Trinity Blood ficlet: Šāh māt

[narcasse]

246 words. G. Post-series. Seth/Süleyman.


Šāh māt

Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.

++++++++++

When she was a little girl…
The strangest fairytales always began like that.
She’d always dreamed that she really was a princess.
It had made perfect sense.
And the princess had always wanted to go on a grand adventure.
That part was also true.
So she had travelled so very, very far from home.
Of course she did, it wouldn’t have been a good fairytale otherwise.
Where she’d fought monsters and flown dragons.
Because the princess always has to be brave and clever in a good fairytale.
And she’d had all manner of fun.
She had… for a while.
But then she had to come home.
Because invariably she always did.
Because her people needed her, to rule over them…
As a wise and virtuous Queen.

And because that was always the way fairytales went; one day the wise Queen would fall in love with a man worthy of her.
… the handsome Prince was not only handsome but good and kind.
She would love him for his gentleness, his innocence.
He forsook his kingdom to stay by her side.
He would love her for her wisdom and her smiles.
And at once the Queen knew that his love was true.
And they would live happily ever after, forever and ever ruling over their people with wisdom and love.

But life isn’t a fairytale. Not really, no matter how hard we try.
So please don’t mind me, beloved, when I come to read fairytales by your grave.

++++++++++

“Šāh māt” meaning literally “The king is dead” is Persian phrase from which the term checkmate is derived.
This is a bit of a twist on the business of how the Methuselah hold a wake.

This grew out of one or two other thoughts that really weren’t expecting fic or at least this sort of fic so I’m actually quite surprised to have written things this way. And yes, Seth’s POV but I didn’t mention that at the top because it probably has rather more impact when you discover that it's actually her speaking at the end.

Comments

[herit.livejournal.com]

And yes, that's certainly true. I'm not sure how Radu would have developed if he hadn't been given this chance, but then again we don't know how active he was to get something done. The RCO is normally the party approaching their future partners, but if there hadn't been Carthago, the whole deal would have been pointless anyway - athough; what Dietrich wanted, as far as I understood, was not primarily Caterina's and Ion's death and a war, although that was something he would have been happy about. From how I understood the course of the plot, the ARK data was his main motive. But to be fair, I personally think that Dietrich's directness towards Radu, forcing him to change completely and now, was appropriate. It's Radu himself who is just equally eager to change things violently and at once, who doesn't flinch about murder, who thinks everybody should be punished, and who may even have had wishes to kill Ion brutally; at least he says so in the manga, claiming that he has hated Ion ever since they were children, and telling him that he has always wanted to brutally murder him (in a moment where he really could have lured Ion into a trap, but which looked like one of those "exploding unresolved hatred" and "ultimate, unfiltered truth" moment). I'd find it ironic, and I could even honestly say I find it realistic, that Dietrich might use the exact means and traits of his victims against them. Radu is angry and frustrated, hates Ion, hates his Queen, hates the whole Empire and the Terrans even more, is all but rushing head over heels into a coup d'etat, wanting to overthrow the state and take revenge, just let out his anger fast and hard and brutal, and best burn it all down because it all just sucks - so, Dietrich lets him. And suddenly, he realises that his cunning plan (http://macrochan.org/source/6/J/6JW3FK3QDPNSBBQBV257YUO2SMLAH7BS.jpg) may not really have been all that good and what he wanted so badly. Dietrich is like the people who, after listening to somebody's hate-rants and promises to beat somebody up, just answer with a smile and hand them a baseball bat. Only, of course, that in this case here the consequences of withdrawing are quite a lot more dire. He does about the same thing to Esther - and especially to Gyula - in the beginning, showing her that revenge includes not only the "enemy", but can just as easily hit your loved ones or yourself, if it's somebody else's revenge; and even your own is connected with sacrifices.

And thank you for that! I cannot wait for you posting, though.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I suppose we could read into Isaak saying that from his side too. Though I’m not sure how much Cain could have changed. Helga might have gone from the brilliant protégé to a bitchy little girl or… but canon says that Isaak didn’t meet Cain till after he’d been kicked out of KCL, doesn’t it? Perhaps, depending on what year of their course they were in, if William and Isaak had known each other through first year already where it’s just bringing everybody up to speed rather than stretching their knowledge and learning, it might have been the case that Isaak was fine then but as soon as the real work started, it became painfully obvious that he just couldn’t keep up. In which case he got vicious and stopped being the fellow genius/rival that William had known him as.

[space in which I attempted to write something. Except whenever I write it neither William nor Isaak dislike each other and end up quite chummy anyway.]

