It is a bit like a Gothic horror story, isn’t it? I haven’t really thought about how it looks from the outside - these people normalise awful behaviour, mental mindgames, coercion and fear, so when we experience negative events throughout our lives we are more blasé than the norm (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing). I don’t know about psychopathy - it’s a possibility, simply because when he was very young he had a horrendous fall from his pony, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and brain damage from that point on - his frontal lobe, which is responsible for emotions, decision-making, ethics-forming &c was permanently damaged. He is also, I suspect, autistic in the typical male brain type of way - but unfortunately, unlike many autistic people, he has no empathy. He doesn’t remember people’s pain unless it directly affects him. He is cruel a lot of the time, and used to make me feel worthless (which got even worse when my grandmother visited: she was very, very messed up from her own parents’ alcoholism - her nanny met her every afternoon to whisk her past the drawing room where they’d been drinking all afternoon, and used to demand that she perform dances and so on for them like a sealion; she and he used to discuss ‘the child’ - me - in front of me from the age of four onwards and absolutely rip my character to shreds. ‘The child’ is ungrateful; ‘the child’ is disobedient; ‘the child’ is never going to amount to anything, and so on and so on). I do know what you mean about the flamboyantly performative victimhood behind closed doors: it was a daily occurrence for me. I’m so glad you survived that, with such panache, grace, fortitude and dignity: you really are a lovely, caring person with a huge amount of integrity (and I can give no greater compliment). Your help for your friend - the fact that you have stuck with her despite her sometimes-sketchy behaviour - is a true testament to your character.
Though there are those who are already condemning Ella to being a carbon copy of Mother Dearest, I just don’t see it. I think Ella is very carefully circumnavigating the situation, exhibiting just enough hostility towards IG to belay her mother’s suspicions, and is waiting for the day she can get out of that hellhouse.