The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

With what happened in the episode 3x09, I saw a real hatred toward Eleanor Guthrie rise everywhere. “Bitch,” “Kill her,” “I hate her” all the time. This is an understandable reaction. But personally, I do not hate Eleanor Guthrie. And yet I LOVED Charles Vane. Over all. Here’s a little personal analysis on Eleanor Guthrie, on Vane also a little, and her relationship with him and Richard Guthrie. This is only an analysis and a personal opinion that I want to share to see if I find people who will agree with me that maybe this point of view it please someone. You are perfectly right not to agree with me, that’s only a personal opinion :) I apologize in advance for my bad English, I recall that I am French but I hope it’s still understanding.

Personally, I understand completely and totally Eleanor. Yet God knows I loved Charles … I loved her beyond the possible. Worse than that, I loved to madness - and I still love - the Vane / Eleanor couple. In addition to seeing my favorite character, a character that has helped me tremendously emotionally for a long time, I also saw a couple that I revere end abruptly. It is a double agony. Yet even as I came out broken that famous episode 9, at no time ANY TIME, I have thought ‘I hate Eleanor. “. Not one second. Just because I end this Assembly beautifully written … and finally, a logical, or even expected, to Charles Vane’s relationship and Eleanor Guthrie. And also because I find it too easy to put everything on the back of Eleanor. In Black Sails, nobody is a saint. Already, I wish to emphasized that NO ONE has killed Charles Vane. He could survive. But he refused to survive. He CHOSE to die. Billy could have saved him, but Charles would not. Why ? Is it only because he knew that thus, the revolt really begin? Yes in the party, but I do not think that’s the only reason. Since the beginning of season 3, I saw a … Charles Vane lost. I saw that he was suffering, he did not know which road to follow. At no time I have seen have these little smiles players he had early in the season where 1 2, I saw happy not seen at any moment. I saw him lost a little more with each episode. I think in the end … it was definitely more to live. All he liked to where almost taken away from him. He in turn his back on his adopted father, Teach, because life wanted that Teach for Charles did not suit him and even if Charles does not seem to regret his choice, we clearly saw that it weighed on him and that he once again someone he loved. Jack. Anne and also a little, but especially Jack. His best friend, his brother. He saved the life to him and he knows that Jack is now smart enough to continue without him, especially Anne. I think it’s somewhat soothed knowing that he is safe. Eleanor. She, more than any other. Whenever we saw in Charles Vane happy in the show was when she was with him in a way where another. Off after the events of the end of season 2, his betrayal was a terrible blow to him and the murder of Richard Guthrie, he knew there would be no future possibility between them. And even if somewhere he wanted, he does that it makes him suffer. And their stage in the cell of the fort confirmed to him that. They were too strong love to finish on too much hatred. He lost to Eleanor, he lost to Teach, and Jack would not have been enough to make him happy. I think all these things, in addition to the knowledge that his death would help Flint, Jack and the others to win this battle, led him to choose death. It is not Eleanor who killed him. If he had wanted, he could have come off, as it did in Charles Town, and blend into the crowd to get the piercing of a sword. It has always been a struggle between them, a struggle where love and hatred are mixed so incredible. He could win this war between the two. But he refused to. Strangely, one could almost say he left her win. Eleanor … I honestly do not think we realize how much she suffers. She always had a mask, it is obliged to have this mask, Black Sails in the universe, seem weak, dying and she knows it better than anyone. But be aware to look behind that mask. Eleanor lost to his mother, who died when she was a child in a violent attack in Spain that looks to have genuinely traumatized Eleanor. At the same time, so she had more need than ever of his father, the latter brutally rejected and abandoned. It to the have a very lonely childhood, totally private parental love. And the consequences of a lack of love of parents for children are always terrible and have consequences that persist into adulthood. For Eleanor, it’s his fear to love to be where love, his inability to trust and its violent determination to prove to her father that she was worthy to be his daughter, worthy of being loved him. There is a saying that every girl looking her father in the man with whom she shares her life. Do I believe in this saying? Not entirely, but I still think there is truth in it, in many cases, and this is particularly the case for Eleanor. I look again and again and again the series right now, and I feel like I understand things every revisionnage. There I clearly feel they have even underestimated the brands Richard Guthrie left on Eleanor. Such deep marks that I clearly felt, lately, in fact Eleanor projects a little of his father in all the men she has known. Whether with Flint, Hornigold, Charles Scott when his dear father, she always adopt the same behavior: a violent