watchtower

her armor + the clothes she wore in her first canon scene, black face paint, anya's braid

when it comes down to it, lexa is (for lack of a better way to put it) one of the most impressive characters we've been introduced to so far. she is sharp and versatile, demanding of respect despite her age without caving to unnecessary ruthlessness in the process. i think the best way to describe her is to outline her personality in two sections: who she is as the grounder commander, and who she is as a person.

COMMANDER OF THE FOREST PEOPLE

from the time she inherited leadership, lexa has devoted nearly every hour of every day to becoming everything that a commander is required to be. that, more than anything else thus far, has shaped her to be the person that she is now. this isn't like clarke, a person first and a leader second. lexa and her position as commander have become so strongly intertwined that the things her people expect from a leader are now fundamental aspects of her core personality.

one thing she's demonstrated time and time again is that lexa is capable of extreme versatility without reaching the edge of her comfort zone. in her introductory scene, she's locked in a cell with two prisoners (the leader and second of the sky people, when they were back on the ark), and you as the viewer are just as convinced as those two men are that she's exactly who she appears to be: timid, modestly-dressed, and nervous for their fates as she informs them that one must kill the other or the commander will kill them both. it comes as a definite shock when, in response to being caught in a chokehold from behind, her response is 'this one is mine' before she busts open a can of whup-ass and puts her aggressor on his back without so much as looking troubled by the effort. it was 100% an act from the start, but she absolutely sold it. this versatility is also shown in how quickly she's able to make executive decisions and act upon them despite that they may have turned out much differently than she expected. (looking at the plot twist commonly known as 'gustus and his poisoned cup' as a great example here.)

a final example of her versatility comes in the fact that she was open to negotiating an alliance with the sky people at all. she was in the distinct minority in this, and she continues to be in the minority right up to the show's latest episode, though her people are making an effort on her orders. that brings me to another really important point about lexa: while other leaders follow the path their predecessors have forged and their people will readily accept and follow, lexa is not afraid to ask the forest people to help her forge a new path altogether, even one she knows they won't be fond of. i feel like this + the above-mentioned ability to slip into roles convincingly all stem from a fundamental acuity on people in general. she knows how to walk those fine lines that others would stumble off of, how to push just enough without pushing too far, how to inspire almost unanimous trust in her leadership even if they aren't always convinced of her choices right off the bat.

relatedly, one of the key aspects of her success as commander stems from her ability to make the hard choices swiftly and without hesitation. when she and clarke first spoke, clarke proposed an alliance, and while lexa was receptive enough to that much, her terms were clear and non-negotiable: they had to hand over finn (who needlessly slaughtered 13 of her people) to be executed for his transgressions, or else be massacred by her people. that was still a point at which the grounders were painted as antagonists, so as the viewer we were supposed to find that verdict cruel... but from lexa's perspective, it was absolutely necessary. there was legitimately zero chance that her people would accept talk of a truce if the murderer hadn't been punished, and while lexa didn't have a problem making a controversial decision, that would be both an outright injustice and a sign of weakness in her as their leader. so they either had to execute finn to wipe the slate relatively clean, or the sky people had to be slaughtered in their entirety to eliminate the liability of their presence.

the hard choices she's made haven't just been toward the sky people, either. when it turned out that one of the warriors she'd known since she was a child had poisoned her cup and attempted to frame raven kom skaikru, she executed him just as swiftly as she would have executed raven for the same. though she would do anything to protect her people, that protection is invalidated once they disobey her orders, and she won't hesitate to hand one of her own men over to the sky people's brand of justice if that person seeks to attack them. in fact, that's exactly what happened in 2x10 - she handed clarke her sword and said, 'the kill is yours, clarke'. not even a flicker of doubt or hesitation.

all in all, lexa really does have insanely good composure under most circumstances. the primary exception thus far was the poison was discovered, at which point the acid in her tone could've burnt through steel as she ordered the sky people to be contained. why? because betrayal, above all, is one of her 'cardinal sins' so to speak. i'm not sure if that's unanimous among all of her peoples or if that's a hot button of lexa's specifically, but the fact stands. and even then, she was entirely recomposed as she began to torture the suspect (poor raven) with the first few slices of their death of a thousand cuts. she has given harsh orders, she has witnessed members of both the sky people and her own falling into various states of emotional disarray, and she has even slaughtered someone she cared for (in her own way) without so much as a hint of emotion. a lot of this stems back from something she told clarke - that she learned how to get rid of the pain, and that in order to do so, one first has to cease to love or care. love is weakness, to lexa. it compromises your judgment and endangers your people.

a final note about her leadership that i didn't know where to cram in there so far is that not only is she open to the truce, but she's actually intellectually engaged by it. lexa actively seeks to cause the sky people to learn more about her own, and her own to learn more about the sky people. she often asks questions about the skaikru ways, which are oftentimes so incredibly foreign to her that she can receive a common-sense topic as new information (e.g. being confused about leadership selection not based around the dead leader's spirit finding a successor, as if that's the only way leadership could be chosen). vice-versa is true, too. lexa seems varying degrees of impressed or pleased whenever sky people show knowledge of her own people's culture and ways, ranging from the 'that was unexpected in a good way' look she gave clarke when clarke told finn's wrapped body 'your fight is over' in trigadesling to the nod of approval she offered marcus kane when he greeted her as 'lexa kom trikru', careful not to butcher the words.

