Recap post: the “real!Ciel mastermind theory”

As proposed on Friday, here’s a recap post about my take on it, for the few who wanted it and in hope that it might help some others with the few misunderstandings I’ve seen going around. Let me know if anything is not clear!

First thing first, despite the name of the theory, real!Ciel isn’t exactly the mastermind or the real target of Ciel’s revenge for me, if just because he and our!Ciel wouldn’t have ended up with child traffickers and sold to the cult if there wasn’t another party involved (and wanting for them to suffer).

So someone else definitely manipulated real!Ciel and his possible wishes, in order to get to the Phantomhive household. They sent someone, very probably a supernatural being considering how they appeared right behind our!Ciel, to kill almost everyone before making sure the boys would know Hell.

For simplicity’s sake and this post, we’ll assume the true mastermind is Queen Victoria (+ John Brown) and if there is a need for more explanations, please check these posts [x][x].

Moving on, in my take of the RCMT, there were only two attackers on December 14th:

and while #1 is the supernatural being (Brown?), #2 is real!Ciel (see below).

However, I know, why would a ten year old child ever wish doom on his own family?

Well, first of all, things very probably didn’t go according to real!Ciel’s plan, way before the boys were even given to child traffickers: I’m of the opinion that initially all that real!Ciel ever wanted was for his father to die.
And why? Because with Vincent dead, he was the next head of the Phantomhive family and as such…

…he might have a say into his little brother’s project to go to London and become a toymaker, leaving him behind.

But things escalated from the twin’s initial plan, very probably because of the real mastermind who used real!Ciel’s little wish to get his father out of the way to almost entirely annihilate the Phantomhive household, before getting rid of the twins in a much crueler way

(possibly because real!Ciel was an accomplice).

So overall was it a horrible, irrational and childish idea coming from real!Ciel? Well, yeah, but he was ten years old and, mostly…

he apparently had (& still has as a bizarre doll) a rather pathological attachment to his little brother

(bordering on obsession really) and that could be enough of a reason for him to truly fear the future separation.

He might have even seen his parents as being unsupportive of him and his issue on the topic, because they clearly seemed to be okay with our!Ciel’s choice in ch133. Thus getting rid of at least Vincent to replace him and have his say on the matter was a minimal price to pay for not being separated from our!Ciel.

I disagree with fans labelling real!Ciel a psychopath in the past (it’s possibly different now because of UT), however I do think something was wrong with him if his little brother was the only one who mattered above everyone else to him. And, again, I really think that’s the case because…

(”together” as “just the two of us”)

…Lizzie, the Midfords, Ann (before she died)? Well, he didn’t/still doesn’t seem to consider them at all. :// Our!Ciel does though…

and that’s from where I draw a comparison between what’s normal and what seems to be less so, because it’s as if Sensei wanted to insist that they’re very different on this point.

So, looking at ch133/134, what happened?

First of all, it’s very important to realize that there is a one and half year time skip between real!Ciel breaking down about our!Ciel leaving him behind (with Vincent and Rachel not taking his side) and December 14th, 1885.

And it’s important because that means that Sensei purposely hid what the twin did or even how he acted between the incident and the actual massacre, after focusing for two chapters on real!Ciel being bothered by his brother leaving him.

So “he was a sweet kid, loved his parents and he would have never done that”? Well no one can know that for sure, since it’s not like we really saw anything about him between “I have no choice but to become Earl Phantomhive” and the attack on the manor. Besides, it’s kind of very Sensei-like to do foreshadowing this way, just saying.

Moving on, I’m not going to expand on how/when/why real!Ciel could have ended up as an accomplice of the attack of December 14th because we have no clue of that yet (that’s all in that one and a half year missing from the flashback), however I think everyone pro or against RCMT realized by now that the outsider who killed almost everyone received help from inside the house.

That helper is real!Ciel for me: he’s the one who muzzled Seb the dog and locked him in, so that he wouldn’t warn anyone/attack the intruder, but also maybe so that he wouldn’t be killed.

As I said above, I doubt that real!Ciel considered that anyone besides his dad had to die for him to get what he wanted and both the dog and servants could still be useful to him as the next Earl

anyway

(in order to keep the exact same household, except for Vincent himself).

As for Rachel, well, from the way she and Vincent died, embracing each other…

…I think she tried to shield Vincent and was killed first. ;_;

However,

had his initial plan gone perfectly, I’m not sure either that real!Ciel thought it necessary for his mother to die (just like the dog and servants).
Either because he imagined that, once he’d be Earl, a woman would have no way to stop his decisions (I mean, look at what he said to Lizzie, I know he was a kid but ://), or because he thought she could understand after what she said about her and Ann in ch133.