rejection of authority, and especially an absolute revolt against the fact that we can consider it as a child incapable to make choices by itself. She can not stand the idea that we can to dictate his life, it shows on several occasions, including during a scene with Mr. Scott in Season 1 when she almost shouts "The decision does not belong to you! It’s not you, where my father where to Hornigold, where Charles Vane to choose for me! I take only my decisions. ” Charles in particular understood this as saying that “I believe in you enough to these fathers who dictate your behavior.” This is the case, but this reflex with each man in front of her and one might think that this is just a huge female pride and an iron will to impose itself as a power in women this world ruled by men, but it also adopts another disturbing behavior vis-à-vis all his men, it’s almost if to urge that all his men to be proud of her that impressed by it. Clearly, when one of these men is a little impressed because it in fact, even if it is a man she hates Hornigold as we see very clearly that this is what she seeks, both we left alone but that one is impressed by it. Whether we are proud of them. It shows with Mr Scott when he welcomed the end of season 1, it shows with Hornigold when it also welcomes the end of season 1, this is clearly a sense in which it needs. A feeling that she never had from his father. She wanted her father to recognize worthy of his daughter and heiress, that he deems as a potential ally in their family business and not like a little girl cumbersome, it has persisted in to adulthood. She wanted the pride of his father, that he looks and he tells him that he is proud of it, we feel it in each of their scenes that, but he had never done before season 2. This is what every child search, after all. Acceptance of its parent that it is adult and pride. Eleanor suffers from this lack. She suffered terribly, it’s a vacuum in it, such a void she tries, without even realizing it, fill it with any substitute and therefore she put all men over where less in the same position. Finally, the end of season 2, Richard Guthrie finally made him this gift with his long speech leaves Eleanor totally silent upheaval. He gave her what she always expected and very clearly, I can not even imagine the good it’s to make it, as she believed in it, as it has even hooked because even if Charles loved her beyond the imaginable, he certainly would not ever fill that void father she had in her. Only Richard Guthrie could do and he finally did. I think after that Eleanor clearly felt more at peace, it shows the way, certainly everything was far from settled between Richard and her and it will remain poor as shit forever, but he had to fill a vacuum tortured for nearly 24 years. Ca to the be a godsend for her. Charles withdrew the gift to him, unfortunately, even though it was right in the physical act itself beyond the emotional.I think of the change Eleanor is due to this, too. Is that it seems very much more receptive blow to male authority, notably where Rogers simply English. Richard Guthrie punched the hole he had dug in it, the hole grew to rebel against all men that revolved around her, who refused this authority and which made her an important ally for hackers . But once filled this void, that of being much easier for her to accept the authority of Woodes Rogers and English, much simpler because it does not feel as much as before the need to fight for it, though old habits die hard, and we see it out the feisty Eleanor of his youth. Besides Rogers in the English own profile right on him and his father. Somewhere, Eleanor is perhaps really party girls looking a little their father in their companion. I always thought that was why she had this attraction to Flint, because he had this good English and erect something that was reassuring, no less. And I think this is true given the Eleanor shocked when she learns that Flint killed Mr Gates does not expect this from Flint. And the shock was born a small period of lucidity about it all: that the upright image she had of Flint, like that of his father, broke, I think that the clearly frightened and unprepared, which led him instinctively to approach Charles because with this vis-à-vis breaking Flint, Eleanor to understand subconsciously that what she wanted, what she wanted n ’ was not what she needed to move forward. And men like Charles are not necessarily more dangerous just because they hide their less violence. In this short period, I really think it is. This English image, that image of her father she is looking around and it comes to projecting even on those who do not, this is bad for her, destructive but no one makes no account, I think she does not even realize that’s what it seeks. What she needed was a man like Charles Vane, and the bottom of herself as she knows it, just … all from a complex and a childhood trauma. And this stuff does not go away easily, if ever. And the moment of clarity to it had in mid season 2 is closed again when Richard told him she expected those words have always heard it in the mouth of other men but not that of her father which she aspired, in the background, to be worthy of his legacy. She knew she had lost Charles in season 2. And we could see that this choice of it to make her suffer. I remember perfectly that scene where she looks at the fort, looking lost, before snuggling against his father, certainly crying saw the movement