In fact, it doesn’t even matter if he’s Cedric or not, because it’s selfish of him anyway to bring some members of our!Ciel’ and Frances’ family back from the dead, when it’s for sure going to make them feel horrible if he succeeds.
Look at the twin, we don’t even know yet if UT holds any responsibility for the current arc, although it’s very possible he does, but Lizzie felt constantly miserable for at least two months already…
and it’s probably going to be our!Ciel’s turn very soon.
Let’s just say that it’s UT’s duality as a character, his devotion and selfishness completely clash, so I sure wouldn’t want to be in our!Ciel’s and Frances’ shoes either if he ever manages to bring back more than just the twin (which I hope he won’t, really).
so I’m sure she’ll manage if she’s to ever confront UT about what he’s doing.
Thanks for passing by Anon and have a nice day. 🙂
“his devotion and his selfishness completely clash” ooooh
This is about seem cracky but bear with me
It’s interesting, if we are taking the GrandpaUT theory as correct, that his “love” for his dead family is actually making things completely worse for the living AND dead. Like, if he truly loved them he’d leave them alone and let them Rest In Peace. So, it definitely seems like he’s more obsessed with having them close to him/alive, moreso than being happy.
Which, if you think, is kinda what RCiel is doing? “I’m never going to leave your side again”
I definitely think that UT’s devotion to the P family (whatever the reasons are) is making things worse in most aspects (that’s why sometimes I compare him to Kelvin), except maybe when it comes to possibly being a major help towards the contract binding our!Ciel with Seb. x)
As for real!Ciel, if you’re speaking of his current behavior (ch129, ch130) it’s most likely the way he was brought back (with the “episode” method?) that emphasized his obsessive side from childhood for me.
However I do agree that his obsessive side that we saw already in the flashback might be a family trait, I mean Ed is also rather… attached to his sister (although it’s not expressed in a similar grim way as real!Ciel with our!Ciel, at least for now) so who knows. 🙂 Real!Ciel definitely was an obsessive type of person, that much we could see from early on, so it might be something he inherited from someone in the family indeed (be it from UT if he’s the grandfather or even from his mom’s side, I mean, look at Ann -_-).
I also agree that if UT loved the people he wants to bring back, the best would be for him to let them rest in peace, without mentioning not bothering those people’s family either. That’s his problem though, he’s just… clinging because he’s selfish and desperate (and I say that as a big fan of his).
Thanks for reading!
@kajuned Sorry, I’m not sure who you meant by Anna (Ann/Red?), but yes obviously there is no guarantee at all. 🙂 (and @my-lady-no-further: it might interest you!)
All I’m saying is that the “obsessive sibling” pattern may be random or something that Yana wrote on purpose, since it seems there is one in almost every sibling pair of the family (though it’s not for the same reason/expressed the same way):
Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about Vincent & Frances’ sibling dynamic to know if Vincent was as protective of his younger sibling as his son and nephew are (it is a headcanon of mine though), but generally they seem to have managed much better so… eh. xD
Anyway, I’m definitely one to see real!Ciel’s behavior as being… possibly pathological (even from childhood, I mean), but I can understand not everyone considering the same idea and I do agree that his behavior isn’t completely similar to UT’s.
For UT, it is mainly based on probably living a complicated/tragic existence and on desperation for me (what you said)…
whereas for real!Ciel, it seems to have been latent from very early on…
…and this is why I see it as closer to the behavior Ann showed (because she didn’t simply become mad after losing her family; in the first place she could never move on from her obsession over Vincent, in my opinion).
Anyway, I guess we’ll see, but thanks for your input! 🙂
Hi Anon! And OMG, you make a great point, although I do have to say that I disagree about Vincent since personally I can’t blame him for being murdered.
In fact, he seems to have been a good dad in my opinion…
it’s just that his character remains rather mysterious and hard to read in general, but he certainly wasn’t on the same scale as the others, since he at least made sure his sons wouldn’t be left alone should something happen to him.
I really don’t care whatever people decide to call her, but I just wanted to explain my personal take on why Sensei most likely went for “Claudia” and simply messed up because she’s Japanese (just like she messed up “Frances” with Francis, when “Francis” is 100% masculine at the time of the 19th century already) especially since…
it seems to have been corrected the last time we saw her name written down (ch85 vs ch103, it looks like an “a” and not an “o” anymore).
Anyway, for the people who argue that it is “Cloudia” to fit some sort of sky theme for the P family, this is most likely wrong for two reasons:
1) Vincent implied that his sons were the first in the family to have unusual names in ch132
and Claudia >> Cloudia in term of “traditional names”.
2) while you can argue that there might be a sky theme for the twins’ first names (again, unconfirmed so far so please let’s not assume anything about our!Ciel’s birth name), it’s most likely not the case for the previous generations otherwise Vincent & Frances would have received names fitting that sky theme, like the twins and their mother
TL;DR it’s more likely to be Claudia than Cloudia and Sensei just initially messed up before finally correcting it in ch103.
