(no subject)

[adamance]

[OOC]

Your Name: Alison
Contact: medieval @ plurk
Are you at least 16 years of age or older?: Yes
Current Characters(s): N/A

[IC]

Is this a re-app?: No.

Character Name: Lexa
Journal: adamance
Canon: The 100
Canon Point: 3x7, post-death
Species: Human, albeit with a collection of AIs in the technology in her neck
Age: 21-22

History: Official Wikipedia page | Episode summaries | Timeline of events from the Fan Wiki. | The 100 wiki page on Lexa.

Personality: As the Commander of the Grounders (one of the remaining groups of people after Earth underwent a nuclear apocalypse), Lexa has been trained to be the most exemplary member of their society, as well as the symbol of all of her people. What this means is simple: the Grounders are a harsh people formed by the conditions of their existence, believing that survival must come at any cost. They utilize the language of violence, believing that strength in battle is one of their greatest virtues. They often treat life as if it's a war to contend with, both among their people and with outsiders like the Mountain Men or the people from the sky (typically referred to as Skaikru). They treat many of their actions as necessary evils, and being able to make these grave decisions is also a sign of strength. Lexa's people celebrate her wisdom because she knows when to make these decisions—and when to stay her hand to create and encourage unity among her people to turn against a common enemy. She can't risk being seen as weak, which leads to a number of scenarios where she must act with violence to get her point across. During one of Lexa's audiences in her throne room at in her people's capitol building, one of her ambassadors challenges her strength and decisions, insisting that she might be weak for not being as ruthless as possible. She draws the challenger into a "private conversation," and then proceeds to kick him off the balcony. None of her people are surprised by this decision, and the script itself hints that this was a commonplace circumstance.

Along with being the most extreme of her people, Lexa has to be cautious and give her trust to few others. Caution among her people involves acting with preventative action. They must concern themselves with the living, but they cannot forget the dead. For that reason, they followed a creed of "blood must have blood," which often included practices of torture to prolong someone's death before they died. The harshness of their ways combined with the emphasis on survival means that death is truly a great cost, even if they seem quick to leap to it without realizing its counterproductive nature. This point is something that Lexa does come around on, but it's a decision that comes with a great deal of doubt. In order to become the Commander, Lexa had to kill all of the other novitiates for the role in a Hunger Games/Battle Royale-esque fight to the death. From the very beginning, she struck out with blood on her hands, but she had been prepared for that from birth. The final stage of her preparations comes at the hands of Titus, the man who supplements the Commander's teachings for all novitiates. He tells her that she cannot favor anyone, and that being attached is something that can only be viewed as weak (and therefore emotions themselves are a weakness). Time leads Lexa to realizing the error in Titus' teachings because she sees that, like Gustus, he does not trust her judgment. She reprimands him, but doesn't do anything more because she believes that he has her best interests at heart and is only worried about her.

Part of Titus' teachings are damaging because caring for people, especially her people, is part of what makes Lexa a great commander. Because she loves her people, she is willing to consider a variety of options and she's executed a number of creative plans. As a result, her people have come to see her as a visionary. She is the first Commander to begin to introduce ideas that would lead them to no longer going to war constantly, and brings peace within the different clans. One of these clans (the Ice Nation) was responsible for the loss of her first love, but she overlooks her grudge and accepts them into her coalition. She understands the necessity of this action, and will set aside her personal interests for the sake of all of her people. This coalition of all of the clans is a very new thing, and a tenuous one. The fact that it's tenuous is partly because her people are used to a lifestyle of warring, but Lexa is willing to continue to work diligently to find ways to ensure its continuation. She is prepared to do anything possible to give her people a better future, even if it means she might die for it. In fact, it's apparent that Lexa values self-sacrifice—though her words sometimes contradict what she comes to see as honorable. It's clear that the Lexa who presents herself as harsh and unforgiving is putting on a front; she understands caring for others, and is willing and able to show a softer side to those she cares about in private (as she does with Clarke as she comes to know her, and with Titus as well as the next set of novitiates). She will chastise those who are too caring for others, but will come to respect them at the same time.

