Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-27404492-20170709002747/@comment-14909251-20170715053014

I think the general image of the family that has been presented to us is one where Willow is as much a victim of Jacques as their children. Any bad parenting may just be a result of her experience.

For the record, I am not even remotely assuming that Jacques was always the way he is in the series or even that he was always as bad as he is in the present period of the series during the time he has been involved with the Schnee family. He may well have been a lot like he is now when he first met Willow, but as with many abusive relationships, she saw the parts of him he wanted her to see and those parts may have been very good.

Not knowing exactly how their relationship turned out, either he still was sort of hiding his true self during the early period of the marriage when Winter was conceived or her conception is why they got married. At any rate, I would argue the large age gap is a potential indicator that their relationship has not been an intense romance for much of their marriage.

One thing I suggested a while back, before knowing whether Jacques was a Schnee by blood or not, is that Weiss could be the product of an affair (thus cementing Jacques as the wicked stepfather to her Snow White). Were that the case and Jacques knew, then his treatment of Weiss would be a bit more understandable. As for Whitley, not to get too explicitly dark, but we don't know exactly how long Willow has had her drinking problem.

Willow's initial reasons for staying would probably be Winter and also still being in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. By the time she has begun to see him for what he is Jacques has already found a way to manipulate Nicholas Schnee into giving Jacques control of the SDC. Presuming this means he controls the other parts of the Schnee estate, then Willow has little choice but to stay or run, which is not an easy choice.

Funny thing is that when I talked about gaslighting earlier, the name itself is derived from a play that was adapated into films. The most well-known film is one where the husband's behavior is literally about stealing the wife's inheritance. So, it could be a very apt choice to describe this if we assume he did something similar to Willow to convince Nicholas his daughter was not mentally fit for taking on the company.