of his shoulders. She lost to Charles, but she is comforted in this father she thought she had finally found and earn respect. Charles to betray surely the most difficult she had to do, when it speaks seen in Flint just after, when it speaks of “The things I have destroyed to reach this moment and everything … Anything That strood in ict way. And for All That effort for All That sacrifice … ”. A friend made me realize everything a con trick on Eleanor with a sentence every beast. I am the first to say that Charles Eleanor loved but somehow I had never seen it that way. He just said “his father killed by the man she loved.” Said like that, it takes a different extent I think because so far, I said that I had underestimated me the love that Eleanor had for his father, and I am totally focused me on it to explain his actions and his way of being in season 3, but maybe that’s just half the problem, actually. Maybe this virulent hatred towards it to Charles comes not so much the fact that he killed his father in … but either to HIM who killed his father. The only man she loved. If it was Hornigold where an unknown who killed Richard Guthrie, would she have been such hatred? Such anger? Such determination? Strangely, I do not think. The fact that this is the only man she loved, she still loved him when to turn away saw the condition of his betrayal was diving - serious depression she made on site in his office sitting to fix the floor, completely cut off the air in the world - that that this is the same man she loved that killed his father … to all this love she had for Charles, this love already so skilfully battle related to turned to pure hate hard suddenly. Because clearly, I have never seen Eleanor also in love with Charles that at the end of season 2, after he killed Ned Low, risking his life to protect her. She had given him his confidence completely, to the point of turning against Flint for him. Besides, if it had not been Flint nor Abigail Ashe, is more than certain that at this moment in history, they would have stayed together. But his domestic problems, her love for her father but also his belief that the choice of Charles was too dangerous to Nassau for her, drove him to betray him but this betrayal ripped her heart and it definitely does not that she no longer loved him saw his despair when the survival of facing Charles Flint and depression. Then see the first man she loved killed the second man she loved most … knowing the extreme side of the relationship and feelings of Charles and Eleanor, it’s more logical that this has turned to icy hatred. It became cold and totally for England from the next episode, I realize that. From that moment, she has lost this ability to have this player and provocative. She lost to sincerely I think his ability to love this day because in his mind, the two men she loved died the same day, and one of them had become something to be done. She left overwhelmed by a cold anger. I only share an idea that is now fully acquired me. Hate so cold Eleanor descended directly from a love too strong for someone committed to the only act to never do it against, killing the other man she loved more than anything, the same syndrome all she had, strangely. Throughout season 3, at no time I have seen have this provocative, playful and arrogant she had in the first two seasons, I first thought it was prudent to face English … but actually, no. It’s just that she is no longer able. She totally lost it to seeing the body of his father and knowing that this is Charles Vane which to do that. That explains a lot, I think. Too violent hatred that came out of too violent love. She lost in the image she had of Charles in the last moment, an image that was brighter than ever, because certainly recognize that the man she loved was the murderer of his father was too painful for her. Insupportable. Charles Vane make a stupid thing to shoot was probably the only way it felt to not go crazy. mad grief, hatred and anger but mostly pain. She was already haunted all season 3. Haunted by conflicting feelings, used to love Charles as evidenced by his haggard and lost when Rogers told him that Charles Vane will never return to Nassau, and torn by this icy hatred who invaded kill the animal to murder his father, a pet she can not associate with the man she loved. When Charles speaks to him in the cell, when she finds herself face to face, she tries to see the animal that she has created but there is also the flash, human traits to it once loved. Only Charles condemns himself without express by saying that his father was a shit, because it adds a layer on that which is unbearable to recognize for Eleanor. That is why it so crazy to look half before hitting him, this rage that rises upwards that grows to almost strangle well and screaming lungs full, it is this unbearable pain that it felt, not only of the death of Richard Guthrie, but the fact that this is the man she loved and in which she placed her trust in who killed him. It comes back to the fact I find that Richard Guthrie and Charles Vane are the two men she loved most in. And it explains better if it is determined. That explains the haggard look lost and I perceived it at the hanging, look both tough and determined, determined to kill the animal she saw in him, but with that vague impression of not not knowing what she did because it all leads to a lie it creates is not to sink into madness. Madness and rage that was