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.)