🍒❤️‍🔥 Charlotte Campbell moodboard ❤️‍🔥🍒

Finished The Running Grave the other day. Spoilers for the whole series below the cut.

Robin's last chapters undercover had me on the edge of my seat, I was so stressed for her.

Once again didn't realise whodunnit until Strike laid out the facts. I was in the “Daiyu is still alive” camp. After we learned that Mazu originally claimed that Alexander Graves was Daiyu's father, I thought the title of the book was a clue to her still being alive but… nope XD

Then again, the only character we met that could have been her was Becca, but she didn't quite fit the bill, did she? As Abigail said, “’Er sister an’ bruvver would’ve known she wasn’ Becca! ’Er muvver would’ve known! (...)” And it didn't explain the role of the hatchet or the burned rope.

One thing I wasn't surprised by was Charlotte's suicide, though I expected it to happen later on in the book.

Some background: after the first sample came out, I'd found out through some research that Dream of the Red Chamber (or The Story of the Stone), a novel in which one of the main protagonists is called Daiyu, had been adapted in a English-language opera in 2016. One of the changes in the opera version was that Daiyu kills herself by drowning into a lake after the man she loves marries someone else. In the novel, Daiyu succumbs to chronic illness before the marriage takes place.

Considering Tannhäuser turned out to parallel Strike's love life in The Ink Black Heart pretty closely (for an in-depth explanation, see this series of posts on The Strike & Ellacott Files Blog), I did wonder if Daiyu's suicide in the opera and/or other plot points of Dream of the Red Chamber would play a role in The Running Grave. A synopsis of the opera is available here.

Of all recurring Strike characters, Charlotte seemed the most likely to commit suicide. She has attempted it in the past. Plus, some aspects of her character seemed similar to Dream of the Red Chamber's Lin Daiyu:

[Daiyu] is an icon of spirituality and intelligence: beautiful, sentimental, sarcastic, self-assured, an accomplished poet, but subject to fits of jealousy. - Dream of the Red Chamber, Wikipedia

I couldn't see (or didn't want to see :P) a Strike/Robin marriage being followed by him becoming a monk though.

Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. In the end, here's how The Running Grave parallels the opera adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber:

In both stories, Daiyu only drowns in the retelling (the opera / the story what was spread by the UHC).

Daiyu and Charlotte are tragic characters, who both had been “unwell for a long time” (to quote Strike).

Daiyu / Charlotte kills herself because she can't handle the love of her life being with someone else. However, Charlotte doesn't drown, though she dies in a bath. Robin is the one who almost drowns.

Baoyu turns to religion after Daiyu's death / Strike visits a religious building (a church) after Charlotte's death.

After Robin escapes the cult, the story takes a very different turn, concluding with Strike's sort of confession. At first I was worried that Murphy was going to propose to Robin (since Daiyu's murder at Abigail's hands was clearly supposed to mirror the siblicide of The Cuckoo's Calling), but this was much better.

Who knows what awaits our heroes in Book 8 though… Hopefully not more (un)intended consequences of Strike's fling with Bijou. She said it wasn't his but she could be lying (or, more likely, have no idea who the father is).

P.S. Special mention to Pat who, along with her husband Dennis, was amazing in this book.

Charlotte is the worst, but I love seeing tender flashback Cormoran 🩵

The one and only Charlotte Ross Campbell

(spoilers for The Running Grave) What did you think of Charlotte's character arc now that it has ended? I haven't seen much discussions of it but personally I think the chapter about her suicide was one of the most well written parts of the book. Strike's thought process afterwards, and his character development, really struck me too. Something I really love is that Jo's books are always more about how to survive death than they are about death itself. You see that all the time in both CS and HP, grief is an important part in all of those books. Everytime there's a scene dealing with grief, that's when her writing never fails to go straight to my heart. I'm thinking about Harry's reaction to Sirius' death in Dumbledore's office, or the way he learns and talks about his parents, Cedric, Sirius; about how Strike remembers his mother, etc. These moments are so moving. And in HP, she takes this even further, as the story is not about death but about literally surviving death (Harry surviving Avada Kedavra in book 1; Harry making peace with his own death in book 7 (that moment right after he watched Snape's memories and he's lying on Dumbledore's office's floor and it dawns on him he is meant to die, I think that's a very underrated HP moment)). Then you also have the fact that CS is just as much about the suspects/the characters who grieve than the victims/the characters who die. I think her approach to death, grief, surviving, is very interesting.