Again, this isn’t supposed to make anyone change their way of calling her, just like I never attacked anyone for calling Frances by a 100% masculine name when she’s an absolutely badass woman. It’s just that people are speaking about a sky theme in the P family as if it was canon, when we have almost 0 proof that there is something like that going on, and the only hints we’ve got so far surround the twins, not anyone else in the family.
As always tho, just my opinion. No worries if you disagree. :))
Ah, I’m glad someone else agrees. 🙂 Truth be told, this is kinda the conclusion I was hoping others would reach, that canon had corrected the whole “Cloudia/Claudia” debate with ch103, but seeing as it initially was written “Cloudia”, I definitely can’t blame some readers for not noticing in ch103.
My problem for Cloudia/Claudia was more about the sky theme thing being used as an argument way too often, be it for how to spell her name or to guess our!Ciel’s, when it simply isn’t canon for now, not even for the twins.
The Francis/Frances thing is a different issue for me, because I do cringe whenever I see her called “Francis”. I can’t help it, she’s one the most non-stereotypical characters considering the settings of Kuroshitsuji: she’s beautiful, she’s very ladylike and refined, but she’s also strong and a badass noble lady
and despite all that, she ended up with a masculine name because Sensei made a mistake.
Again, I’m never going to fight anyone who calls her “Francis” because it’s not civilized + it was an honest mistake since Sensei is Japanese, but it does hurt a little inside when I do personally relate a lot to confident/strong/badass fictional women (easy enough to realize if you check my blog xD).
IDK it’s as if you were to take cheerful & badass Lizzie who loves everything cute and imagine Sensei initially wanted to call her “Maria” but messed up and it became “Mario”. It’s just a letter but it changes everything and, considering how Frances totally embodies the strong & badass feminine character and can give cold sweat to a freaking demon, I wish she would have been given the feminine name she deserved to live up to that personification.
For real, everytime I see “Francis”, I feel as if we’re supposed to believe that Claudia somehow wanted a second son but was stuck with a daughter and thus still gave her a masculine name because she was to be raised “like a man”. And like, as far as we know & when we see Lizzie, she was raised to be a strong girl, because Frances was raised to be a strong woman, because Claudia was a strong woman…
so the masculine name thing is… disappointing, to say the least.
Anyway, I know it might not mean so much to a lot of Kuro readers, it’s not like Frances or even Claudia are recurring characters (hell, we don’t know even know Claudia x)), but it always feels like a joke when I see an ongoing war about the “he or she pronouns for Grell” discourse when Grell is an okama and then I remember that I got hate last year for not calling Frances as “what’s written in canon when [I am] so annoying with canon all the time”.
The whole point is that fans can obviously call these two ladies whatever they want. I just stated my personal opinion as to what seemed to be the most likely for Claudia/Cloudia and my slight disapproval of Yen Press never correcting Sensei’s mistake for Frances/Francis.
Hi Anon and don’t worry, I totally agree with you! In my opinion, there are two reasons this statement sounds weird:
to avoid confirming/denying the UT = Cedric theory, because him caring about the P family is simply linked to whatever happened with Claudia
because, if the UT = Cedric theory is true, UT’s probably not exactly the best parental figure anyway.
#1 is just the way Sensei rolls, so moving on to #2: we’re talking about someone who, despite obviously caring about the P family in his own way, still let the Campania arc happened after realizing that Ciel was on the same ship, to say nothing of him becoming (unless he already was) a mass-murderer with a smile on his face.
Of course, UT’s reasoning during the Campania arc was that Ciel would definitely be safe because Seb would protect him…
…but that doesn’t make UT less of an asshole in general, and same goes for possibly knowing that the Midfords were there too but deciding that
¯_(ツ)_/¯
they would surely be safe because they are skilled + Ciel wouldn’t let anything happen to them anyway.
So, as I was saying, if UT somehow is Cedric, then I doubt he ever was “daddy of the year”, if just because if he’s Cedric, then how comes Tanaka was all that Vincent and Frances had left after Claudia passed away? It doesn’t even matter whether or not he was around or her husband or whatever. From the moment they were 15 and 12/13 years old, the least to do is to keep an eye on them immediately after.
But hey, while we’re on the subject, this is UT during the Weston arc…
and sometimes I really wish I could wave in front of his face and say “hi, Shinigamis are originally humans too, you know?”.
I mean, I’m aware that we didn’t know about the true nature of Shinigamis back then, but still personally I think that speaks volumes about UT’s current psychology not being what you’d call “usual”, which is why it’s not so surprising that he’d fit on the margin of society.
