Three paintings of the Magne family, and what they now mean to Charlie.
The gnarly-branch-framed painting that hangs in the Hotel lobby is the Magne family's official portrait; the faces the royalty choose for their infernal subjects to see:
Lucifer, with lidded-eyes and a lackadaisical shark-toothed grin that plainly states I am powerful enough to not even care.
Lilith, with a sultry, knowing smirk that spells out subtle danger to anydemon using their brain.
Charlie… stiff, muted, swamped by her formal attire. Hair restrained by thorny vines. Eyes a little lost behind the makeup.
The symbolism is sour.
There's another painting in the lobby, behind the couch, enclosed in the teeth of some hell-beast. It captures the Magne family at a long-ago ball.
Lucifer's toothy smile is the same here, but his eyes are open, playful. Charlie beams, winks, twirls her frilly skirt. Lilith, offsetting their exuberance, strikes a cool, aloof pose; hand on hip, slit dress revealing a leg.
It should be a happier memory… but for Charlie it isn't, really. Because the only reason she was so outwardly elated, then, was that she was younger, sheltered, yet to view her first Extermination or take a closer look beyond palace walls. She did her parents bidding, she conformed.
In hindsight, and knowing what she now knows, it discomforts her.
A third painting, in a small plain frame and kept in a private drawer, is for Charlie's eyes only. It's of a picnic, in one of Lucifer's orchards; red trees bearing glinting gold apples.
Lilith, in a sunhat & dress, reclines on a blanket, smiling behind the fruit she bites into. Charlie, just a messy-faced child, laughs and tussles with her father. Lucifer, sans hat and jacket, rolls around in the grass with his daughter; his teeth somehow less pointed in his beaming visage.
A joyful, bygone time. Before she became, in the eyes of her father, "a failure."
It hurts to remember, but Charlie chooses to anyway.
A/N:
Painting no. 1 is the portrait that Alastor takes a moment to view at 23:39 in the Hazbin pilot. Painting no. 2 is in the left background at 20:44.