Name: Clarke Griffin
Door: Door Pass

Canon: the 100
Canon Point: 4x07, "Gimme Shelter"

Age: 18
Appearance: here!

History: Wiki
Personality:
Clarke Griffin is a natural born leader.

That's not to say there hasn't been any evolution of her leadership skills. Clarke starts the series as a teenager sent to Earth among her delinquent peers — a scientific experiment to determine if Earth is habitable, for the survivors of a nuclear holocaust that live aboard a flotilla space station known as the Ark. Upon landing on the ground, and armed with only classroom-level survival training and her smarts, Clarke almost immediately establishes herself as someone who wants to protect the colony at large; she looks up their trajectory to the supplies they need on a map, arguing with those who protest the task that they need those supplies to survive.

She proves her worth multiple times by setting out on dangerous missions — supply runs, rescue attempts — and gradually earns the respect of the leader of the other faction of their camp, Bellamy Blake, who comes from a less privileged background than Clarke and has no intent to serve the interests of Chancellor Jaha and the other powers-that-be that remain on the Ark. Her ability to win Bellamy's admiration and trust over time is the unifying force that keeps their fragile band of delinquent colonists together and strong even in the face of the most dire circumstances.

She's serious and no-nonsense, cool and calm when under duress. She has a knack for being able to retain a rational mind even during the most frightening encounters — grounders attacking, a hemorrhagic fever that rips through camp used as bio-warfare. Even the peaceful lull and comfort of their internment in Mount Weather doesn't sit well with her; she's perceptive enough to see through the ruse, and her suspicion is rewarded when she discovers the bunker survivors are bleeding grounders dry to heal themselves.

But underneath that rational exterior beats a painstakingly sensitive heart. Clarke agonizes about the decisions she makes, but as a habit she keeps her emotions locked up fairly tightly for the most part, particularly if they don't serve her such as with Finn's seduction and subsequent betrayal. Lexa teaches her that love is weakness, something she tries to put into practice with assigning Bellamy to infiltrate Mount Weather as their inside man despite her initial misgivings about doing so, but it's obvious throughout the entire mission that Clarke simply feels too much, proving with TonDC that Bellamy's life is more valuable than the 250 or so that reside there before the missile lands.

This brings to light another side of Clarke, one that's quite ruthless in her own right. When she and Finn are captured after the bombing of the Grounders' bridge that thwarts their immediate attack, she frees herself by luring her captor into removing part of his armor, allowing her to slit his throat. She performs more than one mercy killing on members of her own people, to relieve their pain when all other avenues have been exhausted. She sacrifices Finn, to ally themselves with Lexa's grounder coalition — saving him from a lengthy torture, but ending his life nonetheless. With the assistance of both Bellamy and Monty, Clarke executes the entire population of Mount Weather to save her own, when there are no other options and her back is to the wall. She may be a 'Princess' to some of those from the Ark, her initial nickname given to her by both Finn and Bellamy upon their landing on Earth, but the grounders come to know her as wanheda, the Commander of Death.

And that's another thing about her — she commits to a decision about something, a course of action, and she doesn't abandon it for anything. Her obstinacy paints her into a corner where strategy is concerned; instead of changing the rules around in media res, she follows things through, stubborn and dogged, to their often horrendous conclusions. Her faith is misplaced, in many cases — her unswerving faith in Lexa to honor their alliance at Mount Weather's door is what inevitably leads her to have to kill every single man, woman and child not of her own people beyond that boundary.

What she's forced to do in the Mountain changes Clarke, irreparably. It's her Rubicon crossing. She's still capable of love and forgiveness, and second and even third chances for others, but after this she's unable to extend herself that same forgiveness. This starts Clarke on a downward emotional spiral, following the death of everyone in the Mountain and the return of her people to Arkadia. She leaves the fledgling camp, because she can't fully accept what she's done and she 'bears it, so [her people] don't have to.' The guilt eats her from the inside out though and she subconsciously removes herself from the rest of the Ark survivors, abandoning them in their eyes when she believes she's staying in Polis and navigating grounder politics with Lexa for the greater good of Skaikru. Her alienation doesn't abate, even when she returns to them after Lexa's death and with ALIE's takeover and the advent of the City of Light; it's only Bellamy who opens his arms to her. The rest of the remnants of the one hundred run the gamut in responses from being hurt by her abandonment, to blaming her for the deaths of people they cared for in the Mountain.

Her inherent selflessness is amplified, with this alienation. By the time praimfaya is realized and preparations begin for it, Clarke's self-preservation instinct is nowhere to be found. She no longer believes she's worthy of being saved, focusing on making sure everyone else is instead, and this manifests in some pretty self-destructive acts — her willingness to throw herself in front of an advancing Azgeda army, injecting herself with Luna's nightblood marrow become the guinea pig to test excessive radiation exposure to it, and her insistence on putting the flame back into her head to become the next Commander. (All plans which fail, fortunately.) She even gives her hazmat helmet to replace Emori's defective one on an outdoor excursion to rescue Raven, choosing to brave the harmful spike of pre-praimfaya radiation unprotected.

It's almost no wonder then, that with the death wave bearing down and her friends' lives at stake, Clarke chooses to make the ultimate sacrifice. Her fight is over, she tells herself, and the decision seems to give her a measure of peace; she ends up on the radiation-soaked planet alone with everyone she loves either rocketing up into space, or tucked underground in a bunker.


Powers and Abilities: Clarke has immunity to very severe levels of radiation, because she was born in space. In addition, she possesses rudimentary medical training afforded to her on the Ark, as the chief physician's daughter.

Inventory:

• one backpack with various stuff in it - handgun with ammo, change of clothes, some minor toiletries


• one handheld radio


Samples:

introspective
dialogue-heavy