That does have potential for William honestly mourning the friend Isaak used to be, with the added twist that the Isaak William knew was the fake while the person he has become is actually the real thing. I could imagine that William might not at all the sort to invent excuses but going on only what he’s seen and what he can confirm, may well suspect that there’s some underlying awful thing that’s happened to Isaak to change things, when in fact Isaak was always that immoral and just chose to hide that fact on occasion. It comes back to the whole business of stasis again; William may not have changed all that much either but… New theory! William and Isaak are meant to demonstrate stasis and the hypocrisy of there being a blanket rule for that sort of thing. William doesn’t really change but his stasis is a socially acceptable one where as neither does Isaak, if we presume that he was that disturbed from the start, but his stasis is socially unacceptable so he’s demonised for it. Trinity Blood: nothing is a case of absolutes. Which comes back to Ion’s line in the anime about the Empire dealing only in absolutes with no allowance for variation.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Be careful what you wish for seems to be Dietrich’s motto. He’s really quite the honest liar at times because as you say, he gives people exactly what they ask for, which comes back to the whole Mephistopheles angle where you need to really be aware of all the consequences before you ask for anything. It’s a fascinating contrast to Isaak who, at least in the case of Caterina, is probably giving her what she doesn’t as for directly and probably would never ask for opening but wants nonetheless. They make a lovely pair of devils in that respect; Dietrich gives exactly what’s asked for which is often enough not actually what people want and Isaak gives exactly what they want which will probably eventually be enough rope to hang themselves with. In that respect, Radu really just doesn’t fit into the RCO because he’s still attached to the material world and can’t truly be the sort of outsider that Dietrich and Isaak are, until he steps beyond it. Cain really makes a good sort of Antichrist then, training his followers or at least allowing them to train themselves to go out and give people exactly what they want which is often enough to destroy them. Except now I’m trying to make Revelations 17:10 “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.” fit Rosencreutz so it’s probably time to stop typing my thoughts out directly into text again. imperial_artist: He’s like a stream of consciousness novel in a way.

[herit.livejournal.com]

I suppose Cain wouldn't have a problem with buying a literary bodyguard for his favourite geisha. Though suddenly I have to imagine him dancing. Maybe he's not all that bad as a dancer, though then he probably rather knows the classical standard dances, Waltz and such. (And that reminds me of my first dancing lessons, around New Year, and with an Isaak as partner, too. >_> It's certainly... an interesting experience. Though a Panzermagier suddenly pulling your legs and making you fall over, just so he can straddle you wordlessly is a quite interesting experience, too.)
If he seriously tried that... my respect for the attempt at least? Or maybe he was just absolutely oblivious what the problem might be, and that neither party may like the mutual introduction, especially when William cheerfully explains that no, of course it's not cheating, because he loves his fiancee after all, while his mistress is just awesome in bed, and that's all for both sides. Which leaves Isaak heartbroken for being just a cheap - but awesome - fuck, and William's fiancee, because she's just being told that her skills in bed are quite below what William expects.

[herit.livejournal.com]

That's true, I suppose. Even if Cain hasn't changed, it's likely that he proved to be different from Isaak's picture of him. It's all pretty much like how a Samsas Traum song: You weren't always honest / You may never have betrayed me / But the picture of you in my head / It lied to me. As for William and Isaak, I suppose it's quite likely that they were on an equal level to begin with, but what strikes me about them is that William makes a much more natural impression than Isaak in his genius. We don't know anything about Catherine Lange, but with her daughter being a stewardess-training-for-pilot, I'd guess the mother was the sort of person to actually "love" her studies and work. You probably know what I mean; the sort of great inventors like Da Vinci, who just have joy in studying, drawing, analysing, and are sort of fickle in their changing from one area to the other. That's purely speculative now, but that's how I could see Catherine Lange by what little we know of her. Now Garibaldi is a weird one. He really was in love with his work, too, but in a quite more radical way. He chose rebellion and death when he was forbidden to continue his project, and treated his creations as his children. His suicide was really touching, IMO. I suppose back at university, he'd have been the one fascinated with the possibilities and what they meant; the visionary. Maybe a small Seth, somebody who wanted to create something new and watch it grow. And a highly ethically concerned person, though with quite twisted ethics; manipulating human life wasn't really below him, but his creations were what he considered equal to a human life. He'd have been the kind of scientist to get extremely worked up, maybe even throw Herbert West like tranta. William, again, seemed like a mix of the two; not quite visionary in his inventions like Garibaldi, but not as much of a free spirit as Lange either. While I could imagine both him and Lange sitting in the attic and opening and repairing all sorts of machines they can fine, I'd see William as planning to take this part and that part and do something new with them, in an experiment, while I could see Lange rather doing it to see how the thing is built on the inside, how beautifully it works, and how she could create something new like this - just better. But in the case of both of them, their genius has a sort of natural touch, while Garibaldi would certainly have been a natural genius as well, but his methods of studying would include far more theory from books, analysing and testing other people's theories, and finally developing something huge all on his own. Of all the four, he has certainly made the most genius invention, after all. And while I could see Lange and William rather relaxed and curious, I suppose Garibaldi would have been more hell-bent on finding something he just cannot put his finger on but knows it's there. And then Isaak; I suppose in his methods, he would have been quite a lot like Garibaldi, studious and strained rather than just curious and relaxed, but I presume that this would just develop once he realises he has to work to keep up with the others - before that, he'd probably have had a quite natural, innate genius he never really had to work for. Then, after realising that the others were very much his equals, his strained ambition may have awakened, and going for the same rough way as Garibaldi, his ambition was rather not finding this uncertain "something" Garibaldi was after, but more likely proving himself against his rivals - and that's where he was doomed, because at some point he broke and could not defeat the others anymore with other means than cheating. I don't doubt he'd have been quite on the same level as the other three, just his problem may have been that he wanted to be the best while the others were of course competing, but put their work first. Oh well, that's really all speculative now, you know. But that would be my take on the whole university business.

