abudabudoo

But on to the good part. Kaeya’s letters (beautiful handwriting lol)

Some timeline info - Diluc didn’t leave the city straight away after the fight and his resignation from the Knights. Varka, Jean and Kaeya started unraveling Eroch’s dealings very soon after Crepus’s death.  

Kaeya is so…………. Didn’t even wait for Diluc to leave to start writing to him with relevant news. This is getting sadder. 

I hope that everyone will check on the secret compartment since at least it confirms that Diluc did answer him on occasion. Plus it says something that he recently reread those letters and left them strewn across the room.

However it doesn’t seem like Diluc shared any info about his travels, and instead Kaeya sleuthed everything about him himself, like the information about the secret organization and that Diluc is the Darknight Hero.

Now more than ever I want to see more details of their fight, I kind of assumed that it wasn’t just Kaeya straightforwardly sharing his secrets and that instead he might have also said some meaner stuff about Diluc himself, but then again. According to this event, maybe not. Side-eying Diluc tbh, so far it doesn’t seem like whatever Kaeya told him was bad enough to warrant slashing at him with a claymore.

Oh yeah and we have confirmation that Diluc really went for it, enough to at least injure Kaeya. 

And it’s also still a bit unclear what was happening before the fight. Why didn’t Kaeya come along with Crepus and Diluc to the winery during Diluc’s 18th birthday, did he live and work separately back then too? That would explain at least why him staying in the winery is seen as a bit of an issue by the household.  

This bit… People seem to think that this means Kaeya and Diluc get along just fine and they’re simply too private for other people like Varka to notice. But idk. To me this reads like Kaeya quietly accepting that Diluc isn’t interested in any actual communication (after all, his answering letters are all brief, first one provoked by Kaeya’s ‘eye’ comments), and that he respects Diluc’s boundaries enough not to force the issue. 

Varka’s letter

So…. Varka really was away on an expedition during the incident of Crepus’s death? Since he says that Jean ‘wrote to him’ even though they would assumedly work in the same office. But in Kaeya’s second letter he writes that Varka ‘would have probably sat [Diluc] down for a talk’ if he learned of his plans to leave, so he was in the city after all? Unclear.

Interesting that Varka would go as far as to attribute Ursa’s death to Crepus, claiming that Eroch stole his credit, even though in the manhwa it was stated clearly that Dottore defeated the drake later, thus putting Mondstadt in the Fatui’s debt. 

So, apparently this is confirmation that Eroch was one of Dottore’s clones.

But like, this also means that Varka is a huge liar since he didn’t actually unveil the truth of the incident and Mond seemingly accepted the version of the story where Dottore saved the city lol.

In which case it’s also more understandable that Diluc still holds onto his grudge against the Knights. 

Also, Diluc’s answer… He’s a bit um. Obsequious? Daddy issues showing I guess. Wonder if he would slander Knights of Favonius as freely as he usually does to Varka’s face.

Alice’s letter

Small detail, but I find it funny how she mentions both Diluc’s ‘younger brother’ AND his friends, while Diluc himself only mentioned ‘friends’ in his Cat Tail’s message. What’s even going on inside his head. 

Letter from the Winery

Just overall weird implications that the Winery’s staff is aware of Diluc’s fight with Kaeya and that their disagreement was severe and loud enough to almost warrant refusing to host him when he visits, but not really. 

Since Kaeya still visits often  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Having such an ambiguous status is not particularly good for Kaeya’s character though. 

Jean’s letter

Nothing of note except that she mentions Abyss Order as a known entity. Chronologically that’s when Diluc had just returned to Mond, so the Abyss Order was already around before the events of the game, although unclear for how long. 

Secret Compartment

I LOVE THAT KAEYA ISN’T 100% ROYALTY AFTER ALL like wow im just so happy about this!! His family might have stepped up as ‘regents’ in the wake of the cataclysm (or earlier, but the cataclysm seems to be the implication) but that is far more noble than being monarchs who failed to save their people!

With that, all the royalty hints still kind of make sense, but relieve him of the responsibility and unsavory implications. I think it’s 100% the correct decision for the writers to make, they wouldn’t be able to properly condemn monarchy lol.

And the fact that his family line is compared to fire, it’s just so poetic. Especially if my theories about owl stuff will get confirmed later and then Ragnvindrs will also be connected to Khaenri’ah’s people in that way.

And Irmin? In real life Irmin or Jǫrmun is theorized to be one of Odin’s avatars or a proto-version of ‘the main god’ in Norse/Germanic mythology, and Irminsul (one of the holy trees) gets its name from him, too. I wonder if in Genshin this is the only one-eyed king or one from the line of many.

I suppose no time travel is involved after all and Alberichs simply survived throughout the last 500 years. And Kaeya never saw Khaenri’ah as it was before Celestia struck it down!

This has cool implications for his motivations, as someone who didn’t have to live through the trauma of genocide and war himself but still inherited the grievances of his ancestors.

It’s also even a closer parallel to immigrant narratives than I previously thought. I wonder if that also means that Kaeya has more living relatives around.

*bangs pots* alive mom from teyvat

By the way, checked the chinese version and he uses 义父 to refer to Crepus, still a rather literary title used for a father figure, not necessarily ‘adopted’. But eng translators have clearly decided to stick to adoption, whatever.

And ah… So his hidden eye has a scar over it after the fight, but it’s still in working condition? Unclear why he was hiding it and continues to do so, magical eye probably still a possibility.

Despite their polite tone, this exchange still reads as a bit petty. Diluc didn’t apologize still, so… Even if Kaeya doesn’t blame him for anything, it’s a bit strange for Diluc to be this alright with maiming his closest friend.

THAT SAID it’s cute that Diluc starts every time with ‘thanks for the letter’. And that he told Kaeya to take better care of himself. 

But still… Kaeya involves himself in all of Diluc’s affairs, he always talks about him, he regularly writes letters to him, he’s lonely and he spends way too much effort on trying to get closer to him again. All of their interactions (except for the first on-screen one) have been started and maintained by Kaeya. What does he get in return? Hmm.

Just give us something mihoyo… Anything. Diluc going out of his way to help Kaeya or at least a phrase from him implying that there’s a reason for his reticence? Some guilt or perhaps a misguided attempt to let Kaeya build another new life without him, I don’t even know.

Diluc y Kaeya