By "popular" demand; META ahoy. LOL.
Because I need to do something else than whine about my lingual incompatibility with most of the world, I'm choosing to post the massive Bella-and-Rodolphus meta celta_diabolica has been nudging me to post. Hee. I much prefer this to medieval German kings right now.
This is long. On them separately and together; sort of the base for my personal fanon.
I think that what drives Rodolphus is first and foremost a pathological hatred of all things disruptive. Things he can't control, or that interrupt the world from running smoothly (blood-blending blurs the traditional rules of magical society and makes it unpredictable, ergo horrible idea that will send the world straight to hell. Put briefly). He is rather intelligent and run by logic, not morals - "there is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it" would VERY much appeal to him.
This is the result of a very chaotic childhood with a suicidal mother and an often absent father who enjoyed introducing not-overly-through-thought ideas in the family at the irregular intervals that he was present, ideas that often had consequences that were left to his sons to deal with the best they could. (Rabastan is of much sturdier mental stock than Rodolphus, somewhat paradoxically since he spends the majority of his life following his unstable brother blindly. But he never took the same adult role that Rodolphus did either, and therefore escaped most of the self-imposed mental torture. But he'd have handled it better.) Rodolphus early on came to the realisation that his family was a chaotic mess and that no one was taking responsibility for it, and even when his mother was still alive he took it upon himself to be an - the - adult. Both parents took advantage of this (neither enjoyed it, but both had their explanations - Reynard didn't have time *just that once* and Amaranthe was too tired right *then*...) and made it spiral.
Despite this - bad childhood, bad genes - Rodolphus comes off as anything but emotionally scarred (and would far rather die than admit to being that, if he even considered himself that which is highly doubtful). He is confident, efficient and was always successful academically. He has been the living image of smooth and efficient since childhood when his mother needed stability and the household needed running, and very seldom lets his emotions get the better of him (infuriated political rhetoric doesn't count here, but it’s an outlet nevertheless). Where Bellatrix is emotional (at least after Azkaban; she must have been a bit more stable before it, but probably not very cool then either. Very much like Sirius; rash) - Rodolphus is very cool and controlled but also someone I see as a constantly ticking bomb. Constantly boiling beneath the surface, that kind of thing. It's not always obvious, except for when it goes off at - uncharacteristically - irregular intervals, and the days right before. It doesn't necessarily have to be for a "good" reason but can come fairly out of the blue, but is often the result of prolonged mental stress and a period of very foul and invert mood - once he (after a time of fiercely trying to) no longer can repress and compartmentalise, it blows up. And then he is very dangerous, being both physically and magically strong and fairly void of conscience. He's not overly interested in violence otherwise - were it not for this particular issue, he'd probably not done half the things he has. He doesn't regret them - he doesn't feel them, care about the morality - but isn't interested in pain and destruction for its own sake, like Bellatrix seems to be. But, especially as a teenager, he sure causes a lot of it anyway and always without blinking. But he's not completely sadistic. He has many traits of a sociopath/psychopath, but not all (he can feel affection - for Rabastan and to a degree for Bella, and my pet ship with Mrs. Zabini) - but ticks a lot of the points anyway. But Bella is more clinically disturbed than he is - his behaviour is chosen to a larger extent, even if a lot is caused by environment and genes. But he could be different, rise above it - he just never cared to try. I’m not sure Bella even could.
Other core character differences - she likes his outbursts while he feels mainly distaste for them (the loss of control, not the actions committed), and he in turn has little patience for her tendency for emotional rants. Basically she eggs him on and he holds her back (to be practical, not moral - can’t have her going off just anywhere), to the extent they both allow it.
Since early childhood (partly because of it, partly just the way he is) - he’s also rather serious and often fairly humourless, something that gets more prominent with age. It’s a control thing - can’t afford to let loose - but he’d call it a distaste for excessive frivolity and random stupidity (more or less put like that.) He is very snobbish in his confidence - partly a control thing again, but most of it very honest. Someone who fares very well alone and not is very social, although he can play the game. Baseline mood is a strict, somewhat sarcastic, to those beneath him taunting manner - when relaxed he can even be amusing, to those with his sense of humour (dry, intellectual and very racist). When in a period of fouler mood he is quieter, and best left undisturbed by all not wishing to have their heads bitten of. Generally makes slow transitions between moods, it takes days, not hours.
In my Gang!verse it’s Rosier who is the (dark) golden boy, it is definitely not Rodolphus even though they are close friends. (Rosier is the original leader of the Gang too - he is much better at PR than Bella and Rodolphus who tend to scare people.) Rodolphus is not liked by basically anyone beyond Rabastan (who on the other hand basically worships him), Bellatrix and most of the time Rosier, who can get fairly tired of him at times, though. Andromeda always blamed him for large parts of Bella’s character (giving him too much credit) - and has always felt the least attachment to him out of them all (no family relation, and the Bella factor), and Yaxley was often uncomfortable with both Rodolphus and Bella. Most people would be.
Other (Slytherin) students, teachers and later most people on his side of the political fence fear and respect him, which is what he cares about. It is very seldom mutual, which he also is perfectly fine with.
At the trial he is mainly bored - they all knew what was going to happen anyway - and doesn’t have the impulsivity of Bellatrix. Not very nervous either, so he basically just lets it wash over him. What Crouch, other wheels of the system think - what does it concern him? All that matters to him is what Voldemort thinks, and at this point in time he’s got a clean conscience. (He missed that Voldemort likely approved of Bella’s passionate vote of confidence, because to Rodolphus it’s totally unnecessary repetition of what their actions already show. I suspect that the main reason Voldemort prefers Bella to the others is, beyond her “prodigal skill and no conscience”, her shameless fangirling. Ego-stroking.) But Rodolphus has much more repressed emotions, even when it comes to Voldemort. He dislikes emotional, "hysterical" outbursts in general, for their illogical and useless nature (when you're caught, that is. Or annoy someone else, mainly him). Appearing idiotic and miscalculating is a testament of human failure. The most it annoys him when he falls prey to these things himself, because of the human failure factor - he can handle Bellatrix' outbursts even if he doesn't much appreciate those either; he sees her as more intelligent than that, and they tend to be disruptive of whatever useful thing that could be done instead. To him it’s loud and messy, not horrifying. As far as he is concerned, she can torture Muggles in the basement all that she wants - as long as the sounds don't interrupt his work upstairs. That's when he gets annoyed. (There is a possibility for a twisted sit-com here, yes...)
