Can't Buy Her Love, Noooo

Looking over the recent Black Cat mini-series, I've been trying to decide what Vasili's hopes were. He was going to reacquire the treasures of the Kravinoff family, lost to them decades earlier, I assume when the czar fell, because he fell in love with Ana Kraven. Was he courting her mother's favor, since she was angered by the loss of those pieces, in the hopes she'd OK a courtship with Ana? Or was it his way of proving that he was more than a mere servant? That's all he was viewed as, another in his family's line which serves the Kravinoffs, which would firmly establish him as beneath them. If he could recover everything, demonstrate his skill and devotion, maybe he'd be viewed differently, by Ana at the very least.

Felicia presented it to the Kravinoff matriarch as the former, Vasili expecting Ana as some reward for his work, but her objectivity is questionable, since he held her mother hostage to make Felicia steal what he couldn't. The fact he didn't push himself to be better, to finish his mission on his own, lends validity to her statement. If it was really about proving himself, he'd have kept trying on his own, rather than force someone else to do it for him. Which says it was less about how it was accomplished, and more that it was accomplished.

I'm not an objective theorist either, of course. I'm a sucker for those big gestures, the bold declarations of affection I think mostly occur in fiction. it doesn't work that way, which is probably Vasili's mistake. He figured he'd present all these recovered baubles, and Ana would look at him differently, more than indentured help. Maybe she would have, but it's unlikely. The Chameleon served her father for many years, and I don't think they were ever friends, let alone anything more. It's the Kravinoff sense of superiority. Someone once beneath will always be beneath them. If Vasili had succeeded, he might have earned praise, but he could easily have been beaten for overstepping his bounds. The family was in the middle of something big, and his personal mission could have jeopardized that, if he'd attracted police attention. Involving the Black Cat may have messed things up, though I didn't read Grim Hunt, so I can't say.

Still, even though Ana trusted him, enough to insist to her mother that Vasili would never work against the family, it's the trust one extends a pet, confident it'll never bite its master's hand. Which is not what he was looking for, and wasn't likely to ever become what he was looking for.

Interesting to contrast Vasili and Felicia, though. He serves the same role as his father and mother, though he seems dismayed by how his father served (helping Kraven kill himself). There was no sign of his relationship with his mother. Felicia follows in her father's footsteps, likely surpasses actually, but has a distant relationship with her mother, who's unconnected to the work, and doesn't approve. Vasili stole for Ana, and for himself, since he believed it would help him with her. Felicia steals because she's good at it, and she enjoys it. Vasili loves a girl who is never gonna love him back, while Felicia is (was?) in a relationship with a guy who might have wanted it to be more, but she's fine keeping it casual. For Vasili, everything he does is in pursuit of a goal - Ana. With Felicia,, the doing is as much the point as anything else. She made the choice to follow her father, makes the choice of what she'll steal, how she'll do it, and who she works with. And those things don't have much relation with who she sleeps with. She might not steal something for a villain out to get Spider-Man if it'd be used against him, but she that doesn't stop her from stealing all sorts of other pretties.