For many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.

Alright, so in Chapter 227 we got a few panels of Undertaker, pookie is finally home from war, or was it beating up management at HQ? Who's to say. But we do see that he's decked out in his reaper fit, his left eye bandaged in a mirror of Ciel's, and those scars of his, however he got them, are looking mighty fresh. And why is he here? To pick up his doordash order of one decomposed demon-hunter, hell yeah.

Cut to some unspecified length of time later (???), and Modri is waking up looking fresh as a daisy (well, kinda) in UT's tub, and hey, he's even grown out his hair! UT is rocking a cunty ponytail, hallelujah! What the fuck is going on!? When the fuck is going on?!?

Modri's flashback appears to take place in the 18th century, and here he is turning up in December 1889 as a bizarre doll? I have so many questions about the authenticity of Modri's memories, the relationship between cinematic records and the body, and of course, when and why Undertaker started the bizarre doll experiments in the first place.

First of all, there was much kerfuffle about what this meant in relation to Chapter 141, where the English translation implies that the reason Undertaker started experimenting with resurrection was to bring r!Ciel back to life. But even the English translation is self-contradictory, and @/madamemaddy gave a translation of the Japanese text that makes more sense in light of what UT had just said prior: instead of 'it all started', the text might be better read as 'from the night I took the young Earl home'

So, no. Even if we can't take Modri's memory at face value, it seems that originally, Undertaker's experiments on the dead were not for the express purpose of resurrecting r!Ciel Phantomhive.

But let me stick a pin in Modri for a moment, and discuss instead a question I've been pondering for a while about my favourite lady haunting the narrative:

If it's true that Undertaker loved Claudia, why didn't he try to resurrect her?

One of things that has always given me pause in the idea that the reason the Undertaker is obsessed with the Phantomhives is because he was so in love with Claudia and destroyed by her death, was the fact that he apparently wasn't pushed to attempting the resurrection of a Phantomhive until the death of her grandchildren (well, one death, one pending suicide-by-demon).

Now, this could be just him becoming progressively more insane over the years, or from the family deaths piling up - Vincent's death certainly had an impact on him, and this panel suggests that if there had been a body to resurrect, he would have done it.

But if he really loved Claudia, why wouldn't he try something similar with her? I mean, he's absolutely unhinged, so why not steal her corpse and attempt to preserve her body? Chapter 227 seems to suggest that such a feat would be possible, so why not continue his bizarre doll experiments on her, or wait for the technology to reach a point where he could bring her back?

I suppose it is possible that he has her in cold storage somewhere, but I think it's more likely he's carting around her skull, as has been suggested before. So... Why not preserve her body?

There's a lot of speculation at to what Undertaker's plan is regarding o!Ciel and r!Ciel, and one popular theory is that he might try to put o!Ciel's soul into r!Ciel's body*. He (rather mournfully) mentions its impossibility back in the Campania Arc, but he continues experimenting and his bizarre dolls have obviously improved since then. It makes sense that this soul transplant could be the ultimate goal he's working towards, 'freeing' o!Ciel of the body that bears his contract seal with Sebastian, and presumably granting him a form of immortality. This, for the record, I think would be o!Ciel's version of Hell, so. Good going, gramps.

*It's also similar to what happened with Ciel and Alois Trancy in season 2 of the anime, for those who subscribe to the parallel theory (I am side eyeing Hannah Annafellows HARD if this is indeed the case. Girl who the fuck are you meant to be!!!??? My head hurts, and I hate everything about what I am typing and thinking lmao)

So, yes, Undertaker might be working on trying to transplant souls... But what about transplanting records? Given his success so far with manipulating records, that seems like a logical next step to take in the interim... For a mad scientist, that is.

Simply One Hell of a Roast

It's interesting that Undertaker is so upset that Vincent's 'body' was destroyed in the fire, that he 'burned down to the marrow of his bones', but not that r!Ciel's literal soul was eaten. He saved his body from the fire, and with it the cinematic record - I guess it's all hunky-dory?

So what's the deal - does a cinematic record's integrity degrade along with the physical form of the person to whom it belonged?

Well, if we take what we see in Chapter 227 at face value, it would appear not. Modri's body is in a fairly advanced state of decay by the time UT comes along, but apparently his cinematic record was intact enough to get him going again.

Cremation is specifically mentioned in Chapter 227 as something 'cruel', because it was viewed as sacrilegious in the Christian religion, a declaration of the disbelief in the resurrection of the body on Judgement Day. So, with Christianity having been brought into it in canon, is it possible that part of the reason this cremation is considered such an awful act in the world of Black Butler is because fire also ultimately ends up destroying the cinematic record?

I wouldn't have thought so, because we have seen PLENTY of people cooked by Sebastian on Ciel's orders, and we have seen the collection of the records of people whose bodies are on fire... I guess the question is if these collections need to be made immediately post death, to prevent the destruction of the record, or are records as impervious to fire as they seem to be to decay?