There again, real!Ciel’s plan definitely didn’t go as expected, since the real target of our!Ciel’s revenge ordered her assassin to annihilate the whole household instead (the twins awaiting another horrible fate), which…

what

took

place. Well, almost because someone survived.

Before I get to this part though, I have to say: I don’t think real!Ciel is the one who killed his parents. He wanted his father dead, yes, but he’s not the one who stabbed them, or Seb the dog, or even most of the household.

Just look at ch134, all the dead people our!Ciel came across had a lot of blood pooling around the bodies, a lot of blood on the walls or furnitures around too, which in my opinion signs the work of a real skilled killer (that supernatural being, attacker #1).

So I doubt the twin would have been able of that, not at ten years old, not when he didn’t have blood on his clothes ~~and not when he seemed to suck at fencing~~. What he did do however is at least muzzle and lock the dog, take the Phantomhive ring from his father’s hand (the ring that proved he could inherit the position after his father)…

and possibly stab Tanaka at least once (making him attacker #2).

The reason I think the twin is the one who stabbed Tanaka is the opposite as to why I think a real pro took down everyone else: Tanaka was stabbed twice

meaning that the first time wasn’t enough to kill him, so:

either he held his own against a supernatural being because he was strong enough
or real!Ciel is the one who wasn’t skilled enough to kill him on the first try.

Also, the second time Tanaka was stabbed was precisely as he attempted to warn our!Ciel of something about real!Ciel…

And if real!Ciel was in on the plan about December 14th, frankly I doubt he’d want his little brother to know that he was an accomplice in the massacre that took place.

The last chapter even implied that servants aren’t exactly people real!Ciel tends to care about anyway…

…so who knows if even Tanaka wouldn’t become disposable from the moment he caught on about real!Ciel being an accomplice? ://

So basically, real!Ciel is the one who stabbed Tanaka in the back, just as Tanaka tried to warn our!Ciel, but then the supernatural attacker showed up and took our!Ciel away before he could see who was the one with the knife.

I know Tanaka is still considered as a suspect by some fans, but honestly I just can’t see how or why. And when it comes to how Tanaka managed to survive his wounds and the fire that destroyed the whole manor, since that’s one point making him suspicious, I discussed it a little here for those interested.

Additional hints & details for the RCMT

To tie with the more recent chapters, since UT brought back the twin, but not mandatory when it comes to understanding the theory, so under read more:

the twin’s behavior towards our!Ciel

I think it’s a hint by itself, because he still seems very obsessed with the idea to finally “be able to be together forever”.

Real!Ciel being a bizarre doll though, that means UT brought him back through editing his cinematic record with “episodes” (i.e ”yearning for the future”).

In other words, if before he died real!Ciel was strongly envisioning his future as “being together forever” with his little brother (as the flashback showed well enough), it could explain why he’s still super obsessed with the idea, because that’s literally what keeps him going as UT’s current masterpiece.

A real obsession can be dangerous: look at Ann and the JTR arc, or look at UT who can’t mourn the dead Phantomhives and instead tries to bring them back through lots of horrible and bloody experiments. So in real!Ciel’s case, it’s not that impossible that it could have led to December 14th.

the attack on Soma and Agni

Could be a hint depending on why the twin became violent and what was the purpose of the twin coming to the house in the first place.

Was it to see our!Ciel? And that’s why they wrote a creepy message on the wall? In that case, discovering Soma living there or Soma acting familiar with him triggered his violent reaction.

Or was it because of Soma himself? It’s obvious that UT told real!Ciel about what life his brother led for the last 4 years, so he could have mentioned Soma. However, considering how real!Ciel only sees and cares about him and his little brother, Soma calling himself “Ciel’s big brother” could have made him super jealous. ://

why did the attack happen on December 14th precisely?

In case anyone else is wondering. I’ve seen three possibilities until now:

because it was easier for the twin to get everything ready (muzzling the dog, etc) while everyone else was otherwise busy preparing their birthday party. There is even a mention of real!Ciel reading till super late the night before, to the point of not getting enough sleep.
because, in the idea that real!Ciel was really missing some screws, the plan to kill his dad so that he could become Earl was supposed to be a birthday gift to both him and his little brother (since the plan was one way for them to “be together forever”) (proposed by @asthmaticastre [x])
rather than being related to the twin, the choice of the date is related to the mastermind, because Prince Albert was Queen Victoria’s love of her life and historically he died on December 14th, 1861.
So if in Kuroverse the Queen thinks her Watchdog at the time (Claudia) was somehow responsible… she could hold a grudge => short version of the theory.

could someone have prevented the RCMT from happening?

