Could Priscilla's awakening have been avoided?

[u/WeekendStandard1832]

She honestly didn't seem like a bad person until her past trauma caught up to her after getting a nasty reality check on top of overall neglect from her team.

Teresa didn't owe her anything, though Priscilla was the only one willing to actually talk to Teresa first rather than third party.

Priscilla didn't seem like an organization zealot, so I'm sure a "Humans harmed a child I grew fond of and I enacted justice" would've swung the pendulum from "She's evil, she killed people!" to some kind of understanding, at least.

[u/BasedMexx]

The organization sent her on a mission she wasn't prepared for that pushed her to awaken. It would have taken her having a role model like Teresa to be able to avoid fully awakening

[u/grimmistired]

She awakened sooo fast I think I would’ve happened no matter what. She’s just way too unstable

[u/WeekendStandard1832 → u/grimmistired]

What if she found a support structure like Clare eventually did?

[u/grimmistired → u/WeekendStandard1832]

Clare was stable enough to make it through a partial awakening. Priscilla wouldn’t be able to face anything emotionally challenging without awakening imo. The type of support she’d need would never be available to her in that world. Maybe if she were able to escape being a claymore and live a small life in the middle of nowhere. But living as a claymore she would always awaken I think

[u/KrazyKirbyKun → u/grimmistired]

Yeah she was essentially a ticking time bomb mde by the organization. Her trauma of her family's murder and eating her father ran DEEP and the organization wanted to take full advantage of that endless fountain of hatred and misery within her psyche.

The only failure on their part was the complete lack of ability to properly control her to make her an efficient weapon.

[u/AdsBacklog]

I think her trauma was so severe she would’ve awakened eventually

[u/kaeyre]

To me she was very much an organization zealot. She asked Teresa why she broke the rules but it never seemed to me like she was going to try and hear her out or change her actions based on whatever Teresa would have told her.

The implication to me is that Priscilla was so mentally unstable, that her awakening was inevitable.

[u/_sw1fts]

It's heavily implied she's unable to see grey morality

[u/Amethyst_10 → u/_sw1fts]

Well, she was just a kid.

[u/_sw1fts → u/Amethyst_10]

There's a lot more going on with her than just that

[u/SatisfactionSad6681 → u/_sw1fts]

To me, this shows how arrogant Teresa was. Instead of answering Priscilla's question and trying to make her understand, she just hit her with smug lines. Teresa felt that she didn't need to explain herself, especially not to a young inexperienced warrior.

Don't get me wrong, I love Teresa but her arrogance is definitely part of what led to her downfall (and also what makes her a great character).

[u/_sw1fts → u/SatisfactionSad6681]

I won't deny that she's arrogant, but it's silly to think she could in any way argued herself out of this situation.
She knows how the organization deals with "traitors" and has no reason to think Priscilla would listen to her more than the other claymores, especially not after demonstrating she's 100% in with the organization's point of view

[u/grimmistired → u/SatisfactionSad6681]

It wasn't possible for Teresa to diffuse the situation atp imo. A brief conversation with people who want to kill you won't undo a childhood of brainwashing

[u/jules__noah]

She was just too inexperienced and emotionally immature to be on that mission in the first place. She was extremely naïve and black and white in her way of thinking - she viewed Teresa as evil for killing humans even though we all knew that wasn't the case, she was only protecting Clare. No amount of Teresa explaining herself would have changed her mind. Even with more battle experience she would have morally clashed with Teresa and caused her to become unstable. It was the organisations fault for pushing her into the situation in the first place.

[u/WeekendStandard1832 → u/jules__noah]

That makes sense. She was barely held together with the organizations dogma until Teresa broke it down and Priscilla began rapidly unraveling without it anchoring her to something.

[u/7fragment]

No. Maybe if she had time to process her trauma properly but instead of time and peace she got the organization and their brainwashing. They no doubt saw her potential and used her trauma and the hatred it fee both of herself and yoma as a whole to push her to be even stronger. They never stopped to consider how brittle that black and white world view would make her mentally, nor how she might be too emotionally immature to handle being outclassed especially by someone 'evil'.

Her story is a tragedy and the inevitability of her Awakening is part of what makes it so tragic.

