Why Queen motivation is deeply flawed and an analysis into her worldview
A lot of conversation about Queen miss the the most defining trait of her character. Her trust issues. This post will be about trying to analysis queen characterization, her state of mind, how it relate to her goal and how her character could develop in season 2. Yes this will be VERY long.
As pointed out by many people, Queen's goal of overturning the trust value system has serious merit. No matter how you look at the short term of how that would be done, the world before trust appeared better as it is now. Just as trust can save a lot of people it can greatly hurt other people as evidence in s1. It's basically a new weapon put in the hand of a civilization. When you consider the long term effects if trust was to disappear. the world would at least not have this potential weapon of mass destruction.
The goal is noble. What has less merits, is how Queen arrived to her goal and the root cause for her motivation.
Yes queen still has a lot of characterization left to explore in s2 about her past, and her psyche but even with what we got in s1 there is still a lot that people overlook. Without doubt, the biggest clue to how she view the world is her speech but I would say the biggest clue in how to form the picture is one line in her PV : "I won't trust anybody anymore, I don't need to rely on anyone either. I'll only believe in myself"
Something undeniably deeply broke her worldview in the past and made her unable to trust anybody from potential friends to even her fellow citizen just as you would normally trust your neighbor to strive for to good of the community. This view is further reinforced in the speech she make. When she highlight the problems that the trust system create such as conflict between heroes and disaster from it, she pinpoint what she herself believe is the root cause of the problem: "the will of the people".
I think its very intentional that the person who want to tear down a power system based on trust is the character who has the biggest trust issues. Queen cannot believe that the mass of people will make the right choice and is fundamentally against "the will of the people" which is often used in democratic speech.
You can understand even from the start of the speech she despise relying on trust from other to achieve anything. She reject from the get-go any label imposed on her by the person the podium and claim she will trust herself rather than relying on it from other. This trust in herself then lead her to think that SHE will lead the society to order. She cannot trust anyone else to do so. This is the logical conclusion of her view. She probably cannot even trust the people contributing to her trust value.
There is a reason why she is called Queen. Queen worldview is anti-democratic and against any system to need to rely on trust from the common people. This is why her biggest motivation for removing the trust system is not the problems the system cause. It's the very nature and idea of it.
Queen characterization literally feel like an antagonist to the show premise. If we didn't have any information about season 2. I would be convinced she was set up to be the final villain. I will expand on that next
Her entire plotline and relationships so far have been set up almost perfectly to blow up and reinforce her further down into the extreme of her worldview. First the most obvious is her dad.
Queen dynamic with her dad feel very weird because at this point it feel more like Queen view her dad more like a business partner than someone she love deeply. We never got outward sign of affection from Queen toward her dad. But we can assume he is one of the few people she trust with some things. When she will learn about his involvement with spotlight, her most likely reaction to this betrayal will most likely to convince herself she was right all along to never trust anybody because in the end even the one closest to you fail your trust, so why trust anybody.
The second one is LJ her first friend she made in her life at 18 (which is crazy btw). I think anybody thinking Queen will not take extreme issue with LJ trying to kill Ghostblade as revenge is deluding themselves. Queen worldview presented herself as someone wo will bring order among other thing. She literally talk about hero conflict even if that might not be the biggest reason behind her motivation. Her friend trying to go outside every system in the society and using their trust power to deliver their OWN sense of justice is fundamentally opposed to Queen see the world. If LJ does indeed do that, this will be a second blow to queen trust issues almost as big as her dad betrayal.
When you pair a character with already a deeply problematic view about society with relationship dynamics that are poised to make said character go to the most extreme of the worldview, you have the potential to have an immense crashout not only internally (like her depression in s1) but on the external world. The exact type of crashout you often see villains in anime go through.
Again I'm not saying, Queen will absolutely end up a villain. Her arc could still be about overcoming her trust issue with the world, but we can't deny the setup for her being a big villain is already there and relatively easy to execute compared to a new character which you need to establish the setup.
Finally I would like two discuss two scene in Queen arc which often get overlooked to why it could have been included and what it say about her character.
The first one is the one in ep 11 where she save the girl on the roof (picrel). There was no need to show the fear infected person die brutally. What is even more unsettling is the fact that it happen with Queen back turned from it while she is almost smiling deposing the girl on the ground. If Haolin really wanted to hide some meaning in this scene you can easily find some. This scene is almost immediately after her speech where she lay out her worldview. This scene could represent the place Queen worldview will her to. Yes she may save a lot of people, but the way her motivation is flawed will taint her goal and lead to dark outcomes for some people.
The second one is the fight against the fear infected missile guy in ep 12. As many people pointed Queen could have stopped some of those missile. She chose not to. Lot of people take issue with this based on the fact that they perceived Queen priority as stopping collateral damage and saving people. But as I outlined in this post Queen main driver is her issue with the concept of trust. Yes damage caused by heroes is a factor but not the main. And I think this scene is there to highlight this important factor about queen character.
Queen has been shown to be extremely aware of how the public perceive every action, every sentence said and how the public change their trust accordingly. She definitely know that the bigger the threat, the bigger the trust boost when the threat is stopped. Letting some missile explode make the enemy more feared and Queen more trusted when she eventually stop him. Haolin could definitely have made this scene to show what queen is willing to sacrifice or do in order to achieve her goal which I outlined is more selfish even if the outcome may be good for other people
Tldr: Queen goal is noble and may be good if done right but her motivation is wrong and might lead to something worse if she continue down her path especially since season 1 has done nothing to make her character feel opposition to her worldview and she may be about to experience events to might her more convinced she is right in it.