So, remember how in the Murder arc, when Sebastian and Ciel framed Karl Woodley, and Charles Gray hauled him off for “Scotland Yard” to handle it?
Remember how the “police wagon” that took him away was actually being driven by Charles Phipps and John Brown?
(Vol 11 pg 117)
Remember how Charles Gray killed Woodley while he was in that wagon?
So I wonder who’s driving the wagon Sebastian and Ciel are in…
(Ch 144 pg 8)
Abberline says he’ll question Our Ciel at the station, but he already knows what our young master’s involvement was. I’m sure Abberline has some alternative plan to make sure Our Ciel isn’t actually imprisoned.
But if someone else has different plans, and drives the wagon away from Scotland Yard and Abberline’s protection, things could get much more interesting.
I find it interesting that Francis is the only Midford who wasn’t present at the epic Staircase Reveal™….
People have already speculated that Francis figured out the identity switch a long time ago, and I tend to lean in that direction. I’m kind of wondering if the respect she’s gained for OC over the past 4 years will manifest itself in her taking his side.
Look, Alexis is about to sit down with RC and probably be given an *ahem* slightly biased version of events. Elizabeth is already in shambles, but has pretty much abandoned OC, and Edward will most likely side with her.
Francis is mysteriously not entangled with this yet, and I doubt they would introduce her later only for her to have the same reaction as the rest of her family. I also doubt that she’ll just disappear from the story soooo….
Idk man, she was pretty harsh to OC when he was a small child, so this might be an opportunity for them to see eye to eye. Plus, OC only has 2 aunts and the other one tried to kill him, so maybe there could be some heartwarming contrast (ex. Madam Red said “you shouldn’t have ever been born” while Francis could express some sort of pride in him, y’know?).
Most of OCiel’s family is dead or undead, so it would be nice if at least one of the four surviving members made him feel loved, and I feel like Francis would be the perfect candidate to fill that position.
^^^ agreed with all of this, besides her being harsh with him when they were kids. :))
Why? Because she called him an extra/spare? Which is who he is, especially since Yana won’t say his name, so it’s hard to refer to him differently.
As for what she said on the subject, she just meant that he’d have a hard time as the watchdog *when* he was still a very sickly child and, rather than sending him to his death should he inherit the position, she’d prefer Vincent having another option in mind.
I mean, how many times would Ciel have died without Seb in Kuro alone and not counting the day they met?
Sorry @bizarre-dollhouse xD didn’t mean to make it all super serious, but I’m a little surprised by people saying ch132 was Frances being harsh, when her words were just the consequences of seeing members of her family die because of the Watchdog’s duty (like Claudia) and wanting to avoid a sickly child going through the same thing, when simply going outside in Spring or Summer could have killed him until he was ten.
I discussed this privately with a few friends but I actually love the idea a lot so I’m sharing with everyone. 😀
So far in this very long arc, there were a few occasions the focus drifted away from Ciel & Seb. The first major time was at the very beginning of this arc
with Ed being the reason Lizzie went to the Sphere music hall in the first place and the second major time…
led to very unfortunate circumstances. T_T
So I was saying to my friends that I’d love to get some more chapters not focusing on Ciel and Seb, especially now that they’ve been put in a rather awkward position…
and might need the help of others to clear their names if they’re really arrested. And since Soma is hurt, more Ed-centric chapters could be more likely and I’d personally love that.
First of all, it’s hard to believe that Ed won’t question if real!Ciel truly isn’t involved with the Sphere music hall considering that Lizzie is with him and that she left the house for the Sphere music hall over two months ago.
Secondly, Ed is currently the only one who was also there at Weston when UT explained about his latest BDs to Ciel
so, should he recognize UT (even if we know Ed can’t see anyone else when Lizzie is here), he might be able to suspect that something is up with real!Ciel.
As for a team up with Soma, the reasons I find this idea so cool are because Edward and Soma both are characters who are very close to our!Ciel + at the time of ch143, what they know about the current arc is complementary, meaning that if they were to assemble their information, they would both easily realize that our!Ciel was framed.
To explain: what Soma knows and believes is that…
someone who looks exactly like our!Ciel attacked him and Agni, leading to Agni’s murder. So now he’s pissed at our!Ciel because he doesn’t know about the existence of the twin (since our!Ciel never mentioned anything about it).
Meanwhile, Ed just found out that the twin is back…
and that our!Ciel is believed to be behind the blue sect arc for different reasons.
So should Ed see Soma and find out about this…
If Soma tries to argue that our!Ciel did this even if this doesn’t sound like him, then Ed will at least be able to tell Soma that “wait, he actually has a twin brother who just came back???”, which could make Soma realize that his friend is innocent and Ed that the twin is up to no good (especially if he remembers about Weston previously to finding out about the attack on Soma and Agni).