[herit.livejournal.com]

The others had lives outside of university later, after all; William had a fiancee, Lange didn't marry but had a daughter and designed the third-biggest airship in the world (or she married and her husband took her name), and even the geek Garibaldi was independent enough to follow William go to the Vatican and manage to find a "patron" for his studies, which he actually lead to success. Isaak, on the other hand, has no aim after university; he just wanders around and doesn't know what to do, because he was all about his ambition and now that it's failed and is gone, he doesn't know what to do.

That's almost a bit like Radu and Ion, really, only that Isaak wouldn't have a reason to think of William as the ignorant upper-class friend who looks down on him and is on a level he can never reach... oh well. Or maybe it was a bit like that, really, although in all honesty, the perception would have been slightly more unfair than in the Ion-Radu case. Radu at least tried to talk about matters, and Ion is really rather stubbornly ignorant, while William may be a bit absent-minded, but has more of a "nice older man" image in the AX and actually takes care of others' problems (defending Caterina at the court, repairing Tres, giving Hugue artificial arms and teaching him to use them, giving Kate an airship to make up for her lost body, etc, apart from emotional back-up he provides). But that doesn't mean Isaak never happened to see him as ignorant, just because William was ahead of him and never bothered to give Isaak a real fair chance to catch up - or even if he did, that was just to mock him anyway and hence threw Isaak off even more; all in his head only, of course. I know I have had people whom I'd irrationally accuse of all this nonsense back at school, just because I couldn't keep up with them and in all frustration usually concentrated so much on being angry that I wasted the time I should have used for studying, and so on. It's a vicious circle, really, but most people experience that at least once in their lives. Only, in Isaak's case it might have actually crippled all of his ability. But I'm derailing.
I'm not sure how much I'd agree with William not changing; he has something blissfully ignorant in his obsession with inventions, but on a social level, he goes through a lot of transformation, from the university student to having a fiancee, having her blown up killed by accident, being kicked out of university, and yet adapting enough to the circumstances to search another way, going to Rome and working as a teacher there, before joining the AX and playing the role of a ... mother. *coughs* Maybe that's all because he couldn't protect his poor fiancee and "should have seen it earlier", "it" being the trouble Isaak had, of course. But then he'd be in a sort of state equal to Abel's without the ability to let go of the past, and that again would imply stasis again. So... I suppose you can ignore what I just said, I'm rambling.

[herit.livejournal.com]

I suppose you could say that, really. And if the "devil" is supposed to mean a "demon", and a "demon" in the general Occult scene... that could well be a quite fitting view on him, not as ignorant as him being considered the "devil" would seem. Demons are, after all, supposed to present people a mirror. I suppose Mephistopheles and Faust aren't too far off as stereotypes for Dietrich and Radu; it's the same presentation of power the other has wished for, and the human's downfall through it, although Faust is redeemed in the end. Though in the case of Esther, Dietrich seems to go Isaak's way, really, at least after the István incident; she openly says she doesn't want anything from him, and she quite obviously has changed her ways anyway, but he seems to be still poking her stubbornly, which either seems to mean that he himself doesn't intend to change his ways even when the other has long since changed their mind, or that he just thinks that she doesn't reveal what she really wants, and he still wants to give her exactly that. It's a bit the same what he does with Radu later, intending to kill Ion when it's really not necessary anymore (in public, even), and administering an attack against Mirka and Seth. Maybe he's really learning from Isaak, while Isaak is certainly more talented when it comes to insight - he at least seems to manage to see what people actually do what, even if they don't speak it out loud or are in denial about it, but he doesn't go for such extreme ways as Dietrich does, giving them something only he thinks they want. They are certainly a lovely pair of devils, really. While Dietrich is all direct about what people "summoned" him for, but later shows an ugly face when he just won't let them go and insists that there's more they want, which he will provide (think of Esther's gang-rape thing) - Isaak is more the "seductive" one, who studies the ones who summon him, figures out something that may be held secret by them or be even undiscovered by themselves, but is quite obvious, and then gives that to them in tiny bits, to make them want more or just to confront them with the shock of him actually being right. Maybe Isaak is more of an Incubus, in the end; or just a very, very mild form of a Succubus. And Dietrich? I'm not sure at all at the moment, but probably a Shoggoth; the kind of thing you summon, which becomes bigger and badder the longer it stays, and you cannot quite get rid of it.
I suppose Radu's problem in the Orden is mainly that he cannot focus on Cain to begin with. I'd find it rather odd to hear that he actually met Cain and thinks Cain is God, because Radu's a psychopath, but not that fatalistic, from all we know. Plus, he seemed pretty damn terrified when he first met Abel in Crusnik form, so I suppose we can trust that he never saw Cain as such. Maybe he'd have ended up in a similiar scenario as the Neumann brothers, who don't seem to care about Cain either, but follow somebody around who does not seem quite as insane as the rest in the Orden. As you've said, it's the attachment - or the connection to the real world that's in the way. Other than Isaak or Dietrich (especially Dietrich), Radu still has an identity outside the Orden, by being known to people, and not only by name or a random meeting or two, but because those people grew up with him. It's like Isaak with William, really, just worse because the two only knew each other for a brief episode at university, while Ion, Mirka, and Seth - not mentioning Süleyman, since he's an outlaw, too - practically knew him from infancy onwards. For Radu to really become something in the Orden like them, Mirka would have to die, and so would Ion; and possibly Seth, though he doesn't know that of course. And that line's beautiful, really; I've come across bastardisations of that a couple of times, but I wasn't quite sure where it was from. It sounded a bit like Lord of the Rings.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Isaak really seems the sort who might well have been a natural genius as you’ve said but entirely unstructured so that instead of making reasonable progress… Goodness, if he was honestly frittering away his genius in a multitude of pursuits without seriously concentrating on anything it’s entirely possible that he was the smartest of the four. It’s the Julian Lloyd Webber vs Andrew Lloyd Webber issue, where you become an expert in something because you’re got no chance at anything else. If Isaak were equally good at everything then it’d be so easy for him not to focus to the point where everything around him is built on shifting sands. Its Chaos gone wrong again really, where they tell you that you’ve obviously got talent but that you’ve only just scrapped a pass in your exams because there’s no structure to your answers and you’re not explaining your logic leaps on the actual paper. In Isaak’s case he probably could explain why he’d done something or presumed a certain point in a theory but that’s not what examinations are about. He’d need to get that explanation down on the page rather than wait for somebody to ask him about it. And of course if he is really that good he’d grow more and more frustrated with seeing the others praised when he knows that they simply don’t have the breadth of knowledge that he has, enough so that finally he’d get to the point where even his tutors couldn’t help because he’d become so furious with the matter that he’d just stopped listening to their advice. Why should he have to explain anyway? He knows so much more than the others and so on. Which would be really horrible for his teachers at least because they’d be forced to stand by and watch as the brightest and the best actively chose to go down the route of thwarted mania. And in we took that to extremes, depending… well, I will have to write that now because it’s so gloriously fucked up.

