This is probably the first point that people will go to say that they hate Violet Evergarden, especially with the redundancy of how often it is stated or insinuated that Violet doesn’t understand love within the first few episodes. However, as you dive into Violet’s backstory, you begin to understand more about why she doesn’t understand things like love, and it’s not because she’s some emotionless robot.

Violet has never been shown love in her life. As a child, she was raised to be a machine of war, something disposable once the war was over. For someone who was taught to fight with her life, it’s more or less evident that love would have created weakness in Violet, who was really good at what she did. Then when it flashbacked to Violet’s disappointment after not being given orders by Gilbert, in his effort to save her life. Violet’s sense of self appears to revolve around being used, so it is understandable when we see her take the initiative to show how useful she can be in the war. If we take how she was raised and acted as a child, we cannot help but love Violet Evergarden for how she is not able to understand love. She was not someone who could be afforded to love or was even given love.

Despite her inability to love, Violet Evergarden does realize what she is lacking and does her best to pursue knowledge about love. This results in our storyline, Violet becoming an Auto Memory Doll. Right from the start, Violet was not able to understand the complexities of human emotion outside of their outward facade, which often did not reflect what they really desired. Violet could not grasp that for a while, but as time and her experience grew, Violet began to understand more and more about the emotions that she couldn’t get a grasp on through numerous attempts and talking to other people. Violet did not fear admitting to her deficits, even when she felt great shame about them.

Violet never fears doing her best, even when she has no talent at such things. This has helped her to grow to be a rather sought-after Auto Memory Doll in the more recent episodes, which high expectations for her work so much so that Violet travels all over in order to help people transcribe letters and their work. No matter what Violet does, she puts her all into it to ensure she does a great job that will satisfy her employer.

As we stated earlier, Violet Evergarden was a war machine who was not given love in order to be as great as she is. However, we want to dive more into Violet’s past, which really defines her as a person, and actually makes us love her more. She was an orphan, a girl who knew nothing of the love of having any parents and thrown into the military in hopes of becoming a killing machine. Even when handed to Gilbert to fight on the front lines, no one but Gilbert really gave Violet any mind. They merely wanted to use her. She was given no childhood, no chance at life. She was to be used until her usefulness came to an end—or her life, whichever came first.

It hurts to see that Violet was devoid of any kindness in her life until she finally met Gilbert, whom she perceived to consider her as a killing machine, much like everyone else. She was ready to take orders and put her life on the front line, which is evident when Gilbert assigned everyone a task accept for her. This reminds of very much of actual child soldiers on the battlefield today, who may have been kidnapped or taken off the streets in order to fight a fruitless fight, which will ultimately end in their deaths and outrage amongst many. It brings into question the loss of innocence amongst children when they are pulled into an adult’s war, and it really hurts to see how real this situation is, despite its fantasy theme in Violet Evergarden.

In episode 6, Violet Evergarden shows a rather endearing trait when she works with Leon. Leon is rather antagonistic nor does he not care for her or dolls for the most part. At one point in episode 6, a group of men tell Violet to leave Leon behind to work with them because she is so beautiful. They cited their reasons being that Violet is too good for him because he’s an orphan and try to name other stupid reasons for Violet not to work with Leon.

Rather than be judgmental and judge Leon the same way as the others, Violet merely states that she, too, is an orphan and must be even lower than the men speaking to her because she has never even met her parents. However, at no point does Violet even judge the men for their harsh comments about Leon either. Violet does not care to judge others and would rather just stick with facts as well as her job. This may seem to make her robotic in nature, but it is rather endearing as she isn’t hateful towards any person at all in the anime, no matter the situation.

There should be no question on Violet Evergarden’s loyalty and her work ethic. However, this soldier-like quality didn’t translate well as a doll and Violet was unable to empathize with others. Luckily, she slowly develops this quality with the help of many others.

This can be seen in multiple episodes like episode 5, where Violet coaxes Charlotte and Damien to write their own letters, from deep in their hearts, so that they can find love in each other. While Violet’s job was to just write artful and beautiful love letters that will be read all across both kingdoms, she realized the true feelings between Charlotte and Damien and was able to bring out the love between these two royals, and that she does. They end in rather crudely written letters, but it’s the feelings behind the letters that have more weight.

Then there’s episode 10 when Violet comes to visit Anne and her mother in order to write letters for the mother over the course of 7 days. Violet performs her work as best as she can, but she also takes it a step further to play with Anne whenever asked, even though that isn’t her job. Hoewever, she realizes that her job has more to do with Anne and helping to ease Anne more so than just writing the letters. Consistently throughout episode 10, Violet Evergarden reassures Anne and tries to comfort her even though they both know of Anne’s mother’s impending death. Violet makes no mention of the impending death, but at the very end of episode 10, we witness Violet breaking down into tears as she finally lets the emotions that she’s been hanging onto for 7 days loose. She really develops empathy and feels for poor Anne who will be orphaned and has a limited time with her mother, as well as Anne’s mother who has to accept the fact that Anne will be alone in the world sooner rather than later. Violet has finally been able to develop empathy for others and that just makes her story all the more amazing.