changing his dynamic with his siblings though. He would have been invaluable to them, especially in the early days when they were trying to survive. But again, he still likely would have been a violent and murderous person. It maybe could have been even worse if Kol and Klaus became closer than Elijah and Klaus.

They made Kol's violent and murderous nature a part of his personality, which is why I had a hard time believing that just meeting Davina changed him as a person. But again, I know a lot of people have complex headcanon backstories that show Kol was a completely different person and losing his magic sent him over the edge, which I am not saying is not possible. I just personally don't see it. When Abby lost her magic, she became depressed and lethargic. When Bonnie was cut off from her magic, she didn't become murderous. Kol losing his magic didn't change his personality, but it may have pushed him further into that side of himself than he normally would have. This combined with the heightened emotions of becoming a new vampire created the Kol we met.

I'm sorry I forgot to respond to this earlier, but thank you for the ask!

I often wonder if Elijah's mommy issues are worse than his daddy issues. I could write a book on how badly they both messed all of their children up, but particularly Elijah.

As you said, you can tell this by his characterization, however, a lot of people overlook it because he is not as blatant with it as other's, namely Klaus. But how he interacts with everyone and even the relationships he has show just how badly these issues are.

From the flashbacks, and even his present day actions, you can tell that a lot was put on Elijah from a very young age. He feels personally responsible for his siblings. Not only their well-being but their behavior. The scene you pointed out perfectly shows this. I had to go back and make a gif of it. Esther is actively planning to kill her children and tells Elijah that she "wish[ed] the others were more like [Elijah]." Elijah doesn't fully get the gravity of it, but as the audience we do. Maybe if the others were more like Elijah, Esther wouldn't feel the need to kill them all. The pressure this simple 'compliment' puts on Elijah to keep his siblings in line is indicative of the guidance he has gotten his whole life. If he could keep his siblings well behaved, bad things would stop happening to them.

People call out his suits and his "cleanliness" but it's literally a trauma response. Esther, at one of the lowest moments in his life, used magic and told him that if he kept himself clean, everything would be okay. She then emphasizes this by coming back to life and reminding him that he is the 'moral' son, even knowing everything she knows about him.

This is reinforced when just a couple of years later, Esther imprisons and tortures Elijah, calling him a monster. She had all of the same knowledge in TVD as she did in TO. We can blame it on bad writing, but it's canon, so if we are accepting it as is, it's pure manipulation. It was a reminder from her that he allowed himself and his siblings to slip and that made him a monster.

Elijah throughout the shows struggles to connect with anyone in a meaningful way. Even those he loves outside of his family are easily discarded when necessary. While he feels guilty and lonely doing so, he does not hesitate to protect his family. The entirety of 'always and forever' is based on the fact that Esther and Mikael raised them to believe that their family was more important than anyone else. They were willing to anger nature in order to protect their family. To Elijah, that literally meant his siblings lives mattered more than anyone, including himself.

He so desperately wanted a family, wanted his family, to be happy and together. Yes, he makes plenty of mistakes along the way, but his underlying impulse is to protect his family. He wanted to make his parents proud, he wanted their love, but we never see him receive it. Even as a child, he is basically discarded. Elijah struggles with his self worth because of this. He even tells Hayley he has no purpose to his family if he isn't fighting to save them. He feels he has no worth outside of his role in saving his family.

Esther's neglect left lasting wounds in Elijah that are only brought up on occasion and then quickly glossed over. Even after he found out what he did to Tatia, we get like one episode for Elijah to grieve and then it shifts to him begging Klaus for forgiveness for some reason. Elijah never has a moment to just feel. His pain is always deprioritized in order to support his family.

Thanks for the ask!

If she had never met the Mikaelsons, probably not. If the Mikaelsons had never existed, maybe?

Hayley's life wasn't great before she met the Mikaelsons. For most people, they came in and destroyed perfectly happy people. But for Hayley, she already had a pretty bad life. Her early days are a little confusing, but from what we do know is her parents were killed when she was just a baby and she was adopted by a family who then kicked her out when she turned into a wolf after she killed someone in a boating accident. She was then, I believe, in foster care and eventually ran off, staying with different packs as she went. She was so desperate for any type of family or love that she helped orchestrate the death of 12 hybrids. At this time she also got on Katherine's bad side and had Katherine sending vampires to kill her.

All of this to say, she wasn't doing great on her own. She likely wouldn't have even found what remained of her family in New Orleans had Klaus not told her where they were. Even if she had, she wouldn't have been able to break the curse on her pack. She would have been stuck in New Orleans, seeing her family once a month.

Additionally, Hayley becoming a mother is a major reason she had such amazing character development. She went from a selfish, impulsive girl who didn't even seem to value her own life to a strong, intelligent leader of New Orleans who had something worth fighting for. As much as the Mikaelsons caused her harm, they are also the reason she had the happiness she did have in her life. She may have become a mother with someone else, but she wouldn't have the support that she had with the Mikaelsons and from her pack, which allowed her to really grow as a person.