Because I remember that a lot of readers used to despise Vincent and Rachel for “badly raising their son” and not paying attention, but I just don’t think it’s their fault, because I don’t think that real!Ciel behaved particularly oddly aside from that one trait.

That being said, as I explained here, I think there is a slight possibility that Vincent might have caught on about his first son’s strong (rather abnormal if the rcmt is a thing) attachment to his little brother…

Not that it saved him or Rachel, so I guess no one has to care, but we’re still missing one and a half year from the flashback and, in general, Vincent is a rather mysterious character so… in case we ever address that time skip again, it could be useful to at least consider the idea.

why would UT even bring back the twin if the RCMT is true, considering how much he cared about Vincent?

Last point, but at the heart of the current arc and I agree with @dorkshadows on the matter, which is to say that UT is so ~~biased~~ obsessed with not wanting to lose more Phantomhives that he would probably find every reason to excuse real!Ciel’s involvement in what took place on December 14th.

Though there is also the possibility that UT didn’t even watch this part of the twin’s cinematic record before editing his record post credits, because he was already convinced that the Queen was behind the attack on December 14th. In that case he wouldn’t even know that the twin played a role in Vincent’s death.

I’ll conclude by redirecting you to what @cielsama14 once said about the RCMT here, which I think is extremely fitting, especially considering what Sensei always said about the P family being cursed.

Long post as always with me, but I hope it was understandable!

Please keep in mind that this is my take on this theory, but there are other versions.
Don’t hesitate to ask if there is anything. Thanks for reading. 🙂

rationalkuroshitsuji:

Ch 141 review: Sebastian’s sense of smell

(Ch 141 pg 12)

It’s disturbing enough that Our Ciel didn’t realize he was sitting on top of the corpse of his brother while sitting in Undertaker’s shop.

But it bothers me more that neither Sebastian nor Grelle seemed to notice.

Sebastian and Grelle are both supernatural beings whose duties revolve around the dead. They both ought to have noticed a corpse.

I can explain it away though.

For Grelle, the explanation is fairly simple. Grelle was undercover as Madame Red’s butler, so it wouldn’t have made sense for them to have said something. Grelle also had no reason to have known Our Ciel had a dead twin, so even if they’d noticed a corpse, there was no reason suspect it might have been connected to the Phantomhives.

For Sebastian it’s a little trickier: Sebastian was intimately familiar with Real Ciel’s corpse. If anyone should have noticed, it’s Sebastian.

However, in the Weston School arc, we saw Sebastian interact with Mr. Agares several times without him directly sensing that Agares was a walking corpse.

So I suspect that Sebastian probably noticed that there was a corpse in the coffin, but he couldn’t tell that it was a bizarre doll. He must not have been able to tell that it was Real Ciel’s body either, or else he should have said something to Our Ciel.

—-

I wonder if that was the joke…

Undertaker: You want information? Give me supreme laughter!

Sebastian: I’ll handle this. Please leave the room.

…

Sebastian: The Young Master doesn’t realize he’s been sitting on top of a corpse this whole time.

Undertaker: YES, yes he has been, hasn’t he.

the way you crap on Undertaker’s character gives me life

Is this @dorkshadows as some sort of revenge for my own

little

anon prank?

If not, then I’m having a hard time guessing whether Anon means it seriously or ironically, because I love UT: it’s just way too easy to figuratively throw eggs at his handsome and scarred face, because of all the drama he’s raising lately.

I mean, seriously, everything UT did is as far a testament of healthy love as you can get, so I just can’t help but imagine Claudia being in Hell like…

And that’s what’s killing me. xD

Anyway, I love UT, I love Seb too, but I’m gonna force the adoption of all my still alive children and take them far away from these supernatural dudes who have no idea how to make them happy.
…I’m taking Tanaka with me too, because he’s the real MVP of this story and I don’t want him to die.

So me shitting on UT half unironically is just me loving his character but wishing he’d wake up already. 🙂 Hopefully it’s going to be for this arc, because

no one is unreedemable yet as far as our!Ciel’s dynamics are concerned (except maybe the twin if the RCMT is true?).

Have a nice day, whoever you are (Anon or Dorky-chan)!

kurotwins:

The custom-made coffin

Chapter 141 confirms another little theory of mine that I’ve had since 2CT:

Remember how Undertaker always mentioned to Our Ciel when he stopped by the funeral parlor that he had a custom-made coffin for him?

Where did he get his measurements from?

That to me was always a hint that not only did Our Ciel have a twin brother, but that he had been with Undertaker this whole time, and thus provided him with the measurements.

