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"I don't need charity Councillor. Yours or my parents'."
Caitlyn Kirraman is a child of Piltover. Mother being a member of the council, Caitlyn was born with a golden spoon in her mouth. She had everything she could ever want, everything she could ever need.
Yet, even as a child, Caitlyn felt suffocated by her wealth. She never had to earn anything, never had to put in the hard work like others, and to her, that felt completely unfair. The only times Caitlyn had felt any sort of freedom away from her last name and status was when she indulged in her friendship with Jayce, and when she was allowed to shoot.
Caitlyn is a very good natured and caring person. To the point where it could be considered naive. When asked why she held a gun, she was unable to answer. All she knew was that holding that gun, shooting her wooden targets, it gave her the peace of mind away from her family. It was only as she had gotten older that she had realised her answer. It gave her a freedom that no amount of money or material items could give her. It made up a large part of who Caitlyn was as a person, not who Kirraman was.
Caitlyn eventually went on to become an Enforcer, without the help or interference of her parents. She felt as if she could do good, as if she could make a difference with her own hard work and perseverance. And even if it was brief, it was shown in the show that Caitlyn's family relations never played a role in elevating her to a higher position within her job. She was considered a rookie, and was therefore treated as such, which only further pushed her into working even harder. Even if that meant she had to stick her nose into places it didn't belong.
When Caitlyn finds a lead on who might be conducting the shimmer transports into Piltover, it takes her straight to Violet. Now, Vi is an inmate in Still Water prison. She's from the Under City, highly dangerous, and too stubborn to answer any of Caitlyn's questions.
Caitlyn knows nothing about her, she could've been a mass murderer for all she knew. But once she found out that the guard of the prison had put her through countless beatings for all the years she had been there, and was willing to do it again to get her to talk, that same borderline naive good nature, brought to light a new objective. To set Violet free.
She could've waited for the original inmate she was going to question, to heal. Or she could've let the guard go and have his fun; she was an inmate after all, one from the Under City no less. Yet, she couldn't allow that to happen. I think it's worth mentioning that she allowed Jayce to exercise his power as a Councillor to help her, even though she had previously outright rejected it. Caitlyn, a person who was always intent on doing things for herself, by herself, asked for help to set free a person she knew little to nothing about.
When they arrived in the Under City, everything she had been raised to believe about it was brought into perspective, was questioned. The Under City wasn't just a run down slum, home to criminals of all kind. People were suffering, dying on the streets. And Piltover, for everything it had claimed to be doing for the Under City, knew nothing about the true state of its citizens. There were good people there, people like Vi. Children and families just like the one's in Piltover, that were being over run with the introduction of shimmer.
I especially loved the scene where she hugged that man who Vander had helped way back in episode one. She wasn't disgusted or frightened by his deformities and frail state, she wasn't angry or disappointed that he had willingly fallen victim to shimmer. She was simply sad that Piltover did nothing to help, and that therefore she couldn't do the same.
