If I Were Writing…

 

E7’s February/March Side-Story, A Game of Princes

So, we’re a few days away from the final part of the Vivian side-story, Game of Thr… er, I mean, Game of Princes. This has been a really good story, which kind of sets up a pattern for SG at this point; expect that the story they release in February each year to be the best one they’ll release all year. Last year’s Valentine's Day side story, despite some people complaining early on due to the mechanics of it, was a very popular one, probably the most popular all year. The Valentine’s Day story the year before that was also very well liked, again probably the favorite of the year.

In any case, this story is unique in that it has a very deliberate mystery element to it. I’ve got stuff to say on the way the main story is going too, but I’ll save that for another time.

Spoiler Alert for anyone who hasn’t caught up on the side story yet but given the title of this post you should probably already expect spoilers.

So, the story starts off with Vivian, our favorite busty city lord from Episode 2, waking up in an unfamiliar location. She soon comes to realize that she’s been isekai’d, or so it seems. She went to bed, woke up in an alternate version of Orbis with a bevy of people she doesn’t know from the Orbis she’s from. For example, Queen Diene (whom Vivian should have little to no knowledge of) is alive and still queen, albeit her husband the king recently deceased. She has a son, but it’s not Aither. Rather, she has three sons and a daughter; Tywin, Ervalen, Kawerik, and Vivian. That’s right, Kawerik’s also alive. And Vivian’s a princess. But they’re not all actually Diene’s kids, because kings and their polygamist ways.

I could spend some time detailing the complicated family tree here, but that’s not super important (I don’t think) to the discussion I’ll be starting in a minute.

Apparently, some time before Vivian awoke in this nightmare world, the Princess Vivian of this world was kidnapped, possibly killed, by unknown assailants. Vivian’s arrival seems to be some sort of providence, the princess not only surviving the initial incident, but even freeing herself and escaping all the way back to the relative safety of the royal palace.

In this world where someone has already tried to kill her once it seems Vivian then has the task of earning Kawerik’s trust as he is initially the only one that knows she’s not the real princess and suspecting she’s involved in the plot that’s claimed his sister and may be trying to end him as well. She must also uncover what is going on, hopefully to not just avoid another attempt on her life, but to find out how to make it back home. All while fighting her affection for Kawerik, which is awkward since they’re siblings in this world, or maybe not that awkward because apparently there were already rumors that the two were romantically involved… royals man…

In any case, we find that Ras is in this world too – unique in that no other E7 alternate world thus far has shown any indication of an alternate Ras existing – as a fourth prince who is initially suggested to be the king’s child from another woman not Queen Diene. We also have Otille – an individual who has not had any real role in any stories in the game – serving as an advisor to Tywin, the sort-of introduction of Mage Luna as an advisor to Ervalen, and Tenebria serving as Ras’s advisor.

The introduction of Mage Luna is interesting, albeit potentially misleading. We’ve known since Fallen Cecilia’s release way back when that there is a person from her ML world that is a mage, and looks exactly like Luna, who FCC blames for killing her entire family, turning them into magic stones. That was considered to be ML Luna. That is more or less the story of Mage Luna here in this side-story – she is a mage, fought against dragons in a major war, was tricked into wiping out a village (by Tenebria) by turning everyone to stone, and is now cooperating with Ervalen in a scheme to try to right that past wrong.

In reality, there’s not much reason to doubt, then, that this world we see this side-story is the same world FCC came from. Much like the misunderstanding and confusion about events in Dragon Valley when Luna forced Cecilia and Yufine away, it’s highly plausible that the same sort of event happened to Mage Luna, FCC, et al.

Who Done It?

As the side story plays out, it is revealed that Tenebria is intimately involved in much of what has been going on and may in fact be the culprit for everything. She has apparently been brainwashing Tywin with false visions of a future disaster, after apparently placing a curse on him and setting herself up as the hero for curing him of said curse, driving him to kill the princess in some attempt to avert the fictitious calamity she showed him. She has been also corrupting Ras, making him believe he is weaker than he is and has no choice but to obey her commands for his own wellbeing and safety.

But this isn’t the same sort of plotting we’ve seen from Tenebria in the past, which makes me skeptical this is the Tenebria we know, or alternatively that this is all Tenebria’s doing at all.