Deeper down emotional outbursts, especially those more hysterical than violent - remind him of his mother, whom I have pegged as something of a bipolar nature, very much not medicated and with a fair dose of "emotional woman married to distant man in an arranged marriage that very much does not work" thrown in. Cry for help, i.e., but the only ones who noticed were her pre-teenaged sons. Bellatrix doesn't much trigger this so with her outbursts he's mainly annoyed - crying and the like on the other hand deeply unsettles and infuriates him. Not only is it useless, but there's a past too.
In short: a person who hates irregularity and losing control, and has no patience with hot-blooded emotions but prefers facts and figures. Has many traits of a sociopath (largely lacks empathy, distanced and fairly manipulative) but is not clinically insane. Hates feeling weak or helpless like he so often did while in charge of the household, and in return enjoys manipulating and having power over people.
There is an element of "finding someone else to take charge of this mess" in his fanatic worship of LV. That is someone who is controlled, efficient and has a plan. To make the world run more smoothly, better. Erase all obstacles and obstinate people who refuse to let things be smooth - people like his father who disrupt the world at irregular intervals, people like non-purebloods who disrupt the magical culture. These are reasons different from Bellatrix', but no less powerful. Basically, LV is the only one except for himself he can trust to run things. And he does. If there was ever a candidate for finding fast and smooth answers to his problems - and with the need to blow off some steam in the meantime - well...
The perhaps the only thing in his life that he is ashamed of is the fact that in the chaos following Voldemort’s fall, he was at one point close to stepping away. The crisis caused him and Bella to have massive compatibility issues because of the core differences in their characters, and their lives became very draining. I don’t see them as fighting that much ever before - not seriously, emotionally. They have a sarcastic repertoire but it wasn’t personal before the crisis hit. Neither, but especially not she, was (as adults) used to not having the upper-hand and it was not very smooth. And he almost left (her, but in the larger scale of things that’d meant everything.) This is where my pet ship Rodolphus/Mrs. Zabini comes in, yes - he had an opportunity to step away from this life, but he decided not to take it. A reversed Snape/Lily story, that one - and I’m still debating with myself on whether he’s Blaise’s father or not. I think he might be, though merely biologically (he very firmly never wanted anything else, and the realisation that he actually was of this opinion even after the fact might have been what finally made Mrs. Zabini get her priorities straight. He knows it though, and I think Bella does too. Blaise might not. Draco would… Yes, I love this plot bunny, can you tell? Have a fair few WIPs here.
Actually, it’s partly a paradox that they get on so well - they’re very different in many ways. But the deepest core is the same, and that’s what binds them. Since it’s - thankfully - a rather rare quality to find in people… (Basically: no conscience, very limited emotional gallery, extreme loyalty and fanaticism, that goes deeper than all normal bonds. Even more plainly for her - his 1981 drama is here - but in the end, for him too. He can consider it, but never very seriously. Enough to angst slightly, but not more.)
Bella is something as rare as someone whose company Rodolphus enjoys, but someone he doesn't feel a shred of responsibility for (she certainly can take care of herself - something he's never convinced of that Rabastan can. Mainly because he’s too overprotective to let him try). Ergo, he can relax around her, making him perhaps the only person in the world whom she makes feel that way. Something I've always had as a core point for Indoctrination III is showing this - that he is at his most comfortable with her, but that it doesn't mean that their relationship is romantic.
That they "get" each other and have a rather special bond has probably been apparent from a younger age than the sexual part was there, and it and the nature of it is something outsiders, including siblings and friends, never really have understood (it's one of Rabastan's big traumas in life.) They have a companionship that runs very deep on mutual understanding and the conviction that they are the only ones who can understand them, be them - it's a megalomania that glues them together and emotionally isolates them. They had a very unhealthy, symbiotic relationship in their teens based on this, when both were at school (in “Indoctrination”, Rodolphus is already out in the world and has physically distanced himself a bit from the bubble, but he does still firmly believe in it. He leads his double and triple lives but considers the one she - and LV - see the actual one.) It's intense both mentally and sexually during this time and a while into the marriage (can I mention how much I hate the S/M cliché though? Thanks.) But I think the marriage got whiter as her LV obsession intensified - there's a very twisted nun quality about that thing. I don't see her as a very sexual person, especially past her teens; she has a limited emotional gallery and doesn't get much beyond physical pleasure out of it. And that means increasingly little to her over the years. Frankly, she's always been more interested in pain than pleasure, and in changing the world rather than really planning an own life and caring that much about herself, even though she can be selfish in her reactions. He is a bit more normal in this regard, but his ideals put a stop to it before he gets too normal... He gets more frustrated, but also has very strict rules for both himself and everyone else, everywhere and here too. He is not a womaniser - he might certainly enjoy it, but he is too strict about blood and status to get on with just anything in a skirt, and also has a position where he can't really do it - this goes for all DEs I suspect, since the mere fact that they are DEs is obvious from the Mark that can't really be shown to just anyone.
And, you know - he is not very charming either. Mrs. Zabini (called Viviane by me) does actually love him though. She is sort of a Bellatrix-light, or a combination of Bella and Cissy maybe - very little regard for others (guess twice who decided her husbands were no longer needed - and who did away with them. Not all, but several.) But she is also very hot-blooded and a romantic nature; sheltered enough not to care nor understand what exactly he does and not willing to understand just how deep it goes until it’s very late. She thought it was a triangle with Bellatrix until the last weeks, when she realised it was Voldemort, not Bella who was the third party. And that was enough even for her. But she would have been drawn to the danger, and had the classic saviour complex going on for a hell of a long and self-destructive time (relationship with a man who basically has no emotions? Good luck!) Basically; Viviane is - wanted to be - Rodolphus’ Narcissa, but he never wanted to - nor could - be Lucius, who always put his family before Voldemort in the end. (That’s a not overly warm brothers-in-law relationship, by the way. Never was.)
