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She's giving boys what they want
Tries to act so nonchalant
Afraid to see that she's lost her direction
She never stays the same for long
Assuming that she'll get it wrong
Perfect only in her imperfection
-Jon McLaughlin "Beautiful Disaster"
The day she turns five, Blair Waldorf begins to believe in fairytales. She started kindergarten a mere two months ago, but already she has followers that worship her every footstep. Her parents look on dotingly as she is perched atop a chair far too large for her tiny frame. The penthouse is loud with the babbling of classmates and their parents.
Her mother made her precious gown, taking hours to meticulously hand sew the small red beads. Blair originally asked for a sunshine yellow dress since it was her best friend Serena's favorite color, but Eleanor had knowingly glared at her young daughter, saying, "Yellow isn't the wisest choice with your pallor."
Blair's father is her king, always kind and wise. He gets home late nearly every night, with disheveled hair and sad eyes, but he comes home early tonight. It is a very important night.
Her kingdom consists of many. She supposes her best friend can be another princess, but only one of them can win the most handsome prince of all. Her tiny fingers entwine with Nate Archibald's. Eleanor and Ann exchange knowing glances, but the children don't notice them at all.
Nate is the perfect prince. He has sandy blond hair that sweeps his eyelids and eyes bluer than the Pacific Ocean. His first birthday gift to Blair sets her style from this point on. When she opens his gift, she delightedly gasps when she finds a navy Jennifer Behr headband.
When she's sixteen and her world crumbles around her, Blair stops believing in fairytales. She's a month shy of being seventeen and almost legal and soclosetoYale that it hurts too much to bear when Nate tells her he slept with Serena first.
Her mouth is shut the entire time he tells her because she has always seen it anyway. Perfect Serena always got everything in life. She coasts through life on her good looks and charm. The only things Blair had over her were school and Nate, and now she lost Nate. Would she lose school, too?
Several bathroom trips later, she stares into the toilet at the mess she's created. When the vomit begins resembling her chaotic life, she washes her hand and flushes the toilet. She is Blair Waldorf and she can survive this.
With her head held high, Blair kicks Nate out of her room, and out of her life. She's already learned how to survive without a king. Surely a princess can survive without her prince?
She's eighteen and so is he, when Chuck Bass decides (again) that he loves her. He's predictable, but she hates spontaneous, so she goes along with him the latter half of senior year.
She rebuilds her kingdom, but rules by herself. Her mother has taught her that a woman doesn't need a man to survive. She doesn't need a prince. If she keeps repeating this mantra to herself, then maybe one day it will become true.
Blair and Chuck don't hold hands or meet after tennis, but sometimes when she sits on the MET steps and licks a morsel of low-fat strawberry yogurt, she feels his eyes on her across the sidewalk. She shivers every time and this makes her feel more alive than anything she ever had with Nate.
She isn't quite ready to write the prince back into her story, so she and Chuck part ways after graduation. Regular checks of Gossip Girl reveal that he is traveling across Europe, stopping in at various Bass Industries locations. Blair spends her days in France, lying in the sun with Roman while her father directs locals at the vineyard.
Two art history classes at the Sorbonne leave Blair completely rethinking her career path before she reminds herself that art history won't make her money. She decides to indulge while she can and spends time taking trains to Italy to visit various museums.
Blair is tan and happy as she strolls around the streets of Florence, strawberry gelato in hand. It is nearly knocked out of her hands by a stranger in a motorcycle jacket.
"Who wears a leather jacket in the dead of summer?" she utters, because surely he is foreign and can't understand her.
He turns out not to be foreign, not to the country, and certainly not to her.
Carter Baizen's face lights up when he recognizes the pretty ex-girlfriend of his former friends.
"Blair," he takes her hand and lightly kisses it, "How have you been, beautiful?"
Blair doesn't let herself get too attached to someone so closely resembling Nate and Chuck, and starts her first semester at Columbia off right. It's a wonder they accepted her so late in the game, but she reminds herself that Harold Waldorf still has connections in New York City, even if he left to be an expatriate in rural France.
