Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-86.143.250.155-20150316000928/@comment-75.121.59.96-20150807182623

While I don't think Lexa deserves a "bullet in the head" I don't believe she's the altruistic leader that people are making her out to be. She cared for Clarke, and I'm sure it was painful to leave her there to, for all Lexa knew, die, but saying she did what she did to save her people is oversimplifying the decision of a much more complex character. And sadly, I think that's what a lot of Lexa fans do. Not to mention, just completely disregarding everything she had been trying to "teach" Clarke throughout her whole character arc of season 2.

This is the same woman who told Clarke that victory stands on the back of sacrifice, after allowing the deaths of hundreds of her own people to, as she says, win a war, and reminding Clarke that people die in war. When Clarke begins to doubt her decision in sending Bellamy into the Mt. Weather, thinking that it was too dangerous, Lexa tells her that, that's what being a leader means, that you must look your warriors in the eye and tell them to go die for you. She demanded Clarke hand over Finn to be punished for his crime of killing 18 grounders, blood must have blood is something that she repeats numerous times, yet when they are finally at Mt. Weather she seems to suddenly go back on all of that. She's suddenly not willing to risk the lives of her warriors to punish the people who had killed and tortured hundreds of grounders.

Yes, Lexa made a deal to save her people, which any good leader would want to do, but I truly don't think that, that's why she did it, that was just a perk. Her choice to leave Clarke to die was not done because she's just so selfless, but instead was done for wholly political purposes because she is very intelligent and shrewd. And honestly, thinking otherwise seems a bit of a disservice to her character.