Add Sieglinde…
who heard this, who can confirm that Ciel and Seb are the ones who brought Soma to her and who researched about the blood samples Seb found in the Sphere music hall + Nina…
who helped Ciel and Seb with getting into the Sphere music hall that one time, they will barely need Violet’s confirmation to understand that “Lord Sirius” is in fact the twin (even though I think Violet’ll confirm it either way, because our!Ciel helped him and his friends).
Violet (and also Lizzie) is more likely to be necessary in order to convince the other people involved in this arc that our!Ciel is not Lord Sirius: like the Double Charles (who may end up accusing Ciel of the Parliamentarians’ murders next), Randall (because Abberline won’t be able to convince him on his own I guess) and maybe even Alexis.
TL;DR Ed investigating some more as Ciel is possibly arrested and meeting with Soma could surely be one way for the entire truth to be revealed + also for Soma to stop believing that his best friend attacked him.
I just hope Ed does realize, one way or another, that there is definitely something not right about the twins and Lizzie.
I forgot to add that this idea is also likelyas a parallel to the Weston arc (additionally to UT creating even more perfect BDs)…
…and the Maurice Cole incident.
Except that this time,it’s Soma who’s falsely accusing our!Ciel and Edward who is more likely to investigate for our!Ciel’s sake. :)))
That’s also a big part of why this idea is pleasing me so much, because I loved the Weston arc!
Ed bby, ur sister just told u that real!Ciel and UT were doing some bad shit, so whenever u’re ready for some personal investigation to get ur cousin out of this mess! plz go see Soma, he needs to find out there is a twin.
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
Okay so while I’m really worried about Lizzy, and I want R!Ciel to get the hell away from her. I’m also concerned about O!Ciel and Snake.
Well see remember what happened in Book of Murder, where Snake tried to kill him for making his family vanish?
Yeah this scene. We know that Snake believes they are still out there. But we also know that Undertaker was also watching the burning of the house. Given that R!Ciel probably saw that too, it’s not that hard to believe that R!Ciel may throw down some more logs onto the fire with Snake. Especially given that Snake was the last one to join them and unlike the others he wasn’t exactly rescued by O!Ciel in the same way.
O!Ciel did lie to him, he did tell him that Doll and the others were safe and still being a family somewhere else. The question is will Snake try to get revenge again?
I wouldn’t put it past R!Ciel to lure Snake to his side, though if R!Ciel is as obsessed with his brother as we think, his options for attacking O!Ciel will be very limited. Given also that Undertaker doesn’t want another Phantomhive to die, I can’t see him wanting that either. So Snake may learn the truth and not side with R!Ciel.
The question is what happens then? If Snake tries to kill him again, which wouldn’t be too hard to get a snake into the jail cell, will he go through with it, or if he learns the truth, will he actually choose to forgive O!Ciel who was traumatized this much and dealing with the fall out of his actions for attaining revenge.
Oddly while I do see Snake trying again, I do see in this case him realizing that his actions will do no good and that O!Ciel is just a messed up little boy that reacted as a child would when faced with a really bad situation. Snake is more of an adult than O!Ciel is, and given the kindness that O!Ciel has given him since that time and the friendship he has bestowed upon him, I get the feeling that Snake, like Finny will want to protect him. Even if he is still hurt by the actions of O!Ciel.
So while I do think there will be a bump in the road regarding Snake for a bit, I have a feeling that the Servants, including him, will come together to rescue and save him. Hell, maybe he has an argument with the other servants and they explain what happened that night to him and he realizes how dangerous and bad they were, and, while he feels bad for their deaths, he also probably will see that the Servants were just protecting the house and Elizabeth at the time.
I just want to see Snake and O!Ciel gain a friendship with real trust like Finny has with him. Even if Ciel isn’t his real name, he has a real name with Snake, that being Smile. Which, in reality, did reflect his truer personality. Someone who was shy but ultimately a happy person.
You mean @midnight-in-town? (tagging you because I think they mean you and also you might want to add on!)
I’m kinda interpreting this differently but I could see how you’d get that out of what little we’ve gotten so far. So this is just how I see it:
In the loose fan translations we have out right now, Lizzy says something along the lines of “if he hadn’t lied all those years ago could I really have such horrible thoughts?” -meaning could she really have wished it was r!Ciel that had come back instead of him if he had told her the truth. She’s admitting this would have been cruel and horrible if she would have wanted that, not saying that she would have.
Here’s the thing, though. When it was o!Ciel who came back and lied about being r!Ciel, (based upon what she’s saying) she didn’t think anything along the lines of “I’m glad it was Ciel and not (o!Ciel).” Because I think instead of saying that that way of thinking would be wrong, she would have said it was terrible that she already had thought that.
midnight-in-town 