The problem with this open-mindedness is that Lexa clearly struggles with it, especially when her emotions come into play. She openly suppresses her emotions, doing her best to choke them back whenever they threaten to reveal themselves. Cold and callous in the face of others, challenges to that threaten her composure. Almost as a way of conforming to this belief, she takes every effort to force Clarke to take on this mindset. Therefore, she has a tendency to overcompensate and end up becoming too ruthless. Lexa often assumes that the harshest action is the best action without considering other possibilities. At times, this can make her seem inflexible and far from the visionary that her people claim that she happens to be. She allows her people to be hit with a missile by their enemy to win a war even when there are other options available. She betrays Clarke's people and leaves them behind to die. When she finds a field full of three hundred of her people dead, her immediate response is to act rashly: she tries to take Clarke, now a friend and ambassador, prisoner because of her people's role in their deaths. Her first instinct is to always be as vicious as possible, or to present a front of viciousness. What is most unfortunate is that many of these actions are excused by her people.

All of this ties back neatly into the idea of Lexa being a symbol for her people, and as that symbol, she has to act without any remorse or regret on the behalf of her people. She cannot let any challenges arise to the status of her identity as her people's commander and symbol. That means she can betray and break an alliance if it means that she protects them (and it also means that she can accept Skaikru into her coalition and offer them the same extent of protection later on). Her position as a commander lends her a certain degree of charisma, but Lexa goes beyond that. The way she carries herself is very much the image of someone who withholds her emotions and gives little of herself away. She holds her head high when she walks with a bland and disinterested expression on her face. On multiple occasions, the audience sees Lexa swallow down her tears and close her eyes to collect herself, and it's clearly an action that she has practiced throughout the years. But she is not only stoic. As the Commander, Lexa has to be able to speak to her people in a powerful way. She is allowed to show her anger, especially if she's issuing a threat in combination with it (and she's known to be someone who will follow through). She doesn't hesitate to issue orders to people, to direct people to act, and to ask for things from others. Lexa has to be decisive in just about everything she accomplishes, and she has to show a sharpness to her decisions. This aspect comes across in her ability to speak bluntly and directly, not only in everyday conversation (though that is most certainly true), but also in how she speaks to her people. Her charisma and training allows her to have the skills to break outside of that: she can give speeches easily to rally her people, and she can be clever to know exactly what it is her people need to see and hear. She has her finger on the pulse of her people at all times.

The ability to be decisive and have her finger on the pulse of her people is something Lexa manages because of her sharp intelligence, especially as the leader of a warring nation. She might act rashly or end up taking the most ruthless route because she isn't accustomed to thinking outside of the box, but she knows her people well and is able to understand the constraints of the world she lives in. Titus labeled her as wise, and for someone of her age, she most certainly is—though her thinking can seem relatively inflexible when it comes to matters she should have came around on sooner. Still, she manages how she does because she's cunning, able to develop even the most convoluted of plans to bring about something she wants. Given the rather political nature of her life, she has to be able to navigate the interests of all of the twelve clans within her coalition, and do what she can to meet all of their needs in a world where surviving is extremely difficult. She is also able to see the opportunities within a situation, and she knows when to not press her luck—or, knows when not to press her luck most of the time.

No matter how clever or how decisive Lexa is, she is still young. As someone in her early twenties, that means she is prone to make mistakes, and prone to change her mind on things that she believes might otherwise weaken her. That youth certainly has an upside: it is what leads to her being able to be adaptable, and being willing to change her ways when she believes it suits her and her people. It's apparent in how she creates an alliance with Clarke … and even after betraying her, she brings Clarke in to offer her protection. In the latter scenario, her people believe that she brings in Clarke partly because Clarke has earned a reputation among Lexa's people as Wanheda—the Commander of Death. This motivation may be part of Lexa's decision, but that's hardly all of it. She sees Clarke as the leader of her own people, and therefore, she has to extend an olive branch to her and request that she join her coalition.Not everything is done for theater: when she accepts Clarke, it's because she values her insight and opinions. When Clarke asks Lexa to change her people's ways and demand a different approach to living, she accepts it. This approach involves turning the motto of "blood must have blood" into "blood must not have blood." Lexa accepts Clarke's argument that if her people want to have a better future, they have to stop the cycle of bloodshed. She will act with force if and when necessary, but she will not immediately jump to warfare, bloodshed, and violence. Even when her people struggle against this altered motto, she still reinforces it (and when Clarke demands the blood of one of the Mountain Men, Lexa is quick to point it out that Clarke is being hypocritical in her demands).