Another clever hint, Yana.

Undertaker: I have never done anything wrong in my life ever

the whole Phantomhive family + Tanaka: *witnessing UT’s many attemps at bringing back their dead family members, without mentioning the thousand of people who died because of these experiments*

How to sum up UT’s character

Undertaker: I love–
Sebastian: Yes, you love the Phantomhive family, we know, you love them so much, they’re the light of your life, you love them so much, you just love them, we KNOW, you love them you fucking love the Phantomhive family ok we know, we get it, YOU LOVE THEM. WE GET IT.
real!Ciel: the demon servant is right tho’.
Our!Ciel: ?????

One thing I’m not sure about. I’m a big fan of RCMT, but has UT looked through all of RC’s memories? If he did watch, is it possible he overlooked that bit? Maybe he respected the twins right to privacy. (Seb called the other reapers peeping toms I think) or… does he not care that the twin had a hand in Vinny’s death? Maybe he blames the true mastermind?(Or plot convenience lol) I’m split. Everything just seems to support RCMT more and more! But that part!D: yana explain pls.

dorkshadows:

Yeah, that’s what confuses me too! I feel like there are lots of hints toward the RCMT and they’re still building, but even it does happen, I think we can be sure that RC wasn’t the one behind absolutely everything. It’s most likely he was manipulated into “hurting” his parents, and had no control over what followed.

Now, onto UT and the RCMT, I think if it happened, UT just didn’t care. He’s a Phantomhive apologist so he’d probably blame whoever gave RC the idea, and since Vincent’s dead and burnt, he doesn’t see the use in begrudging RC. His morals are extremely skewed, and he clearly doesn’t care how this will affect OC emotionally. So even if RC had a hand in patricide, UT still regards him as “family” and will do anything to bring him back to life just because he has a Phantomhive body on hand.

Besides, the CR would show much RC cares for OC (unless that plot point also changes), and since the twins are alive while Vincent’s dead, UT would think the pros outweigh the cons.

Other theory is plot convenience XD Maybe for some bizarre reason, he really didn’t look at the records at all. Or edited that part out. Anything goes at this point!

bizarre-dollhouse:

Tbh i was totally fine and chill with the secret twin trope, but I really hate the “I was there the whole time” cliche ~~(is it a cliche in Japan too?)~~

THAT BEING SAID: if the reason Agares was constantly falling over in the school arc was because he was tripping over RC’s awkward corpse, then that is. That is the height of Dark Comedy™. It’s literally two undead abominations coming together for a running slapstick gag. I just. Wow.

The Undertaker and the bizarre doll project

It’s the third arc now that we are faced with UT’s shenanigans involving the dead being brought back to a state that resembles “life” and, in each arc, UT gave pieces of his motivations, so that we could try and assemble the puzzle.

As with everything else, it is only my opinion, but I don’t believe that bringing back the twin is UT’s ultimate goal or end. It’s not just a mean, but it’s not the only end either, so

there is probably more that UT thought he ought to achieve through the BD project.

Thanks to ch140, it’s confirmed that UT’s goal is strongly related to his connection to the Phantomhive family, so this post will focus on that to try and explain how we ended up with UT going off the rails so badly.

First of all, please note the reasons for his actions he gave in each arc so far:

# Campania arc

The Campania arc tells us that the original idea was born while he was still a shinigami or about to desert. However this doesn’t mean that he started to work on his BD project back then already, just that the idea that started everything is older than his connection to the P family.

Furthermore, it’s implied that what triggered it all at its very origin was UT’s curiosity in humans. By Grell’s words or Seb’s, a Shinigami is a being who’s supposed “to stand neutral between Gods and Humans” (JTR arc) and yet as far as UT is concerned…

…”he was seduced by the lives of humans” and that’s probably why he ended up deserting with that little idea born from curiosity about “what would happen should we edit a human’s cinematic record”.

# Weston arc

This time it’s slightly more defined and there is a notion of UT’s personal wish already underlying there.

It’s not exactly about curiosity towards humans in general, even if the way he’s jokingly presenting it could be misleading. In my opinion, since the fated end he’s talking about here is death, it seems UT simply isn’t fond of how death can take interesting humans away from him, thus putting a stop to UT’s “fun”.

So editing the records and bringing them back (cheating death), would allow UT “to look beyond the fated end” and pretend as if death didn’t take these precious humans away from him (also, from the way it’s worded, maybe UT was thinking about a human in particular and something that he was expecting to see with them, but couldn’t because this person died, which leads to the same thing).

