My Umineko Epitaph Theory - From Mid-Ep3 (Potential Full Series Spoilers)

07th Discussion
#21

@farispie Regarding the multiple personalities, I think the personalities are aware of each other, considering they actively converse with each other at several points, particularly in the beginning of episode 2. As for being able to carry out murders; if we are already suggesting that the red truth saying the personalities are dead is bogus in some regard, that may mean that those personalities are no longer able to control the body, so regardless of what the other personalities think of the murders, once they are “killed”, the Beatrice personality is in control.

I think the easy way to debunk this second problem is that an illegitimate child defines the problem here - it is illegitimate, thus would not be “fitting” as heir to the Ushiromiya headship. As we’re shown in the beginning of Ep4, the Ushiromiya family falls under public scrutiny a fair bit, so it would be tough to let an illegitimate child to be accepted, both internally and externally, as head of the family.

@MagusVerborum It’s tough to say why Kinzo would go this roundabout route with the evidence present. We’ve only seen Kinzo through narration and through character’s memories, so it’s hard to speculate what his actual motives were. Here’s my thought though; the idea that Kinzo would have told someone the answer to let them get the headship doesn’t really make sense on its own, because the epitaph has been present for some years before the 1986. I could speculate as to why the “victor” would be told to wait, as Okonogi said, such as to ease suspicion of cheating, or in order to let someone actually have a chance.

I’m pretty stuck as to what the truth of the intent might be because we’re only just now up to witnessing what happened after the massacre in our playthrough, so the truth of Eva’s survival is still in question. We don’t even know for sure if Eva’s survival was shown exactly as displayed in Ep3, though it does match up nicely. If the epitaph is addressed to Beatrice, but then Eva ‘won’, what does that mean for the intent of the Epitaph? This mismatching between the epitaph and the outcome seems to suggest a different intent to me. I’m struggling for an initial idea to go off here but struggling to start a theory hasn’t killed me yet. Perhaps it’s time to rewatch everything another time through.

Here’s some spitballing (these were part of a conversation with someone else who has never read Umineko, just so I’m being transparent):

  • Maybe the motive actually was to have one of his children prove themselves, but he hoped it was the illegitimate child thus why it was addressed to Beatrice
  • Maybe the illegitimate child doesn’t actually know who they are (thus why they seem to have no personality that is an Ushiromiya), and this was to try draw them out
  • Conversely, what if Kinzo knew he had the child but didn’t know who the child was and this was to try find them (or this and the previous)
  • If his legitimate children know Beatrice has something to do with the Epitaph, maybe they will try uncover Beatrice to solve it, thus revealing the child to Kinzo
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#22

Here is another thought, if you claim Kinzo is dead by the gameboard’s start, then naturally the culprit is using the epitaph for their own purposes. Why do you suppose they are killing using the epitaph as a guideline for the murders? Is it simply a weird quirk of the “Beatrice” personality or is there something more to It?

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#23

Whilst its possible that it is just a quirk where the “witch” personality makes their actions seem like those of a witch, I’m sure there’s something more to it; the question is what is what.

My immediate thought is that the culprit was trying to make things complicated; so that they might avoid persecution once the event is over. This definitely seems to the impression given by the ‘endless’ loop of chessboard turning Battler does in Ep1 after the first twilight, but of course as far as we can tell the culprit doesn’t survive the game anyway, at least from the examples we’ve seen. The other idea I’ve had is that for some reason maybe they are trying to direct someone to the epitaph; perhaps in an effort to unveil the truth and stop them, though I don’t know why that would be. This is what I think the witch’s letters allude to, at least. Despite the letters, it doesn’t make a lot of sense considering that the killings continue once Eva solves the epitaph in Ep3. I can’t think of much else outside those, at least from the footage I’ve been looking over right now.

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#24

Well, I can’t confirm or deny, but in regards to episode 3- Eva never actually announced she solved the epitaph, right? IIRC only Rosa and Hideyoshi knew. So maybe the culprit simply didn’t know the epitaph was solved ?

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#25

If the culprit was determined to kill everyone, why would they stop doing so after the epitaph was solved? Isn’t that contradictory? Maybe you should explain this in more detail but I really don’t get how this could be possible, especially since even after Eva solved it the killings continued.

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#26

Well, the thought was more in regards to why the murders follow the Epitaph; it would seem that making the killings partially predictable would be a more risky way to go about these things. As well as this, as I said, the scene in episode 1 where Battler keeps spinning the chessboard over and over again, it doesn’t seem to make sense that the killer is making these murders easily visible. My thinking then was; why would you want the killings to be visible and follow a pattern? My guess was that you wanted to provide some way for people to stop you, or to direct them to the Epitaph. As you and I both said, it doesn’t make sense since the killings continue in Episode 3, but what @farispie says, it might work if the killer didn’t know that the epitaph was solved.

I do actually wonder; maybe that was the intent of the set of numbers we saw at the end of episode 3? Was the “small golden land” some sort of repayment for not stopping the killings once the epitaph had been solved? I wonder what, then? I had suggested it was some password or pin, maybe to a supply of money, or some of the gold, but I haven’t been able to find any mention of anything specific which would answer that.

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