LEXA, THE WOMAN

while relatively little is shown of her as a person rather than a leader, we managed to get more and more peeks at that side of her with each episode that went by. really, it comes down to the fact that in front of her people in any way, she will always be their commander. in a setting where she's away from her people, like snowblind, she'll be more than a little jarred by fact that the leadership version of herself is essentially invalidated here without the forest people to command, and she'll have to figure out which part of what's left of her is the part she's willing to show to her fellow snowblind characters.

it's not even that she's entirely unwilling to share, either. when she's one-on-one with clarke after finn's send-off pyre, she sees that the skaikru girl is hurting immensely, but rather than tell her to 'man up' more or less (as she might have had to with one of her own people, depending on circumstance), she voluntarily shares her own story of loss - one of the most personal pieces of herself, lexa offered to clarke to bridge the gap between them. because no one quite knows a leader's pain but another leader. no one understands what it feels like to make the necessary calls, to have that much blood on their hands. but lexa does. she felt that same pain an uncountable number of times, enough times that it pushed her to force herself not to feel at all in order to protect both herself and her people from any poor choices that pain might later inspire. costia was the woman lexa loved, and she died because of it, just as finn died for clarke's love. and when lexa told clarke that the sky people had been punished enough, that what happened to finn would haunt clarke for the rest of her life, clarke didn't for a second realize to think she spoke with such certainty because lexa might be haunted too.

it takes a certain kind of person to earn lexa's respect and especially her trust - someone strong, more mentally/emotionally than physically, whom lexa is inexplicably compelled to view as an equal rather than an enemy or someone in need of protection - but once that trust is earned, it sticks. not only that, but it translates to a powerful sort of loyalty which lexa isn't afraid to make known. to one of her own men who made an attempt on clarke's life, lexa outright said, 'attack her and you attack me'. that trust also leads to the slightest of softness toward them. she may not be terribly conversational, but to a person she has developed a trust for, she offers reassurances that few of her warriors are afforded. 'you're safe,' she tells clarke after the aforementioned altercation. later on, when they're in dangerous straits again, she says, 'don't be afraid, clarke. death is not the end.' while that ties more into her spiritual belief in the reincarnation of leaders, the fact stands that she didn't have to reassure clarke in the first place.

in fact, i feel like she's not nearly as good at this 'love is weakness, conceal don't feel' thing as she wants to be. she quickly developed a dangerous soft spot for our blonde protag, an intense sort of kinship she didn't often express but quite clearly felt, right up until the point where she kissed her square on the lips. clarke also manages to be the only person who shuts lexa the fuck down all season, chewing her out for her decisions and how she looks at things and lexa just backs away. not to mention the number of times she saved clarke even at risk of her own people. because that's how her priorities work, anymore: she'll protect clarke over any number of her people, though she'll protect her own people in a heartbeat over clarke's skaikru companions. that's actually the breaking point near the end of the season - despite what she feels for clarke, she was offered a deal in which her captive people all go free from mount weather in exchange for her warriors on the outside standing down and leaving the skaikru captives inside. this is a betrayal in clarke's eyes, and honestly it's a betrayal in lexa's too. a few months ago, it wouldn't have been. nowadays it was still a necessary choice but it definitely hurt her nearly as much as it hurt clarke, no matter how well she hides it.

really, lexa's just... y'know, a 19 or 20 year old girl, wrapped in fifteen billion layers of training and ferocity and unwavering leadership. take her away from those people and, while that leader is the only person she really knows how to be, those layers nevertheless start peeling off one by one. there's a person under there somewhere, i promise.

Flavor Abilities:

eyeliner game too strong

Suitability:

she'll absolutely be trying to climb that 50 foot snow wall because she's stubborn as balls and Can't Be Tamed but that will obviously end poorly. aside from that, she'll be locating clarke and trying to instill some sort of long-term safety for her, despite the music video for bad blood being pretty much based on their lives.

RP Samples:

SAMPLE 1 - NETWORK

[ two things can be heard at once: the all-encompassing presence of rainy snow, and the distinct crackle of some sort of static. after a second (and with a sort of flicker, at first), the video comes on to reveal a very moist woman with a deep band of - is that ash or face paint? - covering her eyes not unlike a painted-on mask. at the top of the camera frame, her hand appears to be hovering over the tablet as if to begin to shield it from the snow... as if it much matters, at this point. ]

Is anyone skilled in tablet repair? [ she says 'tablet' when she's really thinking something more like the trigadesling rendition of 'flimsy piece of shit', because the only thing being stubbornly ignorant to new things would accomplish is making her look ignorant as a whole.

still, she doesn't sound particularly impressed. ] I wasn't informed that these were quite so vulnerable to moisture.

[ true to form, there's a sort of static hum behind her words. this may be a relic from the height of earth's technology, but not a single one of the tools back in her village can be damaged by a layer of snow. ]

SAMPLE 2 - LINK TO A LOG

Right here!