She finds New York to be a completely different scene as an undergrad. It's a change that scares and shocks her, but she welcomes it. She wouldn't have welcomed it two years ago, but two years ago Yale was on the map, and Nate Archibald was on her arm. Both are now lost, but she is only bitter with one. The pretty boy that came and went is no longer anything more than a friend to her, but she cherishes this fact dearly. It's more than she had before with him, if she's completely honest with herself.
USC accepts Nate, but he declines their offer to attend Columbia with Blair. It's not for Blair, it's for his mother. He won't say this aloud, but Blair knows this boy better than she knows herself. Even without words (because he doesn't use many), she knows he stays so his mother doesn't hurt more than necessary. Unselfish deeds by Nate Archibald start to become more regular in daily life so Blair begins to accept them and hope she can change, too.
The years begin to blur together as more and more coursework is assigned to be completed. Blair realizes she has no more time to sleep, therefore no more time to dream. Her lost fairytale seems to have taken a hiatus at the moment, but she's none the wiser because she doesn't even seem to have time to breathe these days.
It's her senior year at a university she never thought she would attend and she hasn't seen her beautiful blonde best friend in months. While Blair takes the traditional route and studies abroad in the City of Lights, Serena of course one-ups her and spends an entire year in Chile. She wasn't even aware her best friend spoke Spanish until Serena confirmed she'd added it as a major midway sophomore year.
With her closest go-to bff so far away, Blair relies on Nate when her stress levels begin building up. There is so much pressure on her that she thinks she will explode, but one smile from him is all she needs to brighten her day. It's reminiscent of their days as children, when things were so much simpler, long before they ever dated. Sometimes Blair wishes for these days to return, but she knows she likes the person she is becoming.
As other students spend their Thanksgiving vacation partying with family and friends, Blair is holed up in her mother's penthouse with countless law school applications. She'd thought about going the medical school route, but wasn't sure she wanted to stay in school forever. A summer job at Cyrus's law firm helps secure in her mind the fact that she had always been good at arguing. Now someone would pay her to do it.
It's almost too easy to sink into the elusive hazel-green eyes of one Carter Baizen.
Blair knows she has no self control when it comes to manipulative Upper East Side boys and gives Carter the benefit of the doubt when he buys her a drink laced with promises and a future to come.
The first time they fuck (again) it's on her terms and he lets her have control. She wants to be the one wielding this relationship (if you can even call it that) so she doesn't end up the one hurt.
She doesn't even know she's in over her head until Gossip Girl posts a photo of them in Central Park. It is graduation day and she didn't get summa cum laude like she didn't get Yale and she feels so lost like four years ago, but Carter stops her in the park and puts his arms around her, kissing the top of her head.
Everyone receives the photo at the same time, along with the caption, 'No tip top honors for B, but perhaps a new King C? We've missed you on this continent ;)' and Blair's mouth is opened wide as she takes this information in on her hours-old Blackberry.
Apparently magna cum laude from Columbia University still means something, because Blair is accepted at several prestigious law schools, including a few in California. It's a far cry from who she used to be, but she thinks Stanford might be the change she needs to make herself completely whole again.
The West Coast isn't nearly as tacky as she deemed it before, but she still wrinkles her nose at too-tan blondes at home football games.
Serena comes to visit more often from her beachside apartment in Malibu. Her neighbor Summer Roberts-Cohen reminds Blair of herself so she approves of her instantly.
Nothing is ever permanent in her life, so when Carter mentions he's had an offer from Google to come head one of their newer divisions, she almost drops her phone in shock.
"Blair?" he asks, not quite hesitant, but she knows she is the only person that unnerves him.
She presses the phone closer to her ear and nods, not remembering that he can't see her.
"Blair?" he prompts again.
This time she remembers.
"Sorry," she says lightly. "I was nodding. Did you know it takes eleven minutes to get from Mountain View to Palo Alto?"
"Yeah, that was kind of the reason I was considering it. Are you okay?"
"Are you going to take it?" Blair asks, completely ignoring his question.
"Do you want me to take it?" he asks just as fast.
Their give and take fast-paced relationship is moving far too fast for Blair, but she can't say anything because she just now realizes that she hasn't felt this way in a long time. It's frightening and pleasant all at once.
She smiles into the phone when she replies, "I'd love for you to take it."
She can almost see him grinning on the other side of the line, dimples in place.