[space in which I wrote that]

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Granted, when I post it anyway, I will have just implied that he had a key goal but that’s really the point with him, early on he can’t see the forest for the trees and then later on isn’t seeing the trees. If he’s actively been thwarted earlier but refusing to focus via specialisation or even just looking at the details, he’s really gone to extremes now where everything has become nothing but arbitrary details to him. If that were the case then he might even know he was doing it and be deliberately crippling himself, much like Radu. If Isaak’s been told to change his study habits he might easily have reacted in the entire opposite at university which resulted in his attempting to prove that he didn’t have to by killing everyone else off but of course by that point he was in a complete rage of the matter so didn’t think it through clearly at all. And after a huge disaster like that he’s more likely to cling to what he knows because changing his behavioural pattern now would still be admitting defeat or rather that he was wrong which also quite the contrast with Esther’s strength because she does something she believes is right though it’s of dubious morality and then when she discovers it was wrong actually admits that it was and actively tries to make amends. Isaak might honestly feel that he’s gone so far that he passed the point where he could admit that he was wrong and retract his actions or at least the sentiment behind them. Sliding scale again with Isaak at one end thinking he’s gone too far, Dietrich in the middle trying to control everything including his own motivation and self-belief and Radu on the other end wanting to actively go back to the way things were before.

The vague take on matters I’ve had so far in writing university era fic involving the pair of them has been that Isaak might have genuinely been the upper class one. If that were the case then he’d be at first quite charmed by this state school individual who’d even managed to get into a top university in the first place and who seemed relatively smart but then that would rapidly give way to an irrational jealousy when he discovered that William really was that clever and certainly more focused on his studies than Isaak. Having dealt with at least one individual who seemed surprised that state school individuals could even write alright, I exaggerate a little but it was similar if Isaak were really from a moneyed family and had been practically given everything the entire way along then he’d probably be utterly horrified that suddenly he couldn’t quite seem to keep up with this state school nobody or rather it wouldn’t be the keeping up that would be an issue since his outrage would stem from not automatically winning because by Jove, that’s what his parents paid for. Though if that really were the case then I can image there’d be a good portion of fandom who’d manage not to hear the over-privileged arrogant nitwit part of it and just hear ‘rich’. I’m coming back to my It girl theory though via that route and if that were the case then he really should have stuck with William because at least he’d have a smart boyfriend, so while his status and wealth would open doors for them William would actually be able to get whatever it actually was; done. Of course what nobody ever spelled out explicitly at finishing school for poor Edith was that if some trollop comes along and attempts to steal your man, you’re not exactly meant to blow her up.
I suspect that William’s probably grown more as a person than Isaak might ever do but it’s an odd sort of growth and lots of things have superficially stayed the same. It really depends on what goes on inside his head really because even if things externally look the same, if he’s thinking about things and relating to them differently then change has certainly happened. Hopefully there’ll be some insight into that in the novels at least.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Since I’ve been coming back to this on and off all day there may be some somewhat interesting leaps in logic but nonetheless, I really do like what you’ve said here. And it makes me think, if we’re talking the meaning of the Lovers as trials overcome rather than usual more obvious interpretation, Isaak and Dietrich would really work for that card. Though it would involve all the pitfalls of fanservice to have them on it and even worse if we ended up with the Devil as Cain with the pair of their chained at the foot of his throne. And there goes any chance of my being serious now.
Dietrich does seemingly learn from other people’s actions or perhaps at least through mimicry of Isaak’s behavioural patterns which would really match up with the shoggoth issue of learning to speak the language of their masters through mimicry. Though if he tries to bite off Isaak’s head at any point in proceedings that could get awkward. I’m thinking of a scene in At the Mountains of Madness where they find the corpses of old ones with their head’s bitten off. The old ones may have created the shoggoths but the shoggoths soon overtook them which would really be a good parallel. If Cain’s cast in the role of the master training his minor demons then it might also be possible that he’d want them to be dissimilar because what one can’t accomplish the other will simply due to a different way of thinking and acting. What Dietrich can’t get done though brute force and intimidation, Isaak is likely to manage though seduction and trickery. Which would be quite the contrast to their physical appearances or at least the associated yaoi stereotypes anyway. Dietrich crushes people entirely while Isaak causes them to betray themselves. I rather like that image really.
Radu met Cain? As in actually spoke to him or just saw him from a distance? Because I find it very odd that he’d think Cain would be… oh, if he’s met Cain and Cain pulled the sort of tricks on him that he did with Isaak, just in a lower key fashion then it’s possible but it might be in the more abstract sense. In which case Radu thinks that Cain is a god and that’s all well and good but he’s not quite going to convert right now this minute and head off on a crusade. I wonder if the von Neumanns are in fact actively avoiding Cain and want to follow Helga because if she becomes the new Isaak she’ll happily take over dealing with their deranged god directly so that they don’t have to. That might actually be the best option for anyone since Cain is bonkers, any sane member of the Orden would want a buffer between them and him. That doesn’t really mean that people like the von Neumanns are sane by a conventional definition though just that their insanity isn’t quite as Cain-centric as Helga or Isaak’s. Coming back to the point though, I suppose Radu could have had a future with the Orden if he’d absolutely rejecting his live outside it and had taken steps to separate himself from the people who’d try to pull him back, either by obviously, publicly being a criminal or something along those lines but in the end he doesn’t. He ends up being a bit like those people who want to topple the people in power just to take their places and change nothing, which is actually what he seems to be about. Helga is too but since that’s within the Orden itself it’s not as if she pretends that she wants to change anything other than be the one to… do whatever it is that she thinks Isaak does for Cain in private and I expect that she wouldn’t be very happy if that was along the lines of giving Cain sponge-baths.

