Gertrude and Jonah are so similar, I think. they both learned about the dread powers when they were young (I assume early 20s) and decided they were not going to be victims of the situation. in the world actively hostile to everyone, they dedicated their whole lives trying to solve that issue – whatever that means for them. and they were ruthless; they lied and killed and betrayed and made themselves cold and detached so as not to grow soft and vulnerable for years and years and years. don’t get attached, use people, don’t let anyone too close, sleep with one eye open, for god’s sake, you don’t have the time to be afraid. while they did have opposite goals (although one can argue they are complimentary – if no one is trying to start the apocalypse, why would you need to prevent it?), they also were the only people capable of matching each other’s intensity. unstoppable force vs unstoppable force. they were doomed to crash
Every character in TMA is a tragedy in their own way but I think Gertrude’s tragedy is often overlooked. She effectively spent her entire life stopping rituals. She never let anyone get close to her. I don’t think she ever even trusted anyone. Every relationship she had was carefully monitored to make sure she didn’t reveal too much to the wrong person, because in her position, any mistake could lead to a sudden, unpleasant death, or worse, the end of the world. And as she went on as the archivist, she watched so many of her assistants die that she seemed to be numb to it, though I don’t think she truly was. When she had to sacrifice Michael, and then lost Sarah and had to kill Emma not long after, she never took another official assistant after that. She’d never admit it, but the effect that had on her seems pretty clear. The way she’s described by the catalogue when Gerry dies, “there was almost sadness in her eyes,” just speaks to me of someone so tired of losing people that the pain becomes distant. It has to, otherwise it all comes crashing in at once, every single loss compounding on all that came before it, and there’s no time for grief when you’re the archivist. And in the end she died alone, and as far as we’re aware, no one cared until the mystery of her death became pertinent to stopping the next ritual. Her fate wasn’t that different from Gerry or Michael: a dead voice left behind to guide the new archivist on his path.
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