It is time.
While I will speak of myself through most of this post, do note that everything that has been said in the four threads has influenced my thinking, so even if I end up solving this beast, it is in part through all of your help. So if you have posted in these threads, thank you very much!
This means I have now finished my reread of Umineko. Throughout my reread, I was looking for answers. And I wanted to have an as open as possible outlook as possible, so to some regard I went through it without already suspecting one single individual, even though another part of me did exactly that. So basically, what I did was look at each individual murder or group of murders and list everyone who had the ability to do that particular murder. I only considered someone as cleaned from suspicion if A: they were observed by Battler at the time of the murder or B: a red truth made it impossible for them to commit that particular murder. However, I still went at it with as open a perspective as possible, so as an exception to B, I ignored any and all red truths regarding Kanonâs and Shannonâs life or death status under the argument of vacuous truths that has been brought up in this thread repeatedly. So without further ado, here is that list of potential suspects for each murder:
So what I see looking at this list now is that Kanon and Shannon are still suspects for pretty much everything. Rosa has to be involved in episode 2, and Eva is very likely to be involved in episode 3. Episode 4 is just one giant clusterfuck of who even knows, so it tells us nothing in terms of lowering our list of suspects. Of course, one can assume that the culprit who planned shit from the beginning was hijacked by someone else in one or more episodes, so what I end up with is the list of Kanon, Shannon, Rosa and Eva as likely candidats to be this Beatrice. Furthermore, it is likely that Nanjo is an accomplice if it is Kanon or Shannon at least, as he always helps them fake their death in that case. For that matter, note that there really is no one that could have killed Kanon in episode 1. (And Then There Were None spoilers)As a funny sidenote, with this we have yet another reference to Agathaâs story, as in both the doctor helps the true culprit fake their death with a wound that everyone would automatically assume to cause death. Well, if Kanon is the culprit, that is.
I myself would like to think that the murder plot wasnât hijacked in episode 1 at least, so for that reason my order of most suspicious to least suspicious (to be Beatrice, remember) is:
Kanon > Kanon=Shannon > Shannon > Rosa > Eva
I will say right here that I will consider it as a partial victory for myself if any of those five options above ends up being the correct one.
Anyhow, now with these options laid bare, we need something else to try to figure out which one is the correct one. And our main clue for that is of course Battlerâs sin, although there are other clues as well.
For Eva, I honestly have no clue what his sin could be. So if youâre reading this and you wanna make an Eva-culprit theory, Iâd be curious to hear it!
For Rosa, his sin would probably be leaving the family register, as that would remind Rosa of being left alone by Mariaâs father.
And now we get to the most likely options, as for all three the sin would be the same. This is also the one I myself believe to be correct. As @Seraphitic and I think others have reasoned, I think this sin would be Battler promising to return to Shannon but in the end never doing so. Sera already brought up some points in the story that suggest this, but thereâs even more. I myself think that Beato was also in part trying to get a message across to Battler with these murders and the fates surrounding the actors in this tragedy. One of these things is Beato explaining in episode 2 the three ways to hurt a woman: âHurt her with a blade, hurt her heart or betray her expectations.â Not long after that Beato says a red truth that doesnât seem to add to any mystery at all, but might actually be a hint to this sin weâre breaking our head over: I keep my promises. Almost seems to me like sheâs saying that Battler did not keep a promise. And then the entirety of episode 3, with the North Wind and Sun strategy. This might simply be Beato making Battler experience how it feels to be betrayed. And she finally outright asking in episode 4, I really see a progression there, basically a âHow much more to I have to hint at it until you finally realize what you did?â
By now youâre probably saying to yourself âOkay, this is all connected to Shannon, so why is Kanon your most likely suspect?â Well, this is mainly because Beato says that she didnât exist for Battler 6 years ago. What I believe happened is that Shannon was truly hurt by what Battler did, and cried about it to Kanon. While Shannon herself eventually got over it, even starting a new relationship with George, for Kanon this was still an important thing, and perhaps in part caused Kanon not being able to see love, since he saw that very same love hurting his sister. So basically, as a defense mechanism, he wasnât able to embrace loving someone else, which is why he refused Jessica even though he seemed to have feelings for her. Perhaps he even viewed his sister as breaking that original promise when she started going out with George. So yeah, this is one aspect for why the incident happened. However, it is only one. It isnât the entire reason.