[herit.livejournal.com]

You need to show me how to waltz one day. I'm terribly good at forgetting things like that. As for the tent scene, that was honestly what I've been thinking of, too. And offering it all to curious guests while being quite unimpressed by it himself would just be like him.
William as Edith's secret back-up character in the game? Definitely. So Isaak is basically hunted by karma and after losing William, is given a new little cynical mindfucker to look down on his poetic nature and fulfil his emotional masochism? And that sounds just like what Radu's want now. William is Edith's original character then, messes Apollo's Isaak up and turns him into one of hers, so that he can bring up little Dietrich whom she gave powers and destructive potential, but not yet a real access to power and circumstances to build up his usefulness for her; meaning, he was meant to be an NPC first, but gladly, with her army of recruiting priests, her new puppet Isaak picks this NPC up and makes him the real ace in Eris' sleeve, so that he can walk around and mess up all those cute little characters Prometheus created (Esther, Radu). That's beautiful. Dietrich and Radu are a new-generation William and Isaak - even the hair-colours match (with some tolerance and timeline defying). And I should get a coffee now, really.

[herit.livejournal.com]

I suppose Isaak could well have been the innately smartest of them, really. At least smart in an abstract, school-centred sense. Or at least I could well picture Garibaldi as analytic and obsessively studious, William as highly ambitious and curious, and Lange (who's into designing after all) as artistically curious and perceptive. Which is about the main types of genius you have, I suppose. Having never had to study at all, of course it's quite a shock for Isaak to realise that now he has to compete with people who have been studying in some way or the other for all their lives. If we put it down to basic qualities and forms of intelligence, I suppose we'd have curious/experimental (William, Lange), ambitious/perfectionist (Garibaldi, William), analytical/logical (Isaak, Garibaldi), and naturally understanding/instinctive (Lange, Isaak). There's probably better terms for the groups, but with those basic feats, I can best sum it up. For example, Lange and William as technical and experimental geniuses were both mechanics specialised on rather big vehicles (airships, in William's case robots). Isaak and Lange were both artistically talented (music, design), which suggests they have a sort of instinctive, natural "feeling" for proportions and contexts in every sense of the words - I suppose they would be the two who could actually enjoy poetry, too, unlike William or Garibaldi. Now William seems rather unscrupulous with his experiments and is also politically and juristically active, while Garibaldi was working for the same political power (the Vatican), driving on it, and throwing ethics over board for his work (unlike Isaak, who did so out of rivalry), which makes them both fit into the "ambitious", maybe even obsessive scientist category, no matter if they are obsessively after power, prestige, or knowledge alone. The last point with the analytical/logical feats is sort of hardest to grasp and explain for me, but I suppose you could say that's the "chemist" instead of the "mechanic" here; they both work on the manipulation of human bodies, Isaak with Cain's regeneration and his creations (Kohoruto), Garibaldi on the creation of the HC series, which gives them the typical "there are so many possibilities" attitude Herbert West embodies. So, in a nutshell, I'd assume we can separate them into mechanic/machine-centred vs. chemist/organism-centred, and observing/instinctive/emotive vs. dissecting/analysing/logical: William as the dissecting mechanic, Isaak as the observing chemist, Lange as the observing mechanic, and Garibaldi as the dissecting chemist. In this sense, William's and Garibaldi's abilities would demand far more studying in order to explain things logically, while Isaak and Lange could just have a natural understanding - far less detailed and not likely to be easily explained to others, of course. And this may or may not be a reason why Garibaldi and William both had their work and studies financed by the Vatican, while Lange only became famous for one exceptional creation she somehow managed to have funded (or maybe she just won some contest with her design) and Isaak, who fails at gaining this kind of appreciation, wanders off and searches it elsewhere, among people or with somebody who can see his potential. But I've derailed entirely now. Right. I wanted coffee.