The relationship between the body and the cinematic record is a big old question mark still, I think. I'm very interested to see what more information we will get about it.

If it's true that the record can be removed and stored and put into a new body, I could see Undertaker putting in effort to maintaining r!Ciel's body for various reasons. These range from simple love to his dastardly designs to overthrow his grandson as Lord Phantomhive with his other, undead grandson. He contains multitudes?

On the other hand it makes much less sense to put such effort into restoring Modri's body from it's very advanced state of decay (if such a thing is even feasible - but then again, Yana made a point to draw the tattoo traces?). If it was possible to just yeet his record into a fresh cadaver and call it a day, why not just do that? Why does it matter that Modri looks like Modri?

This, however, is assuming that Undertaker's ability to edit the records hasn't improved exponentially over the last few months. Maybe he busted out ye olde photoshop and modified Modri's memories significantly. Sebastian, after all, didn't recognize him... Could it be Modri's perception of himself that was altered, the demon in the memory, or perhaps both?

I'm not sure what this means from a writing/theorizing standpoint - 'the entire record was actually Undertaker's fanfic' rug-pull seems a bit lazy and I think it would be difficult for Yana to pull that off in a way that feels satisfying after how much time we spent in that flashback. However we know for a fact that Undertaker has put his hands on Modri's record in order to 'resurrect' him - I do think it's very possible that in he's messed with his memories in some way beyond whatever was strictly required to get him walking and talking and ya know, not eating people.

If a record cannot exist independent of the body that created it, then it makes more sense as to why UT had to restore Modri's body - though the record might still be altered to make Modri believe Sebastian is the demon on which he wants revenge. It also brings into question how records exist in relation to the state of the body - if there was no body for Undertaker to rescue when it came to Vincent's death, how could there be a record?

Is it just the loss of Vincent's bones Undertaker is mourning in this panel, or is it his record, the memories who made him who he was? Or is it his soul, which would be beyond UT's grasp no matter what after his murder? Does it make a difference to him if the soul is collected, or if it is destroyed? This is the part of o!Ciel that hangs in the balance with Sebastian, after all, his soul. If UT actually didn't care about the soul, he could just make another bizarre doll of o!Ciel upon the completion of their contract - but I think it's obvious he doesn't want that to happen.

So what is it that ultimately makes a person a person, in the Undertaker's eyes? A body, memories - or is it a soul?

For never was there a story of more woe than Claudiataker

Alright, and now we finally get to the reason why I started writing this post in the first place, the question that's eating away at my brain matter, my least favourite crack theory that I can't quite shake:

What if Claudia killed herself?

This question came as an answer when trying to reconcile those two unconfirmed and conflicting ideas that I previously mentioned: that Undertaker loved Claudia dearly, and that he didn't try to ressurect her. Why?

Maybe it's because, as with Vincent, he couldn't.

And sure, it's possible that also like Vincent, her body (and her record?) could have been destroyed in a fire - but I don't think so. Again, he's always lugging around that damn skull, and he's not bursting into tears at the sight of it like he did with Vincent's picture.

And so, we come to another area of which we know very little: the logistics of how exactly a human is brought into their next life as a reaper upon committing suicide. I can only speculate, the following is all conjecture:

There is a body left behind when they die; there has to be. People who commit suicide don't simply just disappear, and I don't see why they would be written in any other way in Kuroshitsuji. So there is a body that is left behind, and then there is a body they inhabit as a reaper. They carry their soul in the body they inhabit as a reaper; that is clear from the way the bizarre dolls attack them on board the Campania (though, Sebastian might have a soul as well, in that case?)

But what happens to their cinematic record?

It could be that the cinematic records are brought along with their souls, into the next life, in contrast to what usually happens when a human dies. The idea that the reapers might have their memories erased or altered by the higher-ups has been discussed before, and this could be part of what gave Undertaker the idea to start altering cinematic records in the first place.

So maybe when someone commits suicide in Kuroshitsuji, the only thing that's left behind is a duplicate body, the part we humans can see and can mourn of a loved one, the part that we lay to rest. Why duplicate a cinematic record after all? Humans cannot see them, we have no use for them after the person who made those memories is dead - records are meant only for the eyes of reapers.

Of course, for Undertaker, Claudia's cinematic record might have been the last ray of hope for him in her untimely death.

But why would Claudia commit suicide?

I don't think Claudia would have committed suicide because she was depressed; I think it makes more sense that she, when backed into a corner, made a last-ditch effort at eternal life, without completely understanding what she was getting herself into.

You can't kill me if I kill me first. Well-done my lady.