Anyway, I think maybe this would sound slightly less insanely random if we consider UT’s existence overall:

if he is a Shinigami then it means that he hated his previous life so much that giving up on it was his only way out

yet he’s not exactly “dead” because Shinigamis work hard to earn redemption after killing themselves, so it’s understandable that the idea to bring back humans who didn’t kill themselves would interest him when Shinigamis are such an odd example of “dead” in the first place

besides that and considering the way Sensei uses comic relief in her story, if UT likes having fun so much (making it payment in exchange for his info), it could be that the notion was unknown to him until someone he met after his desertion taught him what it was, thus why he’s so fond of it.

This shouldn’t be an excuse to anything he did obviously, but at least that factors into understanding why he’s so interested in whatever is “beyond the fated end”, thus perfecting his BD project to bring back some people in particular and make them as seemingly human & alive as possible.

# Blue sect arc

The current arc answers an even more specific question revolving around why UT went through so much trouble in order to bring Ciel’s twin in particular back and the answer is that the twin himself is just supposed to be a representation of how much UT seems to care about salvaging the Phantomhive family from death.

So it’s not that UT cares specifically about bringing real!Ciel Phantomhive back, more like his grand dream would be to have all of them back if he can make it happen (the little issue here being that we already know bringing back Vincent is impossible), because of the connection he has to them through Claudia.

And it’s not about giving them another chance at life, nope nope:

either it’s about “me, myself and I” because UT doesn’t want his connection to the P family (to Claudia in particular?) to disappear
or it’s because he promised Claudia he’d protect them all and he doesn’t want to fail his promise to her

Either way it’s entirely selfish. That’s why he can even mention having a custom coffin already waiting for our!Ciel: in case our boy dies, well, it’s okay because UT now has the perfect way to bring him back (from his current point of view).

In other words, is there a difference between life and death?

Well, not as far as UT is concerned, because that’s the only way he found to keep going: the Phantomhives are almost all dead? Thanks to his BD project it doesn’t matter though, because UT is just happy to have a way to see them all again after all this time.

So chronologically speaking, what happened?

UT killed himself and became a Shinigami.
Before deserting, UT got curious about what would happen if he were to edit a human’s cinematic record
Then he deserted for a reason possibly related to “being seduced by the lives of humans”
afterwards we don’t know what happened but we know his connection to the P family started because he met Claudia Phantomhive
and ch140 confirms that one goal of UT through the BD project is to make sure he “won’t lose another Phantomhive”.

I’m kinda digressing but I think we received enough hints throughout the story to consider that Claudia Phantomhive really is the start of everything when it comes to UT’s attitude and attachment to the P family and thus to his place in the whole narrative…

…even if the truth behind the bond between UT and Claudia remains a mystery till now. The nature of his own feelings isn’t really hard to guess, but we know nothing when it comes to Claudia’s (so is UT Cedric K Ros– or not => no idea).

What’s likely tho’ is that, through this bond (and even if he had unrequited feelings), UT probably lived several years where he was happy (maybe for the first time ever or in a long long time), even possibly living the human life that seduced him into deserting in the first place (if he was Cedric K. Ros–?).

However, the Watchdog duty then got in the way…

leading to the situation as we know it now, with Claudia and Vincent dead and only the twins left (since we don’t know how he feels towards Frances’ side of the family for now).

Finally, to say that the BD project is entirely about the P family would possibly be a mistake because Claudia’s locket belongs on a chain with 6 others and UT referred to all of them as “his treasure” during the Campania arc.

That being said, even if he didn’t care exclusively about Claudia back in the days, it’s likely that she was still extremely important to him, especially if he had romantic feelings for her (or if just because the story revolves around her grandson and UT is too present in the narrative for this to be a coincidence).

TL;DR there is a good chance that, while the experiments for the BD project as we know them possibly started when UT decided to bring back the twin…

…the entire thought process between the idea he had as a Shinigami to the actual realization he started to work on 4 years ago was triggered by Claudia’s death as well as the death of the other people represented by the lockets.

So, yes: UT is most likely using the BD project as the ultimate mean to “recreate” the years he spent alongside some humans he truly cared about (7 lockets + Phantomhive family) but who are almost all dead now.
And it’s likely (thanks to the current arc) that he’s also justifying it as not being only for himself but also for other members of the P family (like our!Ciel, or even Frances, Lizzie, etc).

Call it madness or desperation, I’m not here to excuse him because that’s selfishness alright. As for to the upcoming consequences of his acts, I’ve already spoken of them here.

As always, thanks for reading and let me know if anything is unclear. 🙂

serinigalini:

onehellofan-undertaker:

off the charts

ASTRONOMICAL

Source: onehellofan-undertaker