expressed time that scream, but she managed to control a time and she sank back into his lie to protect themselves, and she whispers his words against him, his words that compared to just a beast. She talks about the image it to him now. In this story, it certainly forgotten in all that Charles once did for her. But compared to the pain she feels, I think that for him it does not weight. And to combat this pain, the only way to find it is to get the image of him and cut of any emotion, except this wave of doubt echo of his inner madness, who invaded in the hanging and that to me says this look haggard she had to for a long time, that look at it continued to have once he was dead and she has observed. In truth, it is a struggle inside her. Memories of the past who want to resurface at any price, make him feel this pain and this wall it is put inside of herself. As long as she stays on this lie, it can keep moving, to keep a cool head and clear mind because it protects the lie of his inner feelings. Sometimes, this wall, this lie will crack and pain bursts seen and bewilderment in it, as I saw the death of Charles, and the largest crack comes from its howling face Charles. It can hardly lie in front of him at a time she could never have. But it has hardened (besides the producers specified that the death of Richard Guthrie killed Charles had hardened, but I had not really understood what that meant until now). Just one day the wall is broken and that’s the end of it. Not only this pain she pushed to invade will suddenly break and because it will realize in the end that she lost any. Not just where his father Charles. Just everything. This is not one where the other is a huge and everything she protects this huge while sticking this animal picture on Charles to succeed in combat, otherwise what she did succeed not. That explains the sudden reversal of his emotions in Season 2. Episode 7, she is feverish, desperate for betraying Charles. Episode 8, it is in total depression, silent, low, single cloistered in his office with barely the strength to talk to others. And in the evening when she discovers the body of his father, the pain we see in it, we see that something break in his eyes, and we see this huge shell it is necessary to protect her -even will immediately put in place. The next day, facing Max, it is marble. Icy. Indifferent to everything that happens around her, except his new determination to stop hackers and establish a legal trade in Nassau and as she said, to be at war against Charles Vane. That day, Eleanor has lost its ability to feel true positive emotions. She has in fact lost its innocence, oddly. Since they are only chimeras. She clings to the idea of redemption without really can get involved if it can not really feel anything. I think somewhere in her consciousness of this loss of feeling inside and it scared him, too. That would explain a little better his approach facing Rogers. She wanted to, I think, to find this capacity she had loved and that is what she tries with Rogers. To regain a sense lost but I see force, trying again and again, without really succeeding. I now think that Rogers is more to her. He represents his last chance to regain lost that feeling, that feeling without which it must feel very empty inside. It is a desperate fight with Rogers. Especially that in the hand of a layer that face Charles not to sink. She at times flashes of his brutal feelings she had before. With Max, for example, with whom she had a strong relationship with. It’s still not enough, not at all, and I doubt that this is enough to wake up one day completely. She begins to slowly see Max as a real ally when she arrived in the idea that this would be a potential enemy for it and I think it’s quite nice for her to see that she can see a friend in her, a friend who knows her well. But for now, it has been totally inadequate for this wall Eleanor continues. Can cure it? I do not know. I doubt she has the time, anyway. My conclusion ? Eleanor is a character who suffers internally, and fights as it can to survive. Eleanor with immense strength in it and why it is used. Specifically, given the evolution of the relationship of Charles and Eleanor, it was expected that in the end, one is trying to kill each other and will succeed in half … and I do not think Charles would ever be able to kill Eleanor. Otherwise, he would have done that night, instead of killing Richard Guthrie. Eleanor is a complex character that Flint where John sentimentally, as fascinating as they. She just developed differently. It’s a strong woman in the end, a woman who refuses to be submitted in a world dominated by men who struggle as she can. This is a woman who has always fascinated me personally. This is a woman I understand. I expect a lot of season 4 for it, I expect to see his mental evolution, see if my theories are good, and just continue to see this great female character. There is a HUGE risk that it ends up dying by Teach where Jack … where else it will bury them all, who knows. What the show has taught me is that it is better to never underestimate Eleanor Guthrie. Of all the enemies that Flint and the others have to face, she is by far the most dangerous. All this, I recall, is only an analysis and personal opinion :) In my eyes, either in where pirates in English, Eleanor Guthrie will forever be the one and only Queen of Nassau. And the female character most amazing and fascinating of the series.

