queenklu:

I deeply love the duchess. 

Last night the local cinema showed Sound of Music and I saw it again for the first time in a LONG time–holy shit, the way this actress portrays a character who is arguably the sole antagonist of the film besides the Nazis…

It’s stated that the Captain has been spending months of his time away from home and his children running from his problems WOOING the everloving crap out of this lady who is both TITLED and WEALTHY AS SIN, and they genuinely seem to care about each other! They’re alike in ages and life experiences, they’ve both known the hardship of a lost spouse, they should be a fine match and they ARE.

And in swans Julie Andrews, the governess aka the nanny, and the duchess sees the sparks flying between the man she loves and this random nobody. She goes to confront Maria fully expecting to play coy and underhanded, pointing out their chemistry and that the Captain might “think himself in love just because a woman loves him first” (SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE EH DUCHESS? THAT’S DEFINITELY NOT YOU AND THE CAPTAIN, RIGHT?) only to have Maria go “SHIT that’s what my feelings are??? ABORT ABORT ABORT.” 

Maria: I’m going to pack all my things and leave I M M E D I A T E L Y

Duchess: Oh….kay???? 

She genuinely thought there was going to be back and forth, and sneering jibes, and ‘oh did you want him? too bad’s, and instead Maria is as pure as the driven edelweiss. 

Later the Duchess starts realizing she doesn’t know what to do with kids, she’s never spent time with them before and suddenly there are seven, WHICH AGAIN WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE WITH THE CAPTAIN before he met Maria and remembered he actually liked his family. This dude was already fucking off for months at a time and never hugged his children and didn’t let them play–he wouldn’t have thought twice about packing them off to boarding school once he married the Duchess. Before Maria. 

The scene from this gifset though is just. Ugh, pure gold. The duchess finds the captain watching Maria from the balcony. By this time they’re engaged, bc Maria left and with her went every ounce of the Captain’s emotional awareness. The duchess starts lamenting that the captain is a hard man to buy a wedding gift for–she’s babbling, laughing, pointing out that she knows him very well but that he already has everything he needs, and she can only give him frivolous things like a yacht or a summer home, and–

The captain interrupts her. They’re smart adults who’ve seen the world. This is not their first romance. And he knows that she knows they can’t go on as they have been, and he apologizes. “It’s no use, you and l.

I’m being dishonest to both of us… and utterly unfair to you.”

She could fight him. She could scream and rage and she’d have every right to do so. She loves him. At the very least it seems she’ll have to listen to him break it off with her. 

And she doesn’t let him do it. “Don’t say another word, please,” she tells him, and then dumps him on her own terms. “Fond as I am of you, I really don’t think you’re the right man for me. You’re much too independent.

And I need someone who needs me desperately…

…or at least needs my money desperately.” 

It’s honest, and funny, and kinder than he deserves. But she deserves better, and I don’t know that I’ve seen another movie that lets the rival in love realize that on their own. 

She’s a woman, and not a villain–but by the end of the movie they are no longer the match for each other that they wanted to be.