I love OCiel because of how tragic he is, he’s a clear-cut doomed protagonist and I refuse to see Kuroshitsuji as anything other than OCiel’s downwards spiral until proven wrong. I love to think about it so much.
So leading onto that, these are the basic characteristics of a tragic hero…
Hamartia: a tragic flaw that causes the downfall of a hero.
OCiel’s tragic flaw is proving to be his own insecurity; becoming RCiel was ultimately his decision. A choice he made.
And because of that, the events of Kuroshitsuji have been as we see them.
However, what would have happened if he didn’t become RC? Would he have been able to resist Sebastian’s attempts to trick him? Would he have become so terrified of everything that he was unable to continue and complete his contract?
It’s clear that OCiel thinks this would have happened – why else would he take RCiel’s identity. There is evidence to suggest this very well might have done. So had OCiel been more secure in himself, he would have been able to come back as the real him and avoided the current disaster that is unfolding.
Clearly, the tragic part of his character is that you cannot blame a child, born sickly and into a cruel society, for making the choices he made. Some tragic heroes (eg: like Tess from Tess of the d’Urbervilles) have less agency in their demise. External factors are to blame.
Hubris: excessive pride and disrespect for the natural order of things.
OCiel clearly has excessive pride in many respects. He treats people like objects that can be used to get him where he wants, has no belief that things ‘happen for a reason’ instead life if just full of bad people who do bad things. He even considers himself one of these bad people.
However, he also has no illusions about his own place in the game. OCiel does not consider himself to be above others, he’s full of contradictions.
Peripeteia: the reversal of fate that the hero experiences.
Going from his childhood to making a contract with Sebastian, though there was never a clear shift entirely. His childhood was happy but not perfect.
Anagnorisis: a moment in time when hero makes an important discovery in the story.
This is something that has not happened yet, but if OCiel was to ever experience a moment of anagnorisis (which I think he will) it’ll be before Sebastian kills him. It’s in the moment before he dies that he sees himself clearly, and wishes he had accepted that person into his life sooner – maybe things would have ended better for himself then.
Nemesis – a punishment that the protagonist cannot avoid, usually occurring as a result of his hubris.
In a narrative sense, as soon as OCiel chose to become RCiel it was only a matter of time until the game was finally up. His reasons for stealing his brother’s identity were (in my eyes) very selfish with little regard for what that would do to RCiel, he did it “for himself”.
Sebastian is also a clear nemesis in the narrative. But he’s also a saviour, it’s a double-edged sword that I’m not going to do justice here lol.
Catharsis: feelings of pity and fear felt by the audience, for the inevitable downfall of the protagonist.
Catharsis is the main reason why, when saying any of the above points, there were endless chances to say “yes but–” to… literally everything. OCiel is selfish, but he’s just a child. OCiel is a Machiavellian villain, but he’s being manipulated by a literal demon. OCiel disrespected his brother’s identity by stealing it, but really wasn’t it Victorian society to blame and the rules of Primogeniture that drove him to it?
Basically – he’s just a tragic villain. I’m sure you could write so many arguments in favour of him being completely irredeemable or just a victim to his narrative, and none of them are wrong. That’s why I love him!
That’s all it is: real!Ciel is using his pawns against his brother’s in a real lively chess game. I’m a bit iffy as to what the twin ultimately wants, but let’s save that for later.
It’s a chess game and our!Ciel stepped right up to it in ch129 when he came back to the manor…
and he definitely had a late start because of the shock and confusion when realizing that his older brother is back and Lord Sirius, the blue star of the blue sect, but…
I’m sure he’ll manage to recover. 🙂 Because Ciel has people he can use against his brother too.
Without already mentioning that Abberline and probably Edward will end up on his side (Ed because he already accused Ciel wrongly in the Weston arc and came to regret it + he and Ciel investigated most of the arc together), Violet, Sieglinde and even Soma have several ways to yell bullshit about our!Ciel being the mastermind behind the sect:
For Violet, it’s a question of motivation and wanting to pay Ciel back for helping him several times + saving his life in ch125.
For Soma, he’ll first need to hear about our!Ciel having a twin brother to connect the dots and realize that his friend didn’t kill Agni
and for Sieglinde, it’s just about friendship, considering all that Ciel did for her in the past and how she’s the one who analyzed the blood samples for him.
Obviously Lizzie knows on the truth on this matter too, she knows who the real Lord Sirius is, but her heart is being held hostage by real!Ciel’s side right now so she’s a major pawn to use against our!Ciel for the moment,
but it could change because her love for our!Ciel makes her a wild card.
The servants will side with our!Ciel, who is their master, out of devotion, but they have no idea as to what’s really going on unfortunately. Except for Tanaka, who probably saw it coming (’how’ is still the question) but who’s as tied as Lizzie I’d say, seeing how sad he also looks.
