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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12516
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12516
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If "the humble, virtuous identity is not less or more authentic than the grandiose, power-grabbing one that replaces it," then both those (apparently contradictory) sets of characteristics exist in the same person.

You have to figure out how that's possible. Her backstory is critical to that. Did she grow up as the child of a monastery's charwoman? Was the monastery headed by a Cardinal Richelieu type? Was the monastery run by kind, humble monks who were eventually destroyed by a powerful political leader who adopted her as heir?

I'm just riffing here, but my point is the same as SF's: for one person to hold such contradictory personalities but have them both be authentic, she has to have had a complex life. Whether the change is caused by internal or external factors, you as the author must account for it.

My feeling as a reader is that if I can't _understand_ why she can be Polly Pure and then flip over to Killer Katrine with a sidebar of Emo Emily along the way, I'm going to think that you as the writer don't know what you're doing, and I'll abandon the story.

Other things you have to think about while you're constructing this backstory:

- If her Polly Pure self is authentic, but she takes on multiple other personae to hide her past, does she hate that Polly Pure self? Does she look back on her innocent past with contempt?
- Does she keep changing personae for other people (that is, so they don't know who she is) or for herself (because she can't stand to look at herself in the mirror any more)?
- Who is she protecting with the constant changes? Whose past is she trying to conceal? Could she be trying to keep her past secret because revealing it would reveal someone _else's_ past or secret?
- Could she have multiple personality disorder? (you just don't see enough of this in fiction, AFAIC.)
- What is the _reader_ supposed to think of her various personae? Are we supposed to like them all? Sympathize with them? Is there a persona we shouldn't like? feel sorry for?

Original score: 4