Yay, I finally have time to make a post! I took your advice –
[quote=“pictoshark, post:34, topic:31, full:true”]
I was watching the Ep 3 ??? and would advise you to go do the same. If we’re trying to figure out “Who aaaaaaaam I?” then it contains a goldmine of useful stuff. If anything it’s making me stand even firmer by my original theory. As you seem to still be online, gogogo! It will only take 15 minutes to read, maximum. I’ll be working up my real response to your post while you do that.[/quote]
– and wow I’m glad I did. How did I forget all this? Lambadelta says outright that Beatrice is ‘nothing more than a temporary witch’ and that she’ll go back to being Human without Lambadelta’s sponsorship. She also says that Beatrice was in some pretty miserable circumstances before Lambadelta decided to sponsor her, and that if Beatrice fails, Lambadelta will find the most miserable Fragment in all the possible Fragments and seal her there. Much like when Bernkastel offers to find the happiest Fragment she can for Ange but, you know … in reverse.
That does seem to align with your theory that Beatrice is the human Beatrice who died and then ascended to the metaworld, much like Battler did. In fact, from what we’ve heard, it sounds a lot like how Ange was chosen by Bernkastel to be her piece.
Lambadelta says why she chose Beatrice, too. It was in exchange for her ‘gameboard,’ which Lambdadelta wants to use to trap Bernkastel. But what exactly does that mean? In this episode, they talk a bit about Beatrice’s gameboard, and where it’s located in time – I believe it’s October 4-5 of 1986. That’s why Ange is such an advantageous piece, because she can look beyond that timeframe. And I would guess the gameboard is also Rokkenjima Island itself, which in October 4-5 is closed off from the rest of the world by the typhoon and damage to the phones lines. I’m struggling a bit with finding the right words to describe this, because it’s sort of a unique concept. The gameboard isn’t like a tabletop game you bring to a party, it’s not a physical thing, it’s … a place, a time, a series of events? But a series of events with some variation, which we see from episode to episode.
So in what sense, then, do those belong to Beatrice? I really don’t know, but maybe it’s something like a plan – a plan that took many years to set in motion, that required a particular set of circumstances. (Like: the island being cut off from the rest of world during a family conference. Or even: Ushiromiya Battler being at the family conference, which we were speculating about above.) And if it’s Beatrice’s plan, something she thought up when she was alone and miserable in Kuwadorian, that’s a more concrete way that we can claim she is the concept of the Rokkenjima killings. She died, but the killings still came about, so her will still exists in the world. We can say she still exists, as the Rokkenjima killings. Sort of? Like I said, this is tricky to talk about.
It might help to think about the mystery of the message in the bottle? That comes up in this episode, too – we find out that there’s multiple messages, and they’re written in the same handwriting in Maria’s journal that Maria attributes to Beatrice. The messages tell different stories, but they’re always the story of the Rokkenjima killings of October 4-5, 1986. Different plans, maybe, different ways events could unfold within the required circumstances. It’s always been a little mysterious who wrote those messages – they’re supposed to be from Maria, but Maria didn’t seem to have the time to chronicle everything or the opportunity to put it in a bottle – so maybe they were written in advance? Written by Beatrice? We know there’s a human Beatrice – most likely a Ushiromiya Beatrice – but she died when Rosa was a child, didn’t she? In other words, she died long before Maria was born. So why would she claim to be Maria or – heck – why would she write about any of the grandchildren at the family conference? And how would her handwriting get in Maria’s journal … Is it someone else pretending to be Beatrice, in order to enact her plan? That could be it, right?
I feel like we’re so close! But, speaking of being so close …
Oh, I like this theory a lot. That conversation Natsuhi had with Kinzo, the one that we know now didn’t happen – I was thinking there still had to be a grain of truth in there, one that explained her change in attitude when she returned to Eva. In that conversation, Kinzo hints that he regrets Natushi isn’t his heir, that she isn’t a man and Krauss a woman. Perhaps she was having those thoughts herself, while looking at Kinzo’s body – and then she realized there was still a way that she and Jessica could inherit the Ushiromiya family title. (By being the only Ushiromiyas left.)
Those last three twilights are hard, admittedly. Natushi did advocate pretty hard to push the servants out of the study, so she could have had a trap of some kind waiting for them in the parlor. But with the state of their bodies, it’s hard to imagine what that trap could be, and why there wouldn’t be any visible evidence of it. Man, I’m going to have to think more about this.
