Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-27234079-20191221163921/@comment-14909251-20191229060552

Seeing all the victim-blaming for Weiss in this thread is rather sickening and I think you all are completely missing the point here. Weiss cannot be held responsible for Whitley's treatment without essentially blaming her for being a victim. For one, if you think about it, Willow is contradicting herself. On one hand she says it is good that Weiss left and won't come back, but also implicitly reprimands her for "abandoning" Whitley. That doesn't make sense. It is also clear she has some confusion and how much of that is mental and how much of it is physical (from heavy drinking) is speculative, but I think mental is definitely a part of it.

Weiss can't trust Whitley because they are essentially the most opposite in their responses. Of all the Schnees, Weiss is the only one who has no qualms about openly and directly defying Jacques. By contrast, Whitley's way of dealing with the things is to become as completely obedient as possible to the point where he is more mistreated henchkid. Expecting her to trust him while still living under Jacques is as illogical as Willow's reprimand. In that environment, every family member is a potential snitch, and Whitley is the one everyone would most expect to snitch. Can anyone articulate a logical way for Weiss to have done anything to help Whitley at that point?

It is also worth considering that Willow, out of all of them, is the one who has the most ability and the greatest responsibility for watching out for Whitley's well-being. A mother reprimanding her daughter for essentially not staying in an abusive household to watch out for her brother, when that is the mother's job first and foremost is not a good thing. Winter also has a greater responsibility as she has been completely unbound from Jacques for years. Just a few months of being fully unattached to Jacques and suddenly Weiss is supposed to. . . do. . . what again? Hell, she was in the active process of doing something when she got that reprimand, even if it was not really about Whitley.

Honestly, I wouldn't rule out a scenario where she takes her mother's advice to heart and talks to Whitley about what she found in some way, only for him to blab it all to daddy. The end result being that Weiss is put in far greater danger as Jacques is unlikely to respond well to the prospect that his most disobedient child is going to put him in the slammer. He already has a loyal heir and therefore doesn't really need three kids. Of course, that assumes they don't, for a third time this Volume, completely skip the outcome of the big cliffhanger and just give us the aftermath with Weiss relaying the information.

On that note, all the hopes for Weiss bursting into the dining room hall going "You are exposed, sir!" are not thinking this through much. If the "smile for the cameras" bit means there are press attending, then she to consider the immediate public effect of her actions. Any big spectacle is likely to get out to the entire Kingdom within minutes. That means she would be not only tipping off Salem's people that the heroes are on to them, which probably wouldn't be good, telling the whole Kingdom that the election they just had that concluded with an election-day massacre allegedly by an Atlesian android was also completely rigged in favor of the monopolistic Atlesian tycoon is probably not going to do much for community relations. ..