OK. Back to regularly scheduled programming.
There is a sexual B/R relationship, but not a romantic one. The former is not planned - it just happens - and stops happening when it’s no longer relevant. But the other connection remains.
They are almost each other's only options anyway (they're basically the same age and not related (!), and they view everyone else, even in their own circle, as beneath them. It's also about the fact that they spent a lot of time together all their teens, in Dark Art studies, and the excitement and rushes from that got mixed with hormones (especially on his part maybe, but she was somewhat more normal pre-LV), making one thing lead to another. It's curiosity, hormonal and a bit of a power struggle as well - they always compete and it's an outlet.
It took a while before the others in the Gang caught wind of it. Months.
They're on different missions - parallel for as long as they choose to keep them like that, but separate. The same cause, but different inner drive. They are a team and work for the same goal, but with different and separate sponsors. Basically: they share breathing space and experiences and at times a bed for as long as they care to. It happens to be for rather long - from mid-teens to early thirties and basically (his) death, but it's not a given and not something either has as a prerequisite for living a fulfilled and functioning life.
There is no love - enjoyment, appreciation, but nothing beyond a deep companionship with benefits. He likes her and enjoys her company, in and outside the sack. He might be the only one who does at least the former, but he does. And the same for her, basically - she appreciates his devotion even though his strictness at times both annoys and bores her as much as her rashness can annoy him, and she too feels very relaxed in his company. It's an effortless existence on her (to her, his to him) - terms. More so than him she is surrounded by convention - parents, sisters, family expecting her to be many things she has no interest in. And she doesn't care, but like he finds a relaxing haven in their friendship, she finds a condition-free environment. Even though neither much cares what people think and certainly don't act overly politically correct in public, she even less than he, they are both aware of their “oddities” and the need to cover them at least slightly. That's why when the pressure to marry increases (and JKR largely said Bella married because of the pressure to, which is slightly interesting - that she cared that much) she only has one candidate - the one who won't make life difficult for her, i.e. change her ways (she is way more selfish than he is, like she shows all emotions more. Her childhood as a pampered heiress rather than a child-adult concerned with keeping up appearances - something she'd never do, a major difference in their characters that is problematic in a crisis - allows it and breeds it. He’s nowhere near selfless - he is actually more self-involved than she is, but his motivations for what he does do include others (mainly his brother/family) - more than hers do. Her motivation is murkier, to herself as well. Much of it might even be boredom. She would have been brought up in this extreme hate to a higher degree than he did and didn’t as actively seek it out (the Lestrange household was not on Black levels mainly because it wasn’t as politically active, and Reynard never liked the blood ideas. But Amaranthe believed in it.) For Bella, the choice was more about being as active as she is, which as a woman seems rare. What she believes isn’t rare - Walburga, hello - but how she acts upon it. (Here I realise that it might not have come up that I always saw Rosier the elder, Evan’s father, as the Godfather of the Gang, and someone Rodolphus chose as a surrogate father. One of the few people he admires, and the one who put him on the DE path after Amaranthe’s primary brainwashing. The elder Rosier is a character who fascinates me a bit - he was actually a decent parental presence in many ways, except for this obvious grieve issue.)
But, yes. She's a lot less mature than he is - she never had to be, he always had to be. (This not as a good/bad thing - there’s not really any point of that with these two). He's not all that well-off either (a lot of stunted emotions there), but he functions much more like an adult than she does - she is a lot more instinctive, impulsive and child-like that way. To a degree - she is also very focused and efficient of course, likely more so before Azkaban - but has a shorter fuse and more of a constant temperament with fast changes, and little regard for her surroundings, both when she has evil intentions and when she’s just being loud or something more normally obnoxious. She’s spoiled and much more obviously horrible than he is (at school anyway) - I mean, that fucking baby-voice. Jesus. But it’s not really a matter of levels of horribleness, more in how obviously it manifests itself. He cares a bit more about appearances - and is more concerned about how he himself is perceived, even though he’d deny that. They both have soaring and almost sociopathic confidences, but with different backgrounds and reasons for them - he built it up more consciously and is more aware of all such things than she is. She’s not interested, neither in her own psyche nor (especially) in that of others - he is the bookish one, she is the action-oriented.
I've always viewed them as having an age difference, maybe even a considerable one - they canonically can't have more than a year or so, but I think it often could have seemed like they did anyway. He has been old beyond his years for most of his life and finds his self-worth that way; she doesn’t care and can partially come off as younger than she is (more so while interacting with people than when alone or with only him or other close family, if that makes sense. She has very meagre social skills, basically.)
But they're both very intelligent and have other things in common - mostly, it evens out. They keep each other motivated, and work very well together as long as they are on the winning side or at least have a plan - in a crisis they don't mesh as well. Then their fundamental differences come out, and since they don't have a deep and overcoming love for each other but have teamed up because of how well it works when it does work, it gets tense.
Bellatrix is really the most unredeemable of them all. Out of them, I feel she's the most clinically disturbed and has been since childhood. Not a total sociopath either - certainly can feel affection - but close. (JKR says Bellatrix is in love with LV and she certainly is; whether it's more infatuation than romance I guess is up for debate. I'd go with infatuation which I find more in character; with less fine-tuned emotions, she would more easily be infatuated with someone than be able to have a real romantic relationship. Goes with the idea of social/emotional immaturity - it’s the hero-worship of a 14-year old, basically.) She’s basically the one who would have been dissecting birds as a kid and not really understood - or cared to find out - why it was frowned upon. From a young age, she would have realised that she was different and I think her extreme loyalty to Voldemort and the whole cause partially stems from this - actually fitting in somewhere. She doesn’t have as a dramatic and traumatic background as the Lestranges do - her derailing was mainly brain chemistry. Anti-social personality disorder, Borderline, something like Aspbergers/autism maybe (know way little about the latter and am mainly throwing out unofficial diagnoses I tend to see put on heavy criminals IRL, but this isn’t a psychiatry thesis anyway - however much I like being an Internet Psychiatrist.)
