#i thought the muffin had written meta on the volturi secretaries but i can't find it anywhere

[therealvinelle]

Thoughts on Heidi and do u think Aro killing her entire coven was called for?

Heidi is from Hilda’s coven, which means her human life was garbage.

Hilda, for reference, was a vampire in 16th century London with a feminist mission to liberate society’s most oppressed women. In addition to Heidi she created Anne, Victoria’s older sister. Anne had been an impoverished prostitute who worked to keep a roof over Victoria’s head, and Hilda turned her on a night she went to see a john. Hilda also created Mary and Noela, while Anne went back to see her sister and ended up turning her.

Considering Hilda’s mission to save destitute women, Heidi would have been destitute as well. I think most likely she was a prostitute, in fact I think Victoria was the only member in that coven who wasn’t. The fact that Anne was turned on a night she was working means Hilda singled out a lady of the night, and I suspect she found the others that way as well.

And now we enter the realm of speculation, but I suspect Heidi recruits the Volturi secretaries the same way. (And yes, considering the fact that Heidi is the one responsible for bringing in the humans, I do think it’s her who recruits the secretaries.)

We don’t know much about these women, but we know that they’re completely loyal to the Volturi, that the Volturi trust them, and that they don’t appear to have anything else in life.

There’s also the Volturi mission. Explain to these destitute women what vampires are and how the Volturi preserve human society, and offer them a place in all of this, and I imagine Heidi doesn’t need her gift to make them say yes.

As I’ve been over before, I think Chelsea can only do so much. If the secretaries were normal human women with bright futures and friends and family who’d worry when they inevitably go missing, Chelsea would have to use all her talent full force on every single secretary to mindwhammy these women. It’d be cumbersome for Chelsea, and frankly quite unwise of the Volturi to take women whose departures from the human world could attract a lot of notice. Besides, the secretary we do see, Gianna, seems to be quite happy with her job. She admires the vampires she works for, is delighted when Jane greets her, and longs to join them. This does not strike me as the behavior of a woman who had a lot of life options before coming into touch with the Volturi.

So yes, I think Hilda’s directive survives in the form of Heidi singling out these destitute women, empathizing with them even, and bestowing upon them this great honor. Their material needs will be covered, they get to serve the Volturi, and in time they will either give their lives or their mortality. Either way it’s a better life than the one they would have (or so Heidi would certainly think, considering her background).

When it comes to the secretaries’ position within the Volturi (because this has apparently turned into a post on Volturi secretaries), I imagine the fact that they are replaceable does not make them worthless. They do serve the Volturi, and Volturi guard is what Aro calls those who serve his coven. There is too an inherent nobility in the sacrifice they make. I imagine Aro does not disrespect that sacrifice.

We also see that they are treated with respect. Jane shows respect to Gianna. She didn’t have to, in fact Jane does what she wants, but she greeted Gianna all the same.

Going back to Heidi’s coven and what happened to it, I have a lot of thoughts on how the Volturi carry out their justice, but bottom line is I think they’re just. Eclipse was an anomaly.

And I’m not sure that Heidi’s coven was as innocent as Meyer tried to portray them.

Going by the timeline, we know there was Anne, Victoria, and Noela within a short span of years. Anne admittedly had amazing control, being able to turn Victoria when she had only been a vampire for five years, but Anne also loved Victoria so much that she became a prostitute to provide for her (the way the deal she had with her pimp sounds, it sounds like she was working for free in exchange for Victoria getting to live for free in the brothel). That’s love. And the way their meeting is described, Anne struggled at first to be even in physical proximity of Victoria, so her success in turning her sounds like Herculean effort fueled by her all-overpowering need to protect her beloved sister rather than Anne being that great on the regular. I’m not saying I’m not impressed by Anne’s success, my point is that the control she showed around Victoria might not be representative of her control overall. Point being, Hilda had a bleeding heart and a lot of young vampires all living together in a densely populated city as a result.

At its height, the coven consisted of six vampires. The average vampire coven has three or four vampires. The Cullens being seven strong makes them an anomaly. Hilda had a coven twice the size of the norm living in the middle of London, eating at least one person each every fortnight, making it twenty-four dead people in a month, though the number could be higher. 

I’m not surprised that they caught the attention of the Volturi.

Then we have the fact that Anne was allowed to go speak with Victoria in the first place. I totally get why Hilda would okay that, checking up on an impoverished woman to see how she’s doing sounds like something right up Hilda’s alley, but letting a human see her vampified sibling and live to tell the tale is toeing the line of keeping the secret big time. Luca was doing something very similar, and while he got away with it, the Volturi didn’t like it and if it weren’t for Renata he probably would have been executed. Now, Anne going to see her sister is a very minor breach and not something that warrants the slaughter of the whole coven, especially not when said sister was made a vampire, but it does show that Hilda did not rigidly enforce the law within her coven.

Remember also that Aro relieved Renata of Luca and Demetri of Amun without harming either Luca nor Amun. Given Luca’s thing that he had going with Renata’s family, and Amun’s ancient enmity with Aro, he had far more motivation to kill either of them than he did Heidi’s coven, and yet they were spared while these women were not. This, to me, points to Heidi’s coven having actually been guilty.

I question the idea that Aro even knew that Heidi was gifted when he issued the order to have the coven executed. Eleazar wouldn’t be born for another two centuries, and... well, how would Aro know? I suspect he found out when reading Heidi’s mind. Besides, Heidi’s gift is great, but she’s no gamechanger. Would a vampire whose gift is covered by Chelsea really be worth wiping out a whole coven?

As for how Heidi is doing now, I suspect she’s fine. What happened was tragic, but Chelsea loosened her emotional ties to the coven, lessening the trauma. The coven was guilty as charged, and Heidi gets to honor Hilda’s memory with the Volturi secretaries. It’s sad that things turned out the way they did, but they could have been worse.