In what is probably one of the more important moments in Ep 1, we learn of how fractured the alliance between the Acolytes really is. Kayron is more or less in lock-step with the mission of the Archdemon – he very much wants to see Orbis destroyed. Nigal is an idiot underling, so he's more or less in the same category as Kayron - he will do what he's told. 

Tenebria, however, states rather clearly that she doesn’t necessarily care one way or the other if Orbis is destroyed. In fact, she’d prefer it wasn’t destroyed. Not because she’s secretly conflicted, or a good-guy playing at being bad. But because she derives her enjoyment from tormenting and torturing others with her illusions and nightmares. If Orbis is gone, so then is her source of fun.

Which is what creates the dilemma here. If you accept the supposition that OUR Tenebria is responsible for what is happening, that would mean one of two things; either she took Vivian to another world, or she’s showing Vivian a nightmare.

Both are highly unlikely, for mostly the same reason in both cases.

Tenebria likes to torment and mentally destroy individuals. Despite the side story being told from Vivian’s perspective, however, she’s not really involved in it. Yes, she’s investigating the mystery of the princess’s disappearance/death, the reason for how it came about, and how to get herself home. And, yes, she has been under some duress regarding how to deal with Kawerik here knowing he’s not “her” Kawerik and will one day sooner or later leave him to return home. But she’s hardly been forced into any danger, forced to take on any burden she couldn’t have easily dislodged herself of.

In other words, while she is the perspective of the story, she’s not at all the focus. Most everything that is happening in the story could happen without her. If this is a nightmare created by Tenebria, it’s odd that Vivian hasn’t been made the center of it. Compared to the Order of the Shield folks in Ep 1, or even the escapades in the Fairytale Tenebria side story where she’s basically leading Luluca around by the nose, this would be an exceedingly passive-aggressive means for her to target Vivian. She isn’t even using people or places Vivian would know and therefore have more reaction to, as other than Kawerik and Ras she doesn’t actually know any of the rest of these faces, and this all seems to be happening in an alternate version of Ritania, not Cidonia. While the scene with Ras is interesting in teasing out Vivian’s general personality – a want to help others even if not be fully immersed in their situations – she’s not exactly shown to be in a place mentally where she’d be that broken up if anything bad happened to Ras. And it’s not even as though Kawerik’s been put in any real danger himself either. He’s actually played a rather small active role in much of this story thus far.

The same applies if it’s Tenebria skipping town to a new universe and dragging along Vivian. There’s no real reason she would make Vivian tag along just to leave her to observe all this. It’d be one thing if Vivian stumbled along into one of Tenebria’s misadventures, but that isn’t the impression we’re given of events. That could change, showing Tenebria messed with Vivian’s memory the same way it’s implied that she messed with Tywin’s.

But the entire event’s setup seems to strongly imply these events have been in motion long before Vivian’s involvement, and therefore that this isn’t just a nightmare being shown to Vivian, but a real alternate world.

So why is Vivian here? Clearly Vivian herself would like to know that answer. It would seem as though she was merely so unfortunate as to find herself stumbling through a Chaos Gate and into this twisted version of Orbis. It is also relatively clear that her memories have been messed with since she can’t recall how it happened.

However, I’m not so convinced that she was targeted for this. At least not by Tenebria. This nightmare, if that is what it is supposed to be, is too tame for something meant to be torturing Vivian’s psyche. There has been little to no cause for her to shy away from choosing Kawerik’s side, a choice she was always going to make. The “off” nature of this world is too pedestrian, too ordinary, to be a deliberate fabrication meant to torment, as even ML Kawerik’s world seems like it would have been harder on Vivian. No one else she knows or cares about has been endangered or threatened, other than the general “end of the world” threat involved. She hasn’t had to put herself at much personal risk, outside a plan she herself came up with to use herself as bait. All of this would suggest that if it were Tenebria responsible for targeting Vivian for a nightmare, she’s going about it in a very different way from any of her past episodes.

But it isn’t an unreasonable conclusion by any means. So far as we know of any other dimension hopping, nothing about the individual who is doing the hopping changes. They don’t assume the identity of their alter ego, the two continue to exist simultaneously. That’s why we have, for example, or Cecilia and FCC, or the comedy duo of Charlotte and LQC; one can cross to the other’s world without directly affecting the other. Here, Vivian not only showed up in this world of Princess Vivian but did so with the seemingly perfect timing to step into her shoes once the princess was thought dead. That speaks to planning and forethought, not random chance. And given that Tenebria seems to be the main antagonist trying to destroy this world, it would make sense that she was the one that dragged Vivian into all this.

