The heart, the core, of Lizzie’s dilemma all revolves around one thing.
Love.
She believed herself to be in love with real!Ciel, yet she was fooled by our!Ciel. This leads to question the validity of her feelings and love. How could she love someone and not see he was the not the one who returned to her? That’s the question burning in her mind.
Since his return, she has grown closer to our!Ciel and loves him, yet he lied to her. She now questions all their interactions and everything he has ever said to her. She cannot trust him and thus cannot trust her feelings.
Her confusion right now really is one of the heart.
@shinigami-mistress While I agree with all of the points you made, I believe that Lizzy’s main dilemma in this arc is going to be choosing between love and duty.
Lizzy’s relationship with O!Ciel was one that was based on love. She always showered him with affection and did her best to make him happy. And she did all this not because she thought it was her duty to do so as his fiance, but because she loved him.
Her relationship with R!Ciel on the other hand, was based on duty. Lizzy was trained since she was young to protect R!Ciel, so when she learned the truth about O!Ciel she immediately sided with him. She felt like it was her duty to do so, as his fiance and because she had already failed him before.
And now Lizzy has to choose, between her love for O!Ciel that turned out to be lie, and the sense of duty she felt toward R!Ciel that lead to many deaths and O!Ciel being accused of a crime that he didn’t commit.
frances has been realistic about the twins’ situation from day one, and maybe that makes her come across as harsh, but it’d be counter-productive to pretend ociel wasn’t the second in line, wasn’t sickly, wasn’t going to struggle to fill his brother’s shoes if he needed to (without the aid of a magical demon butler).
I was proud of her for realizing that her love was an illusion she used to comfort herself, but I also feel it was only a partial revelation and another one will be coming, and I’m excited for it. Lizzie is a Good Female Character, I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
See, illusions have always been a calling card for Lizzie’s character, in that she’s lied about who she is as well to get Ciel to like her by pretending to be weak. I hope she realizes that the situations are basically inverses of each other soon, because she needs to. R!Ciel is an illusion himself right now, probably not actually alive (I think?), and also his persona is most likely an illusion itself. The only thing that’s real about him is his name.
I am also glad she does not see the twins as interchangeable (thank God) and also realizes that she doesn’t really love or know R!Ciel. I think that will be vital as well, because R!Ciel is still dead somehow and also is currently acting truly awful and quite possibly was manipulated into having his family attacked. She didn’t know O!Ciel’s true identity, of course, but I do think she knew quite a bit more of him than she ever knew of R!Ciel. Yes, there are things he keeps from her, quite a bit of them, and that’s wrong, but I don’t feel like everything is a lie. It’s up to her to decide whether or not that matters. I hope it will.
The illusions idea ties into the theme of conforming to expectations vs being yourself, which has been a persistent theme in Black Butler with Sieglinde, O!Ciel, Lizzie, etc. They all have roles they see themselves as needing to fill, but these roles are really prisons that limit them from truly realizing their own power and how close they can become with other people. Soma ties into this as well, but he’s done a far better job of escaping from it currently, which is why I really hope he has A Talk with Sieglinde and Lizzie when he realizes R!Ciel killed Agni and not O!Ciel. But the manga is also fairly sympathetic to the idea of expectations because you don’t really have a choice about the role you’re born into, but it’s not really responsible to just shrug it off either. So there’s a tension there and I think Lizzie is starting to explore just that.
When our!Ciel is arrested, we clearly see he is still wearing the Phantomhive ring.
This image is no accident, and it’s rather interesting. At one time, this ring was very important to real!Ciel. This is the ring he was told only the true earl could wear. This was the ring he took from his father’s bloody body and swallowed to keep safe. He even managed to hold it inside his body and not pass it through.
Yet now he hasn’t even mentioned it. Not one time did he say one word about the ring. He could have easily told someone to give it to him, but he has not. This leads to one question.
Why?
Personally, I think there are two possible reasons for real!Ciel not to demand to have the ring returned to him.
The Ring is no Longer as Important to Him:
As I pointed out before, the ring used to have a lot of importance to real!Ciel, but perhaps this is no longer the truth. After all, he obviously doesn’t need the ring to prove his identity since he has those (Tanaka, Lizzie, etc.) or will say that he is indeed the real Ciel. It’s actually more important to our!Ciel as it is part of his ‘disguise’ as his brother. This could even be a way to show how real!Ciel has changed since being reborn as a Bizarre Doll. When a living human, that ring was very important to him. As a Bizarre Doll, he has little to no interest in the ring.