She had a loving home but couldn’t appreciate it/didn’t get much out of it, and I expect that she was rather awkward as a pre-teen. Not interested in what was expected of her, not interested in faking it either, but unless she is completely void of all social skills and receptors, which doesn’t seem likely - she must have noticed it. Felt different, not fitting into a world of glamorous surfaces and little content. (I have long seen both Bella and Rodolphus as wealthy people - DH proved that beyond a doubt! - who are rather uninterested in this fact. No peacocks. Might be their only decent quality, that they’re not particularly money-conscious. “Gold? What would I want with gold?!” or however it goes, don’t have DH here.)
I can see her both as a very lively and rather withdrawn child, but think I’ll go for lively. (Rodolphus on the other hand would have somewhat similar feelings about himself versus the world, but have been rather quiet and robotic. He might be the better candidate for something in the autism spectra, actually.)
Unlike Reynard and Amaranthe, who paid little, none or the wrong kind of attention to their sons, Cygnus and Druella would have noticed that something was off with Bella and done their best to both deny it and cure it, at the same time. Cover it up most of the time, but also, in the early years, try to introduce her to “normal” hobbies etc. Wouldn’t have worked very well. Overall the family dynamic would have been very skewed - the majority of the attention focused on the daughter who appreciated it and returned it the least. Andromeda would have got the worst deal (and shouldered her fair share of the attempts to “cure” Bella), but I think Narcissa was fairly attention starved too and might have turned out to be the perfect socialite in order to at least be approved and noticed that way.
Her school career would have been troublesome - not academically, rather the opposite - but in all other ways. She has no respect for rules whatsoever and would have showed up in class when it suited her, etc. Would have been expelled five times a year were it not for Slughorn’s indulgence, something she (and Rodolphus) take completely for granted. Parts of me wonders if she even bothered to finish school since LV would have been around by her seventh year, but I guess she did it for the same reasons she actually got married. There is some interest in decorum, deep down. Might also just have been smoother.
Viciously despised of course, especially in the later years (4-7th or so). In the earlier years she’d have been more “weird”, I think - she would likely always have been something of a tomboy (definitely not the giggly type). Always - and this goes for Rodolphus too - with an obvious dark side, and not just a mean one - a disturbing one. Maybe not so literally as young children, but it was there. Frightening, basically. Even more so once she found her place in the Gang (which I think was more of a boy’s club at first) - and became more and more vocal and obvious. And skilled, not to mention. People would have known/heard the rumours about this, but not the extent of it. But it would NOT have been unknown what she and Rodolphus were reading. Just the extent.
Rodolphus is largely the only one who both understands and likes her - Andromeda tries to understand and does love her, but can’t ever fully manage both.
Out of the two, she is the more emotional and the one with both the shorter fuse and less likeliness to hold grudges (not political ones like the conviction to kill half her family, but she doesn’t ponder on normal arguments - nor does she realise that someone else might once she’s over it). She is also both the less purely sexual as well as the more exhibitionistic, if that makes any sense - the emotional connection is mainly lost (he can have one, but perhaps not so much with her), but she also can turn off the need entirely if she wants to. It’s an activity like any other, really. But she does like provoking people, and since she cares far less about how she looks to others than he does, she is way less concerned with who sees and hears what. While I do dislike the God damned NC-17 S/M standard, I can see it - lots of what she does seems to be ways to make a fairly numb person feel something (she engages in life-death combat regularly, and loves it - seems like someone who likes an adrenaline rush and hates being bored. Really: where Rodolphus hates not being in control, she hates being bored. Major core difference in character summed up in one sentence.) So why not. But I don’t think he’s as interested. She tends to want to seduce him when he’s in one of his moods (=when things aren’t mundane), and he tends to be the least interested (=in control of himself and comfortable) then. There is a tendency in fanon (and I expect a stubborn rumour in the fictional world) - that violence turns her on, and to a degree I agree. But I think it’s more about the break with the mundane than about the actual violence - it’s just that anger and violence are the most frequent breaks with the mundane in her circle. In a way this works out beautifully - she gets her excitement by provoking him even further, and he can take out his frustrations on someone other than innocent bystanders.
Overall, their physical relationship is very strictly physical, and sort of with an on/off switch. As teenagers they - she especially, but he too does enjoy screwing with people’s minds as long as he doesn’t feel ridiculous himself - might very well have engaged in the odd PDA just to make others uncomfortable, but generally I think they were fairly discreet, at least when sober.
Speaking of sobriety - he smokes, a lot. She doesn’t, not on her own anyway. He has a tendency to turn to the bottle when all else fails, she is rather moderate and, like with sex, doesn’t really do it for anything else than for having something to do right then. It’s not escapism, I don’t think she practices that. He does - not very much, and would prefer to not at all. But he does. The smoking is something he took up very early and mainly does for nerves. She seldom or never is anxious or nervous - he is so far more often than he’d like, and has a far more complex psyche, really. (He senses that she doesn’t, and very much approves.)
Voldemort, then. Yes.
They’re the most devoted DEs of course, this to a complete manic level. We know. They would certainly be the "some almost as bad as LV" type of DEs, in different ways. They're not just political followers - there's more. Combined, they almost make Voldemort. And they know it. In a "we need to be a team to work" way, not "let's throw him over"-way. They tried to find him, not take over after him in 1980. Big difference. Skills-wise they probably could have (and might have been expected to), but they didn't. They aren’t pure enough Slytherins - they have too much Hufflepuff in them, too loyal to mainly strive for personal success. He does so more than she (he has more to prove) - but still not nearly enough. And they are far too invested in LV personally for that; he represents so much to both. For them it's not just about the racist ideology - that certainly appeals to their traditions and superiority complexes, but it runs deeper.
In the end they both have backgrounds of massive insecurity about themselves - her oddness (apart from Rodolphus, Voldemort is the only one who appreciates Bella for what she is, and since she has a whole other get of feelings for him that for Rodolphus, we know the result), his unstable family - and LV removes that. I don't think either could ever put words to what he means to them, but it goes far beyond normal political loyalty, as we have seen. He makes them strong, makes them firmly belong. He can promise to make the world the way they'd prefer it - for her, a place (simple and clear-cut enough for her) to comprehend, stand to live in - and for him a place he can control. Which is why they worship him and get on so well with each other, because they give each other a little bit of what LV gives them.
