So…after reading the chapter, I haven’t come away with so many emotions in while. And I just need to address that I love Toboso-sensei so much for this Lizzie centered chapter because it really showcased how complex she is.
Lizzie coming to terms with her feelings and realizing she may not have real love for RCiel was something I was not expecting. I think she’s grown from that childhood obsession to burgeoning adulthood. She can begin to separate truth and lies. And though she’s “shattered,” as it was put, I think sometimes people need that harsh realization before they can mend themselves and grow from it.
Believing she’s a terrible person for hoping RCiel would come back addressed that question that OCiel had in the beginning: Would people be disappointed it’s me? Apparently yes. But at least Lizzie owns up to it and doesn’t want to feel that way. She wants to grow so much and be a better person.
In parallel, her growth reminded me how Madam Red never realized her feelings for Vincent were a childhood obsession – not real love. Madam also wished Vincent had come back instead of Ciel. She never got over that part of her life and became part of what led to her downfall. But Lizzie’s capacity to understand what’s in front of her could save her and encourage that keen sense of her mother.
(Also, Edward addressing God about putting Lizzie through this gave me flashbacks to the manga’s beginning.)
All in all. I teared up at the end.
Predictions: Lizzie’s a badass and will be more so in later chapters. I hope she realizes she has feelings for OCiel and helps him – whether its romantic, or friendship. (I’m hoping familial friendship. I don’t want Lizzie going through more pain).
Additional thoughts on Kuroshitsuji chapter 144
As the character who has been most explicit in showing romantic affection, it must equally be the most shameful to her, that ironically she showed this very affection to the wrong person.
The main
theme to Lizzie as a person is her doubt regarding the truthfulness of her
love.
The parallel drawn between Lizzie and Madam Red was something that was particularly interesting to me, because where this current arc regarding Lizzie is headed towards shows the good
potential to a complex story about human relationships that most teenager-centred stories fail to. (How many are about star-crossed lovers, or initial dislike until suddenly hit by a hormone-lightning? Ugh…)
As stated by Yana-sensei herself in her old blog, as Vincent is a post-mortem character, she draws him differently depending on in whose memories he is being retold.
Speaking of papa, Ciel’s papa has made a brief appearance in the latest volume [Volume 9], and I have been trying my best to draw him differently depending on from whose memory he is being recollected. (Whether I succeeded or not I don’t know)
Madam → The kind-hearted man she wants to forget Ciel
→
The kind-hearted father Baron Kelvin
→
An evil man with deceptive gentle looks Tanaka
→
The Evil Nobleman Earl Phantomhive
So going back to Madam Red, we do indeed see in chapter 10, how she did not really remember Vincent for who he was, but rather who she wanted him to be in relation to herself.
Please notice how Vincent was never in full, clear view, or even in the centre of her memories. This tells us that the centre of Madam’s focus was her sister’s position as Vincent’s bride she had hoped to be.
In the end, even though she did not know who, Madam still blamed someone or something for her ill fate and is overcome with jealousy. The only person she did not blame, was herself.
This draws a very clear juxtaposition with Lizzie, who has primarily been blaming herself. Lizzie even loathed herself for so much as having thoughts of blaming Our!Ciel for the situation. That she is successfully deceived by Our!Ciel just meant that she failed the ‘true-love test’.
In chapter 144, Lizzie is still too overcome with self-loath to consider the situation from outside her own perspective (and given that she is 15, it is not so weird!). But once she has sorted out her own feelings, she might start to consider Our!Ciel’s side of the story.
Perhaps a stretch, but the final page of chapter 144 is already pretty good a lead-up towards Lizzie comparing herself to Our!Ciel and therewith perhaps consider his perspective too, after all.
The relation between Lizzie and Our!Ciel might end up being them sharing something ‘fake’; but sharing a secret is quite intimate and does not have to be a bad ingredient for a close bond.
In contrast to Madam Red, Lizzie has a much fuller grasp of who Our!Ciel is (despite ironically not having known who he was).
So, all in all, though it might be twisted, I really am looking forward to a
very twisted, distorted relationship (romantic or otherwise) that Lizzie and Our!Ciell will
have to rebuild.
Please! Give me this any time, please. Enough with star-crossed lovers, tsundere-relationships or obsessive abuse euphemistically called romantic jealousy!
Vincent: Do you dig graves?
Undertaker: They’re all right, yeah
that the skeleton on UT’s scythe isn’t a part of its original design. Assuming this isn’t a mistake on Sensei’s part or a random skeleton, the question is whose skeleton is it?
The thing is, personally I used to consider possibly Claudia Phantomhive’s, because of the thorns and because of the cover of ch54…
…UT should have also found a way to preserve their bodies from deteriorating (which is possibly why he already knew how to salvage the twin’s body 4 years ago), which doesn’t make it likely for the skeleton on his scythe to be Claudia’s in that case.
However, we know there is someone else that UT cares about, but unlike the twin and possibly the people represented by his lockets, UT can’t bring him back because…
his body got too damaged.
So on the scale of one to ten, how unsettling would it be to consider that UT possibly added Vincent’s skeleton to his scythe so that Vincent will always “be with him”, because unfortunately UT can’t bring him back
as a bizarre doll, like everyone else who matters?
As I said, 100% crack theory, but I always found weird that UT didn’t have/make a funeral locket for Vincent when he seemed to care so much, so the people represented by the lockets must be different from Vincent in some ways.
Maybe that’s because they can be brought back when he can’t…
…and that’s why UT didn’t want to leave what was left of Vincent rest in a grave forever so he added a part of his skeleton to his death scythe.
EDIT: for those who wonder about UT’s words in ch105
Hi Anon! Haha yes, I saw some funny posts about real!Ciel basically not really looking forward to seeing his aunt again and, even if it’s just supposed to be humor, personally I think this may not be so far-fetched. 🙂
We already know real!Ciel finds her scary after all…
and she did say to our!Ciel…
even if it turned out that Seb is the one who took that bear down. xD So she’s definitely not strong enough to beat a demon, but still, when it comes to more thoughtful games, I think her nephews possibly have got nothing on her.
There is this trope in manga, that Sensei even referred to in the past, which is about how children are influenced both by their blood as well as by who raised them: so the reason the twins are twisted boys is because Vincent was also like that + because, in our!Ciel’s case, Seb also took on his education.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t have any good sides (our!Ciel was mentioned to be kinder than most of his family several times), it’s just one way to explain why they can also act terribly and drastically.
As siblings, Vincent and Frances were brought up together (Tanaka, according to Sensei in that same post,
probably
being the one who looked after them after Claudia’s death), so since Vincent had a few twisted and evil parts, it’s easy to bet that Frances might have inherited/developed some too (especially since she possibly used to be her brother’s spare). xD
And marrying Alexis wouldn’t have erased that, at least I don’t think so [x][x]. In fact, Sensei might have even hinted at this before…
because Frances thinking she’s getting old in ch14 (chill bae tho’, you’re in your mid 30s) isn’t really about not aiming properly. Rather it’s because the thought of her daughter in danger made her way more emotional/hesitating than her younger self used to be.
My interpretation of this line might be wrong of course, but anyway being a Phantomhive is not about being physically strong like Frances is, that’s just bonus, rather this is about being cunning and ruthless. And Vincent was, the twins are, Claudia probably was too, additionally even Tanaka and UT are, so Frances must be as well.
No way marrying into the Midford family would have erased the whole education and way of thinking she had half of her life, at least I hope not, because I am a big fan of Sensei’s characterizations and I wouldn’t want to change my mind on this. xD
Sorry for rambling Anon, it’s just to say that Frances’ absence is indeed weird and I would understand real!Ciel (or even UT) being suspicious/worried about Frances being eventually bad news, just like our!Ciel himself.
I hope this makes sense, thanks for passing by and have a nice weekend! ^3^
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…
…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…
is
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?
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. 🙂
Hello Anon! Well, considering Frances’ discussion with Vincent…
…it seems indeed that it’s best if there is a spare to the Watchdog’s heir, just in case something happens.
I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible for Frances to have been Vincent’s spare back during their childhood however, even as a woman, because…
Claudia being the Watchdog probably was a special case
in the first place, as there might have been no man to take on the title, which is why Victoria probably allowed her to take it on instead, as we debated here:
“if there were no surviving legitimate male relatives, the title would become extinct… Unless someone got a parliamentary and royal warrant to pass it on to the daughter.“
Following this logic, if Victoria had given the agreement to Claudia for the Watchdog’s duty, it doesn’t seem illogical to think that Frances was her mother’s second heir, the spare in case something happened to Vincent, the rightful heir. That’s even why she’s probably as strong as she is…
because she was trained to take on the Watchdog duty too, just in case.
Crack theory time (that I share with @aroturier): if our!Ciel hadn’t come back 4 years ago, we were wondering if the Queen wouldn’t have passed the Watchdog duty
on
to Frances (aka to the Midford family).
I hope it answers your question, have a nice day Anon!
Bringing this back because I really think that the reason people believe Frances was being harsh in ch132 is fallacious and this is bothering me.
Considering once again that Vincent’s predecessor was a woman because of special circumstances in the family, it must not have mattered to Claudia that she gave birth to a son and a daughter. That’s why she most likely raised them similarly: for their own protection but also should they both end up carrying the burden of the Watchdog duty.
So Frances saying what she said in ch 132 is not only her being worried about our!Ciel surviving as the Watchdog (and frankly she’s not wrong), but also her speaking as a first-hand witness: because the reason she’s so strong and has trained since childhood most likely is that she was Vincent’s own spare for the watchdog duty until he married and had heirs of his own.
Cue the discourse to Lizzie as well when she wanted to give up on fencing, with the example of her dead mother in mind cementing Frances’ conviction that being as strong as possible was one of the keys to surviving as a Phantomhive (and when you see Tanaka living this old as a close associate to the P family, there again I doubt Frances is wrong).
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. 🙂
midnight-in-town 