Cléa is my favourite character in the game. And I am often saddened by how many people seem to fall for her façade ; just like everyone else in her family, Cléa speaks in half-truths to Alicia. And unlike the rest of her family, no other Dessendre calls out her bullshit. Once again, she has to do it herself in falling leaves. Anyway, as I feel like this character is often misrepresented, here are five incredible traits of our dear paintress that could be more discussed:
- Maybe the most important thing : her relationship with Verso. This guy never liked to paint. Even when creating osquio as a child, he expressed how much he wanted to be a musician instead. And yet, he made a single incredible canvas, and he poured his soul into it. This may seem paradoxical if we forget Cléa's intervention, who apparently made him start with drafts of anything he liked (yes he may put candies everywhere ! It's his world where he should express what he wants, he doesn't have to follow Aline's lead constantly) up to building a wonderful diverse world with idiosyncratic species like grandis. Having the patience to make a paint-hating child build a world where his soul shine everywhere by playing with him is peak best older-sister energy.
- Cléa has a huge sense of integrity. She finds the changes made by Aline to Verso's canvas to be so disrespectful that she would rather have it destroyed than misrepresenting Verso's legacy. Even though her relationship with this canvas is likely stronger than anyone else's, given her history with it and the fact that the lady of sap is the only instance of the soul of a writer not fading. R.Verso's soul even refers to her as Cléa directly.
- She does not, in the whole game, express any kind of disdain towards painted creation, nor does she deny that they are sentient. On the opposite, she calls them Alicia's friends, and even give the lumerian a compliment for finding the term "nevron". Cleverness is usually reserved for sentient beings. I am pretty sure that there are three reasons for which the opposite in often believed : First, that is what a lot of people think themselves, and as such, they assume this must also be a point of contention in universe, but this doesn't really make sense in an universe where this is just plain wrong. Secondly, Cléa is not really interested in people in general, sentient or not. So yeah, she doesn't want to talk to Lune or Sciel in the forgotten battlefield, but she does not talk to Maelle either once she notices she hasn't recovered her memories yet.
- Thirdly, she does hate copies and representations of people. I've seen a lot of people interpreting the harshness of her response to Maelle talking about P.Verso as a sign that she doesn't see painted creation as living beings but this one is definitely another integrity point. She doesn't see painted copies as their original, and really doesn't want anyone else to do it either. She especially doesn't tolerate claims that a creation would be her in any way. Even the axons are apparently too much of a reification for her. Instead, painting should be about creating something new like her original nevrons. This point made me wonder what she thought of p.monoco, but maybe she cares less when it only involves animals.
- As the fading man described her, the most important thing for Cléa is art, and seeing every possible creation. This is part of why she encourages her siblings to create. An interesting side-effect is about what happens in Maelle's ending. It makes sense that Renoir and Aline wouldn't try to get her out anymore, but if Cléa wanted to destroy the world out of respect for what she and Verso crafted (as stated by the lady of sap), why doesn't she intervene? One could argue that we only see lumiere in the ending, so maybe the rest of the world was removed to only let Aline and Maelle's world remain. This may explain why there are no gestrals among the lumierian but it is not very convincing as the gestrals probably just don't like the opera and Esquie and Monoco are still there. Anyway, my personnal headcanon comes from Lune, who tells us that Maelle will create a painting for her. This meta-creation made from Maelle's own volition is something that Cléa would definitely be interested in.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, the game truly doesn't give us anything about her side of the relationship with François. p.Verso stayed silent, and so shall I.
Also, while I wanted to describe her underdiscussed virtues, she definitely has flaws. The most obvious one being that while she describes the destruction of the canvas as "out of respect for Verso", he sates quite explicitly and regularly in the game that it went against his wishes. This further confirms her legitimate place in the big Dessendre family of hypocrites.
tl.dr. : Cléa is an artist with a lot of integrity. She likes to see others create and is greatly capable of helping them fully express themselves. She hates mischaracterization and subversion (which made the way the community treated her character quite ironic to me)
Edit : As someone pointed out in the comments, point 3 is completely wrong.