Discussion topic for Rudolf Ushiromiya, son of Kinzo and father to Battler. Freel free to discuss the entirety of Umineko here without spoiler tags. New readers, turn away now!
Alright let’s talk, does Rudolf love Battler? What do you guys think? Is he as stone cold as he appears or is it just an act?
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That’s an excellent discussion prompt!
I do often wonder about that. I think Rudolf has good reason to resent Battler’s existence, for throwing his love life into disarray, and there’s the whole distance between them after their relationship breakdown. But, I do feel like Rudolf loved Battler deep down. Maybe that’s me wanting to believe? I’d say there’s enough evidence to be found in the VN, but it all comes back to me seeing it “because I have love”, I guess.
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It’s definitely interesting to think about. Rudolf does have some good reasons to hate Battler, like making him choose between Asumu and Kyrie but in the end, he’s still his father. I may not have children but I think it’s safe to say that it is hard for a father to not love your son.
I think it’s interesting to see how Rudolf acts in EP6 to Battler’s death. Since it was BATTLER’s game board, it was how he invisioned Rudolf seeing his dead body. So at least in Battler’s mind Rudolf loves him.
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When discussing any character’s true feelings we must remember that the movements of pieces are controlled not just by the GM, but by the in world author.
This means that episode 1-2 we get the interpretation of Yasu, and episodes 3-8 we get Ikkuko and Tohya. Add on the GM considerations and we get 1-4 Beatrice, 5 Lamda, 6 Battler, 7 Bern, 8 Battler/Bern (it should be pretty clear which parts are Bern.)
We see Rudolph acting his coldest and cruelest towards Battler and everyone else in episodes 7 and 8. Considering Bern is Featherine’s cat she clearly has a closer association to Ikkuko than Tohya. Add the whole “Battler was too late” thing episode 7 had going on and you can surmise Tohya had little or nothing to do with writing that episode.
Looking at this it becomes clear that Yasu and Battler/Tohya believed Rudolph loved Battler, but Ikkuko may have had her doubts. I’m more inclined to believe the people who knew him personally, but that viewpoint could be clouded by love. It depends whether you believe “Without love it cannot be seen” or Erika’s “Because of love you see things that weren’t there”.
Personally throughout the story I see a lot more evidence that Rudolph did love him. We learn that Rudolph did his best to keep in touch with Battler and keep him part of the family, and have him be a brother to Ange even when he was gone. Kyrie admits herself that she resents Battler so she would not have pushed Rudolph to do this. If he truly didn’t love Battler then he would have just let him drift away from the family and started over with Kyrie and Ange.
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Well another thing that has to be considered is that Rudolf never actually does anything to Battler in E7’s Tea Party, I mean yeah he tells Kyrie that he’ll shoot Battler if he has to but he could just be saying that to please Kyrie. We don’t actually know if he could’ve/would’ve gone through with it. So that is certainly something to consider, actually on the note of Rudolf I’m surprised he wasn’t portrayed more negatively in Yasu’s stories, I mean after all its because of him that Battler left the Ushiromiya family and couldn’t save her so I’m surprised that he and Kyrie get such minor roles.
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I don’t think this was ever in doubt. Rudolf was a giant jerk, but I think when it came down to it, he would die to protect Battler.
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