Their blissful relationship is just that—too perfect. But can there be such a thing? Surely there cannot, because Blair seems to make sure she will never be happy.
She is nearing the end of her third year of law school and prominent firms have stood up and offered to hire her. She wants to make the decision all on her own, but Carter calls her selfish. She knows she is, she tells him, but she's ready to move back to the Northeast and leave the sunny smiles of California.
"You've had two offers in San Francisco and four in Los Angeles. Do you really have to consider the ones in New York?"
Carter seems as broken as Carter Baizen can seem when his eyes narrow at her, looking straight through her.
"You still love him," he states.
He says nothing else until he laughs. As he pulls out a tiny blue box out of his classically tailored Armani jacket, Blair's breath hitches as he leaves the box on her dining room table.
"I was going to give this to you tonight. No need now, right?"
Carter is still chuckling to himself quietly when he walks out of her door and out of her life for a second time. She knows she is the reason for this, but she's never been the fixer in the group. How can she fix this when she can't even fix herself?
Blair forgoes New York for Boston, in a decision that surprises even her. Cyrus offered her six-figures to start at his firm, but she's making close to this at a company with a plethora of Harvard graduates. They don't treat her like the boss's daughter here. Here, she is her own person. Here, she can shine on her own.
When Serena drunkenly marries one of the Strokes one night in Vegas, Blair takes it upon herself to win her best friend half of the guy's money. The press that comes with this elevates her enormously in her firm, though she's only been working there for six months.
Page Six takes a renewed interest in Serena van der Woodsen and they devote columns to her for months, even though she lives on an opposite coast. She starts modeling for fun, but the paparazzi mainly love her for being friends with starlets.
When Nate's mom remarries, she asks Blair and Serena to be two of her bridesmaids. The girls quickly accept, taking the next months in stride.
They're twenty-six on the verge of something bigger, but they don't know what that is yet.
As they're sitting in the presidential suite at the Plaza putting on navy floor-length silk Oscar de la Renta gowns, Serena wonders aloud, "Did you ever think we'd be married by now?" to her best friend on the floor next to her.
"Definitely," is all Blair says.
She hasn't even told Serena about the year-old engagement ring still haunting her in the closet of her Beacon Hill townhouse. She hasn't told anyone because she's too ashamed of herself.
Nate assumes she and Carter broke up because he was too much like Chuck. He fuels the fire and it spreads around New York, no one bothering to ask Blair what happened. They only need one version of events. Too many cause scandal.
She feels safe dancing with Nate at the reception, so she stays with him for most of the night. Ann comes over, chastising Nate for not proposing already. Nate and Blair smile politely till his mom leaves, entertaining her guests.
"Sorry about that," Nate starts, "She never gave up hope that you would give her grandchildren one day."
His lopsided grin makes everything alright and they waltz before Nate leaves to refill her champagne flute. She twirls around the dance floor with Serena until she feels a tap on her shoulder. She feels ice cold before she turns around into the eyes of Chuck Bass.
"May I?" he asks.
It would seem rude to decline and Nate's still not back with her champagne, so Blair nods once.
"One dance," she says to him, the first words she has spoken to him in years.
He nods back at her. She visibly sighs when the DJ begins to play a slow song.
"No backing down now, Waldorf," he whispers in her ear.
She sarcastically responds, "I wouldn't dream of it."
So they dance.
Blair cries when she finds herself with Chuck in suite 1812.
She hadn't meant to let it get this far, to let them get this far. It had been so long since she last let him touch her that it almost felt sinful.
As he sleeps, his face glows with something she has never seen before. She doesn't want to name the emotion and she is too stressed to sleep, so she searches for her discarded clothes and sneaks her way out of the Palace.
She feels seventeen again and this time, she doesn't like it one bit.
It's taken this long, but now she knows what she needs to do. She misses him, but doesn't know if he misses her. She wouldn't blame him if he didn't.
It takes her PI nine months to the day to find one Carter Baizen, and the photos that come in the sealed envelope don't resemble anything she ever loved.
He is scruffy and scrawny, quite literally half the man he used to be. She tears up, knowing she caused this to occur.
The last time he looked like this, it was his first time back in New York after being away. She recalls Nate telling her of a poker game, being swindled, and something about Chuck's Piaget. She can't remember the details.
