There's a lot of assumptions that have to be made to really dive into this because there's way too many things that can be contradictory.
For starters, I'm going to assume Marina is telling (what she believes) to be the truth to the inspector. While this is info dumping to the reader, it's also being written from her perspective.
First off, Marina feels responsible for Andrew's current predicament. There's a number of reasons why she could feel this way.
- The first, that I think has basically no evidence, is that Marina set up Andrew to be feminized from day one. This is basically impossible unless we're retconning earlier chapters. From inner thought bubbles and how scenes played out, all the initial feminization was kicked off by Nikos and Andrew.
- The second possible reason may be specific to the surgeries. Marina was apparently informed that the surgeries had changed, and regrets that she didn't try harder to stop them.
- The third possible reason is more generally: The guilt she feels because she could have dissuaded Andrew right from the start. As in, being a person that knows Andrew's history of taking acting to extremes, she feels in hindsight that she was in the position to stop all of this and didn't.
- The fourth possible reason is Marina isn't saying she's responsible specifically for the feminization, but the circumstances for the feminization to happen to begin with. As in, maybe her entire trip was to to further her career as a journalist, and she's been trying to get the scoop on Toska.
However, there's a massive contradiction or at least a bizzare leap in logic that shortly happens. Marina claims that she was deliberately trying to get Elena to hate her before leaving Athens, so that Elena will move on and be happy with Nikos.
Except the first thing that happened was Marina talked to Nikos and caused Elena and Nikos' relationship to go down the drain. So if we're talking about a
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situation, that would be fine... except the way you'd do that is to NOT reveal the truth to Nikos before forcing Andrew away.
So it's not adding up.
I'm giving the writing the benefit of the doubt here, but I have to believe that Marina is feeling guilty about Andrew's feminization, but not directly responsible for it. And the reason I say that is that her attempt to make amends here is to set up her feminized husband with her uncle. Because here's the thing: If she intentionally feminized her husband, she wouldn't need to feel guilty about it. Conversely, If she's feeling guilty that he's been feminized but not responsible for that specifically, then the only way Elena getting married to Nikos is something that's a "reward" is if Marina genuinely believes it's something Elena/Nikos/Cousins wants.
And for me, that's such a massive leap in logic this isn't even something that characterizes her as scheming, or manipulative, etc. To me, it's just nonsense. Admitting in story that it's nonsense doesn't make it better. The inspector calls it "sick". I don't know if that's supposed to be implying that Marina is "sick in the head", but no matter how much some readers seem to hate Marina do any of them actually think she's been characterized as delusional up until this point?
Secondly, what's also not making sense is why is Marina "scheming" with the inspector regarding this Albania plan? I can buy the idea that Marina slept with the inspector to get some info, or to convince him to do a one off favor. But it makes no sense to me that the inspector keeps cooperating.
Let's say the inspector is a "good" guy. Forget all the crazy feminization story stuff for a second and let's just focus on his actual job. He shouldn't be working with someone he's sleeping with on an investigation, nor putting them in danger. Which implies he's a bit scummy himself.
Except... if he's not quite on the up-and-up, you can't rely on someone like this in your schemes. If this man seriously just decided to help Marina with her dangerous plan just because she was good in bed, then how can Marina trust that this man won't sell her out (presumably to one of Toska's people) in return for some other bit of arm candy, or money? Of all people, why the hell has Marina told this person the entire story?
Now a simple possible solution is that Marina's been in a relationship with the inspector for a significant amount of time. In some ways, that would make the story a lot more coherent. If in the first place, Marina was here to investigate Toska, started a relationship with the inspector, let Andrew continue to play being Elena so she could get to Toska, that would make this current part have a more solid foundation.
But I think the biggest problem would be the two things Melissa has commented about this story's theme. Supposedly, she's trying to write it so that this story doesn't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth, while also purposefully writing it so that readers will be sympathetic to both Marina and Andrew.
I'm not sold Andrew's a "good" enough guy to deserve a happy ending. I'm not sold Andrew's a "bad" enough guy to deserve a bad ending. I'm not sold that Andrew is actually in love with Nikos, that Nikos is in love with Elena, nor the cousin's being in love with Elena. Without that component, going through with this wedding is horrifying.
As far as I can tell, the only twist left possible in this story is if Andrew stops the wedding. That would be the one and only action he's done this whole story where he's taken his fate into his own hands. Every other time he's been a bystander in his own story. At least to me, that's the closest thing to a "good" ending because the theme of this story is loss of control, so definitively gaining control back is the resolution to that. But that would leave so many loose ends with all these other plot threads.
Conversely, if we make the assumption that Marina is lying right now to the inspector (even if only some of what's said are lies), then a lot more is at play and we're once again waiting for more info.
Also, sonofabitch we're setting up for even more flashbacks because now there's this whole "what happened in Albania" question. And we're still waiting for the flashback for Nikos' first wife.
