#Annabel Lee is not a type six I swear to god

[taxominn]

The Case for Annabel Lee as a Vain Type Three

I’m making this as a response to the outrageous fact that users on Personality Database have typed Annabel Lee as an Enneagram Type Six, which ????

I am a Type Six. Annabel Lee is absolutely not.

This is copied from the comment I just posted on there, so don’t worry: I am only plagiarizing myself.

Annabel Lee is a Type Three, likely with a dominant social instinct. Here’s why I think so:

In a situation that is, effectively, a social game, the first consequential decision that Annabel Lee makes is in Episode 9. After Ada has offered herself, as well as a handpicked group of other students, as an ally willing to follow Annabel’s leadership, Ada must clarify one thing before their alliance is solidified—that Annabel Lee is exactly who Ada wants and expects her to be.

Ada is banking on this; within the first two days, she’s gone the mile of sucking up to Annabel Lee, making enemies with Lenore and her friends to “[sort] the wheat from the chaff”, and gathering allies for Annabel’s approval. This is because Ada has clocked Annabel as a social magnet, someone who carries the mark of a leader, and someone with power (because of her class demonstration as the ‘Lady in White’)—hell, she compares Annabel to a queen in their first conversation.

So, when Ada asks Annabel, “[that odd girl Lenore] seems to think that she’s your…friend. Is she?” It is a test to confirm that her expectations are correct: that an elegant, socially powerful young woman like Annabel would not associate herself with losers or ‘class clowns’, so to speak, and, as such, is capable of carrying Ada to the finish line of the game they’ve been forced to play.

Annabel Lee has two options: she can break Ada’s expectations or she can conform to them. Ultimately, Annabel Lee chooses to defend herself by relying on the E3’s particular defense mechanism, which is identification. We see Annabel walk through the academy halls observing and responding to a social environment that seems to favor and admire her, with Ada talking in her ear about how “posh” she is, or how much she’s like a queen, and that she and Ada are “the same sort of person.”

It’s clear, to Annabel, what people want from her, and because she is not like Lenore, who would almost certainly reject any kind of unwanted conformity, and because Annabel has learned that survival means living on the expectations of others, she does exactly that: “…Mn. No. The poor darling. I don’t know what I did to give her that impression.”

A quote from ‘The Complete Enneagram’ by Beatrice Chestnut, which explains identification:

“Naranjo explains that ‘central to type Three is identification with an ideal self-image built as a response to the expectation of others,’ which often starts with the defensive effort to match ideal characteristics their parents valued. Threes defensively transform themselves into what important others—people in their environment whom they want to impress—admire and appreciate. By noticing and adopting characteristics that others regard as valuable, Threes seek to match an external model to assure approval.” — The Complete Enneagram, Beatrice Chestnut

And Annabel commits to this. She does it over and over again, to the point of gaining ire from Lenore herself, on many occasions. Annabel’s reliance on this defense mechanism, and the manipulations and cruelty that result from attempting to maintain a particular image and “win” the social game, is at the CRUX of their relationship conflict.

It is extremely Type Three-coded, which is why I’m baffled that anyone would ever call her a Type Six, as a Type Six myself.

…and that’s all folks. Maybe next week I’ll talk about the outrageous typing of Will as a Type Two when he is a TYPE NINE. Come ON people, what are we doing here