So yep: chess game. Brother vs brother, Seb vs UT, Grell and Othello probably being confused af and Mama Midford hopefully still missing for a reason
(maybe Alexis telling her what happened will trigger something?). Can’t wait :))
Heyyyyy, you know who else is missing and could be considered a chess pawn for our!Ciel’s side? Lau. And Ran Mao additionally, I guess.
Not that Lau showed up in the arc so far, so the probability that he’ll play a role isn’t that high obviously, but still, Sensei said before that, even though Lau is busy running his own business while following the Watchdog’s rules, he’s mostly “interested in our!Ciel”.
Undying Seb doesn’t seem to faze or interest him so much, so he’s…
…hanging around our!Ciel mostly for his own enjoyment of things.
So I’d say he’d (knowingly) rather play the part of the pawn to our!Ciel’s side of the chess game over real!Ciel’s anyday (if real!Ciel is to become the Watchdog for a short time after our!Ciel’s arrest), because he always bets on our!Ciel to provide him with a lot of amusement.
Ran Mao will follow Lau, but she too seems to like Ciel a lot anyway…
…so that’s two more people that our!Ciel could use wisely against his brother.
In fact, friendly reminder that Lau is the most mysterious character of the whole cast as of right now (and that’s really saying something), so having our!Ciel owing him could be rather interesting for a future arc focusing more on Lau. :))
Whole post here, I cut it for the reblog to focus about Lau.
Personal opinion but I still think that Lau and Ran Mao have no reason to side with real!Ciel. Actually one way to interpret the newest cliffhanger can be as them getting in Scotland Yard’s way, waiting to see if Ciel is going to ask for their help so that they can make him owe Lau.
Because that’s actually a much more dangerous development.
From a narrative point of view, it makes a lot of sense to have our!Ciel owing Lau for helping him one way or another (for example, to help them go to France using the Kunlun company…
or wherever else they may go), since that’s how we can then get an actual build up to Lau maybe becoming a problem later.
Sensei also said in the guidebook that Lau was “probably the strongest character of the manga”, altho’ it was downplayed by her basically going “lol” afterwards, but all that to say that he remains extremely mysterious and that’s not to have him switch sides whenever it’s extremely convenient for him.
In my opinion, if he ever goes against Ciel (which I think is likely for a lot of reasons), it will be when the game is built to be way more interesting for him, not when Ciel is at his wit’s end. As always though no one has to agree with this!
As it stands, we have real!Ciel in the manor spoiling for a real fight with his brother.
He seems so cocky here, and why shouldn’t he? Our!Ciel has been framed for the murders committed by the Blue Sect. Real!Ciel has been proven, by the word of Lizzie and Tanaka, to be the real heir. Things seem to be going his way, and he doesn’t seem to have much to fear at this moment.
Except for maybe Frances.
When he was younger, he found Frances to be scary.
In fact, she’s one of the few people that real!Ciel has ever found to be intimidating. He doesn’t even seem to find Sebastian frightening or intimidating, and there’s a good chance he knows that Sebastian is a demon.
Frances was also oddly absent when Scotland Yard along with Alexis and Edward when they entered the manor. Edward’s focus was purely on Lizzie, and Alexis was never an intimidating individual to either twin. He’s more of a loving uncle than an authority figure. The simple truth is things might have been much different has Frances had been present.
There’s also the fact that Frances undoubtedly knows more about the family history and secrets than most of the others. (Tanaka being the other one who would have this knowledge.) She might know the connection between Undertaker and the Phantomhives. After all, Frances and Undertaker have never directly interacted throughout the series. Maybe there’s a reason for this.
Either way, I think Frances is very important to the story. She’s someone that real!Ciel has shown to be intimidated of. She’s always been shown to be someone who does understand situations more than she initially lets on – like spending the day with our!Ciel on his birthday or insisting that Lizzie continue her training since she knew it would be important one day. Finally, she knows more about the Phantomhive family secrets and history than probably anyone else.
Cracky thought, but actually I wonder about if UT didn’t happen to really leave his scythe behind when he deserted…
only to get it back right after the events of Vincent’s death and the twins’ abduction…
which would explain why he said he had so many troubles managing to rescue the twins in the first place? He arrived after the contract was made (that’s why he wanted to check Seb’s CR during the campania arc) and just in time to collect the twin’s corpse before it got burnt.
Maybe that could also explain the change of design, from simple-looking scythe
to “skeletonized” after he got it back, even if we still don’t know whose skeleton it is (either Claudia’s or Vincent’s, but someone he most likely thinks he can’t bring back if he cut up the skeleton to make it a part of his scythe).
I know he said that he “found it hard to part with it” and that’s why until now I always thought that it was justifying why he had possibly deserted with it.