I can see this happening because while I do think Claudia knew that Undertaker was a reaper and how people become reapers, I don't know if Undertaker would have been very forthcoming with the details of what being a reaper was like, what it entailed. Even if what Undertaker did say was discouraging, I can see her taking the approach of "well, it's gotta be better than straight-up dying", and I don't think you can really fault her for that.

Soo.... You think Claudia's a Reaper? Good God, I hate it here (Black Butler fandom).

This is why I hate this theory too! You can't hate my theories if I hate them first, HA!!!

I'm not super keen on the idea of Claudia making an appearance in the story in anything but a flashback. It feels shark-jumpy. But like I said, I can't stop thinking about it. For one thing, the star-crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet comparisons are just too much for my Rossignol-loving, Shakespeare-hating heart to take.

If it's the case that the reapers memories of their human life are obfuscated by the higher-ups upon their entrance into reaper society, it's possible Claudia has few to zero memories of Undertaker or her human life. This is a tragedy unto itself, and brings back into question what it is that Undertaker mourns the loss of. What is the ultimate fate of a reaper's soul - was her soul doomed when she committed that 'sin', just as his was? Without her memories, is she the same person he loved? Her body was left behind, but what is that to him without all the rest?

Was it even really 'her' body? Maybe that's why he didn't feel the need to preserve it?

If Claudia is a reaper, it's also very likely that she's stuck at HQ where Undertaker cannot access her without waging a literal war, and that doesn't seem to have gone so well for him in the past. We don't seem to see very many female reapers, especially when you consider that so many of Grelle's colleagues refer to her with male pronouns. And let's not forget that Othello did think that Ciel looked oddly familar to him... Could that be because he's seen Claudia around the office, and there's a family resemblance?

What does this mean for the other lockets?

Not much has been revealed about Claudia's death in the manga. We know the date, July 13th 1866, and that's... Pretty much it. The only other clue we've been given is that in looking up the death certificates of the seven mourning lockets, Sebastian 'didn't uncover any commonalities'. So at least, of the information listed on the certificates, it seems there isn't a single trait that might link them, such as how old they where when they died, where they died, or their cause of death.

Fun fact, 1837 is the year when civil registration of death certificates began in England as opposed to record-keeping by local churches, so Ms. Molly G. just made the cutoff.

So if Claudia committed suicide, it's unlikely that the six other people of the locket chain did the same. Or, at least, it's unlikely that it was recorded as such.

Suicide still caries a lot of stigma today, let alone in the early 1800s. The attitude towards suicide did become less punitive over the course of the 19th century, but it wasn't until 1961 that suicide was decriminalized in England. The work around was often for the cause of death to be recorded as something other than felo de se, to spare the family the material loss (forfeiture of estate was law until 1871) and public shame that accompanied the suicide.

The only recognised defence against ‘felo de se’ was acceptable proof of insanity, a state of mind that was difficult to establish. This was not an attractive prospect for a respectable family unwilling to accept the taint of mental illness, a poorly-understood affliction that would damage the marriage prospects of generations to come. As censorious court officials took no account of the anguish that must have hijacked the thoughts of those driven to end their lives, a family’s best hope was to conceal the details of their loved one’s death; a sympathetic coroner might be prevailed upon to suppress evidence of suicide and opt for misadventure instead.

That being said there were no commonalities, so it cannot be that all those deaths were recorded as non compos mentis, either. I guess it's plausible that these deaths could all be recorded differently, even though it seems unlikely. And if any one of them were recorded as felo de se, or non compos mentis, you would think that would raise Sebastian's eyebrows, no? Even though I think Ciel is still be in the dark, Sebastian must know how a grim reaper comes to be... Right? Right? 🤔🤨

It's also convenient that of the seven lockets, only two (Molly & Claudia) are women - reflecting the higher male suicide rate.

Let's say that the plausible proves true - why would Undertaker be keeping a string of lockets of people who've killed themselves since he became a deserter?

Well... What if the cinematic records are left behind when someone commits suicide? Maybe that's part of the memory alteration - maybe only certain parts are taken?

If that's the case, and if Undertaker is able to store the cinematic records independent of their bodies, it could be that the lockets do hold their records... Which means he might be hoping to reunite those records with the reapers to which they originally belonged.

For Claudia, I think the reasoning behind him wanting to do this makes sense, if they were in love. Giving her record back to her would make her 'whole' again, she would have a soul and a record and a body. For the other six lockets, maybe Undertaker hopes that by giving them back their memories, he can win them over to his 'side', as it were? Have a few internal agents? Maybe he originally started making the bizarre dolls for an army and these reapers are meant to be his generals? Idfk man 😭

Alright that's all she wrote. I hate everything about it!!! But here I am sharing it regardless, curious to see if anyone has anything to add, maybe writing it down will get it out of my brain. We can only hope 🙏 Here's to us getting more answers in a few days with the release of chapter 228, pretty please Yana (it's never going to happen).