Application: Personality

[trivialization]

Evangeline’s most obvious quality, especially to casual acquaintances, is her aloofness, the emotional distance and superior attitude she keeps between herself and most of the people she interacts with. In early Negima her classmates are surprised by her first spoken lines, noting that she hardly ever speaks to anyone, and when she does pipe up it’s usually just to snipe at and belittle Asuna or others she considers shallow and thoughtless. But if this trait is often abrogated in Negima, where the enforced familiarity resulting from her captivity and comedy-oriented writing often lead to others getting under her skin and drawing out her peevish, actively proud side, in UQ Holder it’s completely dominating. Much of the dramatic tension in the latter work revolves around Touta grappling with his inability to communicate his feelings for her over the enormous distance she keeps between them once he learns their real identities, and the larger question of whether she has ever truly allowed any of the people who have supposedly defined her life to affect her in any permanent way. Often the fact that she’s not as cold or disdainful in UQ Holder just highlights how truly aloof she is – even Touta, who she treated as something like a child or younger sibling for years and regards fondly, who was even flung back in time and had the opportunity to make an impression on her when she was young and vulnerable, can’t get close to her on his own terms. Even her rare displays of affection are given from a great distance, and it’s an unresolved question in both Negima and UQ Holder to what degree she supports her wards out of personal interest in them versus simply using them to achieve other, longer and more closely-held goals.

Evangeline herself characterizes this aloofness in two different ways. In the opening monologue for UQ Holder she describes it as the stereotypical jaded quality of immortals, who become too accustomed to loss. In her view it is not really the product of fear of loss or sadness, but rather a trivial or shallow character that results from approaching everything and everyone you care about with the awareness that you will one day leave them behind. Later in the series she gives a more concrete example of what she means when she kicks off a lot of the romcom shenanigans by telling a bunch of the younger immortals they’ll all probably be romantic failures because they’re too used to the idea that if they just wait long enough they’ll get what they want somehow or another and lack initiative – which, given some of her comments in Negima about how it’s inevitable she’ll wind up with Nagi as long as he doesn’t die, is probably a prediction drawn from personal experience.

In Negima though she assigns this behavior a moral quality as well; when the kids finally badger her into revealing a bit of her past she makes it clear that she considers herself set apart from them by her violent history. Even though by this point she has long since gained the ability to pass in human society and by her own description experienced many long periods of peace, she still considers herself an exile by nature, set irrevocably apart from the civilized world by her lost humanity and years of bloodshed. For all she’s occasionally given to boasting about her power and spouting cynical antiplatitudes about the ubiquity of evil and naiveté of the would-be do-gooders around her like some stock fantasy villain, she is ultimately a creature of deep moral sentiment who strongly believes that murder is a sin she can never be absolved of, no matter how peaceably or constructively she passes her later years. After relating a bare sketch of her past to the kids she’s honestly surprised and annoyed when Asuna suggests that the simple passage of time or shared responsibility in any way diminish her culpability, and there are similar scenes in UQ Holder where her shade teases Touta for being depressed at his failure to offer any consolation to her past self, telling him that it’s impossible to console someone who accepts their own guilt and considers their eternal life a fitting punishment.

Though Evangeline is reluctant to share even these vague stories of her past with others she projects this burden of indelible sin onto the world at large and is considerably more willing to lecture others in more general terms, often finding opportunities to cast the trials of those she’s become involved with in terms of her murky cynicism. In her lectures she teaches that evil is omnipresent and unavoidable, something built into the world and the human condition. While she does feel that progress is desirable and that the peaceful little world she inhabited in Negima, filled with stupid children who worry over irrelevancies like their grades and love lives, is better than the one she grew up in, she firmly believes that even such laudable ends cannot fully justify their means; any action that is truly significant comes with costs to others that it is arrogant and selfish to choose to inflict. She considered it her most important success as a teacher that she was able to set Negi against Chao, whose motives were entirely pure, so that he could fully understand the gray nature of most conflicts by taking the role of the reactionary who opposes a heroic goal simply because it is inconvenient to a comfortable status quo.