Then again, it was implied that he didn’t have a very happy existence, so it makes sense that we know he can care about others (obviously he showed us that with Vincent and Ciel), but it’s just often not… demonstrated in the best way or for the most logical reasons.
This is my example of Tanaka apparently being the only parental figure Frances and Vincent had left after Claudia passed away yet again, no matter if the UT = Cedric theory is true or not…
Because in my conception of UT’s character and considering how he’s still crying about Vincent in canon, I really wouldn’t be surprised if UT turned out to be utterly depressed after Claudia’s death (especially if he was in love with her), until he remembered that she had kids (who possibly are also his)
he might as well keep an eye on.
So you see, for all we know initially it probably even wasn’t directly for the sake of Claudia’s kids that he became one of Vincent’s evil nobles, that is, until he got attached to Vincent too. In that case (sorry for rambling xD), it’s the same thing for that weird sentence of ch131…
…that I personally chose to interpret as UT implying that he would care about the twins “because they’re Phantomhives” (as in “related to Claudia/Vincent”) and not because he’s possibly their grandfather.
Again, I don’t know if the reason for that is that he was so enthralled by Claudia that it was not even about his own feelings at first but about what he thinks she would have wanted, or just that he simply doesn’t know how to act in a normal way and thus all that he’d rather do is awkwardly care from afar.
TL;DR UT is such a pain as a character sometimes, because he’s definitely selfish and he acts terribly, but at the same time you can’t really doubt of how much he cares and gets involved when it comes to Claudia’s family:
if he’s Cedric, he possibly abandoned Frances and Vincent (whether or not he was around in the first place) for a few years after Claudia died, which kinda sucks,
but he still ended up coming back as “the Undertaker” after a few years and dedicated a large part of his time to helping Vincent with the Watchdog duty
also he barely knew the twins that he had already decided he’d care about them just because they were related to Claudia/Vincent
Caring about Ciel didn’t stop him from throwing him off a staircase though, because he knew Seb would protect Ciel and he wanted to get to Seb
and yet, UT’s involvement in the Campania and Weston arcs could also be seen as possibly trying to get to the Queen, because the Watchdog duty remains one of the two big threats that could end up killing Ciel.
Anyway, sorry for rambling. x) As you can see, I love how complex UT’s character is but I agree that it’s slightly painful how full of contradictions he seems to be. :3 Maybe knowing more about him will help us understanding him or his motivations better though, so please just take everything with a grain of salt!
I hope it’s a little helpful, have a nice day as well Anon. ^3^
Thanks for reading and no worries :)) it’s an argument (with the doubt that shinigamis can reproduce in the first place) that was used more than once and I hadn’t meant to imply that that his other lockets weren’t important in the first place, because clearly they’re part of his treasure.
So I’ll clear up the misunderstanding but first, I have two arguments to oppose to yours:
the story is about Ciel Phantomhive & Sebastian Michaelis
so I don’t want to make a generality, but I think Sensei wouldn’t seem to insist so much on UT if his link to Ciel’s family wasn’t particularly plot-relevant (as opposed to just being a part of UT’s character)
again, not to make a generality, but you can have several people you’re extremely close to and fond of (friends for example), but fall in love with just one person. In other words, I think that’s a pattern with his lockets too: UT liked them all for different reasons.
this is Druitt’s example here, he’s so damn funny that UT protected him from everyone on the Campania, including from drowning, but I’d still say that Druitt is less important than Ciel for UT.
Whether these hypothetical feelings were reciprocated we don’t know, but that doesn’t really matter since we’re focusing on UT’s point of view. So my point is that whatever I said above works no matter if the UT = Cedric theory is true or not, because the only argument my post about UT is based on is the idea that UT possibly was very much in love with Claudia. 🙂
In fact, UT = Cedric is not plot relevant, at least as far as we currently know (it doesn’t change any big element of the plot). I mean, it gives UT a name and that’s why I like it, but basically that’s it. What’s relevant (and already canon) is that UT ended up keeping an eye on Claudia’s family probably because of Claudia herself. That’s why I said above that UT said he “would care about the twins because they’re Phantomhives” (as in “related to Claudia/Vincent”) and not because he’s possibly their grandfather.”
Again, I’m not saying that he’s not keeping an eye on other people as well, but the plot revolves around Ciel & Seb, so UT’s careful watch over them as well as Claudia’s locket will most likely always get a bigger focus than the other lockets, but that’s not particularly relevant to whether UT is Cedric or not in my opinion.
TL;DR my post above is unrelated to UT being Cedric or not, it’s all about UT keeping an eye on Claudia’s family because he initially cared about her a great deal or (if he didn’t love her) simply because he found her very interesting. That’s what I was trying to explain about ch131. 🙂
I hope I’m the one making sense ^^
The arguments against the UT = Cedric theory are more than a few though, so no worries if you don’t think it’s possible, you’re not the only one. Thanks again for reading!
midnight-in-town 