Badass Ladies of the Twilight Universe: Rosalie Hale

“‘I saved Royce for last.  I hoped that he would hear of his friends’ deaths and understand, know what was coming for him.  I hoped the fear would make the end worse for him.  I think it worked.  He was hiding inside a windowless room behind a door as thick as a ban vault’s, guarded outside by armed me, when I caught up with him.  Oops – seven murders,’ she corrected herself.  ‘I forgot about his guards.  They only took a second.’” (Eclipse, 163)*

The above quote comes from what is probably my favorite chapter in the entire series.  Eclipse is perhaps the most character-driven of the books, with a lot of different people putting their cards on the table and leveling with one another.  While I enjoy Jasper's account of his past and Edward and Jacob's Big Emo Talk about Their Feelings in the tent, Rosalie's explanation of why she's been so unpleasant to Bella shows her to be one of the most interesting characters in the saga.  In Twilight and New Moon she's sort of in the background, clearly disapproving but not explaining why.  Her story as told when she breaks her silence in Eclipse is thus deeply affecting, and takes on a deeper significance in Breaking Dawn as it helps Bella to know that Rosalie is exactly crazy enough to help her keep her improbable monster baby.  Rosalie, in her own way, provides a counter-narrative to the Great and Epic Love of Edward and Bella by refusing to completely buy into it.  She thinks that choosing to become a vampire is a terrible decision, and has a well-reasoned explanation for why that is.  Like Leah, Rosalie is not particularly interested in tailoring her opinion to make it more palatable to those around her. Also, if anything in this saga is badass, it is most definitely Rosalie's tale of violent revenge against the men who did her wrong as a human.

I also love that Rosalie's own love story (in a universe comprised of soul-mate pairings) involves her as the savior, as does Alice's. Alice rescues Jasper emotionally, taking him away from a life of people-eating-derived clinical depression.  Rosalie saves Emmett physically, intervening in a bear attack that nearly kills him as a human.  Basically, Edward's not the only hero in his family.  I just love Rosalie and her unrepentantly unpleasant, auto-fixing self.  

*Meyer, Stephenie. Eclipse. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.