Despite this Evangeline’s morality does not demand passivity from others, only that they accept the flawed and selfish natures of their own actions. She cares less to judge the actions and motivations and morals of other characters than their worthiness, whether they’re living up to their potential, whether they can back up their words with action, and whether they can accept the consequences of those actions. She tends to be especially harsh with Asuna precisely because Asuna tends to moralize forcefully from a position of ignorance, and she likes Negi because he tends to think deeply on moral issues and sees the world as a complicated place despite his youth. She seems to accept the contradictions inherent in these views, and though she condemns both 'paths' - the path of weakness and innocence as boring, unworthy, and irresponsible, the path of strength and corruption as tragic, miserable, and inherently hypocritical - she will also advocate them both to others. For the tragedies of the path of strength still offer the possibility of personal responsibility and fulfillment, and the light of innocence still offers the possibility of happiness.

All this is central to how and why she approaches other characters and comes out especially clearly in her lesson to Setsuna in Negima; she likes Setsuna because Setsuna lived a miserable life and as a result devoted herself only to duty and acquired a simple, sharp-edged character, but though she warns Setsuna that becoming friendly with others has dulled her and may destroy the one thing she has built her life around, she also tells her that, however much Evangeline dislikes the idea, she may be better served by abandoning her duty, surrendering her responsibilities to others, accepting the pain of a losing a long-held raison d’etre, and living the sort of peaceful life her classmates do. Similarly in her conversation with Chachazero about Asuna it’s implied that, though she hates Asuna for her cheerful ignorance, she also pities her for putting herself on a path that will see her lose it. In UQ Holder she even seems to suggest to a mortally wounded Touta that he still has a real choice to make, that if he thinks his life until then had been good and fulfilling he should consider dying rather than accepting her offer of immortality.

Because Evangeline professes to care less about the specific choices others make than whether they can make a decisive choice in the first place and follow through on it the role she takes, especially in Negima, is that of both mentor and gatekeeper. She, more than anyone else, gives the principal cast the capability and inclination to involve themselves in the grand dramas of the magical world by teaching them magic, honing their skills, and offering the odd clue, but she also constantly tests them, whether giving them straightforward tests of ability, attacking their motives and will to succeed, or even aiding their potential foes to ensure a confrontation. Taken in the most positive light, as Setsuna sees her, Evangeline’s is the role of the clarifier, showing others the decisions and consequences before them they hadn’t known to consider, giving them the chance to clearly choose their own way forward and overcome obstacles they might have floundered against without this proper understanding, and driving them away from dangers they aren’t willing to confront.

Evangeline herself is embarrassed by and rejects this positive framing and for the most part insists that she simply takes others on as projects out of boredom, in anticipation of watching the ensuing drama, or to further her own ends, and will accept any outcome with equanimity; she prefers her students think of her as an obstacle and compares the help she offers to the last boss in an RPG saving the protagonist party at the end of an early dungeon, a mercurial force that they cannot count on and may one day turn against them. In Negi’s case she pointedly says that if he should die on some misadventure she would regret losing him as a student but that would simply be the measure of him; she has no use for him if he can’t approach the same heights as his father and regards the risks he exposes himself to as fairly assumed. Her shade goes further, opining that her destroying his magic and severing his destiny, forcing him to return to a mundane life and leave his goals to others would be a fine outcome. Regardless of whether she’s honest about her willingness to see her charges fail such tests she will bail them out against threats they have no hope of dealing with on their own, as when she destroys Ryomen Sukuna-no-Kami in Kyoto and the Disciples of the Lifemaker in Old Ostia at the respective climaxes of the first and final super-arcs of Negima.