However, the more likely scenario, and one I think a lot of folks to this point have smushed together with the idea that “our” Tenebria did this to Vivian, is that this is the ML world that FCC originated from. As I pointed out, the only reason Tenebria would drag someone like Vivian into this would be to torment her and cause her emotional and psychological agony. There is a distinct lack of that. She isn’t even under the delusion that her and this Kawerik can/will be together forever, or that he somehow survived, all of which would be far more heart wrenching once the inevitable goodbye comes. All in all, this Tenebria’s plans seem directly focused on destruction of the world, not destruction of the individual. Her control over Tywin, her control over Ras, seems not driven by a want to see them personally writhe in agony, as our Tenebria normally does, but in seeing them effectuate a larger plan aimed at world destruction. Well, Ras's torment seems a little more personal, but that also would raise some complications.

This highlights a question that E7 has yet answered for me, which is does EVERYONE have an alternate world counterpart?

From Another World

Certain individuals, I believed, by their nature could not have an alternate world counterpart due to the uniqueness of their existence. Ras, for example, can’t have an ML counterpart. He was created by Diche to be her symbol and champion. To have an ML Ras would presuppose that either Diche herself has a counterpart who thinks just like her, or that Diche created multiple Ras’ and scattered them across other dimensions. Both seem highly implausible, thus it makes more sense to presume that there’s only one Ras and that he is the Ras from our Orbis.

I believed the same generally about Kayron and the Acolytes at first, under the misbelief that the Acolytes were created by the Archdemon the same way Ras was by Diche, and about the robots in Politia since there are so many variables that would have to line up to make that work. But we know now that Tenebria herself had a life before becoming an Acolyte, in essence on the road to chaos before the Archdemon came along. We can presume then that Kayron is the same (I have a pet theory on Kayron’s origins I’ll share another time). But more than that now, we have the ML version of Flan on the way. Flan was created by Politis and/or Belian. That she would exist in another universe would presuppose that not only does Politis exist in another universe (we generally assume that to be plausible) but she had in mind to create a robot that looked exactly like Flan in that other universe too, who also apparently has a sister the exact same way “our” Flan does. It is a collision of the concepts of free will, creativity, and predetermination, that is a little complex to dissect.

Regardless, the exercise refutes that earlier supposition I had that some characters just couldn’t have direct other world allegories. Therefore, it opens up the possibility that this Tenebria, the one in this Game of Princes side story, is actually the Tenebria of another world, once more on the path of evil and using the power of dreams and illusions to cause chaos and destruction.

All that’s well and good, but it still doesn’t answer why Vivian and why “now”. At no point was Vivian convinced she wasn’t in another world, at no point has anyone approached her sure she wasn’t Princess Vivian, or at the very least who considered that she might be a Vivian from a different world. Thus Vivian, and us, have no insight into the why and how of her being in this alternate world.

Divine Intervention?

This leads to my theory – we have a meddling god/goddess.

From what we know of the totality of the E7 universe and its lore, Diche was in a disagreement with one of her sibling deities. Diche decided to create, nurture, and protect Orbis. Her sibling, Ilyros, didn’t like the idea of her doing that, and so created the Archdemon to destroy Orbis. Diche created Ras to repel the Archdemon, and thus began the cycles of fighting the Archdemon, the world’s destruction, Diche’s rebirthing of the world. We know Rekos also had its own deity, similar to Diche, whom was killed by Straze and Faustus, Faustus being another likely creation of a sibling deity unhappy with their sisters creating and nurturing these worlds with humans on them.

Given that it’s known to have occurred twice, there’s little reason to doubt it happened a third or fourth time as well. Diche created Ras, the goddess of Rekos was killed before being able to fully act but had empowered/protected Roana and Luluca as Rekos’ guardians and protectors. It seems that the world that Vivian is in right now was set to have a similar setup to Orbis, Ras being created by the goddess and placed in the Sanctuary until he was prepared to save the world. But he was removed from the Sanctuary early, likely by Tenebria’s direction through manipulating the king, and Ras was kept weak by Tenebria so he wouldn’t grow into the threat to the plans for destruction that the Ras of our Orbis is. That done, the goddess had to make a new plan.