[herit.livejournal.com]

Back to the topic, though, as I've said before derailing, I could imagine Isaak to be the honestly innately most intelligent of the four, but unable to present himself right, and far too focused on exactly that - proving his own genius, which he (thinks) he can clearly see. He may have been right even, but who cares if he cannot present himself right. Maybe that's why he became such a master of propaganda in the end? It may have been exactly what he lacked at university. And good point about the multitude of pursuits and his lack of concentration. That sounds very much like I could imagine university-Isaak. He's intelligent, he's a genius, he's in love with a damn bastard but he cannot really put himself into the image he needs, or decide just what exactly he wants to do; become a musician, a natural scientist, a CompSci, or maybe take a look at mechanics. Having multiple talents can also mean that you have only so much potential in each, but I think you've said that. As a matter of fact, now you've said everything else I wanted to say, and as pathetic as it may sound, I can only shut up and agree and be amazed how fucked up and - how eerily realistic this is. We aren't overestimating Yoshida again, are we? Pseudo-Canon: Because it's better this way. And post that, please.
And honestly, I'm generally more inclined to see William as the quite bad-ass lower-class genius, maybe even from a working class family (early fascination for machines?), who thanks to his wittiness - and unscrupulousness - may have had a firm grip on his old school, and was rather used to defending his position by studying and using his intelligence. That's a lesson Isaak would never have learnt, and even though he may have been far more intelligent by nature, William was just used to having to be really clever to get ahead/not be bullied/help his family out/get away from his family/create an own life for himself. I suppose we can't help that fangirls will always squeal over facts they don't even understand fully. We see it in the forum all the time. It's pure ego-masturbation on the part of some people, who disagree just for the sake of disagreeing and so on. That all would really give some explanations as of why Isaak had to trick William, wouldn't it? While William was certainly intelligent and assertive, Isaak had quite some innate skills, after all, and once he may have decided that he could use his inability to present himself in a good light, that would have been a quite fatal result - as we saw.

I'm honestly unfamiliar with the Lovers card, but you've gotten me into it now. I'll check it again. So far, I really can't comment yet, so give me time till the next comment (yes, I'm eager to send this quickly, because I'm way behind in commenting). But I like the idea for that image really a lot (and the linked one is gorgeous, I could see that with the RCO instead, too). Before I go and get my coffee already, let me just throw in some suggestions for other cards, because I had nothing better to do last weekend at my dad's flat:
The Fool: Ion (formerly Abel).
The Hierophant: Caterina (formerly Antonio, wtf)
The Highpriestess: Seth, as Augusta (formerly Caterina)
The Chariot: Esther (formerly Tres)
And, because summing up the Arcana Minora into just four cards is sacrilege, Paula as the Princess of Swords. Crowley-interpretation now, of course.

[herit.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be too surprised if baby!Dietrich actually tried to do that, really. But he's socialised after all. But those Shoggoths now remind me an awful lot of the nanomachines, really. Yoshida must have been a burning Lovecraft fan. And agreed on that image, I love that, too. So seen, the RCO master/apprentice relationships are really rather perfect matches. We have Cain and Isaak, in which Cain is the guideline for life Isaak desperately needs, all the inspiration and permission for weirdness he craves, while Isaak is a human he can access, a human who understands as much as a human possibly could, and is willing to give it all up for him. Then, there's Isaak and Dietrich, with Isaak as the teacher and emotional punching bag (who just absorbs all the boy's spitefulness and cynicism without reacting badly or caring much), while Dietrich is the promising, mad genius, and the rest you have described anyway. Then we have Dietrich and Radu, wherein Dietrich is the instructor and the one pushing Radu to his limits just enough to make Radu really go berserk, and Radu who lets Dietrich trigger him perfectly and consequently directs all this destructive force he has at the planned target. The same could be said - if we knew more - about Helga and Balthasar, who is next in rank to her, no matter if she's closer to Melchior (maybe that was their downfall, too?). Helga the unscrupulous, ambitious scientist and Balthasar, the collected, mild artist - if they had better communications and actually used their differences to balance their position like all the other master/apprentice pairs do, they may not have gone down.