Because the protagonists do ultimately succeed without any really major setbacks Evangeline’s claims of impartiality are never truly tested; given the way she comes to enjoy playing around with the other characters over less consequential matters and the rather shaky, image-conscious excuses she gives when she’s called out on getting chummy with or helping others it’s easy to lean towards the view that she’s exactly the sort of mostly-benevolent guide and mentor Setsuna pegs her as, but it remains possible to interpret her as the impartial judge and proctor she claims to be, a sadistic meddler who got lucky or a manipulator who was just carefully guiding everyone towards an endgame planned well in advance, possibly in collusion with her supposed captors, or some intermediate combination of the four. For what it’s worth she admits herself in UQ Holder that, despite all appearances, she finds it easy to get attached to people once she’s spent some time around them.

In UQ Holder her closer relationship with Touta shades this tendency differently but the question of whether her motives are benign is much more core to the story. She again seems to favor the idea that a person should choose their own path, but rather than impartially revealing the decision to be made she is fiercely defensive of Touta’s ignorance, threatening even her former student, Yue, with death for giving him the barest outline of his origins, seemingly preferring that he simply find his own way in life rather than trying to follow through with the plans of the people who created him. But she was one of those people, and others like Fate and the other remnants of Ala Alba accuse her of deceit and treachery, raising the possibility that she only wants him ignorant so that she can use him for her own ends. Given the time travel subplot, though, which establishes that Evangeline has a much closer personal connection to Touta than anyone else with a hand in creating him, it seems most likely she is acting in what she believes are his best interests.

UQ Holder’s Evangeline is also different in that she’s less avowedly neutral and independent; she is a boss in the titular organization, which attempts to unify the scattered immortals and use them as a force for good in the world. That said she also still seems to see herself as unsuited for the role, as she’s quit and left the organization at least once before.

Despite her dim views of the world and her place in it Evangeline does not respond with ennui alone. The same pride that allows her to scorn the attention and frivolities of would-be peers can also be what draws her into interactions with them. It’s easy enough for her to say that others have no business being involved with her, but once they are and she’s bothered to acknowledge their existence she demands they acknowledge her back. She’s incredibly proud of her accomplishments as a mage and worldly nature and quick to lecture the ‘lucky’ few she’s interested in on her views and criticize them at every turn. She sometimes seems to regret her spiels after the fact, ruefully complaining that ‘getting old has made me too preachy’ but considering that many of her sobriquets from her old supervillain days have evangelical themes it seems she always considered herself some sort of bad-news prophet and it’s a longstanding trait. While listening to herself talk often seems to be her chief aim in all this she does care more than she’d like to admit how people react; she’s incensed early on when Negi dares to think he honestly won against her in their more-or-less staged fight at the beginning of the series and rarely happier than when she finally shows him a glimpse of her true power at Kyoto and finds him suitably amazed. With Negi in particular she can be quite jealous in her role as mentor; complaining over his learning martial arts from another teacher and getting honestly flustered when Albireo Imma started advertising the advantages of being tutored by him instead.

Though she’s usually the one enjoying pushing the rest of the cast around from her position of superiority the fact of her engagement gives them more opportunities to surprise her back and when the more familiar members of the cast get too carefree or frivolous in her presence Evangeline often cracks her calm, judgmental demeanor and launches into wild, impulsive retorts and slapstick violence. Albireo in general is very good at poking holes in her worldly image, hinting that he’s hiding important information from her and mocking her pretensions to drive her up the wall.

Evangeline has her share of less significant quirks too. She’s an active learner; aside from her magic she adopts a great many hobbies and interests to stave off boredom – she’s known to have a love of board and video games, tea ceremony, pastry-making, and costuming. She also undertakes much more time and intellectually-intensive projects, like collaborating with Chao to create Chachamaru, a truly sentient and soul-bearing AI. She apparently has a penchant for classical literature (though of course it was probably contemporary when she read it) and will occasionally quote Tolstoy and Shelley at people. It’s also not difficult to read a maternal side into her relationships with Chachamaru and Touta, both of whom she takes great interest in pride in watching develop.