It’s hard not to feel sorry for Malva Christie in Outlander. While she was written as a villain of sorts, she was actually a young woman stuck in a traumatic life. It led to her making some dangerous and wrong choices, that ultimately led to the loss of her life and that of her unborn child’s.
One of the big questions fans want to understand is why Malva would try to kill Claire. After all, it was Malva who was the reason behind Claire and Tom getting so ill. They definitely didn’t have the bloody flux that was going around at the time.
It later came out that Malva loved Claire. Why would she want to kill someone she looked up to and loved? It all comes down to the trauma that Malva was living in at the time—she wasn’t a girl with PTSD but a girl stuck within the traumatic life she was living.
This isn’t about absolving Malva of the things that she did in Outlander. It’s about understanding why she would do something so terrible to someone she ended up loving like a mother in her own way.
Malva listened to the wrong people in Outlander
We have to remember that Malva was young. She was also abused. While these aren’t excuses for her behavior, they go a long way to explain how she acted.
Allan shared that he and Malva had an incestuous relationship. It wasn’t consensual, though. He groomed his sister and took advantage of her. He knew it was wrong, but he made sure that she kept quiet about everything with various threats. It was abuse, and Malva ended up listening to him without realizing that he was the wrong one to listen to.
The best way to explain her baby and to have it looked after was to claim it was Jamie’s child. However, Malva needed to seduce him, and the best way to do that was to get Claire out of the way. She thought that this was all necessary because that’s what Allan said.
As she realized that Claire was a good person and someone she could trust, she ended up looking at her like a mother. She wanted to be like Claire, and it led to her feeling bad for everything that she was doing because of Allan. Malva died trying to do the right thing. She wanted to tell Claire everything, and Allan couldn’t allow that to happen.
Had it not been for Allan, I don’t think Malva would have done half of the things that she did. She definitely wouldn’t have tried to kill Claire and Tom, and there would have been no need to lie about Jamie being the father of her child.