This is long. On them separately and together; sort of the base for my personal fanon.
I think that what drives Rodolphus is first and foremost a pathological hatred of all things disruptive. Things he can't control, or that interrupt the world from running smoothly (blood-blending blurs the traditional rules of magical society and makes it unpredictable, ergo horrible idea that will send the world straight to hell. Put briefly). He is rather intelligent and run by logic, not morals - "there is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it" would VERY much appeal to him.
This is the result of a very chaotic childhood with a suicidal mother and an often absent father who enjoyed introducing not-overly-through-thought ideas in the family at the irregular intervals that he was present, ideas that often had consequences that were left to his sons to deal with the best they could. (Rabastan is of much sturdier mental stock than Rodolphus, somewhat paradoxically since he spends the majority of his life following his unstable brother blindly. But he never took the same adult role that Rodolphus did either, and therefore escaped most of the self-imposed mental torture. But he'd have handled it better.) Rodolphus early on came to the realisation that his family was a chaotic mess and that no one was taking responsibility for it, and even when his mother was still alive he took it upon himself to be an - the - adult. Both parents took advantage of this (neither enjoyed it, but both had their explanations - Reynard didn't have time *just that once* and Amaranthe was too tired right *then*...) and made it spiral.
Despite this - bad childhood, bad genes - Rodolphus comes off as anything but emotionally scarred (and would far rather die than admit to being that, if he even considered himself that which is highly doubtful). He is confident, efficient and was always successful academically. He has been the living image of smooth and efficient since childhood when his mother needed stability and the household needed running, and very seldom lets his emotions get the better of him (infuriated political rhetoric doesn't count here, but it’s an outlet nevertheless). Where Bellatrix is emotional (at least after Azkaban; she must have been a bit more stable before it, but probably not very cool then either. Very much like Sirius; rash) - Rodolphus is very cool and controlled but also someone I see as a constantly ticking bomb. Constantly boiling beneath the surface, that kind of thing. It's not always obvious, except for when it goes off at - uncharacteristically - irregular intervals, and the days right before. It doesn't necessarily have to be for a "good" reason but can come fairly out of the blue, but is often the result of prolonged mental stress and a period of very foul and invert mood - once he (after a time of fiercely trying to) no longer can repress and compartmentalise, it blows up. And then he is very dangerous, being both physically and magically strong and fairly void of conscience. He's not overly interested in violence otherwise - were it not for this particular issue, he'd probably not done half the things he has. He doesn't regret them - he doesn't feel them, care about the morality - but isn't interested in pain and destruction for its own sake, like Bellatrix seems to be. But, especially as a teenager, he sure causes a lot of it anyway and always without blinking. But he's not completely sadistic. He has many traits of a sociopath/psychopath, but not all (he can feel affection - for Rabastan and to a degree for Bella, and my pet ship with Mrs. Zabini) - but ticks a lot of the points anyway. But Bella is more clinically disturbed than he is - his behaviour is chosen to a larger extent, even if a lot is caused by environment and genes. But he could be different, rise above it - he just never cared to try. I’m not sure Bella even could.
Other core character differences - she likes his outbursts while he feels mainly distaste for them (the loss of control, not the actions committed), and he in turn has little patience for her tendency for emotional rants. Basically she eggs him on and he holds her back (to be practical, not moral - can’t have her going off just anywhere), to the extent they both allow it.
Since early childhood (partly because of it, partly just the way he is) - he’s also rather serious and often fairly humourless, something that gets more prominent with age. It’s a control thing - can’t afford to let loose - but he’d call it a distaste for excessive frivolity and random stupidity (more or less put like that.) He is very snobbish in his confidence - partly a control thing again, but most of it very honest. Someone who fares very well alone and not is very social, although he can play the game. Baseline mood is a strict, somewhat sarcastic, to those beneath him taunting manner - when relaxed he can even be amusing, to those with his sense of humour (dry, intellectual and very racist). When in a period of fouler mood he is quieter, and best left undisturbed by all not wishing to have their heads bitten of. Generally makes slow transitions between moods, it takes days, not hours.
In my Gang!verse it’s Rosier who is the (dark) golden boy, it is definitely not Rodolphus even though they are close friends. (Rosier is the original leader of the Gang too - he is much better at PR than Bella and Rodolphus who tend to scare people.) Rodolphus is not liked by basically anyone beyond Rabastan (who on the other hand basically worships him), Bellatrix and most of the time Rosier, who can get fairly tired of him at times, though. Andromeda always blamed him for large parts of Bella’s character (giving him too much credit) - and has always felt the least attachment to him out of them all (no family relation, and the Bella factor), and Yaxley was often uncomfortable with both Rodolphus and Bella. Most people would be.
Other (Slytherin) students, teachers and later most people on his side of the political fence fear and respect him, which is what he cares about. It is very seldom mutual, which he also is perfectly fine with.
At the trial he is mainly bored - they all knew what was going to happen anyway - and doesn’t have the impulsivity of Bellatrix. Not very nervous either, so he basically just lets it wash over him. What Crouch, other wheels of the system think - what does it concern him? All that matters to him is what Voldemort thinks, and at this point in time he’s got a clean conscience. (He missed that Voldemort likely approved of Bella’s passionate vote of confidence, because to Rodolphus it’s totally unnecessary repetition of what their actions already show. I suspect that the main reason Voldemort prefers Bella to the others is, beyond her “prodigal skill and no conscience”, her shameless fangirling. Ego-stroking.) But Rodolphus has much more repressed emotions, even when it comes to Voldemort. He dislikes emotional, "hysterical" outbursts in general, for their illogical and useless nature (when you're caught, that is. Or annoy someone else, mainly him). Appearing idiotic and miscalculating is a testament of human failure. The most it annoys him when he falls prey to these things himself, because of the human failure factor - he can handle Bellatrix' outbursts even if he doesn't much appreciate those either; he sees her as more intelligent than that, and they tend to be disruptive of whatever useful thing that could be done instead. To him it’s loud and messy, not horrifying. As far as he is concerned, she can torture Muggles in the basement all that she wants - as long as the sounds don't interrupt his work upstairs. That's when he gets annoyed. (There is a possibility for a twisted sit-com here, yes...)
