I don't understand why Xhalax was so. . .

[skchwojko]

shocked when Aeryn told her she knew that man was not her father. Hadn't Xhalax told Aeryn just a few eps prior that she had in fact killed Talyn herself? Didn't make sense to me. . . Xhalax's plan to make Aeryn think Talyn was alive nor her reaction, "You didn't know."

[skchwojko]

From Relativity
AERYN:
Look at what you are doing! You are butchering this magnificent creature in it's sleep. When it wakes it will be a slave, and there is no guarantee it will survive the procedure!

XHALAX:
You are pathetic. You are not my daughter.

AERYN:
I am. You made me very aware of that the night you came to me when I was a child and you told me what you'd done. Which, may I remind you, was not regulation.

XHALAX:
I never came to you! You only dreamt it.

AERYN:
Oh, well... for many cycles I believed that. But, you see, I now have a vid recording which I would be happy to show you if you'd like to see it. Or are you ashamed of your sentiment?

XHALAX:
Yes I am, and I paid for it! My superior officers knew I visited you that night. They interrogated me... and I professed my-- attraction... for a certain Peacekeeper Officer.

AERYN:
My father.

XHALAX:
Yes, Talyn. He was older than I was, no longer as effective in battle. But my superiors didn't want to lose me. So... they gave me a chance to redeem myself.

AERYN:
What did you do to redeem yourself? How did you redeem yourself?

XHALAX:
By killing your father.



Then, from The Choice:
AERYN:
Wasn't killing Talyn once enough? But did you have to kill him in front of me? Is that what was missing? When I first met him, I knew he wasn't my father, but he knew all these details about you and me.

XHALAX:
You're lying. You didn't know.


I don't see the reason for Xhalax's response. Of course, Aeryn knew. She's told her! Do you think it was just a slight incontinuity between writers?

[Nicola]

Xhalax Sun was a tortured and twisted woman who wanted to torment Aeryn because Xhalax saw her as the cause of all her misfortune. So she conceived a convoluted and improbable plan to do just that.

Personally, I don't think Xhalax was thinking rationally.

[sny]

I sort of interpreted it to mean that Xhalanx had this idea in her head that Aeryn was weak, sentimental, and gullible, i.e. a softie, simply because she had rejected the Peacekeeper ideals. That she would believe immediately that this was her father, because she was such a weak and pathetic creature, and that his death would cause her great pain. She wanted to cause Aeryn as much pain as possible, by staging the killing of her "father" in front of her. By giving her hope, then taking it away. And she went to great lengths, apparently, paying many of the people on the planet to be in on her plan.

I thought Xhalanx's line in The Choice was one part denial that Aeryn wasn't soft and squooshy enough to immediately buy that this man really was her father and one part denial along the lines of "NO! My brilliant plan to torture her with hope that she's found her father, then had him yanked away, it couldn't have failed!" It's like she's trying to call Aeryn's bluff about not being affected by the death of "Talyn".

Or summat.

[Lee in Limbo]

*nods* I concur. Simple incredulity that she had figured Aeryn wrong. She thought she had her disapoointing daughter all figured out, and was hell-bent on erasing the last vestiges of her downfall.

Obviously she had developed a pretty serious issue over having to kill Talyn to spare Aeryn. It twisted Xhalax. Int the end, she was disappointed and hurt and probably even threatened at the thought that her daughter, whom she'd come to resent so much, had found freedom that had been denied herself and Talyn. Xhalax just couldn't come to terms with Aeryn's growth until her final scene.