amat info

[astralling]

CHARACTER FACTS

» Name: Prudence “Prue” Halliwell
» Canon: Charmed
» Reference: http://charmed.wikia.com/wiki/Prue_Halliwell
» Canon Point: 2x03, The Painted World. Right at the beginning, when Prue gets sucked into a painting.
» Gender: Female
» Age: 28


CHARACTER INTERPRETATION

» Appearance: She’s a very pretty young woman in her late 20’s, with dark brown hair and green eyes. Bluntly put, she looks like Shannen Doherty but younger, prettier, minus the gap-tooth and work done.

» Orientation: Heterosexual.

» Personality:
Throughout her three-season tenure on the show, Prue's identity is the one that probably changes the most. The core elements of her personality stay the same, and her behavior comes back around in cycles even as she evolves, but how she identifies herself, the way she presents, and the parts of herself that she tries to prioritize change dramatically. She goes from a tightly-wound, deeply repressed, conservatively-dressing workaholic WASP with family estrangement and more issues than Time magazine in the pilot, to a still sort of tightly-wound, fairly repressed, eclectically-dressed workaholic artist and superwitch with a medium pile of issues and a thirst to find herself. She comes currently from a third of the way through, shortly before a drastic period of change.

The first thing most people notice about Prue is the way she owns any room she walks into. Indeed, it's a prominent characteristic in the show: she's an alpha dog, a boss, someone who walks into a room and immediately finds her feet so she can start handing out orders to get things done. It comes from being a first-born, a big sister, a caretaker all her life, a Scorpio, and consummately duty-bound. She can be very bossy and judgmental, very prideful, sometimes close-minded, but generally with the goal of getting things done or accomplishing a goal. She isn't as much of a team player as she could be, preferring to take the lead or work alone rather than cede control. Bad things happen when she gives up control- like losing innocents, losing loved ones, losing relationships, jobs, or just losing control of her own environment, which is anathema to her.

When we first see her, she's tightly-wound all the time, with a tensed jaw, high necklines, and a grind in her teeth whenever her baby sister's name comes up. That's the repressed Prue, the one who canned her photographer dreams to pursue a museum job she didn't like, in order to support the family. It's a theme in her life: putting others first out of duty. Her job wasn't something she wanted, it was something she needed. The fact that she was excellent at it was a nice plus- enough to make her turn her head for years and stay content with "almost good enough". Another sacrifice for the family. From a very young age she had to sacrifice a great deal: her childhood to her sisters, her innocence to the demon that killed her mother and the grandmother who put too much responsibility on her, her peace of mind to constant pressure from Grams to keep bad things from happening to Phoebe and Piper, her career to Grams' demands. Within only a few minutes of the pilot, this Prue comes to light- when she interrupts a conversation her sisters are having to give Phoebe a blanket (despite their ongoing antipathy), because Phoebe's is the coldest room in the house.

Despite her sometimes harsh, bossy, snarky exterior, Prue has a deeply compassionate and incredibly sensitive soul. Losing innocents, watching people suffer, and dealing with death affects her very, very deeply. However, she has a pile of issues about being weak or exposing herself to getting hurt, as well as a lifetime of being denied the luxury to grieve (like never really healthily grieving for her mother), so she channels that tenderness into fierce protectiveness and determination to do good and fight evil. Anger comes much more easily to her than simple, healthy sadness.

The presence of magic in their lives just heightened this protective, self-sacrificial streak- Prue is the firstborn, the strongest, and is now duty-bound by the forces of Good itself to protect the innocent. She's the one who will jump in front of a bus to save a child, or feed herself to the fire to piss the fire off. She'll jump feet-first into a stupid situation if her mama bear instincts are triggered hard enough - especially by a child in danger - and will do anything, plow through anyone, give anything to help her sisters.

Prue has always had an incredible stubborn streak, multiplied by a sense of fierce determination, and it applies in most areas of her life, including her job and her magic. When she gets something in her head, it's hell to try and change her mind. This gets her into trouble more often than not, since often what gets into her head is the idea that she can take on some enemy or situation single-handed, or a fixed opinion of somebody that most likely turns out to be wrong. This makes her quick and harsh to judgment in many cases, and sometimes incredibly myopic when she decides on a good opinion of someone, contrary to evidence. The latter case isn't as common, though, since Prue runs heavily towards the cynical. She once said "seasons change, people don't", although the longer she's exposed to magic - and its impact on her own changing life - the more this belief crumbles. It's come out more and more in her magic: an essential, underlying belief in the goodness of people. Well, some people. She has an ability to see underneath someone's bullshit and see the goodness in them. When she latches onto that glimpse of someone's goodness, she refuses to let it go, no matter what they think of themselves. She'll go to any lengths to save someone she believes deserves saving.

However, she can still be quite close-minded: she's always had certain things, she's always been the sort of privileged older sister in terms of being head cheerleader, class president, fairly talented at what she applies herself to, and accepted, so she has little understanding or patience for social outcasts. She has little patience for people who don't work as hard as she does or sacrifice herself as readily as she does. Rebellion is selfish to her, being on the wrong side of things is sort of incomprehensible, being a "have not" is sort of beyond her sphere of understanding, and she can be fairly dogmatic about her way of thinking.

Remember how I just said that selfishness is terrible and incomprehensible to her? Well, her lifetime of self-sacrifice has created a particular kind of self-centeredness in her: when she's really excellent at something, she needs to be the best at it, because her work and the things she throws herself into are all she has. She represses her urges so much that she doesn't have anything but her job and her magic. In her future, a brief period of unemployment will drive her crazy, and she routinely throws herself headfirst into her magic so she can be the best at it. It's what she does, it's who she is, in her mind. Her repression in the rest of her life eventually leads to magic being the biggest thrill she gets, which often translates to a sometimes stupid love of high-risk jobs and thriving on the danger. It's a complicated way to prove herself.

Since she centers her life around work, magic, and sacrificing fun for the sake of others, she's basically one giant repressed id. At one point in her future it gets so bad that she starts astral projecting in her sleep to a biker bar, where her astral self, her repressed inner desires, plays and is a bad, bad girl. She doesn't allow herself hardly any fun. Even her rebound guy, a bad boy who's everything she never wanted? She doesn't sleep with him, she never really opens up to him, truly relaxes around him, or lets him all the way in enough to have real, relaxed fun.

Prue rarely opens herself up to anybody. She went over 20 years without saying the words "I love you" even to her sisters and grandmother, because it was the last thing she said to her mom before her mom died in front of her. The love of her life died protecting her from a demon, and after that she had a hard time trusting anybody or opening herself up to love ever. She died without having had another serious relationship. The love she had for Andy demonstrates how she is in a real relationship: when she allows herself to love someone, it's so rare that when it happens she tends to lose her head a little. The first time she used magic for personal gain was for Andy, and every time she goes a little nuts with magic it's either for the sake of her sisters or for a guy who really matters to her. Love with her runs extremely deep, and is something she'll willingly sacrifice her beliefs and convictions for.

If you can get past her walls.

That's a big if. Despite her incredible strength and force of will, she's ultimately spent most of her adult life terrified of love. Of connection, of loss, of being left behind again by someone she let see her vulnerable.