Deeper down emotional outbursts, especially those more hysterical than violent - remind him of his mother, whom I have pegged as something of a bipolar nature, very much not medicated and with a fair dose of "emotional woman married to distant man in an arranged marriage that very much does not work" thrown in. Cry for help, i.e., but the only ones who noticed were her pre-teenaged sons. Bellatrix doesn't much trigger this so with her outbursts he's mainly annoyed - crying and the like on the other hand deeply unsettles and infuriates him. Not only is it useless, but there's a past too.
In short: a person who hates irregularity and losing control, and has no patience with hot-blooded emotions but prefers facts and figures. Has many traits of a sociopath (largely lacks empathy, distanced and fairly manipulative) but is not clinically insane. Hates feeling weak or helpless like he so often did while in charge of the household, and in return enjoys manipulating and having power over people.
There is an element of "finding someone else to take charge of this mess" in his fanatic worship of LV. That is someone who is controlled, efficient and has a plan. To make the world run more smoothly, better. Erase all obstacles and obstinate people who refuse to let things be smooth - people like his father who disrupt the world at irregular intervals, people like non-purebloods who disrupt the magical culture. These are reasons different from Bellatrix', but no less powerful. Basically, LV is the only one except for himself he can trust to run things. And he does. If there was ever a candidate for finding fast and smooth answers to his problems - and with the need to blow off some steam in the meantime - well...
The perhaps the only thing in his life that he is ashamed of is the fact that in the chaos following Voldemort’s fall, he was at one point close to stepping away. The crisis caused him and Bella to have massive compatibility issues because of the core differences in their characters, and their lives became very draining. I don’t see them as fighting that much ever before - not seriously, emotionally. They have a sarcastic repertoire but it wasn’t personal before the crisis hit. Neither, but especially not she, was (as adults) used to not having the upper-hand and it was not very smooth. And he almost left (her, but in the larger scale of things that’d meant everything.) This is where my pet ship Rodolphus/Mrs. Zabini comes in, yes - he had an opportunity to step away from this life, but he decided not to take it. A reversed Snape/Lily story, that one - and I’m still debating with myself on whether he’s Blaise’s father or not. I think he might be, though merely biologically (he very firmly never wanted anything else, and the realisation that he actually was of this opinion even after the fact might have been what finally made Mrs. Zabini get her priorities straight. He knows it though, and I think Bella does too. Blaise might not. Draco would… Yes, I love this plot bunny, can you tell? Have a fair few WIPs here.
Actually, it’s partly a paradox that they get on so well - they’re very different in many ways. But the deepest core is the same, and that’s what binds them. Since it’s - thankfully - a rather rare quality to find in people… (Basically: no conscience, very limited emotional gallery, extreme loyalty and fanaticism, that goes deeper than all normal bonds. Even more plainly for her - his 1981 drama is here - but in the end, for him too. He can consider it, but never very seriously. Enough to angst slightly, but not more.)
Bella is something as rare as someone whose company Rodolphus enjoys, but someone he doesn't feel a shred of responsibility for (she certainly can take care of herself - something he's never convinced of that Rabastan can. Mainly because he’s too overprotective to let him try). Ergo, he can relax around her, making him perhaps the only person in the world whom she makes feel that way. Something I've always had as a core point for Indoctrination III is showing this - that he is at his most comfortable with her, but that it doesn't mean that their relationship is romantic.
That they "get" each other and have a rather special bond has probably been apparent from a younger age than the sexual part was there, and it and the nature of it is something outsiders, including siblings and friends, never really have understood (it's one of Rabastan's big traumas in life.) They have a companionship that runs very deep on mutual understanding and the conviction that they are the only ones who can understand them, be them - it's a megalomania that glues them together and emotionally isolates them. They had a very unhealthy, symbiotic relationship in their teens based on this, when both were at school (in “Indoctrination”, Rodolphus is already out in the world and has physically distanced himself a bit from the bubble, but he does still firmly believe in it. He leads his double and triple lives but considers the one she - and LV - see the actual one.) It's intense both mentally and sexually during this time and a while into the marriage (can I mention how much I hate the S/M cliché though? Thanks.) But I think the marriage got whiter as her LV obsession intensified - there's a very twisted nun quality about that thing. I don't see her as a very sexual person, especially past her teens; she has a limited emotional gallery and doesn't get much beyond physical pleasure out of it. And that means increasingly little to her over the years. Frankly, she's always been more interested in pain than pleasure, and in changing the world rather than really planning an own life and caring that much about herself, even though she can be selfish in her reactions. He is a bit more normal in this regard, but his ideals put a stop to it before he gets too normal... He gets more frustrated, but also has very strict rules for both himself and everyone else, everywhere and here too. He is not a womaniser - he might certainly enjoy it, but he is too strict about blood and status to get on with just anything in a skirt, and also has a position where he can't really do it - this goes for all DEs I suspect, since the mere fact that they are DEs is obvious from the Mark that can't really be shown to just anyone.
And, you know - he is not very charming either. Mrs. Zabini (called Viviane by me) does actually love him though. She is sort of a Bellatrix-light, or a combination of Bella and Cissy maybe - very little regard for others (guess twice who decided her husbands were no longer needed - and who did away with them. Not all, but several.) But she is also very hot-blooded and a romantic nature; sheltered enough not to care nor understand what exactly he does and not willing to understand just how deep it goes until it’s very late. She thought it was a triangle with Bellatrix until the last weeks, when she realised it was Voldemort, not Bella who was the third party. And that was enough even for her. But she would have been drawn to the danger, and had the classic saviour complex going on for a hell of a long and self-destructive time (relationship with a man who basically has no emotions? Good luck!) Basically; Viviane is - wanted to be - Rodolphus’ Narcissa, but he never wanted to - nor could - be Lucius, who always put his family before Voldemort in the end. (That’s a not overly warm brothers-in-law relationship, by the way. Never was.)
OK. Back to regularly scheduled programming.