The Ring is Part of a Bigger Plan
This is the darker of the two possibilities. We the audience know that real!Ciel took the ring, but this isn’t known by most of other characters. All they know is that Vincent used to wear that ring and now the younger twin, who has lied about his identity for nearly four years, is now wearing the ring. Because of all that’s happened, it wouldn’t be too hard for people to be led to believe or jump to the conclusion that our!Ciel had something to do with his parents’ death or had been planning to take his brother’s identity for a long time. Most people will probably believe that he is the one that took the ring since he’s the one in possession of it. Considering he’s being arrested for identity theft and on suspicions of being involved in a murderous cult, he’s not exactly being seen in the best light. Wearing the ring could only add to all this, and could be part of a plan.
Either way, I think the ring is still quite important to the story.
If you’re confused or angry about Lizzie’s actions/feelings in this arc or in general, just understand that she was groomed. Her entire life purpose was to be “the wife” and as been raised to act and think that way. Having that changed on such a drastic level, especially at 14-15, is messing up her entire way of thinking. She was raised to mentally handle violence, but not to be anything other than Ciel’s wife
@anafeloz don’t mind me, OP, I just want to add one thing to this.
There are a lot of good posts on Lizzie going around (I’m so happy :D), but in my opinion, what you’re saying here is possibly what’s not considered by most readers who don’t get her character.
Yes, Lizzie was groomed, more so than her brother or her two cousins, and the result is her hyper-focusing about her future as “the Watchdog’s wife”, hence the confusion & the pain when she started to realize that the boy she was falling in love with was technically “not the right one”.
That’s also why years ago she was drastically affected by real!Ciel’s claim that “strong women are scary”, because her whole life revolves around becoming the Watchdog’s wife and she’s supposed to live as happily as possible with this fate.
But, and that’s what I found interesting, Lizzie was not groomed out of anything besides a desperate need for survival and that’s why it’s also so tragic. Honestly, the circumstances of the P family suck and that’s why all these kids (all of them, with this chapter focusing especially on Lizzie) have so many issues.
Like, the twins went through all that shit in the first place because Vincent was violently murdered, for a reason linked to the Watchdog’s duty. As for Lizzie, the only reason Frances raised her to be the way she was until this arc is the result of her losing her own mom (probably murdered too) when she was a little girl and not wishing to lose her daughter the same way.
It’s fucked up, the parents aren’t even to blame (unless you really want to argue that Vincent can be held responsible for being murdered and Frances for being traumatized by her mom’s death), it’s the circumstances of this family that are.
All that to say that Lizzie’s reasons to be upset at herself (and not even at our!Ciel) are very relevant to the context of her whole life so far, as well as to the past of her family. And, personally, I think it’s amazing writing by Sensei to address this & I couldn’t be happier.
This chapter is everything I had been waiting for and more, seriously. There are a couple of things that stood out to me while reading the raw and I want to note them down before I forget (and to compare once the official English version is released)! Just in case, here’s my rudimentary translation of their scenes in case anyone’s a bit lost with my commentary.
(Spoiler images inside! Don’t read if you don’t want to spoil yourself!)
Mmm good question, but imo he has no other choice? Of course he could escape with Seb’s help if he wanted to, but i don’t think that’s a wise thing to do. For one, if he escaped, it would look like he’s admitting his guilt and that would put him in an even more difficult position. Secondly, where should he go? Who would support him now that he was exposed and became the prime suspect of a murder? (I mean, yes, the members of the ‘Aristocrats of Evil’ like Chlaus & Diederich might be willing to harbour him but they don’t live in London and I don’t think OC would want to leave London). Also, Abberline knows that OC is innocent (at least in the case of the Sphere Music Hall murders), so as long as he’s the person in charge of the investigation, he surely won’t treat him badly and will try to help him. So if I were OC, I’d save the escape/prison-break as a last resort, but idk, maybe he has other plans.
what is RC trying to do with all this? Why is he setting OC up?
“Destroying everything OC has built up in the past 4 years (title, fame, social status, relationships, etc) and isolating him away from anyone” is my guess. RC probably wants his little brother to be that helpless, weak child he used to be until 4 years ago.
Do you think he even knows that he doesn’t have a soul anymore?
