Sabine - Script Character Analysis

Sabine is on the cusp of freedom.

After two decades of being owned and having little control over her life, she's determined to keep her head down and leave Saint-Domingue as soon as possible.

However, let's take a moment to step back and do a script character analysis for our protagonist Sabine.

Sabine is the daughter of Adélaïde, an enslaved woman, and Jacques Rousseau, a Grand Blanc plantation owner. Like most children, she was still figuring out her place in a world full of blurred and dangerous lines. Her father gave her permission to roam the grounds freely. Her mother and grandmother understood the risks of stepping out of your place. They warned Sabine never to leave their sight.

She spent her days under her grandmother's skirts, watching Mambo Abena tend to the enslaved and the freed—sometimes even the Grand Blanc women too afraid to see a doctor in public.

But like any curious child, Sabine sometimes disobeyed—sneaking into the gardens to read books her half-brother, the legitimate son of her father, left behind. She preferred stories of ancient civilizations and distant lands—places she would likely never see.

And that was the danger: the confusion. A child born of violence and contradiction, expected to understand boundaries that shift with every glance or word. Given small freedoms, but never the safety to use them.

Liberté is about that space—

The one between survival and selfhood.

It's about refusing the scraps handed to you.

About the right to choose, to be seen, to be free.

It's about what happens when people no longer accept "their place"—and claim their power instead.