DKJVKADCJSNLX thank you so much for this post!!!! XD <3 I’ll get straight in!

Such a great point about Charles not being happy. I’ve only watched S3 once so far so this is just from what I remember but I think Charles realises that his way of life, of violence, piracy, of literally fighting every day to stay free, is becoming obsolete and everyone else is moving on. At the beginning of S3 he is part of Team Protect Nassau with Flint, Jack et al but when Teach comes back he realises he’s bored, he doesn’t fit in. But when Flint then comes and asks him who he is, he knows he’s outgrown who he was with Teach, and he sacrifices himself for the cause, for his friends, because he sees his place is not in the world any longer, it’s for those who can find a place in it like his brother and sister Jack and Anne. He does it for them. He hates Eleanor and all she stands for in that moment, but actually he’s finally sacrificing himself for what she fought for: peace and equality for everyone. He could not live in this world but he died for it.

I didn’t know/remember Eleanor’s mother died in the Spanish attack omg, this makes her protection of the fort so that can never happen again all the more moving.

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Love what you said about Eleanor’s rejection of male authority figures because she’s had to look after herself when her father left.

I think she saw Flint as someone more civilised too, someone she could relate to in wanting to help the people of Nassau stop being the “animals” they are forced to be.

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Because she felt this connection with Flint it shocked her when he killed Gates as you said, and it is easier for her to go against him and all pirates now because she can put him in the monster/animal group that she put Vane in by 3x9.

Her feelings for her father translated into her feelings towards all men. Firstly hatred: resentment for being abandoned, having to fend for herself, disempowered, and secondly longing: for approval, validation that yes, she has done all this alone, she is their equal. Now that her father is dead these two states have separated into how she feels about brutal pirates vs civilised English.

I think Charles did understand Eleanor a lot better than most people, and believe they had real feelings for each other, being very similar in their aggressive need to show that no-one owns them, but he didn’t understand her love for Nassau and acted very entitled towards her a lot of the time so I think the relationship wouldn’t have worked out. He had too much Teach in him. However YES I really like this:

I think she liked that Charles was straightforward, there were no games - until he killed her father to spite her, which was “cowardly”, not his style at all. What he said to her in 2x6 is “all bullshit.”

I think in that moment he must realise that his way of life, piracy, isn’t legitimate. He’s betrayed himself as much as her when he killed her father. But he knows Flint’s vision, he knows there is a future, he just knows it isn’t England’s, and Eleanor is too blinded - and forced into working with England -  to see. (Side note, I hope Eleanor sees that England and Woodes aren’t what she needs, so her and Max can manipulate from inside the system!)

I think you’re right that Charles being the one to kill her father hurt most because she felt he understood her a little, understood her relationship with her father. So it is easier then for her to see him, Hornigold (who sold her out) and all pirates, as animals, the enemy, with no empathy or humanity. Because they are uncivilised and her father was civilised, so she is with England. She needs to find order in this chaos.

Yess I love this. I hadn’t thought of her seeing her as a rival before but that’s a good point. Hardening herself has taken its toll and she reaches out for her old friend, even if she may also be her rival. I love the parallels between Eleanor and Max vs Flint and Silver. I think/hope that both will follow the same way, in that Max will take over from Eleanor, just as Silver will take over from Flint. But both willingly, knowing they’re not alone and have people taking care of things if they step down, and even if they didn’t complete all they set out to do, they are *allowed* to find peace and love themselves (and their partners), finally be content. Both Flint and Eleanor hate who they’ve had to become, the sacrifices they’ve made (as you said) in their quest to make Nassau better.

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Also, Max and Silver are better leaders than Eleanor and Flint. Eleanor started out with power, money, a business; Flint had power physically, mentally and skills from his training. In their respective roles they were able to rule through fear, threat, aggression etc. which, as I was saying before re Teach and Vane, are tactics from the simpler, ‘old’ ways of doing things. Max and Silver are both lower class, in the beginning out for themselves by necessity, having to learn fast the ways of the world through hard work and subtlety, having to read people and be liked in order to get by as they don’t have brute strength or power on their side. People trust and like them because they’ve both at one time been in the positions of those they’re commanding, so there’s an understanding, and they can manipulate without people even realising they’ve done anything. They are “both feared and liked” as Silver said. A hard-won respect through years of not having much and working up through the ranks as it were.

I know Eleanor and Flint have both had a lot against them (of course!) and are less privileged than say Woodes Rogers, but compared to Max and Silver they’ve had a lot on their side re more traditional power dynamics. And it helps (ruling-wise) that Max and Silver started out just surviving, not aspiring towards any sort of power, whereas Eleanor and Flint had help with surviving (from father/father figure - however much of an asshole each turned out to be), so focussed on helping others, which means a LOT of responsibility and the weight of the world on their shoulders. That gets really tough, so I’m excited for them both to get love and support from Max and Silver as they take over the reigns. (Get it? Reins to reign? Puns :’))

I don’t really know how to finish this now lol but great post! So many points I hadn’t thought about so thank you, thank you! <3