A Frank Discussion about Frank Randall

First off I will say I am completely on the side of nearly everyone when I say Claire and Jamie are the perfect match and their love is something worth wanting. They are the love story to end all love stories but everyone is quick to vilify Frank. Is he a villain that many people make him out to be?

Here are my thoughts. A few months ago I got into a heated debate on tumblr with someone who said that Frank was the worst human being on the planet, essentially, and was overall super shitty to Claire throughout the entirety of their marriage. I disagreed on several points. I will go through the accusations and explain my points on them.

Accusation #1: Frank cheated on Claire after her return through the stones.
Diana Gabaldon has said that Frank did not cheat on Claire but we are going to negate that for the sake of this argument. Claire says he was very good at hiding it but on the night Frank died, they got into quite the row and she accused him of cheating and he did not flat out deny her accusations, saying something along the lines of "I didn't think you'd care enough". Even if Frank did cheat on Claire we have to realize a few things. One being that Claire was gone for three years and even if he thought her story was crazy as shit, she came back to him, alone and pregnant with another man's child. They were not especially intimate after their return, by Claire's own words, so he was obviously a lonely man. Yes, adultery is not a good thing, but to argue he cheated on her and to make him a villain for it is silly considering she, essentially cheated on him for three years. Claire married Frank first in the chronological order of her lifespan and had the chance to go back to him when Jamie brought her to the stones and she chose to stay. So even though I'm one of the hardest hitting Jame x Claire shippers there are, she was still unfaithful to him. So no, adultery is not right and if he did cheat on her then they were both guilty of it. So feel free to berate Claire for doing the same thing that Frank may or may not of done as it is never truly confirmed.


Accusation #2: Frank was emotionally and verbally abusive to Claire throughout their entire marriage. 
The only instance that I can even see this being remotely possible, is the argument the night he died. He and Claire both said shitty things to each other and he accused her of infidelity, and said he was taking Bree away from her. By this point, Claire and Frank were less a couple and more like an arguing set of siblings, constantly on the end of each other's rope. They were both yelling and screaming at one another and yes Frank did insinuate some racism by saying part of the reason he was taking Bree away from the US was where she wouldn't date some black guy and apparently thought Claire was having an affair with her friend Joe Abernathy. It was a shitty thing to say but Claire said shitty things too and once more Frank is vilified for daring to do the same thing Claire is doing. It doesn't make it right but then again, neither of them were truly right in how they handled the situation. Both showing impulsiveness and brashness in the face of anger. There is never any other time in the books where he is spitting at her. Claire describes the later years of their marriage as very argumentative and honestly if not for the fact that divorce was so frowned upon, I'm certain they would of done it.

Accusation #3: Frank was never supportive of Claire in any way. 
Well this one is flat out wrong. Think back to Voyager for a minute and imagine that part where Bree is a baby, Frank has friends coming over for dinner and Claire is the frazzled housewife who ends up so at the end of her rope that she just leaves Bree with Frank and walks off into the night, needing to take a break. It's that night that Frank agrees being a housewife is not the job for her and suggests that she goes to school to become a doctor. Yes, he was looking at it more for Bree's sake than for hers but it is a very uncommon thing for a man in the 1950s telling his wife go and be a doctor. Back then, women were the home makers. They knitted, they sewed, and they had dinner on the table at six. He at least understood her enough to help her become a doctor, even if his motivations were more toward Bree than Claire at the time. They were not exactly a close couple after her return through the stones.

Accusation #4: Frank is the absolute douche-baggiest douche-bag on the face of the earth.
This is a general statement but I've seen it written several times over. So here is my case as to why he is not the worst man to ever walk the face of the planet. For one, he generally loved Claire when they got married. He loved her sass and her vivaciousness but they were only married for a very short time before war separated them. He started working in intrigue, he had to hide and lie and fabricate and no doubt was affected by the war as many men were. Then he and his wife are on the way to reconnecting, having only spent ten days together in the space of seven years. Of course there is some distance between them. Neither of them are the same people but he still loves her. And then his wife disappears for three years and he mourns her and searches for her and then she shows up pregnant with another man's child, wearing another man's ring telling him this cockamamie story of how she fell through time. Of course he doesn't believe her. Most men of that time would probably plop her right into an insane asylum but he doesn't. Yes he yells at her while she's laying in the hospital bed but he was listening to her tell him a story of time travel. Certain she'd lost her mind. In the end, he calms down, he apologizes and he promises to not abandon her though he is well within his rights to do so. He takes Bree and raises Bree as his own. He loves Bree so much, he treats her as if she were his own flesh and blood and prepared her for a life that she might face should she ever travel back in time with her mother. He might not of believed Claire completely but he eventually believed her enough to at least try and prepare Bree for a life in the past.

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In conclusion, I will say this. Frank and Claire's relationship after she returned through the stones, was tentative and distant through most of that 20 years, with only brief spaces of intimacy between them. He was not a perfect man. Neither was Claire a perfect woman but he did what he thought was honorable. I think the reason people are so quick to vilify him is because of the simple fact that he is boring in comparison to Jamie. Jamie, despite his faults, is charming and witty and funny and sweet. He's honorable and strong and a manly man while also treating Claire like an equal.

I don't think Frank ever stopped loving Claire but after her return, he had to watch his wife love and pine over a man she thought was dead for twenty years. He knew she was in love with someone else and tried to be a good husband to her but her heart was set on Jamie. So if he did cheat, I don't blame him for doing so. Claire was very emotionally distant from him when she returned back to him. The fact that he so willingly took her back and tried his best to be a good husband to her says something for the man of honor he was. He couldn't offer her adventure or a life of purpose tending to wounded men. He couldn't offer her the passion and love of a soulmate though he did love her. He could not offer her a love that shadowed the love she felt for Jamie Fraser. It doesn't make him evil.

Yes, Frank made mistakes. He was not a perfect man but he was not an evil villain bent on destroying Claire's happiness. Claire was imperfect and so was Jamie. They are all flawed in some way. I think people just want to villify Frank because he was an obstacle between Claire and Jamie. He was always there when he was alive in Dragonfly in Amber and Outlander. Always at the back of Claire's mind even when she was with Jamie. He was the other man in a love triangle to span the centuries. He was not perfect, but he was not the villain and for people to have so much vitriol for him is silly and wrong. At least in my opinion. Your thoughts?

Picture Credit: Starz