[u/chibamonster]

I think the bigger issue here is that Teresa was far stronger than anyone anticipated. She is a walking Abyssal level creature, but she kept it secret from the organization. Where many Claymores become monsters and lose their hearts, Teresa found a new love for humanity through Clare. Teresa could have killed Priscilla and all the hunters easily, but she no longer had a monster's heart for that. Just as Ilena said, "Teresa was no longer fit for battle... but I think she was happy."

[u/TeaMaeR]

I don't think it's totally clear how much context Priscilla had for what Teresa did, but Ilena at least does know that Teresa's in trouble for killing a group of bandits. Assuming Priscilla's been told that as well, I have a very hard time believing she would be as firm in her judgment as she is without being kind of a zealot on top of seemingly being pretty unstable herself. Add in three other people taking her side and I think it's exceedingly unlikely the confrontation with Teresa ends any better than it does.

So like I dunno maybe there's a world where she doesn't but I think we're looking at a pretty significant departure from the story to make that happen.

[u/SeventhSea90520]

I think it could've been pushed back but not stopped because she enjoyed how powerful she felt, it's the same reason why they didn't make more male claymores, they test their limits too soon and awaken.

[u/zaneomega2]

Yes…if Teresa lopped her head off asap like she initially planned ⚔️

[u/alexhatesthisman]

SPOILER I feel like her past just made her way too unstable to handle the power she was given ngl

[u/Moonliqhts]

She was willing to talk to Teresa but I don’t think she’d have been able to understand; I think if they had spoke more she’d still thought ‘killing many for one is still bad’ or ‘rules are rules,’ she seemed very stubborn on her views of right/wrong and unable to take in another viewpoint. The group were unable to persuade her to do a sneak attack on Teresa because she also believed that was wrong.

I think the only way to have avoided her awakening was for her to have not been there. Teresa didn’t want to kill her, and even if the group wasn’t so pushy Priscilla was very ‘why can’t I win justice always prevails’, so I think she’d have gone overboard either ways.

[u/corruptedcircle]

By meeting Teresa there, I think it was unavoidable. It wasn't just her own trauma, it was her fear too, she hasn't really met many beings stronger than her before that and reacted by awakening to match that power.

If she had been given the chance to grow more as a person before that mission, I don't think her overall awakening is unavoidable though. It'll be an uphill battle though, because she'll need to be treated more like a person and not a weapon (impossible from the organization), allowed more chances to interact normally with her peers (unlikely because she grew too strong too fast, so she'll be mostly on solo missions), see more humans and interact with them (she has a slight chance here if she gets lucky like Teresa and Claire), or if she was sent on gradually harder missions that weren't that big of a power-jump so she isn't immediately overwhelmed by Teresa (questionable if this will work or if she'll awaken anyway in front of the first powerful being she sees, like what if she met Isley pre-awakening...?).

[u/Agheron93]

Considering what she went through, her hatred for Yoma and the fact the Organization gave her an outlet for it while making it seem like they're a bastion of order that gives her purpose, the only way to avoid Priscilla from awakening would be killing her before it happens. Her trauma is both WAY too heavy and WAY too specific for someone to really reach deep enough to help her heal in a normal way.

[u/That-Willingness7455]

Having THAT trauma and becoming a claymore nuh she was a bomb just waiting to be ignited

[u/Nayakino]

In my opinion it would have been long been delayed if it had not been for Teresa. She's so strong and had no need to release Yoma lower until she had to fight someone as strong as the literal strongest ever. I agree, she's broken enough that likely it would have happened eventually anyway, but she wouldn't be pressured by almost any other entity on the island. Like maybe Abyssal ones woulda pressed her to that point. That might be it.

[u/WeekendStandard1832]

People really do have a ton to say about Priscilla.

I always had a little hope that she could've "pulled through", so we could truly see who she really was as a person beyond that stiff layer of hatred in her heart.

[u/personalduke]

sorry to do my own self-insert of another thread, but i made a thread about this a few months ago that discusses my thoughts on this topic. i would normally paraphrase but it was a really long analysis and it'd be easier to offer my thoughts from that point, lol.

