Edit: Was supposed to include the question/quote from proctorelite re abuse. My bad - thumb-typing on phone.
(Mods, please delete if this is not allowed)
I've wondered for a while what happened in LV's family to send LV & AC so far off-kilter.
The violent activity with LV's prior husband(s) indicate their moral compass was/is way off for some time now.
Sometimes due to mental illness or other aspects beyond their control, good loving families end up raising children who go off the rails.
But for both LV and AC to be so far outside the bounds of normal morality, it seems like there may have been a crime or crimes many years ago against the young LCVD & AC?
We also know that many times formerly abused people will come unhinged (clinical term) when their children reach the age they were when they were abused.
When you add in what appears to be traits of NPD to LVCD, with the added stressors of a teen daughter becoming a woman ("competition" to Ns, a normal reasonable mild crisis for most mothers) there's potential for things to go wrong. Usually not murder, of course.
There's something to the fact you see LCVD in red lipstick but never see TR with that same facade of "glamour." That might actually be protection/self-protection.
When I first read TR was to be going to college, I was astounded, because in some ways, she looked like a very, very young 17. In a way, she seemed "forever young," which is one way of keeping Mom's "competition" in check and staying on good terms in this household.
One thing is certain, the boundaries between the Cox siblings were very malleable - where did they learn that?
Someone asked this many, many threads back, and I wonder, too - what was in this for AxC?
Why did he need that much approval from his sister that he'd do these heinous things (starting with the known assault on TR's father, and including everything we know and everything else that DIDN'T make the news). Sure, a person hopefully stands up for their siblings, even as adults, but this goes soooooo far beyond that.
Plus, the guy is in jail after the assault on TR's father and STILL bent on revenge (via the jail letter to his friend). I mean, you're basically in ICU with a burned-up nub of a hand from putting it on the hot stove, and your response is to try to figure out how to get your other hand on the hot stove? The letter wasn't even anything LCVD would have ostensibly seen, so it's not posturing for her approval, it's very clearly a revenge obsession with someone who technically didn't do anything to him (that we're aware of, although I can only assume a polite "Could you please extract yourself from our marriage, dear brother-in-law" might have been issued by at least two husbands?). What causes that kind of deep-seeded revenge fantasies, and is it an indication of an overall familial break with reality that would allow these atrocities?
What did AxC miss out on as a child that made him need to be "this important" as an accessory to his sister?
It's also clear that TR was "parentified" in her role as caretaker for JJ. The fact she was a "little adult" more or less removes another boundary to protect her and protect her years of innocent childhood.
Likewise, while LCVD was busy on her husband carousel, she was most certainly not busy being a vigilant mother (unless she has incredible multitasking skills beyond mortal humans? Oh, but she is a "God," isn't she?).
That was a lot of broad musing, proctorelites, in reply to your thoughts, but I would have to agree the CONDITIONS to enable abuse were certainly there and the protections that prevent such atrocities from happening wholly absent.
That may be too much horror for our outraged minds to process right now, but statistics indicate it happens so much more than people recognize. We just don't talk about it.
But again, I think many of us here are at maximum capacity for sadness, dismay, horror, and heartbreak, so while it may be 100% relevant to motivations on both LCVD & AxC's part, it might be too much for some to delve into at the moment?
I hope it didn't happen. Dear lord, let that child have escaped SOME of the horrors that could have befallen her. Please, please, please. She had more than her fair share of burdens in her short lifetime, and a premature departure that even Stephen King could not have conjured... "Unfair" is such an understatement.