So now that we cleared up the topic of Battlerâs sin, letâs look at Kanon, who I believe to be the culprit, and the mysterium that is Beatrice in detail. (This is also the point where I start to make some baseless assumptions, trying to tie a lot of things in this story together.) Well, and to look at Beatrice, we need to look at Kinzo for a bit as well. So we know that Kinzo had a mistress named Beatrice. Letâs call her Beatrichi for future reference. I believe that we never saw Beatrichi. No, I think she died at some point far in the past, but she is the one that gave Kinzo the gold. Now I believe that later on Kinzo found a child that he believed to be a reincarnation of Beatrice. This is the Beatrice that we saw in Rosaâs flashback, the one that was raised in Kuwadorian and that died some 20 years ago. Letâs call her Bea-nii. Like I said, Bea-nii is dead. However, I think that Kinzo truly believed he experienced a miracle, having found Beatrice again. And if this assumption is correct, then this could be the root cause for his involvement with the Fukuin House, the orphanage Kanon and Shannon are from. What I basically believe happened is that after Bea-nii died, Kinzo hoped to repeat that miracle, to find another reincarnation of Beatrice. That is why he wanted orphans from that house to work for him as servants, to test himself whether maybe, just maybe, one of those orphans is his beloved Beatrice. Perhaps one of those tests was showing them Kuwadorian, trying to discern if they recognize this second mansion. So basically, what Iâm saying is that not only did Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa know about the hidden mansion, but all servants from the Fukuin House as well. So now let us make another asumption. What if Kanon actually recognized Kuwadorian? In reality this was probably due to Shannon talking about it, but for Kinzo this probably was kind of a dilemma. The miracle actually happened again, he found Beatrice again (letâs call him Beatrice-san), but heâs a boy, so something canât be right! So while he might have exclaimed âBeatrice!â at first, he promptly denied that again. In Kanon however this might have created a sort of escapism persona, and shortly after he founded Mariage Sorciere together with Maria. After all, the most important part of this alliance is that each acknowledges the existence of the other.
Following Mariage Sorciere, both first wanted to add others into the alliance, Kanon inviting Kumasawa as Virgilia, which as a reallife senpai and perhaps advisor in servitude would make sense as a teacher even though she was added later; and Maria inviting Ange, which we know eventually lead to Ange destroying that fantasy a bit by denying Sakutaroâs existence.
Following Kinzo a bit, I believe that he then came up with the idea of the epitaph to find the next reincarnation of Beatrice. He basically believed that only Beatrice would be able to solve the riddle. This is why the name Beatrice is also inherited to the one who solves the Epitaph. Whether Kanon knows the solution, Iâm actually not sure. It could be, it could also not be.
Back to Mariage Sorciere, later on it took a change for the worse, with the two imagining how to take revenge on their abusers instead. Thatâs where another part of the motive to the disaster lies. And then thereâs of course the how. How the murders happened. This is basically to prove that magic exists, both to the family, which is why all those closed rooms are employed and why the epitaph is used as inspiration, and to the rest of the world, which is why multiple message bottles have been sent out and why everything is ended with an explosion, most likely, as it probably wouldnât hold up against a police investigation.
So I hope this little theory at the end here was enjoyable to read. If you think someone else is the main culprit, feel free to make a similarly compelling theory, I have heard there was at least one culprit theory that gained a lot of traction and ended up being wrong (I of course donât know which culprit theory that was, perhaps it was a theory similar to mine and I am wrong all along), so even though it might seem to you like thereâs nothing left to think about after this post, do not stop thinking. However, if I ended up hitting the mark, Iâll view it as a greater victory than just the one I mentioned above. Weâll see once Chiru hits steam. Hope to see you all then!
EDIT: Ohh whoops, forgot, hereâs all the notes I took while rereading: