midnight-in-town:

Hi Anon and don’t worry, I totally agree with you! In my opinion, there are two reasons this statement sounds weird:

1. to avoid confirming/denying the UT = Cedric theory, because him caring about the P family is simply linked to whatever happened with Claudia
2. 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^

@kajuned​

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.

If you remember: UT’s lockets aren’t an exclusive list of people he cares about, otherwise Vincent would be on it, so in my opinion, his lockets are possibly an indication that he thinks he should be able to bring these people in particular back with his BD project. 

As I said, what this means is that he most likely was very fond of the people represented by his lockets for different reasons but still, there also are hints Claudia is the one he possibly fell in love with amongst all of them.

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!