The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes discussion

There is no doubt in my mind that Sejanus considered Coriolanus his best friend. Corionalus was, as much as we can make out in the book, the only person that was willing to deal with Sejanus`existential crisis of being district born and now a Captiol citizen. Plus Coriolanus made it seem like he wanted to get Sejanus out of the arena willingly so he faked quite a bit of "caring" towards Sejanus.

However, it seems to me that Coriolanus hated Sejanus from the beginning but thinks they were friends? As we have seen, his rescuing Sejanus was forced upon him by Dr. Gaul. Furthermore, Coriolanus thinks down on Ma and Strabo Plinth with seemingly no reason. Ma always shows genuine care for him, which we can see by her continously sending him baked goods to District 12 and there is no reason for Coriolanus not liking Strabo Plinth, except his not giving him money after rescuing Sejanus.

I think Snow, in all his selfishness, thinks of himself as a good friend to Sejanus, even after betraying him to Dr. Gaul, which is so ironic to me. He secretly hates on the Plinths for their wealth and resents them for their origin being District 2 but when their wealth benefits himself instead of Sejanus, he goes all for it. At the end, after returning to the Capitol from District 12, he happily lets Strabo Plinth pay for his apartment and his education and is even willing to let them move in a floor beneath them. The Coriolanus from when Sejanus was still alive would`ve rather flinged himself off the roof instead of living in the same house with the Plinths. It really shows how during all the events in the book, even the ones that only concerned him and Lucy Gray, the only person Coriolanus cared for was himself. Anything else he told himself, was a blatant excuse.

I think it comes down to Snow being unable to not finding profit of his friendships. His upbringing, his way of understanding the world and people, and how he's an actual dictator in the future, shows me he never really considered Sejanus as a friend but as a pawn.

He never let go of his idea of inferiority of the districts regardless of the contact he had with the districts. His ideas and his own morale was always superior.

IF he had cared a bit of others, he would've stopped the moment he'd realised the consequences of the action he was about to make. Those consequences were always present for him, only one was unpredictable: how he won the games, because he was only looking for himself and in that moment he forgot his winning didn't make him excusable of consequences.

What I mean is yeah, I think you're right that he never saw Sejanus as a friend nor sae Lucy Gray as literally someone. He constantly used people around him, thinking he was objective and righteous (which directly leads us to the fact that the perception he has of Katniss in the main books of the "fakeness" of her feelings for Peeta were biased, because **he** showed fake feelings for Lucy Gray, but that's a matter for another discussion).