Hi everyone! I was doing a little rewatching of Downton S1 and I realized how despicable Mary really was to Matthew, so I wanted to do a little character study about his reactions to all of that. Please let me know what you think!

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She was so cool.

Cool Lady Mary in her pure ivory tower looking down on the rest of them.

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The first time he saw her, she was wearing that trademark frown he would come to be so familiar with. His first thought was shock, that of course she would enter unannounced at such an inopportune moment. But then he was stuck with the fact that she was beautiful. He didn't know what he was expecting when he had heard that the Earl had three daughters, but as she rode away in her posh black hat, he knew that it was certainly not Lady Mary.

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They were meant for each other in a sick twisted way. He was both her nightmare and her salvation, a physical representation of all that was wrong with the world tied up in a paradoxical bow. He was both son of god and sea creature to her princess. While he would steal away her entire fortune, he always kept the key to return it.

She hated him. He could deduce that simply enough. Because of some combination of their inopportune first meeting and his status as the heir to her fortune, her resentment was evident in her harsh words, disdainful glances, and passive aggressive behaviors. He admired her fire, her passion that was so absent in most of the girls he had known before her.

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In fact one the daughters was interested. Edith's ruse to take him to see the chapels was well intended. They had pleasant conversation. She was interested in his life and did not take insult with his work or upbringing. She was friendly and affectionate. He knew that this was what was good for him. That he needed a wife and, as he looked into Edith's guileless eyes, he realized that she would be a very apt choice indeed. But he noticed how on the edge of ease and boredom their conversations became. How simple she seemed to be. He couldn't help but wish that her tongue was a bit sharper, her hair a bit darker…

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They were at dinner, and she had not one but three handsome and eligible suitors. He never thought for one moment how things would turn out that night, or how it would go on to affect the courses of both their lives, when she excused herself mid-conversation to be swept away by the darkly handsome Turk.

Secretly he was pleased, well not pleased, but relieved, when he heard that the Turk was dead, and she was his again, if only in his mind.

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There she was at the town fair, approaching him, seeking him out for once, dressed in that blue coat and black hat he had come to know so well. Sometimes he thought of her repetition of outfits as some small proof that she was human, tangible to him. He was caught off guard by that color against her dark hair and pale skin.

She was angry again; he had made her angry, another tense undercurrent to their conversation. Another constant reminder that he was her sea monster, the villain, that would steal away her fortune and freewill. She always said those things, just to guilt him, to poke small holes into his heart with thin needles. But in the way that she said it there with his bike between him, he could tell that she no longer told him these things to spite him. It was her raw confession.

He had asked her if she could help him get a word with her father, and to his surprise she had agreed. That night he stood there in the foyer as he waited for the women to turn. His eyes stayed on Mary far longer than necessary, frozen by the trapezoid of flesh on her back, the way that the white chiffon flowed down her thin arms, as he studied her without permission.

He said it all to her that night. She meant a great deal, a very great deal. But he was always her consolation prize. Always the next best thing, a constant reminder of her disappointment. What do you call second place? The first-place loser.

She resented him, Matthew always knew that. He thought it was about the Abbey, the money, but it was more than that. Her father's love and her own insecurities haunted her every time she looked at him, every time his name came up in conversation. Because one day she would need him. And most of all she hated her own dependency.

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He knew she found him dull. Compared to the Turk. Compared to her armies of suitors, but he thought that even he would be a shining star compared to Sir Antony Straland. He should have known better though, because despite her recent friendliness, pleasantry and, dare he say, flirtation, she was still Mary Crawley. Her attentions were fickle, her empathy a force of fiction. And as she swept by him that night in the drawing room he thought, How stupid I have been.

As he left on that cold night, part of him wished she would run after him, out into the snowy drive, just so he could leave her standing there alone as he walked away. Those small icy darts on her bare white arms and frowning face.

But of course she wouldn't, because he was just another toy in the corner to her. They were all just toys growing dusty in Mary's dollhouse.

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He let her chase him for a while, but of course how could he every really stay away? She was cruel, he often wondered if she even had a heart, but when she looked at him through her dark eyelashes, arched eyebrows raised, the hint of a smile in her brown eyes, he was hopelessly entangled in her web. And when he told her that they should see more of each other, he knew that her quick turn of the head and flickering eye contact meant more than any words she could have said.

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The night he rescued Sybil from the mod, he contemplated a future with her, the third daughter. He felt so angry at Branson for not protecting her, and her injuries physically pained him as he saw her laying on the couch. She was so pure, transparent like Edith with all of Mary's passion. She admired his career and his care for the people of the county that Mary had little interest in or time for.

But of course Mary would always be his first call.

And his confused feelings wouldn't stop him from proposing to her hours afterward. When she kissed him back, recanted her cruel words from the previous year, soothed the wounds she had thoughtlessly stabbed into his heart, how could he not forget his pain and insecurities? How could she ever question that it was simply his duty to love her? Didn't she know that she was the sun and everything, everyone (including him) moved in orbit around her?

He should have known that when he got too close he would surely combust into flame and ash.

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In the weeks that followed, he felt so lucky that she would even consider his proposal, although he was sure she would accept. It was perfectly right, them together. He was the son of a god now, Perseus, her hero. Her kiss transformed him from beast to beauty.

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He waited for weeks and weeks, and then the news. The new distraction, preoccupation that would render him worthless to her.

There was to be a baby. Part of him is glad that it happened. Glad she could show her true colors sooner than later. He had dodged a bullet he told himself. If she would not marry him then, as a country solicitor, she did not deserve him when that poor dead boy was buried in his small grave. When he asked her that day if she loved him enough to spend the rest of their lives together, he already knew the answer was no. She loved herself, loved her independence, and maybe she had loved him, but not enough.

He had so desperately wanted to be yes. He loved her so dearly, so deeply, but on some level he understood. He had this money bestowed upon him, late in life, but even he was becoming accustomed to the life of wealth. It would be harder for her to leave, to have to work for herself, no servants, no finery. She would come to resent him again in time. He resented himself for not being able to provide more her. He would never fit there. That he decided on the spot.

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In their last tearful reunion, he wished she would beg him to stay. He wanted to see her in front of him on her knees in her white dress in the spring grass. He still loved her, but he realized that he alone would never be enough for her. He would find another girl, one that could be described as kind and honest, the perfect wife for a country solicitor, and then he would make her a Countess.

And cool Lady Mary would still be locked in her tower. She would have her title and her money, but she would never have love. That would be her sacrifice.