She knows it's worse this time for him.
This time Blair is twenty-seven and ready to take on the world.
There's a sinking feeling in her stomach when she boards a plane to Asia, but she knows she's at fault. When she lands in Vietnam, her hair is instantly matted to her forehead and her Tory Burch tunic sticks to her lightly tanned skin.
It takes her three days to find him.
His eyes are incredulous and a bright shade of green as she approaches him in Hanoi. They're at a bank of the Red River and she starts to walk toward him as he stares at her the whole way.
"Blair?" he asks, because he has to be sure.
Surely he is imagining her, like he has imagined her for the last couple of years of his life.
"You're not real," he whispers, and he closes his eyes because he wants to forget how they ended things.
He thanks whatever being is above him that they are by themselves, because it would be embarrassing for Carter Baizen of all people to be caught looking like this in front of a girl. But he reminds himself that this is not just any girl, that this is Blair Waldorf, the only girl to have ever captured his heart.
She shuffles her fingers in her bright white Bottega Veneta tote and pulls out that tiny blue box he gave her so long ago.
"I wanted to return this," she says shyly, or as shyly as Blair can muster.
He laughs, "You flew halfway around the world to return an engagement ring?"
He runs a finger through his sticky hair, pondering the last time he washed it.
"Not quite," she replies sheepishly, this time pulling a perfectly manicured hand toward his.
She links their hands and they both look down. His hands have become callous as he spends his time in recently industrialized countries. Hers are perfectly soft, painted in a brilliant shade of coral that match her lips, which he lifts his head to observe.
She always had the most beautifully glossed lips. He wants to kiss them, but refrains for the moment.
"I think I might be ready now," Blair says, "It wasn't about Chuck before. It was about me, but I didn't know that."
Carter nods dutifully as she continues speaking delicately. He wants to interrupt her, but he won't, for fear that she will leave him here, again.
"I needed to become my own woman. I thought I had, so many years ago, but I was still just a little girl waiting for her perfect prince to come along. I don't think I ever got rid of that idea in my head."
He drops her hand and turns around, but she can still hear him as he utters, "I'm not your prince, Blair. I won't ever be that guy."
He hears her sigh behind him.
She replies, "I finally realized I don't need a prince. I just need you."
He appears more skeptical than before, but he turns around nonetheless.
"I love you," Blair whispers, but he can still hear her.
When he walks toward her and sinks his hands around her waist, she throws her hands around his neck and kisses him like nothing else matters.
And in this moment, it truly doesn't.
They have an intimate wedding ceremony at a small church in the mountainous province of Hòa Binh.
Blair witnesses for the first time the ring that Carter bought for her so long ago. It is a crystal-clear solitaire set in a channel-set band.
It's perfect.
She is wearing a white áo dài, the traditional dress of the Vietnamese people. Hers is made of silk, embroidered with thousands of Swarovski crystals. There are plain pants to go underneath, and she dons the silver Jimmy Choo flat sandals she purchased last week in New York.
This is nothing like she ever thought her wedding would be like, but this fact is finally okay with her.
When she looks over at her now clean-shaven husband-to-be, she sees happiness in his eyes. The dim lighting of the church has made his eyes more golden than green, but she loves both shades.
Their "I do's" are uttered with such love and compassion that Blair has to wonder if she is dreaming. She still doesn't think she deserves this.
Before Blair can tell anybody about her recent nuptials, she gets a buzz from Gossip Girl telling Manhattan about them.
Carter only laughs from their hotel in Luang Prabang, "Only Gossip Girl would know we were married before The Times."
Her international phone is greeted with various different texts, ranging from "Congratulations"—Serena, Penelope, etc, to "WTH WERE YOU THINKING?"—Nate, to "I had to read about your marriage in the paper, Blair. Really, now?"—her mom.
This time she's laughing, too.
She grasps her new husband's hand and drags him outside to the streets of Laos. They rent bicycles to ride for the rest of the day and he tells her over a sunset-filled dinner that he loves her more than anything.
She starts to think that maybe, just maybe, Prince Charming does exist. He has green eyes instead of blue and his hair is more brown than blond, but she loves this version all the same.