The only reason original Penelope was hated by her family was because the OG fl was brainwashing *everyone*. From what I know, before the OG fl shows up in the household, the most abuse she got was from her maids. Yes, she was neglected by her father and was disliked by her eldest brother because he held guilt; her youngest brother was a bit complicated in my opinion. This section of the story was from the first life of Penelope, who was unfortunately a little girl who didn’t know better, was taken advantage of, and made herself feel better by bottling up & exploding — she got rage baited easily.
OG Penelope couldn’t because out of the thousands shattered souls of Penelope, there was bound to be only one who was strong-willed enough to break said brainwashing; this Penelope suffered the same fate as story Penelope and was emotionally mature enough to bypass every obstacle the game passed.
I think what the overall story is saying is that experiences make us stronger and mentally mature; at first we’re going to be weak, but every jump from an obstacle that makes us expect the worst, and every fall that becomes a scar, helps us overcome. This is also why the eldest brother stays brainwashed and was the easiest to brainwash compared to the father who accepted the death of his daughter , and the youngest brother who apologized and also accepted the death of his sister—the eldest brother did not overcome his guilt, drowned , while everyone else did!
SPOILERS
Eckles…
I do like Penelope as a protagonist but I think I just got kind of frustrated with her because she didn’t develop or change until the very end so it was a bit hard to read the same thing again and again and watch her refuse to trust anyone, constantly assume the worst, and take advantage of people. I know she’s just desperate to survive, I understand that, but I could place ch 1 Penelope in ch 170 and I think she would make the exact same choices. I also just don’t love stories where a person comes into an abused household and fixes everything because now they’re doing it “right” when the original didn’t do anything but be a victim of abuse. It’s one thing if they genuinely did love the OG but we have numerical proof that they hated her enough to kill her. And I just can’t get over that— it’d be one thing if we learned the percentages are a misrepresentation of the feelings or if they started out a bit higher? Like Reynold… negative affection? Really? That’s a bit much esp since later we see that og Penelope and Reynold had moments where they acted like siblings and clearly cared for each other. (When Reynold pretended to fall out of a tree and og Penelope cried). It just always made me sad to see our Penelope succeed, like the story is saying “don’t be like OG Penelope” or smth when OG pen was only acting out because she was being extremely neglected and abused.