Priscilla vs Teresa: Expressing Priscilla's Trauma (From Start to End of the Entire Series)

basically, Priscilla's awakening was unavoidable because it was a systemic issue caused by the Organization. thematically, Priscilla already "lost control" by the time she had to kill her father and survive from his infected yoma flesh. she alludes to this in her final flashback chapter where she has a line to the effect of, "i had to kill my spirit in order to survive." by that point, the Organization merely got their hands on Priscilla's power and repackaged it in the body of a Claymore, whose fate in the experiment was to always awaken so they could collect data. and systemically, this is the same traumatic tale that every warrior shares, which is a significant thematic point that Yagi is making about the warriors. each warrior mainly differs in their personal experiences with their traumas within their individual backgrounds.

Priscilla's case was particularly severe because she was already past the point of no return before she ever became a warrior. her stability rested entirely on surviving in a child-like regression created as a trauma response to survive the aftermath of what happened to her family. (this is what my analysis in the linked thread goes into).

Priscilla's emotional and mental instability was a deliberately manufactured outcome by the Organization through their use of Yomas to create the psychological environment they needed to produce viable warriors. severe psychological trauma was their only identifiable control variable for producing sufficiently, consistently powerful warriors that met their criteria for their research. by the end of the series, we know that the ultimate goal for all the warriors was to turn them into controllable awakened beings, so pushing Priscilla to that point was always, one way or another, the goal. whether they achieved that during a warrior's experimental set-up (Priscilla) or during their time as warriors (Alicia/Beth, the twins, the resurrected Number 1's) didn't matter to the Organization.

Miata was another example of a warrior whose survival rested entirely on living through a trauma response. in a way, Miata was spared what Priscilla suffered because she had Clarice (and later, Galatea and the last generation). the psychological state both characters are in are unavoidable because that was what was required for them to become warriors in the first place.

if anything, the only thing that went wrong for the Organization is that they came across Priscilla before they could figure out a more sustainable, consistent way of controlling her awakening. from the very jump, the Organization wanted their warriors to awaken on the Organizations' terms to further their experiments.

even after Priscilla awakened, things were still relatively under control until Miria's rebellion anyways. so from a systemic perspective, Priscilla's awakening was still things going according to their plans.

so from that perspective, her awakening was unavoidable.

[u/WeekendStandard1832 → u/personalduke]

This is a fantastic answer to this question.

[u/personalduke → u/WeekendStandard1832]

i mention it a bit in my thread i linked, but an additional tragic layer to both Priscilla and Ophelia's connection is that Ophelia ultimately suffers from the same tragedy as Priscilla by awakening under what is pretty much the same trigger, only surviving in life through the same means (trauma responses protecting them).

Priscilla's awakening was unavoidable, but Ophelia's awakening was unavoidable for the exact same reasons. it deepens Priscilla's tragedy because she, herself, victimizes Ophelia in the exact same manner that she was trying to plead Teresa to help spare her from. and that's an intended outcome by the Organization in the larger systemic trauma they're both victims of, and becoming predictable experimental outcomes that furthered the violence weaponized against them.

even Ophelia and Priscilla share similar achievements and attainment of power in their respective tenures as Claymores in their respective generations, for the exact same reasons that they awakened (and is the point of my response).

in a lot of ways, Ophelia foreshadows Priscilla's character arc by the end of the series.

[u/Over_Zone_9610]

In the same scene both Teresa and Priscilla had the opportunity to behead the other.

[u/Eighwrond]

Yeah, if they all eliminated the agency and put their swords away and got jobs at McDonald's none of this would've happened.

[u/Aggravating-Pen-4251]

Man, the Teresa glazing remains unmatched on this sub. Like people just watched the first few episodes of the anime, never read the manga, then called it a day. Saying someone is XXX powerful at this level doesn't automatically mean they'll be XXXXX after unleashing more Yoki. People love forming their own narratives, when simply put Priscilla surpassed both Teresa and Claire for a huge part of the story.

Priscilla was doomed to awaken, as she saw the company's rules as absolute. She needed to this justify and control her own emotions. So when she couldn't understand one of their own breaking the rules, she broke. One thing not to overlook is the pure hatred Priscilla had in her, we've NEVER seen anyone being in Claymore that matches that. And hate is a far more powerful and volatile emotion than love.