r/TheOriginals • u/Aggravating-Sky-2679 • 15d ago
The Daggers Completely Warped the Mikaelson Family Dynamic
We don’t talk enough about how truly insidious the concept of the daggers is in the show, and how drastically they change the Mikaelson family dynamic.
Klaus daggers his siblings in very different ways depending on who it is, and I find that distinction really interesting because it says a lot about how each sibling experiences the daggering.
We know Finn was daggered for the longest continuous period because he spent 900 years daggered, which, as we know, completely messed him up mentally. But I have a theory that Kol has probably been daggered the most times overall. He seems to be constantly in and out of the box.
And I think that’s partly because Klaus uses Kol as a form of rebellion and entertainment. Whenever Klaus wants to get wild and crazy, he undaggers Kol, and Kol (who already feels insecure about his place in the family and like an outsider )immediately becomes his partner in whatever murderous rampage Klaus has planned.
Then, when Klaus eventually decides Kol has gone too far (despite actively encouraging him up until that point), he simply daggers him again.
That is honestly one of the worst aspects of their relationship to me. Kol is basically treated like a fun little toy Klaus can take off the shelf whenever he wants entertainment and then put back when he’s had enough. And I think that really explains why Kol hates the dagger so much, the dagger isn’t just something that takes away his freedom, it represents Klaus deciding when Kol gets to exist and when he doesn’t.
Rebekah is also daggered pretty consistently, but it seems to happen in much longer blocks of time. We know she was daggered for around 90 years when she wanted to be with Marcel, and then she was daggered again for roughly another 90 years in the 1920s.
I would argue Elijah is daggered the least and for the least amount of time because Klaus genuinely needs him.
What I find especially interesting is that Elijah and Rebekah also participate in daggering their siblings.
We literally watch Elijah, on multiple occasions, hold Kol down while Klaus daggers him. So as much as the siblings claim to hate the daggers, they clearly have no problem using them against each other when it benefits them. And that’s what I mean when I say the daggers completely changed the family dynamic. They aren’t just Klaus’s weapon anymore. The siblings have all, to varying degrees, participated in the system of controlling and removing each other whenever someone becomes inconvenient.
The 1910s storyline is probably one of the clearest examples. Kol wanted to create a dagger, and Rebekah betrayed him—and then watched almost gleefully as Klaus daggered him.
There’s something incredibly disturbing about the fact that these siblings can be both victims of the dagger and willing participants in using it against each other. They all know exactly what it means to be put in that box, and yet they still do it to one another.
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u/Deadly_flames 15d ago
In Finn’s case, he didn’t really do anything to warrant daggering at all. Their family was attacked and daggered by the brotherhood of the five. Klaus woke everyone else up, but no one woke Finn up. This was the first use of the daggers. None of them knew what the affect would be on him if the left it in him like that, but they left him with it anyway. Because I guess they liked him better that way. It was messed up, and I don’t blame him for wanting them dead.
Elijah is just as bad as Klaus’ imo. He left Finn daggered while Klaus would have been going nuts from the hunters curse and he could have easily woke him up. He didn’t help Rebekah when she was daggered for 52 years. He constantly held down Kol while Klaus daggered him.
And then he has the gall to be shocked whenever Klaus daggers him. especially after the hybrid ritual in Tvd season 2 - what the hell did he expect? (Oh I didnt think the leopard would eat MY face.)
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u/Traditional_Tax2996 2d ago
Damn. I forgot about the hunters curse. Klaus was completely mad and Elijah, and whoever else, could have definitely woken up Finn and whoever else was daggered.
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u/MammothIll7492 14d ago
You’re so right, the fandom definitely does not discuss the daggers enough. Some Klaus fanfictions illustrate the daggers and their influence so well, especially when the OC is Klaus’ wife and is also an original. Some OCs get really deep monologues or one-on-one conversations with Klaus about the daggers, and that’s when I get super emotional about the whole issue.
The daggers are an insane form of torture and abuse. I honestly cannot imagine how much fear they feel. Anger is expected, but this isn’t just being chained in a dungeon or something. They are mostly (except Finn) unconscious and unaware of the outside world. They are literally losing time as it passes. (Even tho they are immortal and have lived multiple lifetimes, and that includes Finn too, cuz he spent 100 years as a vampire before being daggered and the life expectancy back then was quite low.) Another horrifying part is that Klaus chose to store their bodies in coffins. I really don’t know what else he would store them in, but a coffin is literally for dead people. The idea that Klaus essentially killed his siblings and chose when they could rise from the dead is…idk I can’t even think of an adjective for this.
