Was V saving Evey really coincidence?

Question

In the movie V for Vendetta, the first thing we see is V and Evey mirroring each other and then Evey gets in trouble and V saves her.

I find that so strange because it would be so not making sense for a person with such big visions to waste his time wandering in the city and saving individuals especially that night in which he had a very huge plan.

Also he takes her with him which would bring nothing but trouble and makes no sense.

Later as we discover her background we see that she was the best possible person to choose as a colleague because of the things that had happened to her brother and parents.

Also V himself says in that first scene after saving her:

I (like God) do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence.

Here I find the sentence I don't play with dice so deliberate. Implying that either V has actively arranged things to go that way or that he is believing in fate and superstition.

But I find the latter simply so cheap.

Therefore, although I didn't notice this getting clear anywhere in the movie I'm assuming that he knew about her background and he had plans for her.

However, later in the radio station when she has passed out after saving his life, we see him doubting so much to take her to his home which does not fit to my theory of him having plans for her to make her somehow his colleague.

Can someone please help me answer this contradiction?

Answer 1

V pretty much sacrifices everything he can in the face of opposing Sutler's regime. Maybe he doesn't stalk the streets at night the way Batman does, but that doesn't mean that he will refuse to help when he sees an instance of Sutler's oppression of the people.

I (like God) do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence.

Here I find the sentence I don't play with dice so deliberate. Implying that either V has actively arranged things to go that way or that he is believing in fate and superstition.

There is a third option, which I think is the better interpretation: V does not know why he met Evey, but because he rejects the notion of coincidence as a whole, he therefore chooses to (blindly) believe that she has a role to play in his personal story.

That doesn't mean he knows what the role is, or whether he'll ever see her again. But V chooses to believe that saving Evey will have a positive impact on the world.

V's belief in fate (the antithesis of coincidence) is also well justified. People who are down on their luck (much as V is after his imprisonment) have a tendency to willfully trust in a bigger plan to justify the injustice that was done to them. Rather than think of himself as a random victim, he chooses to think of himself as the destined hero who needed to endure it in order to set him on the road to overthrowing Sutler's regime.

V continuously shows an incessantly dogmatic belief in his purpose and his role in life, even at times where he doesn't have the whole picture. He makes many quotes to that effect, stating that V himself is a representation of the dogma that we must stand up to authoritarians and fascists. This is what he imprints on Evey, he becomes the idea and eschews being just a man.

However, later in the radio station when she has passed out after saving his life, we see him doubting so much to take her to his home which does not fit to my theory of him having plans for her to make her somehow his colleague.

This works better with the above interpretation. Part of V wants to believe Evey is a good thing to happen to him, but the logical side of him realizes that he cannot know that Evey won't oppose him or rat him out.

He's unsure about Evey, but the current situation forces him to decide (on whether to trust Evey) then and there. In either case, if he makes the wrong decision, it will have negative consequences.

As Frank Hopkins mentioned in a comment, he's also contemplating whether he should leave her to be apprehended by the authorities, or imprison her himself. Neither sounds like something he wants (he's very much aware of what imprisonment does to a person) but is forced to pick which is the lesser of two evils.