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In the hopes of generating some dialogue and getting some feedback, I'll post here an character expose I did on the pivotal new character introduced towards the end: Eclair Tonnerre. It is to the producer's credit that they can produce such a fascinating character in such a short amount of time.
"It goes something like this: the lady Eclair, raised like royalty in a lavish household, finds herself drawn to the quiet grace and down to earth warmth of one of her housekeepers. In an environment where everyone merely obeys or regards her as a tool of the family, she finds herself talking more and more with this housekeeper. The woman's favorite topic is her son, whom she has been unable to see for nearly three years. She speaks fondly of her son, how handsome he was and even more by now, what a good child he was, a prodigy with the piano and one with a kind and loving heart... the sort of person that Eclair, in the guilded life she leads where appearances are everything, has never encountered before.
She wants to meet this person, listen to him play the piano.
When Eclair is informed by her parents that her marriage has been arranged to one Suou Tamaki, she recalls the name of the son whom that housekeeper spoke often of.
She arrives in Japan and finds Tamaki a better gentleman than even his mother described... and far more handsome. She's determined to have him... and though she uses the chance to reunite with his mother as bait, there's a small part of her that wants them to be reunited; the commercially-motivated wishes of her parents and Tamaki's Grandmother are irrelevant, as long as what they do placates the seniors and their selfish wishes. It seems perfect; both she and Tamaki are people who can't lead lives of free choice, and within those circumstances, if they (the three of them) could find happiness with each other... then was that so bad?
She doesn't want Tamaki to remain attached to his host club; she wants to make him realize his place, that somethings are inevitable, but she can help him make the best out of it, and maybe they can both find a measure of happiness. This is why she is unkind, even cruel, sowing seeds of distance between Tamaki and his hosts, so that when the time for farewell comes Tamaki might not be hurt as much. She wants to make the price he has to pay as painless as she can.
The looking glass helps her see things in a detached, objective way. Just a trade, just carrying out her parent's wishes, her own feelings and those around her irrelevant to what she desires to accomplish. It enables her to keep herself from going in too deep. The only time she lowers the looking glass is when she embraces Tamaki from behind on the piano, and when she sees Haruhi behind them in the horse wagon. Its moments liek these that her true feelings come across: To someone like her, the only genuine affection and warmth she has experienced in life may have been that which she received from Tamaki's mother and from Tamaki, in the few days she spent with him.
Deep inside, she knows she could be happy married to this boyish gentleman.
Her plan goes awry; she senses her defeat the moment Haruhi shows up. Fearful and not wanting to separate from this boy, she lays her hand on him, looking glass of cool calculation and objectivity discarded now, and silently implores him not to leave with her unmasked eyes.
But she can't hold on to him; not because he struggled, she could've kept him, but she let him go.
She was the one who let him go."
On an interesting side note, when I shared with my friends the fact that I wasn't opposed to Tamaki-Eclair, they responded in the gist of "Blasphemy!" "No!!!" "... No Comment." Its tough rooting for the underdogs.
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