Tavia said:

I'm not convinced Servalan's bleak world view by Rumours was necessarily present at the start of the series. She gives me the impression of being curiously innocent and almost optimistic in S1, especially. One of the nice things about the series to me is the way in which even the villains' characters are radically developed as time passes.

She does appear innocent in the beginning, I think because of the hairstyle-- it's rather like the Peter Pan cut. I wonder if the changes in her retinue also helped with the illusion of powerful aging-- in the beginning, she stands next to Travis, and looks like she could be his teenage neice. "Pressure Point" actually verbalizes some of it; Servalan was apparently so spoiled it never occurred to her even as a cadet that there were ethical concerns in the way the Federation operated. Kasabi considered her the epitome of what was wrong. Yet, in the end, Kasabi faulted herself for not having tried to reach through and find something decent within the brat.