Oh, he didn't meet him, or at least not that I know of. I just meant, if he had met him, I'd really find that odd. It's rather Dietrich who pulls all the tricks on him that Cain pulled on Isaak, and though Radu's far more reluctant, it seems to work somehow. Maybe Dietrich was just a bit too much inspired by Cain in this, and that's where all his daring last-minute rescues come from now. Only that he can't admit he's trying to be daddy, and is rather displeased with Radu not being quite as easily impressed as mummy, which is why, oh well, he needs to beat him up. Granted, Radu's easy enough to sincerely trust Dietrich, or at least trust that the RCO will really, really be a good idea and help him. So maybe he's getting inspired by his big brother Isaak in the end. Too bad he dies, and especially for Dietrich; daddy didn't let mummy die, after all, so he needs to stitch him back together and pretend he's still fine and alive. After all, mummy is stitching daddy back together, too, and daddy made sure mummy will always have new arms when the old ones are cut off. And that would be enough of the RCO family, I suppose, before somebody shoots me. Coffee. Doesn't help.
On a tangent, as you mention the von Neumanns, I actually wonder how many of the members really know about Cain. It's possible that the lower ranks just don't even know of his existence, or if they do, only have this name - Contra Mundi, or mein Herr.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I may have to come back and read your breakdown of the four again in a little while though I have been coming back to it on and off which is, at least in part the reason why it’s taken me so long to reply here. I do see what you’re saying but right now it’s just not ‘clicked’ in my head so to speak. That William and Garibaldi have had to justify their experiments/creation or rather that they’ve succeeded in it would really be assisted by the fact that theirs is a potentially slower logically progressive understanding. They’ve thought the ideas to pieces and been justifying said ideas to themselves the whole way along so it’s not all that much harder for them to then use those justifications before a Vatican funding council. They’d be the ones who might be slower at reaching the answer of “42” on an exam paper but have all the working out jotted down too in the process of getting there. Lange on the other hand might have a certain logic but also have gaps in her logic then, where she’d be following a detailed progression in her calculations but then suddenly makes a quantum leap of logic that isn’t explained and that nobody else really understands the reason for, though she too gets the right answer in the end. Which leaves Isaak who’d just write “42” down as his answer without any working out written down on the paper. And in that sort of case while he’d get full marks because his answer is right, if he gets it wrong then he gets nothing. If Lange does the same and one of her leaps of logic is incorrect so that she gets “39” as her answer instead she’s still likely to get marks for her calculations up until the point that she makes that incorrect leap. Garibaldi of course gets the answer right every time or if he doesn’t; actually proves that the exam question has been incorrectly worded and William gets it right too because he doesn’t take his risks in the exam itself but perhaps does so in arriving with just 2 minutes left before the start. In fact, using the exam scenario, it’s probably Garibaldi and Isaak who arrive really early, Lange who comes in with reasonable time and William who dashes in last. Garibaldi takes the exam in the same way that he conducts his pre-exam preparation, William takes the exam in a similar fashion, Lange makes some few leaps of logic which are genius but also highly risky, and Isaak takes risks the entire way through. And if that’s the case then it’s Isaak who’s overconfident about his results and who then ultimately doesn’t do quite as well as he expected to and he probably can’t even see what it is that he’s done wrong.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I’m not sure if I’d want to suggest he was the most intelligent now that I think about it but as you say, the most innately intelligent perhaps may have been the case. As a scientist though you’d expect him to have at least placed some emphasis on methodology because it’s your method that justifies your result. It doesn’t matter if you get textbook results for an experiment if you can’t prove that you didn’t just pull those results directly from the book. If that’s what he’s been lacking though it would make perfect sense, with a touch of deliberately being contrary in there too, for him to drop his actual scientific skills entirely or at least not bother trying to extend them further and instead focus entirely on the presentation aspect of it all. Which would still mean that as a scientist he was evidently skilled if he can mange what he does without bothering to learn more and in fact actively neglecting his scientific abilities but having become overtly bitter over the matter it would be a sticking point that he probably wouldn’t even want to be praised for that because he’d see it as worthless. Because it must be worthless if nobody recognised it before. I could even see him reacting quite badly to any possible compliment directed at his scientific ability. All William would need to do would be to ask Isaak why he’d done what he did because really, he was actually quite a good scientist and Isaak would probably misinterpret it as an insult and try to blow William up again. At a slight tangent, I actually couldn’t quite imagine university era Isaak being quite arrogant enough to fit in with the musicians. Which reminds me that I really need to take apart another half-written fic and just expand the Isaak & Balthazar part. While I could imagine him being aware of his abilities, I don’t think there would have been the necessary overt arrogance there or rather I could imagine it but I quite prefer the idea that he might not have been horribly arrogant and actually reasonably modest to a fair degree which would probably lead to people like William taking over him. Of course William wouldn’t necessarily mean to but because he’s used to having to defend his ideas he’d do it naturally, while Isaak would be just self-assured but never having had to justify that, just wouldn’t bother talking it out which comes back to that chain of logic point again. Because that would be the worst thing for Isaak to be really because his passivity and quiet self-assurance would most likely lead to his seething privately over the fact that nobody was recognising his genius. If he’s used to keeping quiet about it and being relatively modest the real challenge might not be realising that he’d need to speak up but rather learning to do so. Then again perhaps it’s a bit of both, he might keep suspecting that he needs to speak up but never quite figure out how to and thus get even more frustrated because nobody was recognising him and he was unable to speak up. It’d be easy for him to get trapped in a very passive role if he were close to William too because he’d get used to letting William talk over him and William would get used to it too which would make it even harder to break out of that establish situation. All that said, I could be entirely wrong of course and we both know that I’m quite fond of the idea of Isaak having been flawed and then reacting at extremes to those flaws being exacerbated by circumstance rather than being some sort of Stu who went to university for the ‘lolz’ and so on.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

If William really were the lower class one he’d definitely have to fight for everything he’s got. He wouldn’t just be fighting to prove his point but also to be heard in the first place because in a competitive school system that’s what you do. He’d have to get himself heard, say what he wanted to say eloquently or he’d be shouted down and damn well make sure it was something sensible because otherwise there’d be a bunch of Isaak’s friends Rahs just waiting to cast aspersions on the standard of his education. As for the rest, you’ve already said what needs to be said. Am I forgetting to tell you when I’m agreeing with everything you say again?