There is a sexual B/R relationship, but not a romantic one. The former is not planned - it just happens - and stops happening when it’s no longer relevant. But the other connection remains.
They are almost each other's only options anyway (they're basically the same age and not related (!), and they view everyone else, even in their own circle, as beneath them. It's also about the fact that they spent a lot of time together all their teens, in Dark Art studies, and the excitement and rushes from that got mixed with hormones (especially on his part maybe, but she was somewhat more normal pre-LV), making one thing lead to another. It's curiosity, hormonal and a bit of a power struggle as well - they always compete and it's an outlet.
It took a while before the others in the Gang caught wind of it. Months.
They're on different missions - parallel for as long as they choose to keep them like that, but separate. The same cause, but different inner drive. They are a team and work for the same goal, but with different and separate sponsors. Basically: they share breathing space and experiences and at times a bed for as long as they care to. It happens to be for rather long - from mid-teens to early thirties and basically (his) death, but it's not a given and not something either has as a prerequisite for living a fulfilled and functioning life.
There is no love - enjoyment, appreciation, but nothing beyond a deep companionship with benefits. He likes her and enjoys her company, in and outside the sack. He might be the only one who does at least the former, but he does. And the same for her, basically - she appreciates his devotion even though his strictness at times both annoys and bores her as much as her rashness can annoy him, and she too feels very relaxed in his company. It's an effortless existence on her (to her, his to him) - terms. More so than him she is surrounded by convention - parents, sisters, family expecting her to be many things she has no interest in. And she doesn't care, but like he finds a relaxing haven in their friendship, she finds a condition-free environment. Even though neither much cares what people think and certainly don't act overly politically correct in public, she even less than he, they are both aware of their “oddities” and the need to cover them at least slightly. That's why when the pressure to marry increases (and JKR largely said Bella married because of the pressure to, which is slightly interesting - that she cared that much) she only has one candidate - the one who won't make life difficult for her, i.e. change her ways (she is way more selfish than he is, like she shows all emotions more. Her childhood as a pampered heiress rather than a child-adult concerned with keeping up appearances - something she'd never do, a major difference in their characters that is problematic in a crisis - allows it and breeds it. He’s nowhere near selfless - he is actually more self-involved than she is, but his motivations for what he does do include others (mainly his brother/family) - more than hers do. Her motivation is murkier, to herself as well. Much of it might even be boredom. She would have been brought up in this extreme hate to a higher degree than he did and didn’t as actively seek it out (the Lestrange household was not on Black levels mainly because it wasn’t as politically active, and Reynard never liked the blood ideas. But Amaranthe believed in it.) For Bella, the choice was more about being as active as she is, which as a woman seems rare. What she believes isn’t rare - Walburga, hello - but how she acts upon it. (Here I realise that it might not have come up that I always saw Rosier the elder, Evan’s father, as the Godfather of the Gang, and someone Rodolphus chose as a surrogate father. One of the few people he admires, and the one who put him on the DE path after Amaranthe’s primary brainwashing. The elder Rosier is a character who fascinates me a bit - he was actually a decent parental presence in many ways, except for this obvious grieve issue.)
But, yes. She's a lot less mature than he is - she never had to be, he always had to be. (This not as a good/bad thing - there’s not really any point of that with these two). He's not all that well-off either (a lot of stunted emotions there), but he functions much more like an adult than she does - she is a lot more instinctive, impulsive and child-like that way. To a degree - she is also very focused and efficient of course, likely more so before Azkaban - but has a shorter fuse and more of a constant temperament with fast changes, and little regard for her surroundings, both when she has evil intentions and when she’s just being loud or something more normally obnoxious. She’s spoiled and much more obviously horrible than he is (at school anyway) - I mean, that fucking baby-voice. Jesus. But it’s not really a matter of levels of horribleness, more in how obviously it manifests itself. He cares a bit more about appearances - and is more concerned about how he himself is perceived, even though he’d deny that. They both have soaring and almost sociopathic confidences, but with different backgrounds and reasons for them - he built it up more consciously and is more aware of all such things than she is. She’s not interested, neither in her own psyche nor (especially) in that of others - he is the bookish one, she is the action-oriented.
I've always viewed them as having an age difference, maybe even a considerable one - they canonically can't have more than a year or so, but I think it often could have seemed like they did anyway. He has been old beyond his years for most of his life and finds his self-worth that way; she doesn’t care and can partially come off as younger than she is (more so while interacting with people than when alone or with only him or other close family, if that makes sense. She has very meagre social skills, basically.)
But they're both very intelligent and have other things in common - mostly, it evens out. They keep each other motivated, and work very well together as long as they are on the winning side or at least have a plan - in a crisis they don't mesh as well. Then their fundamental differences come out, and since they don't have a deep and overcoming love for each other but have teamed up because of how well it works when it does work, it gets tense.
Bellatrix is really the most unredeemable of them all. Out of them, I feel she's the most clinically disturbed and has been since childhood. Not a total sociopath either - certainly can feel affection - but close. (JKR says Bellatrix is in love with LV and she certainly is; whether it's more infatuation than romance I guess is up for debate. I'd go with infatuation which I find more in character; with less fine-tuned emotions, she would more easily be infatuated with someone than be able to have a real romantic relationship. Goes with the idea of social/emotional immaturity - it’s the hero-worship of a 14-year old, basically.) She’s basically the one who would have been dissecting birds as a kid and not really understood - or cared to find out - why it was frowned upon. From a young age, she would have realised that she was different and I think her extreme loyalty to Voldemort and the whole cause partially stems from this - actually fitting in somewhere. She doesn’t have as a dramatic and traumatic background as the Lestranges do - her derailing was mainly brain chemistry. Anti-social personality disorder, Borderline, something like Aspbergers/autism maybe (know way little about the latter and am mainly throwing out unofficial diagnoses I tend to see put on heavy criminals IRL, but this isn’t a psychiatry thesis anyway - however much I like being an Internet Psychiatrist.)