Most probably! He said “How dare you do that to me that day” to Seb in ch130 so I guess he knows that his soul was eaten by Seb!
Look say what you want about Lizzie in the latest chapter but if I was 15 years old and had just found out that the last four years of my life was founded entirely on lies I’d be pretty fucking upset too.
She’s coming to terms with terrible flaws in her own character that she never thought she’d have to address. She knows that she would have been happier had r!Ciel returned instead of o!Ciel. Now we as the omnipotent readers know there was more to o!Ciel’s decision than just her relationship with the twins, but she doesn’t. She sees herself as part of the problem. All she knows is that o!Ciel pretended to be r!Ciel and that she knows she would have been happier with r!C’s return. That’s what’s tearing her apart. She recognises that was selfish and horrible and that o!Ciel deserved better than that, whereas all the while she was just focused on her own happiness. She thought it was love, but she never thought of him.
But above all else she thinks everything the cult did was her fault. She didn’t want r!Ciel to die again, so she ignored the terrible things they did. Had o!Ciel never pretended to be his brother then none of it would have happened. And in her grief, in her guilt, she knows that if she’d cherished o!Ciel like he deserved none of this would have happened.
Yes, she was selfish. Yes, she ignored mass murder. And yes, she was fixated on love when there was so much more going on.
But that’s why she’s upset.
Everything was a lie. And the truth was her fault. That’s a lot for a fifteen year old to handle.
So let Lizzie cry. Her redemption arc is coming.
@kuro-von-shitsuji I hope you don’t mind me just adding one thing OP. 🙂 I pretty much agree with everything you say, from her not knowing why our!Ciel took his brother’s identity to considering that she’s the problem in the whole situation.
The full chapter is not out yet, so did Lizzie actually think as an 11 year old kid that she wanted one twin back over the other, or is she considering that she might have (had she known the truth) and the possibility is bothering her (because that would make her ‘cruel’ in her own words), we can’t be sure.
Whichever it is though, she’s crying because she’s blaming herself, which shows that she’s regretting how unfair/selfish she was or could have been towards our!Ciel. Which shows she doesn’t not care about him or his current situation, no matter how conflicted she is between the two boys.
Which implies reflection and redemption, as you said OP! 🙂
Lizzie is 15 years old and growing up is about realizing that your past self was immature and selfish on a lot of points and that you should strive to do better. No one should hold you responsible of things you did or thought when you were a little kid and didn’t know better, unless you show no reassessment, because no one is perfect.
Lizzie is growing up, so if anyone as a reader didn’t like her before (which is your right and all), you should be happy that she is learning and eventually willing to do better. 🙂
It’s that time of the month, the time when Lizzy haters use absolutely anything and everything to tear that character to shreds for behaving like a human being
The thing that really gets me about the scans that we do have of Lizzy and Edward’s carriage conversation is that she is torturing herself over a hypothetical situation and it’s so god damn heartbreaking but ppl are fuckin coming out of the woodwork to call her stupid/childish/the worst/etc. Her whole childhood she was trained and being prepared to protect RC. She was chosen as his fiancée for that specific reason, bc she was really strong. And then he dies and she feels a weird sense of guilt bc she was always told that she was supposed to protect him. And then, to her understanding, he miraculously comes back! And they eventually begin to grow a little closer! And she develops feelings for him! And then she slowly starts to piece together that he’s been lying to her for 3, almost 4, years about his identity and that she really has lost the person she was supposed to protect but she keeps denying it until someone comes along and confirms all her suspicions and gives her another chance to protect that person. Only now, she feels conflicted bc she cares about OC and the plan is accuse him of a crime and potentially send him to jail but she’s being manipulated by expert liars so she goes along with it
Cut to the carriage scene where she is finally able to speak to her brother, the one person who loves her unconditionally and was heading the search for her when she ran away, about all these feelings she’s been bottling up 7 months. She’s saying that OC lied to her about being his twin but then she’s also talking about if he had been honest with her from the beginning, would she have been disappointed that he was the one that survived instead of RC, her fiancé, and if she’s really that cruel and horrible to even think that which is some heavy shit. She’s wrestling with her conscience in that carriage scene and it’s so tragic that this person who has been one of the most morally upright in this series full of terrible ppl has been put in this situation where no matter the outcome, she loses. She either loses OC, who she has real feelings for, or she loses RC for the third time, a person she has been trained and chosen to protect all her life
midnight-in-town 