Since Princess Vivian had already been on the trail of what was happening and presumably would act to stop it, the goddess used her death as an opportunity to “lightly” intervene by brining in another Vivian to take her place and finish what the first started. Vivian was likely chosen since she would be capable, but also because she wasn’t overly encumbered. Ras is busy trying to save the world again, so he and his cadre couldn’t be called on. Of the individuals with the most influence, remaining, Diene already dead, as is Kawerik, Tywin is already under Tenebria’s control so would be suspicious if he suddenly changed behavior. Ervalen is not at all likely to be of any use, half likely to team up with Tenebria than he is to cooperate in stopping her. Luna’s already there trying to thwart Tenebria, so it’s unclear that a second Luna would do anything but put Tenebria on higher alert. So, that only left Otille and Vivian.

Curiously we’ve seen no other Merus. That makes Otille’s own background in this world murky. We don’t know if she’s a clone, a homunculus, or a regular mage. Either way, with little about her known in either universe, it’s difficult to handicap how she would be helpful for either side, easier based on her personality to see her saying, “I’ll help whoever sends me back home.”

Everyone in this side story, except Ras, Diene, Vivian, and Tywin, is more likely to prioritize a return home over helping this world to the point they’d potentially help Tenebria or willingly look the other way for her if it got them out of there rather than fight her.

Dream Sharing

The second conceivable alternative is that this is a Nightmare targeting someone else that Vivian also got caught up in. Again, thinking back to the Fairytale Tenebria side story, Luluca wasn’t the target of Tenebria initially there. She just found herself wrapped up in that event. The problem is in figuring out who Tenebria was targeting and how Vivian managed to end up trapped in their nightmare. Ras could easily be seen as who Tenebria’s focus is on, but when since Ep 2 would Tenebria have been able to target Ras that he wasn’t already occupied with other stuff, let alone in proximity to Vivian that she would get pulled into it?

Even in an indirect manner, it’s hard to imagine anyone who is close enough to both Ras and Vivian that it would first pain them to see Ras being manipulated this way, and second would know Vivian. That generally applies to everyone in this story, which is what initially makes it so unusual that Vivian is involved – she doesn’t have any real connections with anyone here other than Ras and Kawerik. She likely didn’t even have any cause to be wary of Tenebria at all until the clues aligned that Tenebria was responsible or adjacent to a number of odd elements about this world. That isn’t necessary for Tenebria to act, but it highlights how random Vivian would be as a target without more background on why Tenebria left Ritania for Cidonia, all to single out Vivian for this nightmare that has little to actually do with Vivian at all.

But, that’s why you read stories; to see how they develop, where they started, and where they’re going. For my money, Tenebria is “a” villain, not “thee” villain in this tale. We still need to see who has been playing both sides and what their true purpose is.

So, If I Were To Write...

If I were to write this plot out myself, I would probably choose the alternate world theory. We have Mage Luna here, and the story for her here matches up too well with what we know from FCC's, so it makes more sense that Vivian has found herself in that ML world than to say that this is some one-off creation by Tenebria. 

Going from that, I believe the Tenebria we are seeing here is Light Tenebria, the Tenebria of this alternate world, not "our" Tenebria. I don't think she was planning on "our" Vivian showing up. She had Tywin kill Princess Vivian to stop her from interfering, and likely right now only thinks Tywin screwed it up. 

That leaves explaining how Vivian wound up here. I think it's highly unlikely to be a coincidence. It would be crazy to believe that Vivain just happened to end up in another world right after her counterpart died. It's likely that someone deliberately brought her here. If not the admittedly slim goddess theory, then another possibility is that Vivian herself, perhaps injured and/or dying, called on her alternate world self. Knowing that Princess Vivian was a proud, arrogant, anti-social princess, she likely wouldn't have trusted anyone else except maybe another version of herself. A hasty swap would explain why Vivian herself doesn't remember how she ended up in this other universe. I like this as a wrap-up for the story as it at least leaves a little happier ending than, "Vivian beats Tenebria, returns to her world, and Kawerik is left all alone. The end."