She had a loving home but couldn’t appreciate it/didn’t get much out of it, and I expect that she was rather awkward as a pre-teen. Not interested in what was expected of her, not interested in faking it either, but unless she is completely void of all social skills and receptors, which doesn’t seem likely - she must have noticed it. Felt different, not fitting into a world of glamorous surfaces and little content. (I have long seen both Bella and Rodolphus as wealthy people - DH proved that beyond a doubt! - who are rather uninterested in this fact. No peacocks. Might be their only decent quality, that they’re not particularly money-conscious. “Gold? What would I want with gold?!” or however it goes, don’t have DH here.)
I can see her both as a very lively and rather withdrawn child, but think I’ll go for lively. (Rodolphus on the other hand would have somewhat similar feelings about himself versus the world, but have been rather quiet and robotic. He might be the better candidate for something in the autism spectra, actually.)
Unlike Reynard and Amaranthe, who paid little, none or the wrong kind of attention to their sons, Cygnus and Druella would have noticed that something was off with Bella and done their best to both deny it and cure it, at the same time. Cover it up most of the time, but also, in the early years, try to introduce her to “normal” hobbies etc. Wouldn’t have worked very well. Overall the family dynamic would have been very skewed - the majority of the attention focused on the daughter who appreciated it and returned it the least. Andromeda would have got the worst deal (and shouldered her fair share of the attempts to “cure” Bella), but I think Narcissa was fairly attention starved too and might have turned out to be the perfect socialite in order to at least be approved and noticed that way.
Her school career would have been troublesome - not academically, rather the opposite - but in all other ways. She has no respect for rules whatsoever and would have showed up in class when it suited her, etc. Would have been expelled five times a year were it not for Slughorn’s indulgence, something she (and Rodolphus) take completely for granted. Parts of me wonders if she even bothered to finish school since LV would have been around by her seventh year, but I guess she did it for the same reasons she actually got married. There is some interest in decorum, deep down. Might also just have been smoother.
Viciously despised of course, especially in the later years (4-7th or so). In the earlier years she’d have been more “weird”, I think - she would likely always have been something of a tomboy (definitely not the giggly type). Always - and this goes for Rodolphus too - with an obvious dark side, and not just a mean one - a disturbing one. Maybe not so literally as young children, but it was there. Frightening, basically. Even more so once she found her place in the Gang (which I think was more of a boy’s club at first) - and became more and more vocal and obvious. And skilled, not to mention. People would have known/heard the rumours about this, but not the extent of it. But it would NOT have been unknown what she and Rodolphus were reading. Just the extent.
Rodolphus is largely the only one who both understands and likes her - Andromeda tries to understand and does love her, but can’t ever fully manage both.
Out of the two, she is the more emotional and the one with both the shorter fuse and less likeliness to hold grudges (not political ones like the conviction to kill half her family, but she doesn’t ponder on normal arguments - nor does she realise that someone else might once she’s over it). She is also both the less purely sexual as well as the more exhibitionistic, if that makes any sense - the emotional connection is mainly lost (he can have one, but perhaps not so much with her), but she also can turn off the need entirely if she wants to. It’s an activity like any other, really. But she does like provoking people, and since she cares far less about how she looks to others than he does, she is way less concerned with who sees and hears what. While I do dislike the God damned NC-17 S/M standard, I can see it - lots of what she does seems to be ways to make a fairly numb person feel something (she engages in life-death combat regularly, and loves it - seems like someone who likes an adrenaline rush and hates being bored. Really: where Rodolphus hates not being in control, she hates being bored. Major core difference in character summed up in one sentence.) So why not. But I don’t think he’s as interested. She tends to want to seduce him when he’s in one of his moods (=when things aren’t mundane), and he tends to be the least interested (=in control of himself and comfortable) then. There is a tendency in fanon (and I expect a stubborn rumour in the fictional world) - that violence turns her on, and to a degree I agree. But I think it’s more about the break with the mundane than about the actual violence - it’s just that anger and violence are the most frequent breaks with the mundane in her circle. In a way this works out beautifully - she gets her excitement by provoking him even further, and he can take out his frustrations on someone other than innocent bystanders.
Overall, their physical relationship is very strictly physical, and sort of with an on/off switch. As teenagers they - she especially, but he too does enjoy screwing with people’s minds as long as he doesn’t feel ridiculous himself - might very well have engaged in the odd PDA just to make others uncomfortable, but generally I think they were fairly discreet, at least when sober.
Speaking of sobriety - he smokes, a lot. She doesn’t, not on her own anyway. He has a tendency to turn to the bottle when all else fails, she is rather moderate and, like with sex, doesn’t really do it for anything else than for having something to do right then. It’s not escapism, I don’t think she practices that. He does - not very much, and would prefer to not at all. But he does. The smoking is something he took up very early and mainly does for nerves. She seldom or never is anxious or nervous - he is so far more often than he’d like, and has a far more complex psyche, really. (He senses that she doesn’t, and very much approves.)
Voldemort, then. Yes.
They’re the most devoted DEs of course, this to a complete manic level. We know. They would certainly be the "some almost as bad as LV" type of DEs, in different ways. They're not just political followers - there's more. Combined, they almost make Voldemort. And they know it. In a "we need to be a team to work" way, not "let's throw him over"-way. They tried to find him, not take over after him in 1980. Big difference. Skills-wise they probably could have (and might have been expected to), but they didn't. They aren’t pure enough Slytherins - they have too much Hufflepuff in them, too loyal to mainly strive for personal success. He does so more than she (he has more to prove) - but still not nearly enough. And they are far too invested in LV personally for that; he represents so much to both. For them it's not just about the racist ideology - that certainly appeals to their traditions and superiority complexes, but it runs deeper.
In the end they both have backgrounds of massive insecurity about themselves - her oddness (apart from Rodolphus, Voldemort is the only one who appreciates Bella for what she is, and since she has a whole other get of feelings for him that for Rodolphus, we know the result), his unstable family - and LV removes that. I don't think either could ever put words to what he means to them, but it goes far beyond normal political loyalty, as we have seen. He makes them strong, makes them firmly belong. He can promise to make the world the way they'd prefer it - for her, a place (simple and clear-cut enough for her) to comprehend, stand to live in - and for him a place he can control. Which is why they worship him and get on so well with each other, because they give each other a little bit of what LV gives them.