I may just be reacting to the potential hopeful aspect of The Fool now but considering that it’s The Crocodile in the Ibis deck where there’s definite sense of the fool not knowing where he’s going, not knowing that he’s walking among ruins and a crocodile lies in wait while the Fool carries his past baggage with him; it definitely fits. I’m not quite sure about Cateina as the Hierophant yet but that might be because I’d almost be tempted to see her as The Hanged Man or Judgment. That’d be mostly referring to her having to wind up with her brother killed before she bought a clue and got over her hugely disabling flaw. As Judgement she’d fit for reaping what she had sewn as well as having been judged and in judging her own past actions too. I’m pondering Francesco for the Hierophant now but I’m not quite certain of it yet. I’m not sold on Seth as the High Priestess though, probably because at the moment I’d go with Süleyman for that one. That would tie in with the moon/visionary aspect and considerable wisdom with a touch of mystery about it Süleyman’s feminine wiles of course there. as well as the potential reversed meanings of which there’s a lovely list here (http://www.biddytarot.com/major/highpriestess.html) to save my copy-pasting the entire bit. I think Seth as Augusta is still too superficial to be the High Priestess, she might even be the Magician who might really be a goddess if you choose to believe it or a complete fraud with all the trappings. Esther though I definitely agree on. She’s got that forward momentum and again from the Ibis deck there’d also be the connotations of having found an internal balance and resolve to be that forward-moving figure which would be why she’s the Star of Hope; inspiring hope because she’s always moving forwards. And if Dietrich then becomes the Emperor, at least in outward appearances, I could picture the sort of image set up where he and Esther face the opposite directions respectively. I’m not quite settled on The Emperor for Dietrich though so don’t hold me to that. Though maybe Dietrich should be the Tower and Cain should be the Emperor. And having looked it up since I’m really unfamiliar with the Crowley interpretations, Paula really does seem a fitting Princess of Swords, though at a non-Crowley angle you’ve now also reminded me of the basic interpretation for the King of Swords which would fit Süleyman again which would make Radu the Page of Swords, though if Süleyman is the High Priestess too then Radu’s also the Moon as well. He just follows Süleyman around really and there’s another moon reference really with the orbiting a life-giving sun aspect. Though since it’s finally occurred to me to look up what ‘Süleyman’ actually means, that’s a pretty ironic name there considering what he’s about but then so is Radu’s too. And so is Ion’s… or perhaps if that divine mercy is being applied to him it might work. Then again it’s not really mercy but just keeping him from being killed so that he can suffer further. And if Mirka does mean tranquil then that’s literal enough.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I don’t really know what happened beyond the basics of Isaak tricking Helga into doing something involving Balthazar or did he use some sort of illusion to pretend to be Balthazar? I should go look that up really. But new theory! The reason Dietrich pushes Radu so very hard is because he’s aware that Radu’s just been making slow progress with Süleyman and Dietrich is, in his own little fucked up way, trying to prove to Radu that he’s the better choice and not that boring, old Süleyman who only gets things done really slowly. I don’t know who has it worse; Dietrich who keeps trying to win over girls who have other causes, men or both or Radu who attracts crazy men. All Radu’s boyfriends are crazy and all Dietrich’s girlfriends don’t actually want him once they get to know him a little better so there we have batshit theory: all Dietrich wants is to be loved for who he really is; an insane psychopath and all Radu wants is just for once, a little sanity. They’re completely unsuited for each other. Which probably means that the person Dietrich really needed was Süleyman who not only likes the crazies but is crazy himself too. Dietrich/Süleyman or Süleyman/Dietrich: rejecting your reality and substituting their own since 3042.

Dietrich’s somewhat mistimed his last-minute daring rescues too really because at least Cain tends to get to Isaak before Isaak’s in danger of actually dying from his injuries. That’s probably quite the disappointing relationship for Radu though; he had hopeless optimism, excessive violence and rejecting everything he’d ever known just like his older sister but somehow he got budget Prince Charming instead. After all, Dietrich’s got lost technology too but not like Cain and he can be cheerily creepy too but not like Cain and he was even born in Germanicus too. Poor Radu, he’s done the spells. [He’s] done them all and he did want to go on a dangerous spree but that just didn’t work out for him. But more seriously that does seem like it might fit. Dietrich trying to emulate Cain, at least subconsciously, that is; not Radu trying to summon things using the Necronomicon though that did work for Edith. There is a certain sense of Dietrich trying hard to overawe Radu at least which really can’t have been necessary, though whether that’s just because he needs to prove that he’s the boss of everything or because of subconsciously emulating Cain is debatable.
That’s true and it would certainly make the idea of ‘that person’ Contra Mundi far more terrifying if very few people really knew exactly who and what he was. It’d be a similar tactic to Seth’s really though she doesn’t quite manage it and perhaps even in a certain sense AX’s tactic of having this mysterious ‘monster’ in the shadows. Though anybody actually involved in high level Vatican affairs who knew Abel’s codename would know who he was. Then again he does what Cain does in a general sense and appears silly at least which then creates the added menace that the monster he becomes might truly be terrifying. And that would tie in with the point that the anime and the manga seem to not emphasise; that AX’s real purpose is seemingly propaganda.