It doesn't help anything, but it occurs to me that Donnas situation bears a resemblance to Jason Todds initially.
Originally he had Dicks backstory and was basically Dick. Then got killed off and wasn't considered relevent. What brought him back was a major Batman arc which had Batman confronted with a revived Jason and he then has a new backstory and gets a whole major storyline which is played up in multiple books, and the arc was so good that it even garnered a movie.