Had the Mikaelsons not even existed, or at least not turned into vampires, Hayley maybe wouldn't have even made it out of diapers. The Hollow would have existed with or without the Mikaelsons. The only reason Hayley survived as a baby is because of Marcel. Who wouldn't have still been alive without the Mikaelsons turning him.

Now say she had lived and vampires didn't exist, she likely could have had a great life in the bayou with her family. We know almost nothing about her parents but they seemed willing to sacrifice anything to keep Hayley safe and wanted to created peace in the bayou. I'm not a super big fan of the fact that they arranged a marriage to their infant child in order to fix centuries of conflict, but I get they were up against something they didn't even begin to understand. But Hayley likely would have been a completely different character than the one we know and love.

Thanks for the ask!

He'd be the cutest little witch ever.

No but really, why do I just think he would be terrible at it.

Like he would try so hard to do everything perfectly and Kol would just show up and wave his hands around haphazardly, executing the spell perfectly, sending Elijah into a spiral of self-doubt.

I have no justification for why I feel this way. Just something about how witches tap into their magic doesn't mesh well with Elijah for me. Like he's too emotionally stunted or something. He would just want to be a perfectionist with it and get frustrated because magic isn't just about saying the words but actually tapping into it. I literally cannot picture him being good at it.

I can just see Kol trying to explain to Elijah that he needed to feel the magic and Elijah arguing that 'you don't feel magic, you perform it.' Or something like that. Kind of like (Harry Potter reference) how Hermione knew every single spell ever but then Harry would come over and just perform it effortlessly. Elijah would know everything there is to know about magic and be the best student but it just wouldn't click for him.

Probably not what you were looking for but I just think Elijah being bad at things is so funny because he would get so frustrated.

Thanks for the ask!

So I've kind of answered this before with Klaus, you can read that here.

Essentially, my answer is I think they would be accepting. In my head, all of the Mikaelsons are queer. I mean, as Daniel Gillies said, they've been around for such a long time, you just know they've at least experimented. Rebekah canonically sleeps with a woman in TVD, maybe two. No one bated an eye when Freya brought Keelin home and then married her. They just didn't care about it.

I have discussed how I think Klaus would prefer his child dating a man, no matter what the child's identity was, here, just because he has issues with women.

Elijah, specifically, wouldn't care. Elijah was the only brother that never judged his siblings for their sexual partners (i.e. Kol and Klaus judging Rebekah). I just can't see him caring about his child's sexual identity. He would just want them to be happy and safe.

I think Kol would be the same, despite what Nate Buz would say. And if Kol ever said anything against their queer child, Davina and Josh would kill him. Rebekah would throw them a coming out party, whether they wanted it or not. Marcel would be holding rainbow balloons trying to give all of his best pickup advise. Freya and Keelin would clearly not care.

I think every single one of them would just be thrilled to have a kid and be happy they were comfortable enough to be themselves. I may be giving them too much credit, but I don't think there's anything in canon that suggest they would have a problem with it.

Thanks for the ask!

I am obsessed with how thorough this is.

I'll be honest that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Inadu/The Hollow, simply because Season 4 and 5 are not my favorite seasons. But, not because I didn't like her story or the lore, simply because the writing starts to go off the rails and becomes very rushed.

But I agree, Inadu was one of the best villains in TO. And it's completely because, as you pointed out, she did what every other villain was attempting to do. She felt not remorse for it either. Don't get me wrong, I love most of the villains in TO, but the show, for the most part, would always back pedal at the end and make them "redeemable" villains. Which is why I liked Lucien, even in his last breath he did not try to be a better person. He was a villain through and through. Inadu took it even further because they don't offer any justification for her behavior. Yes, her family killed her, but because she was power hungry and murderous. She was essentially the Kai Parker of TO. And you're exactly right, people only don't like her because she was successful. They only like the villains when the villains are bad at it. Inadu had the entire city, including the Mikaelsons, running scared.

I loved that we finally got lore into the werewolves, they were such an underutilized species throughout TVDU. I'll have to actually watch Legacies if it goes into it more. I love your headcannons of how the werewolves evolved and played out. I would also add that Inadu likely added the "werewolf rage" to make them just like her. She was punished for her murderous mentality, so she wanted her family to feel how she felt, to behave as she had.

I only wish that we could have had a full season with Inadu. There was still so much to explore and a lot unanswered. She was incredibly powerful and I love that they never really defeat her. I agree, she should have gone on to Legacies. I hated at the end, Elijah and Klaus die to "kill" Inadu, but they had tried that before. I'm forgetting who it was, but Inadu was possessing someone and they killed that person and Inadu just went back to the ancestry plane and then possessed someone else. You may remember more and maybe I'm forgetting exactly why it worked, but to me, it was too easy.

I would have also loved to see the werewolves more invovled in the Inadu plot line, since it was their ancestor. But we only ever see Hayley. The werewolves completely disappeared after season 3.

I love this breakdown so much and I'm definitely holding onto it for future stories!