#I obviously don't excuse her attitude towards Yuna throughout the game

[starvingtongue]

Realising now that I haven't actually touched on Dona's feelings towards Yuna on this blog yet and I feel like I should. I've seen a lot of speculation on it over the years (from reddit posts, youtube comments, tv tropes, etc.) and formed my own headcanons regarding over the past couple months too, and I've always thought I've made a note of it somewhere, but browsing through my headcanon tag for Dona, I realise I haven't. Shame on me.

I would like to preface this by saying that I don't think Dona hates Yuna. Dona can be rude, blunt, and upfront to anyone, regardless of who they are. We see this time and time again throughout both X and X-2, that she doesn't give a damn about who you are, what position of power you hold, she's going to treat everybody the same. We see her not saluting to Nooj in X-2, despite him being the leader of the Youth League, we see her not bowing to Yuna when they first meet, despite it probably being the 'correct' thing to do. Formalities like that are not a thing for her. I kinda wish we saw her interacting with more people, especially those within Yevon a little more, to show this a bit better.

But anyway, while she does not hate Yuna, Dona's feelings (and problem) with Yuna stems from Dona's own insecurity, with a possible hint of jealousy, and a view that Yuna gets afforded opportunities that Dona and other summoners don't. We kind of see this through X itself, but if you consider these things from an outsiders perspective (like Dona), it makes a lot more sense. Things such as:

Yuna being Braska's daughter, the child of someone who has already defeated Sin, and has the status that not too many others have. In Dona's eyes, it's afforded Yuna with certain privilages (good or bad) that not too many others have and could possibly make her pilgrimage a lot easier.

She has 6 guardians by the time she defeats Sin (which Dona deems as overly excessive regardless of her own feelings towards Yuna), one of which is Auron. Auron being legendary guardian to Braska, brings more status, privilage, and knowledge to the pilgrimage, which others may not otherwise benefit from.

Yuna is sought out, befriended, and accompanied by Seymour, a Maester of Yevon, which brings certain perks (like getting past the checkpoint at the start of Mushroom Rock, for example), that again, not everyone else is going to benefit from.

All of this combined, and from an outsiders perspective such as Dona's, makes it seem like Yuna's pilgrimage pretty comfortable and somewhat more high status (I don't want to say privilaged again, but I think this is one of the terms I've heard thrown around before when talking about Dona's feelings towards Yuna) than the average pilgrimage is. Dona obviously not right in being this insecure and jealous over the opportunities that Yuna gets afforded, many of which Yuna doesn't get a choice about (and Dona would have no way of knowing about this either), since both are gong on a march to their own deaths, but after seeing Yuna get handed all of these opportunities and been put on such a high pedestal, it's hard not to feel some type of way towards her. Dona sees her as competition, a pretty serious one at that, but not necessarily because of her strength as a summoner, but because Yuna has more opportunities afforded to her that could make her pilgrimage easier than most.

You would think, however, that once Yuna defeats Sin and has that success under her belt, Dona would act out even more towards her, the great High Summoner who lived, but no. While it's not immediately obivous in X-2, I think Dona chills out quite a bit towards Yuna after Sin's gone. She not longer sees Yuna as a rival, as a competitior, to kill Sin. She's chilled out a bit, she can find herself as a person, spend the rest of her days in Kilika with Barthello, and not have to worry about who defeats the giant whale of death first. Her jealously, her insecurity, her feelings of low self worth towards a 17 year old who has a successful former guardian in tow and a Maester interested in her, have mostly disappeared.

I do find it very sad that we never got to see her interact with Isaaru as a comparison. She would 100% still be her bitchy self, but Isaaru's just 'normal' summoner competition compared to Yuna, there's no reason for Dona to be as insecure towards Isaaru as she is towards Yuna.

This type of insecurity is something that a lot of people go through, regardless of if they want to or not, and Dona suffers from it just as much as anyone else would. Does it make it right that she lashes out at Yuna the way she does? Of course not! Dona does a really poor job of hiding this jealousy and insecurity towards Yuna throughout their entire respective pilgrimage. However, it does add another layer of characterisation to Dona that I think a lot of people glance over when they first meet her.