Finally, there is the matter of Lexa being a symbol to her people, and that isn't just tied to the identity of the commander within the lore of her people, but to a chip that is inserted into the back of her neck. In this chip, she has the minds of the previous commanders there to help and guide her. The artificial intelligences within the chip have limited autonomy because Lexa is always in charge, but they can still come to her and interrupt her dreams. Lexa tells Clarke of a moment when she has a dream where the other commanders warn her for going against her people's way of "blood must have blood." There is no doubt that Lexa's mind is her own. She thinks, acts, and loves all on her own, but at the same time, Lexa is unafraid of dying because she believes that her spirit will live on with the next Commander. Whenever she has to face her death, she is overtly matter of fact about it, believing that death is not the end because of the reincarnation process within her people's culture (and this process is tied to the insertion of the chip). By being the holder of the chip, she carries the long tradition of commanders of her people, and she can also become worryingly single-minded about leadership. That's undoubtedly part of why she sees Clarke as the "special" leader of her people: Lexa is accustomed to commanders being symbols and them having that unique quality attached to them. Again, there is no doubt that Lexa is her own person. She can love, hope for a life where she doesn't constantly owe her people something, and act out of selfishness. She certainly has free will, even if the chip inside her head leads to the commanders advising against her decisions. In her final moments, Lexa reaches a critical point in her development in straying from her people's ways: she tells Clarke that life is about more than just surviving. Returning to life will grant Lexa some new perspective on these words, especially in a scenario that will seem to be about survival at first.

Powers & Abilities:
Fighting

She can easily wield one or two swords without difficulty, a spear both in combat and in throwing it over a long distance with perfect accuracy, and presumably a variety of other weapons as well (as her people use bows and arrows as well). Even without a weapon in hand, she's held her own in combat, making her good at hand-to-hand combat as well.

In addition, her people are talented at what amounts to be guerilla warfare. They can work independently but in unison in moving through woods to cause a great deal of harm to others. This involves training in stealth, in setting traps, and more

While all warriors in her culture are not healers, all of them are trained in basic first aid. They know how to close wounds using burning metal, how to figure out whether certain plants are poisonous, and how to apply and cure poisons. They also have developed certain biological warfare weapons to harm their enemies en masse, weakening them in the process.

Physiologically:

In order to identify the next commander, there are unique Grounders who are born with black blood flowing through their veins. Lexa is one of them, making it so that the color of her blood is actually black.

The physiology associated with the black blood passed down from the first of her people, and it allows them to resist the heavy radiation outside on Earth. Not all of her people can resist it, and therefore many of them are born with deformities.

She has a silicone computer chip in the back of her head that is an artificial intelligence designed to help and consider the facets of humanity so that it can continue on. Given the spiritual nature of her people, she doesn't know exactly what this entails, and believes that she communes with them in her dreams. In reality, the chip actually has the uploaded minds of the previous commanders, with them now becoming artificial intelligence that syncs with her mind. Because the chip is degraded, she cannot access it directly.

Politically:

Once someone in the Grounder society is identified as a Nightblood, they are brought to the capital so that they can train under the Commander. As a result, Lexa has been trained since her identification in the ins and outs of her society, as well as the land and everything surrounding it. (It's unclear when this happened; it was late enough in life that she and Anya had a mentorship bond, but early enough that Titus could have a great deal of affection and influence over her decisions.)

All of this adds up to her being a trained politician, with someone who acts with the belief of going to war or preventing war with her every notion. Sometimes it's easier to see her as a general, but she is, without a doubt, a leader, and someone who knows how to bring about diplomatic arrangements, consider the needs of her ambassadors, and more. In that, she can't just be seen as a military leader. To her people, she is an official who was born for the role she takes on. This fact is one Lexa herself believes as well.

Misc: As I described on the FAQ, Lexa has a silicon chip that syncs up with both her biological functions and her mind. She is only able to accept this because of her altered physiology that comes with her having black blood. We know very little about the minds that are inside of this chip outside of the first Commander, Becca. Here is the Wiki page for the chip.

Sample: Sample one. [Begins as the game's equivalent of network, but promptly switches to action.]
Sample two.
Sample three.
Sample four (none of these are long enough, but it's her interacting with this setting).