However, who knows if the English translation isn’t a little misleading and the whole thing may actually be meant as “it was actually very hard to be separated from it after/for such a long time” (aka about 45 years) “and I had a lot of troubles taking it back”.
We don’t know why UT deserted, we don’t even know when exactly in his punishment he deserted, like:
was he super close to being forgiven and he decided that he didn’t want to go “rest in peace” soon?
or did he still have some time to work and he got so fed up with it/curious about humans that he left?
but maybe his decision to desert was one he took after he got back to HQ from that mission with Othello 50 years ago and, in that case, he could have left without his scythe (especially if he was throwing away his shinigami life and wanted to meddle a little with humans).
It’s when the situation got total desperate, when Vincent was killed + the twins were nowhere to be found, that he imagined that the whole case could have a supernatural component and that’s when he had a lot of trouble getting his scythe back? Without his scythe, it’s harder to fight against other supernatural beings after all.
As I said, just a crack theory, I’m probably reading too much into this x) but otherwise I fail to see what else could have taken UT so much time to find the twins?
I feel like this chapter really changed the meaning of that one line ciel said to sebastian about trusting him least of all because before it was a kind of like a oh haha yeah that’s right fuck sebastian that guy sucks but seeing this and what he did to his twin and kind of manipulating him into a contract it’s like yeah I can really see why he doesn’t trust him at all
So I was thinking about this and its possible repercussions in the current arc, i.e what Lizzie may still do before the arc ends.
I know this might not please everyone, since she’s often targeted by criticism, but she’s still a huge part of the arc (and of our!Ciel’s life) and Sensei dedicated an entire chapter recently to how she’s feeling, so you can bet it’s going to matter. 😀
Anyway, when you look at Lizzie in ch58, what she’s describing regarding the twins are two opposite dynamics:
when it comes to real!Ciel, she expresses passivity => she’s the one being protected
and when it comes to our!Ciel, she expresses activity => she’s the one who protects
Granted that this shouldn’t be taken too literally because she indirectly protected real!Ciel by fighting against Seb in ch117, just like our!Ciel protected her in ch14 for example, but this may still be interesting to consider the next developments.
After all, even though she did fight against Seb to stop him from investigating the labs, otherwise she’s been rather powerless when it comes to real!Ciel’s situation…
…or to what he (and UT) did in the current arc, which fits the passive dynamic.
Similarly, where real!Ciel telling her that he found strong women scary (when they were kids) is what led her to think she should be protected by him, the Campania arc happening 3 years after she decided that she would protect our!Ciel gave her the opportunity to reveal her true self to him…
…which is something that he accepted and he didn’t think any less of her after that (even when she almost kicked him in the face in ch107 xD).
So back to the current arc, where is this difference of dynamics supposed to lead Lizzie? Especially now that she’s freed from real!Ciel and the blue sect (who most likely didn’t give her a single chance to figure out why our!Ciel would even lie in the first place)?
Most importantly, if the current arc so far had Lizzie being passive because she was by real!Ciel’s side, now that she’s left him, can we expect that she takes on a more active role, especially considering how she’s not even pissed at our!Ciel but just super confused and blaming herself?
In any case, I think a little detour by home is a great thing because her family always supported her and also taught her how to be strong. And, I don’t know if Frances’ current absence so far is supposed to play a role in helping Lizzie realize on which side she wants to be, but it might (especially if Frances already knows about our!Ciel lying and since Sensei said that Lizzie took her mom as a role model).
My personal opinion is that if Lizzie eventually decides that her place is by our!Ciel’s side (which I think is likely to happen for many reasons), then I bet you that she’ll most likely become very active again in striving to protect him, even from her original fiancé (aka taking up the sword again and fight like a badass).
EDIT: forgot to mention but there is still that random info that Sieglinde now understands how blood transfusions work + that Wolfram has got the same blood type as Liz => could be a hint that she might get hurt because she’s going to choose our!Ciel.
I just love
the way Sensei in ch144 is kinda deconstructing everything that she slowly revealed about Lizzie in ch58.
It doesn’t mean that Lizzie is in need of a clear-cut change, she already had that change during the Campania arc when our!Ciel acknowledged that “what she’s made of” was nothing shameful…
So that basis of her character is still going strong, because it took such a long time for her to fully be proud of it and there is indeed nothing wrong with it. That’s also why it makes sense that later in the arc she goes back to this state of mind, in my opinion.
In fact, it’s the passivity and powerlessness that she showed towards the twin that proves to be in clear contradiction with “what she’s made of”.
In any case, she has been wearing the low-heeled shoes throughout the arc (there is even a clear emphasis on them when she shows up in ch142), so where we are right now, maybe she needs another of her mother’s lessons (in case Frances did know about everything from the beginning) before she will decide to take up her swords again, with which to protect our!Ciel. 🙂
midnight-in-town 