Janelle and Robin are not just arch enemies but in my position, I think they’re arch nemeses.
The difference between the two is that in literature, arch nemeses are actually characters who share the same or similar power set or they share the same origin story.
They come from the same place, and the only real difference is their ideology, how they approach certain challenges or issues that arise in their life. In Janelle and Robin’s case, these two ladies have more in common than any of the other Sister Wives.
They both entered into their marriage or the relationship with Cody Brown from a position of divorce.
These two ladies were both previously married to someone else, and how they entered into the Brown family and why they entered into the Brown family couldn’t be more different.
Now, in Janelle’s case, Janelle was married previously to Mary’s brother.
Once they were divorced, obviously because she’s married to Mary’s brother, she knew Mary and she was familiar with Cody. They developed a relationship and began courting.
When the two of them were building their family or building the interest in one another to get married, and Cody had proposed the idea of her entering into his family as a second wife, Janelle’s mother actually came into town to find out what was going on with this whole polygamy thing, met Cody’s father, fell in love with him, and they were actually married before Janelle and Cody were married.
So in a weird way, Cody and Janelle are actually stepbrother and stepsister, as crazy as that is. But they have a history together, they have a knowledge of one another. Janelle was introduced or knew about Mary prior to the engagement and prior to the romantic aspect of that lifestyle.
On the other hand, Robin was also married. Unlike Janelle, she came in with three children. She had kids in her previous marriage.
When she came into the marriage, she met Cody and Robin, according to the storyline, in very short order and decided that she was going to get married to Cody. Now the funny thing is, Cody and Robin were married only nine months after Robin was divorced or her divorce from her husband was finalized.
This means that there is a possibility that these two knew about each other and were interacting with each other while Robin was either married or freshly divorced, meaning by like a couple months or so. The way they approached the family from that perspective is very different, and this struggle, I think, is at the root of many of the problems that occurred in the Brown family, especially later on.
All the way from season two, where Janelle became way more vocal about her feelings about Robin coming into the family, through to season 17, where there seems to be a lot of stress. Hopefully, this storyline will be explored a little more in season 18, where Janelle is viewed as finally leaving the family and how that all took place.
