The Witch of hopelessness

spoon: fuck I need to draw a romantic scene between Talia and Varkas

If obtaining jewel eyes is so easy, as easy as just having a bit of imperial mana, how many people could easily pretend to be royal bastards I wonder? Magic spells and equipment that change physical features, especially eyes, already exist. What’s stopping someone from changing their eye color permanently to at least closely resemble jewel eyes? How many in the imperial bloodline were actual royals, vs people who figured out the key to having jewel eyes without imperial dna? Maybe that’s why the Aeternitas issue was so sensitive, because at the time frauds pretending to have imperial mana and jeweled eyes stepped forward, so Lucas’ irritated whim of rejecting the heir based on his jeweled eyes actually had weight and possible reason.

What if, for all we know, the true key to the royal bloodline since Aeternitas’ reign was to clone yourself/‘create’ an Obelian offspring that can contain imperial mana? I mentioned before separately that Imperial mana is similar to black mana where “if it can be removed/sealed, it in theory can also be learned, meaning it is not actually natural”. WMMAP is a very biased narrative after all. What if the “artificial” way that Jen was made was actually the real way, passed down to Anastasius by his father, and before that their grandfather, and so on? The truth of the Obelian bloodline passed down only to heirs. It wouldn’t be the first imperial secret. Mana beasts are already one. I find it odd that “creating” a child who can surpass Claude was Anastasius’ first thought. Why not use black magic to actually weaken or kill Claude himself? He and/or their father were already known as tyrants by the people, it wouldn’t be hard nor be that protested to get rid of your only rival for the throne. Why go through the effort to create a bastard, fully knowing you’re ascending the throne anyway?

Unless creating an artificial clone is how you’re supposed to make an heir.

If you think about the novel, it’s oddly similar to the world building in PH too with the Wise Women/Juries—that there are many “stories” (worlds) similar to the main one whom they canonically are supposed to watch over (canon AU’s, or if taken literally, Lee Jihye literally went into the “story” of LP) and they abandon ship once unplanned beings (Children of Misfortune—or in this case, reincarnators like Athy) start meddling. The details of Aeternitas retaining his consciousness despite reincarnating over and over/being reborn/possessing his descendants and other wizards still hasn’t been explained, so the Glen-like process is very interesting—where the next “Glen” vessel is born and it takes time and grooming paired with a physical bond (ie, how the next Glen is marked with a bond so they will always be loyal to the previous Glen until the transfer) to transfer the previous Glen’s consciousness into the next one, kinda like how it took so many years for Aeternitas to break Ana and possess him/live as a parasite inside him, and then making plans to transfer his consciousness into Jen.

Alternatively, what happened to Jack could also be so amusing in wmmap, a soul/spirit so warped that literal hell rejected him, so he had no choice but to keep aging and de-aging/possessing younger and younger bodies (which I believe Lucas actually mentions? That normally spirits automatically are pulled into the cycle of reincarnation yet Aeternitas was a lost cause if he hadn’t joined it by now).

With the initial Glen-style exploration in the first paragraph though paired with cloning, it would make sense why Aeternitas in the manhwa specifically targets his “descendants”, as they’re clones made specifically to be vessels. He shows he can possess and influence normal/non-Obelians, yet for permanent life-long residence he chooses Obelians specifically. It could be because he’s the one who set up the system that started it, or even reset the cycle when he took the throne and overhauled everything in Obelia so he became the main mind in charge, and why Claude was not ever considered an option to possess to him—Ana was already a clone/vessel made by the previous emperor, which he then led Ana to then make another clone/vessel for him possess. With how little we know about Claude and Ana’s dad, Aeternitas could’ve possessed him for a time—passing his knowledge into his son who he believed he would possess once Ana took over the throne. For the one who started the familial drama due to having a bastard and an heir who supposedly contributed and/or turned a blind eye to Claude’s hardened childhood, details of his death are strangely unknown. What if he passed sometime during Ana and Claude’s teenage years, and that’s when Aeternitas decided to posses Ana fully now that his previous parasitic clone had perished?