And also, the message behind Charlotte's suicide, that you can't help people that want to be saved, reminded me of the way the house elf liberation plotline was explored in HP and I thought it interesting to see that's the kind of messages Jo put in both her series.

Not to mention the social message behind it. When Strike thought that her death was a sort of "relief" because he won't ever again die of anxiety wondering how Charlotte is doing, because he should have seen it coming, because it was very likely to end like that -- god, as someone who has had relatives dying after following a self-destructive path, I felt that. It is incredibly depressing yet so realistic and Jo's awareness of those issues is beyond what I typically see in any other sort of media.

Anyway, I had many, many thoughts about that, sorry I rambled!

Thank you for your message (i'm keeping part 2 for a different response, since this one's getting long already!)

I was also really moved by Charlotte's death, specifically the deceptive lack of fanfare that makes it look almost anticlimatic at first glance. She kills herself, predictably for a character who has been presented as passively or actively suicidal from her introduction. Her death doesn't happen at the end and isn't relevant to the case. And yet it echoes one central theme of the book: self-destruction, which is what you do when you join a cult (it's a destruction of the individual). This is also hugely important in Strike's character journey, since TRG is the book where he rises above his most self-destructive impulses. Worth noting that Charlotte dies smack in the middle of the book too (ch. 64), so "central" is to be taken quite literally there.

It's almost as if Charlotte survived so far because Strike kept clinging to self-sabotaging impulses, and she could sense that. But as he truly has a new determination to move on and become a person who acts responsibly towards his own needs and the needs of others, she can no longer hold on to existence. There's both symbolism and realism there - we often talk about men committing murder-suicide on their ex-wife/girlfriend when they realise they no longer have any power over them; Charlotte doesn't go so far but the harm she attempts as her last gesture (the letter blaming him) is no less intentional.

I would just nuance the parallel you're making between Charlotte and the Elves situation in HP. The Elves are not beyond rescuing, they just need to be treated with respect, and that's the lesson Hermione learns from that subplot, not that she makes a mistake trying to change things. Whereas Strike does have to learn not only that he couldn't save Charlotte, but also, her happiness is not his responsibility, and playing hero to mentally ill women is a terrible coping mechanism for his issues in general.

In My Veins - Charlotte Helen Campbell

Alexis and Charlie’s oldest daughter.

🚨 NEW EPISODE! 🚨

We’re back this week for another episode, this time covering chapters 24-26 of part 2 of The Ink Black Heart. In this episode, we discuss Kea Niven, Charlotte’s visit to the office, and the fallout that ensues. We'll be back in two weeks to discuss chapters 27 through 30.

Link to listen 🎧: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/91bPsuEs6wb

Commission of Charlotte and David, drawn by @oopsie-daisy! I really need to make content for these two, they’re so cute 😭

Thank you so much for making this!! 💕

It hit me today that Lucid Dreams by juice wrld is perfect for strike and Charlotte (towards the beginning of the series i mean)

you either read ya mysteries and try work out the mystery or you twirl your hair around your finger while you read about the romance. im the latter.

Dancing in Film: Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan

Now that I know you, I can't really not know you.

Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan

Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan

(same anon as before) actually WAIT i'm not done. Do you think Charlotte's character is JKR's take on the femme fatale trope? Charlotte is physically described as your typical femme fatale, the way Strike talks about her as a sort of mermaid or witch (which, ugh, he is such a man sometimes!) is also very reminiscent of the way your classic films noirs would portray those female characters. And Jo turns that archetype on its head because here, Strike is getting over Charlotte and their toxic relationship, and because she shows that Charlotte being entirely reliant on Strike when it comes to life and death (you know, like a femme fatale will try to redeem herself in the eyes of the male protagonist OR will be killed by a man over the course of the story) is shown as very toxic for her too.

(Sorry for the delay) I think you're completely right. The Femme Fatale archetype as written by men is usually a transposition of themselves on a female identity - a woman who is "different" from other women, combining a masculine behaviour (risk taking) and sexual drive, with impossible hyper-femininity (she has to be the most beautiful and desirable woman to ever walk the earth, because few men could stand to project themselves into an ugly woman). It's a double fantasy of being and owning (since the FF always ends up in love with the male protagonist who is also a more direct projection). Jo's take on that is, well, a woman like that if she existed would likely have some kind of untreated or mistreated mental illness. As described by Strike, Charlotte is chronically depressed, prone to mood swings, has a history of self harm and suicide ideation, etc., and her end is entirely expected.