Lily Salvatore: Mother to Everyone Except the Ones She Gave Birth To

[PinkRibbons]

(As always, any other title suggestions are welcome. I just came up with this one off the top of my head.)

 

I was just adding a quote to that thread, and it occurred to me that Stefan seems to have it right -- Lily seems to willingly attach herself to terrible people. Presumably she married Giuseppe of her own free will and Julian seems to be the same. Not to mention her affection for her current horrible little pack of kids.

 

I mentioned last week, I think, that I'm surprised that Damon and Stefan are as sane as they are considering the parenting they got. I'm starting to think that Lily's supposed hatred of Giuseppe was more about him shipping her off than the way he treated her or the kids. Her biological sons somehow got to now with a lot more common decency (or common sense, perhaps) and just plain old good manners than the brats she's mothering now. Possibly getting Lily out of their life when they did was somewhat beneficial to the Salvatore boys.

Edited October 23, 2015 by PinkRibbons

[immortalfrieza]

 

I mentioned last week, I think, that I'm surprised that Damon and Stefan are as sane as they are considering the parenting they got. I'm starting to think that Lily's supposed hatred of Giuseppe was more about him shipping her off than the way he treated her or the kids. Her biological sons somehow got to now with a lot more common decency (or common sense, perhaps) and just plain old good manners than the brats she's mothering now. Possibly getting Lily out of their life when they did was somewhat beneficial to the Salvatore boys.

I'd say the Heretics were just psychotic from the start, rather than it really having anything to do with her parenting skills. That much I can understand, being born into a family that despises you and thinks you should die just because you were born with an ability they didn't have would turn anybody nuts after awhile. However, the fact that Lily dotes on them and both lacks the power and the will to do anything when they step out of line unlike with her actual children makes her a terrible parent. The fact that any of them actually listen to Lily at all is absurd.

[Cattitude]

I don't find Lily to have many redeeming qualities. I also dislike that she makes me root FOR Giuseppe who was a SOB, but the guy did seem to want to raise his children in good southern gentlemen style and stuck to his convictions even if it meant killing his own children, which he saw as giving them mercy. After all he was a human and part of the orginal MF town council. At least he tried to parent them.

Lily OTOH seems both heartless and weak. To me she is only leader of these "children" b/c they see her as so fragile they have to follow her around pretending to listen to her to protect her fragile sense of self. It is obvious both her natural children genuinely love her and want affection but b/c she really isn't strong she can't truely mother anyone so she can't really give what a mother like Carol or Liz did and what her real children want. Her being a "mother" to the heretics is just lip service to the title b/c it seems they really humor her in the role and it really is the other way around. Lily's idea of a mother is really someone who should be taken care of by her children and given her own way and truely who wants a mother like that. That is also why she falls for controlling abusive men.

[rue721]

I'm starting to think that Lily's supposed hatred of Giuseppe was more about him shipping her off than the way he treated her or the kids.

 

Lily really seems to have been A-OK with all the horrible stuff that Giuseppe did, as long as he wasn't doing it to her.

 

I mean, Giuseppe was a plantation owner in antebellum Virginia, so I'm going to assume he had slaves. But FFS, Lily *still* doesn't seem like she has a problem with that. Apparently, she didn't have a problem with Damon fighting for the Confederacy, either. Lily's sole intervention while he was enlisted was to tell him (by proxy) to take a sick day during a particularly bloody battle.

 

But I guess the problem isn't just that she's a virulent racist, since, judging from that vase story, she didn't even care that Giuseppe beat her own children. She abandoned her kids with him and he MURDERED THEM, and she doesn't even seem to care about that.

 

If she's OK with Giuseppe being a child-abusing slaver, what *was* he doing that she had a problem with? I really can't think of what he could have been doing that was worse than owning slaves and murdering his children. Those are literally the worst possible things I can imagine anyone doing. Maybe starting a genocide....which OMG HE EVEN DID THAT! Against the vampires. He helped heard them into the church and light them on fire, and founded a committee dedicated to their annihilation. And Lily doesn't even seem to have had a problem with THAT, considering that she doesn't bring it up. FFS, I don't understand that woman. Her priorities are bizarre.

 

Stefan obviously loves her, though. And she and Damon actually seem pretty close, despite themselves. They're constantly having deeply personal conversations that they keep private, even from Stefan. I like having her on the show just because I think her relationships with Stefan and Damon have the potential to be interesting.

 

This shit with the Heretics has got to stop, though. And her thought processes really have to start making more sense. I don't understand what her deal is with Giuseppe, or Stefan and Damon, or the Heretics. Because feelings don't work like that! You can't just not have feelings for people because that's convenient, and you can't just replace your children with stray psychopathic witches.

[PinkRibbons]

To be fair, not everyone in the antebellum south owned slaves -- it was a huge expense, and there were people who felt it was distasteful even if they didn't try to stop slavery themselves. And I don't think it has ever been said or shown that the Salvatores had a plantation -- I suspect they were townies and their money came from trade. Both the Salvatore boys have said they didn't want to be fighting for the south and didn't agree with the confederacy, but there was more than one reason people joined the army. Some honestly thought it was about state's rights; some felt the north was built up and trying to take over the southern economy to grab its wealth. Damon may have enlisted simply because all his friends did and/or he wanted to get away from home. So I think the whole part about the Salvatores being racists and/or slaveholders is rather murky.

Edited October 24, 2015 by PinkRibbons

[miss-vanilla]

As a parent, I can't reconcile the notion of never loving my children having once loved them implicitly, which is what we are asked to believe. Couple that with vase story and I have to conclude that she never really loved her sons as much as a mother should.

I know times have changed, and things were harsher back then, but still, she recognizes that Guiseppe treated her badly, and wasn't a nice man, but left her beloved boys at his mercy, and they ended up dead- vampires.

Since her return from 1903 she has shown no remorse or love for her children, and has in fact done the most hurtful thing possible, she replaced them, without guilt or shame, and then went on to punish Damon further by encouraging Kai to inflict the sleeping curse on an innocent as revenge for Damon refusing to bring her "murderous family" back from the prison world. Talk about disproportionate punishment! It's the vase story all over again x1000. The woman is delusional, and a hypocrite, and she has the gall to ask Stefan what she has done to incur their wrath. I hate her, and her statement in the last ep about not wanting to see her children dead, does not make me change my mind. She is a selfish bitch that wants her cake and eat it, and that is just not gonna happen.