Jade is
an interesting character to me because I can’t quite pin her down. With the other women on the show, they tend
to very immediately display what they’re about, from the Widow’s fierceness and
determination to Veil’s intelligence and mercy.
Jade was less of an entity for me at first, not until I realized that
being unsure of her intentions was the whole point (some Jade-related
spoilers.)
From the
start, it’s hard to position Jade within Quinn’s house. She’s Quinn’s soon-to-be second wife, adored
by him and naturally despised by his first wife Lydia, all the while secretly
canoodling with Quinn and Lydia’s son Ryder.
She’s also one of Quinn’s former cogs, which instantly makes the
relationship between them even more unsettling; at points in season 1, Quinn
makes “loving” references to how sweet she used to look serving him back when
he owned her.
Part of
the issue here is that, between the whole baron/cog dynamic and the patriarchal
angle of a baron being free to “take” as many wives as he likes, it isn’t clear
how active a participant Jade was in this coming about, which makes it more
difficult to glean her motives. Did
Quinn merely decide he wanted her and they were therefore engaged? Is Jade trying to make the best of a dicey
situation, simply trying to survive? As
his former slave, is she quasi-indoctrinated to be loyal to him and so gives
him whatever he wants? Does she
genuinely desire Quinn, either attracted to him or enamored of his
position? Did she pursue him – could she have? If not, could she have positioned herself in
such a way to catch his eye? Is she a
schemer like Lydia thinks, angling for the relative power of being a baroness
(not to mention, duh, no longer being a slave?)
How does Ryder fit into all this?
Jade’s ultimate
aim seems to have shifted (or expanded?
Maybe? It’s still hard to say for
sure) over the course of the series, but one thing is clear: she isn’t passive in this whole thing. If she initially appears a bit like Sansa
Stark from Game of Thrones, an
innocent and at least moderately naïve girl caught by the whims of a powerful,
volatile man, she goes on to show signs of being more like Margaery Tyrell, a
smart woman who knows precisely what part to play in order to get what she
wants. Even her “woman of the people”
moments, working in the fields herself when the Widow makes off with some of
Quinn’s cogs and generally advising better treatment of the cogs, reminds me of
Margaery’s public displays of caring for the poor of King’s Landing. The big difference, though, is that Margaery
is a wealthy member of one of Westeros’s most important families while Jade
actually came from the masses whose lives she tries to better – she may no
longer be a cog, but the brand marking her as Quinn’s property is still visible
on her hand. Or would Eva Perón be a
better comparison? Somewhere between the
two?
As power
in the Badlands has been rapidly changing hands throughout season 2, Jade has
ridden the turbulent waves quite well for the most part. While it’s not entirely clear how much of it
is what she wanted and how much of it is her pivoting as she sees which way the
wind is blowing, but it’s risen her stock higher and higher. It now appears she may have flown too close
to the sun for her own good, but I don’t think I’d count her out yet. Jade is definitely a survivor, and apparent
weakness/powerlessness has worked to her advantage before – when the dust
settles, who knows where she’ll be?
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