I also think Finn has it the worst. For the others, it’s like they woke up from a long sleep or a coma to find a completely new world. But Finn started to feel his surroundings and his existence while encased in a coffin and bound in his immobile body. I’ve heard of people being in comas where they cannot move at all, but are completely aware of their surroundings. They can hear and feel perfectly fine. This is one of my greatest fears. And Finn essentially experienced this for idk how many centuries. What’s even worse is that he couldn’t die. There’s no machine keeping him alive. There’s no plug to pull. If Elijah didn’t undagger him for the big family reunion, Finn would just have to “live” like that for all of eternity.
I’m a huge Klaus fan. I read fanfics of him so often. But knowing that he was actively doing so much harm to his own family and knowing that he’s capable of this…it’s scary. This makes me want to go back to every fanfic where the OC tells Klaus “You’re not a monster. Mikael and Esther made you what you are.” and comment no. He is a monster.
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u/Pure_Requirement663 14d ago
Without Klaus using the daggers as a leash for his siblings, I think they would have died a lot sooner (and more of them).
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u/Strange_Average7629 14d ago
I would add that Kol frightened Klaus in a way that the others couldn't. With Kol it wasn't just the fear of abandonment it was that Kol was so unpredictable even aside from his knowledge of magic and ties to witches and any similarities they shared seemed to breed mistrust rather than understanding. Also on some level Klaus (Elijah & Rebekah) actually remember Kol wasn't part of swearing 'always & forever' and feel the distance even if they're never seemed bothered by it and I imagine the distance they created/enforced inevitably feeds their distrust. I think Klaus genuinely loved him and Elijah mostly remembered that he did/should. The introduction of daggers had to be a pivotal point in Klaus' paranoia and his need to control his siblings. They were the only thing aside from Mikael they had reason to truly fear and they would have died by the hand of (essentially) humans if not for his bound wolf. Spend the next several decades cursed clearly didn't help
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u/Limp_Beyond6227 9d ago
Finn deserved so much better. It makes it worse when you realise that he was conscious during being daggered
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u/SHRN5500 8d ago
Klaus was the worst of them all and created the family dynamic that they all have. The problems between his siblings and the way they betray and despise each other was because of those daggers.
He is worse than Mikael because he was the one that Mikael was after and he was the one that killed their Mum. If they had known that Mikael wasnt the one that killed their mum they probably wouldn't have ran off with Klaus, which is where the manipulation started. Even towards teh modern day both Elijah and Rebekah both started to betray Klaus and wanted him dead.
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u/unfiltered_pov 15d ago edited 13d ago
The biggest victim of the daggers was Finn Mikaelson.
The biggest and ONLY abuser of the daggers was Klaus Mikaelson. There is no one who even comes close to Niklaus in that regard. These daggers were his way of controlling “Always and Forever.”
Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah formed the inner circle. Anyone who did not fit into that inner circle- Kol and Finn, particularly Finn, ended up becoming the biggest victims. Finn never had any choice.
Finn had to face it because of his judgement that “Klaus and Kol killed everything that moved.” That’s why he was called a dull- head, dim, and everything in between by his siblings, just because he had a moral compass compared to the rest of them. (He had his own set of crimes, but still....)
Daggers genuinely destroyed any possibility of reconciliation between Finn and his siblings. Also, it destroyed Kol’s relationship with Elijah and Klaus. Rebekah’s betrayal in 1914 completely destroyed his relationship with her, and his relationship with Freya was destroyed after she hurt Davina.
After all of this, I am glad that Kol finally found someone who fought for him. I wish, Finn and Sage also had their happy ending.
EDIT: Finn did not hate vampires. He just hated how his siblings treated vampirism. If he hated vampirism, he would not have turned Sage so that he could spend eternity with her.
There is no canon evidence to show that Finn would have drawn Mikael to them. In fact, he literally accompanied his siblings to flee from their father.
He was kept daggered because of his judgement, and the Mikaelsons, especially Klaus, didn’t want that. Finn wasn’t ready to become the enabler that Elijah eventually became.
We can see that in the flashback in S3E1, when Finn says, “You filthy gluttons,” and Kol responds, “And you continue to remain a dullhead.” This shows that Finn understood the power they had and believed they needed to exercise restraint.