I wrote up real canon first, then headcanon oops. Way too tired to fix it look at all the fucks I give!
Hard Canon
1. Eleanor's mother, Sofia Lamb, was sstationed as a missionary in Hiroshima, Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945. She survived, but many of her friends did not.
She heard the Allies cite "the greater good" as their reasoning -- that the loss of life would be less than if they had staged a full-scale invasion of Japan -- and it's implied that this pushed her over the edge.
2. Sofia Lamb used a sperm bank to impregnate herself, with Eleanor, for the express purpose of raising the Messiah. You can find an audio diary that Sofia recorded, while pregnant, explaining her future daughter's role in the future of society.
3. Eleanor is very clever. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that, as a child, she was given piles of books and no other hobby than to learn, but there's a blackboard in her childhood room that has algebra problems she was solving. When she was seven.
4. Eleanor has a clipped British accent -- her VA is Sarah Bolger. She sounds more like Sarah as Princess Mary Tudor in The Tudors than she does as Princess Aurora in Once Upon a Time, but they both have Eleanor characteristics.
5. The entire cult believed Eleanor was the coming Messiah. I mean like really believed it. There is graffiti throughout Rapture with things like WE WILL BE ONE IN HER and THE PEOPLE'S CHILD IS COMING. They set up shrines outside Little Sister vents, outside her room, anywhere she had once been.
Canon That I Tweaked
Most Big Sisters are apparently 6'10". Not even joking. I have tweaked this because Eleanor does not tower over people in cutscenes in freakish I AM NEARLY 7 FEET TALL ways, so I settled on 5'10" for her since she's not quite a typical Big Sister anyway.
Headcanon
1. In canon, Sofia states explicitly that she tried to raise Eleanor in as detached a manner as possible -- the Messiah shouldn't prioritize her mother over any other human being, so Eleanor shouldn't be attached to her mother. As a result, she tried not to love her daughter.
My headcanon is that she failed. I think deep down, she does love her, and that makes her all the more determined to never show it.
2. Eleanor, on the other hand, is convinced that her mother doesn't love her. And deep down, she wishes that her mother did.
She will never admit that one out loud. Ever.
3. Sofia never explained interpersonal relationships, friendships, tact, sexuality, or any of that nonsense to Eleanor. The Messiah has no need of becoming close to anyone, ever.
I figure she knows the basic anatomy (because, see above in re: educated and clever) but nothing of the emotional / personal side of things.
4. In canon, Eleanor harvests Delta's ADAM when he dies, so that a little bit of him will "always be with her." Normal Rapture citizens get memory "bleed" from ADAM, but Little Sisters can index and catalog the memories and access them however they'd like.
My headcanon: whenever she's lonely in Fandom, she pulls out Delta's memories of their time together -- her harvesting corpses and him thundering after her -- and watches them.
5. Eleanor can't access his memories from before he was a Big Daddy. So she doesn't know his name. She wishes it didn't bother her, but it does.
no subject
Hard Canon
1. Eleanor's mother, Sofia Lamb, was sstationed as a missionary in Hiroshima, Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945. She survived, but many of her friends did not.
She heard the Allies cite "the greater good" as their reasoning -- that the loss of life would be less than if they had staged a full-scale invasion of Japan -- and it's implied that this pushed her over the edge.
2. Sofia Lamb used a sperm bank to impregnate herself, with Eleanor, for the express purpose of raising the Messiah. You can find an audio diary that Sofia recorded, while pregnant, explaining her future daughter's role in the future of society.
3. Eleanor is very clever. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that, as a child, she was given piles of books and no other hobby than to learn, but there's a blackboard in her childhood room that has algebra problems she was solving. When she was seven.
4. Eleanor has a clipped British accent -- her VA is Sarah Bolger. She sounds more like Sarah as Princess Mary Tudor in The Tudors than she does as Princess Aurora in Once Upon a Time, but they both have Eleanor characteristics.
5. The entire cult believed Eleanor was the coming Messiah. I mean like really believed it. There is graffiti throughout Rapture with things like WE WILL BE ONE IN HER and THE PEOPLE'S CHILD IS COMING. They set up shrines outside Little Sister vents, outside her room, anywhere she had once been.
Canon That I Tweaked
Most Big Sisters are apparently 6'10". Not even joking. I have tweaked this because Eleanor does not tower over people in cutscenes in freakish I AM NEARLY 7 FEET TALL ways, so I settled on 5'10" for her since she's not quite a typical Big Sister anyway.
Headcanon
1. In canon, Sofia states explicitly that she tried to raise Eleanor in as detached a manner as possible -- the Messiah shouldn't prioritize her mother over any other human being, so Eleanor shouldn't be attached to her mother. As a result, she tried not to love her daughter.
My headcanon is that she failed. I think deep down, she does love her, and that makes her all the more determined to never show it.
2. Eleanor, on the other hand, is convinced that her mother doesn't love her. And deep down, she wishes that her mother did.
She will never admit that one out loud. Ever.
3. Sofia never explained interpersonal relationships, friendships, tact, sexuality, or any of that nonsense to Eleanor. The Messiah has no need of becoming close to anyone, ever.
I figure she knows the basic anatomy (because, see above in re: educated and clever) but nothing of the emotional / personal side of things.
4. In canon, Eleanor harvests Delta's ADAM when he dies, so that a little bit of him will "always be with her." Normal Rapture citizens get memory "bleed" from ADAM, but Little Sisters can index and catalog the memories and access them however they'd like.
My headcanon: whenever she's lonely in Fandom, she pulls out Delta's memories of their time together -- her harvesting corpses and him thundering after her -- and watches them.
5. Eleanor can't access his memories from before he was a Big Daddy. So she doesn't know his name. She wishes it didn't bother her, but it does.