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Once upon a time, her name was Iseult and she was the second daughter of the second wife of a nobleman in what was now western France. They said she was beautiful, they said she was pure, they said such a lovely girl could never be such an unholy creature as a witch. Perhaps she even believed it.
Then there came a handsome nobleman, dying of his wounds. She healed him with the sorcery her mother, the lovely yet painfully young Aliénor, had taught her in whispers (before furious faces and a pyre of flames had taken Aliénor de Bretagne away for daring to refuse to bear yet another stillborn child). But Iseult was careful, and naught but the gods knew of her deed. He married her and she was glad. Tristan was kind, at least, that was more than many could say. When he grew ill and burning with fever, all he could say was her name. Iseult, Iseult. For the first time, she thought someone had chosen her, loved her. But she simply shared his lover’s name.
It was a great love, Tristan and Iseult, they would say (never mind that he was married to another woman with the same name; it was a mistake, as she overheard her husband plead with his lover). But she was not the Iseult he chose - instead, it was the wife of his uncle: beautiful, virtuous Iseult of Ireland, so achingly in love - and soon enough the great lovers were dead at her feet. As she stared at the other woman’s golden curls strewn across the body of her husband, so pale and perfect in death, she could not regret her choice (but later her tears wash over her cheeks, because he was dead and it was all her fault and why did she lie about those damned black sails?).
She is reminded of that moment as she gazes at another woman centuries later, dark-haired and led across a tomb. As the man she - now known as Moira - had loved for most of her immortal life raged about impossibilities and having been with someone else and kill her and the child, what do I care, she felt her heart splinter once more.
Because she knows Niklaus, she knows this man before her, and so she knows that he would love this child that is not hers. It would never be hers. It belonged to the dark-haired woman who didn’t love him, who had come to him in the aftermath of one of his and Moira’s fights and had touched him irreverently, carelessly. The woman assured Moira that it was a mistake, that she could have him, and that the child changed nothing. So did he; after all, they had been together for centuries, what was one more betrayal? After all, they always made up.
But when Niklaus is preoccupied with his plots and his scheming, Moira slips away and is halfway across the world within days. She ignores his calls, his threats, his pleading because she cared not; their bond was dead and gone the moment that child was conceived. She is alone and empty, everything she has always feared, but she could not remain. Instead, she keeps what little self-respect she retains and suffers her pain in silence.
Any other woman would have, perhaps, stayed. But Moira could not look upon the face of the dark-haired werewolf, would not hear the painful cries of an infant. Of course, she could have done away with the child; the power within her that was strong enough to grant immortality was certainly enough to get rid of a fetus under the pretence of a miscarriage. (But she had seen her own mother's grief over every child lost, every bloody death within the womb, and she would not wish Aliénor's grief on anyone.)
And Moira could have asked her lover to choose between them: her or the child, the woman who had always stood by him or an unknown cluster of cells, and she knew which one he, with his all-consuming love and fear of abandonment would pick. At first, perhaps it would be her, but eventually... it might not be, and she would not have it any other way (though deep down she wished, for once in her too-long life, someone would choose her). It was not the child’s fault that its father had contributed to its conception, and Moira would not deny it the love she had longed for in her own father. After seeing and raising and loving it, she knew Niklaus would always choose the child, love the child over her. She would not, could not ask anything else of him.
But it hurt, oh it hurt. Moira might be a siphoner, a witch as well as an immortal, but she could never have a child by natural means. She’d given that up to be with him and never looked back, the man who had promised to always choose her, and here he was, awaiting his impending fatherhood. Jealousy was a poison she knew intimately well (a poison that she'd killed for even as a human, however unintentionally), and when combined with betrayal… her heart had always been frozen cold.
She still has centuries-worth of contacts from every species, still is a powerful figure in the supernatural world, and she hears their whispers. It is a daughter, they say, a tribrid. Incredibly powerful, a firstborn of the Mikaelson line. The ice tightens in a noose around her neck. The man she’d given everything for - a too-long life, centuries of unwavering devotion, rivers of blood spilled and kin slaughtered (so many covens, each one she had grieved and atoned for in secret aid to surviving witches) - he now had everything she wanted, and it would never be hers.
It was a curse from her days as Iseult, an insignificant and powerless girl in the gilded prison of nobility, to want what she could never have. Moira is just as cursed now, as she craves what she had never even wanted for almost a thousand years - a desire that was hers, not her father's, not Tristan's, and not Niklaus' (though he has it, through no effort of his own but the seeking of pleasure). The dark flames of fury burn through her veins, and suddenly, her life has a purpose again.
So she watches and waits and plots. She spends years in genetics laboratories, staring at her dead reproductive organs under a microscope. She mutilates herself at the hands of compelled surgeons, cutting her ovaries open again and again, and delves into the darkest of magics uncaring of the sacrifices. She collects the genetic material of powerful supernaturals, performs countless experiments, and is not afraid to test on living subjects.
A decade later, Moira has a daughter of her own, more powerful than the world has ever seen. She is a genius, with an unrivaled intelligence enhanced by magic and careful genetic selection. She is beautiful, as befits such a perfectly-designed creature of power. And yet… Moira cares nothing of those qualities. Her petty jealousies and frozen anger are unimportant. Her child, her treasure, is not some inanimate trophy to admire: the tiny creature in her arms is her world, her heart, her everything. All she sees when she looks at her daughter is someone she will always choose, no matter who or what may stand in her way.
For the first time, she loves and is loved unconditionally. It is enough.