Just Another Mortal

From the start it’s interesting to note that we have no confirmation that Vergil and Dante even knew that they were half-demon when they were young. While VoV shows us Vergil at least had knowledge of demons as a child, actively shouting them out while he was under attack, this bit here makes clear they probably never knew who Sparda really was before that.

Does that also extend to them not having known of their dual heritage? It’s left vague.

The only thing we do know for sure is that Vergil in his childhood years holds no disdain or anything similar when it comes to humanity, since he seems like any normal boy… with just some extra special talents on top.

He’s visibly appreciative of books and poetry, and he even has a friendship with an older man who possesses a library from which he sometimes gets his reading material. He also loves his mother and does not seem to put himself apart from humans in any way, doesn't in any of the other materials we have on hand of that time make even a single distinction between them and him.

That changes with the attack and his subsequent awakening. During it he convinces himself that he can only rely on himself and that his own power is all there is to survival, since he himself had to claw himself out of the jaws of death with what he had at his disposal. He also becomes overly aware of the fragility of human life, since he sees his mother’s corpse during that already horrible night, stranding him alone and without protection or guidance (more detailed post on that here).

On his own he strikes out into the unknown, primed to take on whatever he has to for his continued future. Hunted for years to come by Mundus' forces.

And here’s probably the crux of the issue, or what I extrapolate from this point forward that causes him to become so cold in the face of people dying. We know how much damage Mundus’ hunters can cause. From dmc5 we know that 136 lives were lost in the night of the attack on the Sparda household and we’ve heard of the large death count Gilver causes in the dmc1 novel when he’s sent to hunt Dante down.

Vergil would probably have witnessed even more death in the years he was being hunted, in case that night alone maybe wasn’t enough to harden his heart against such suffering. The subsequent years of fleeing, fighting, seeing death all around him, deaths of humans caught in the crossfire of a thing they had nothing to do with… that would be enough to break any spirit. Except for when one guards their emotions against such suffering. Which is why I think that what Vergil possesses is most likely a learned apathy that functions as a defence mechanism, one he uses up until the end of VoV and maybe even a bit beyond that, since something like that is not easily shaken.

So going back to the point of the timeline of Vergil’s younger years, here’s where he first learned this apathetic stance when it comes to human life. He’s not angry or spiteful or anything, he just… doesn’t overall care about them, and he’s focused on what he wants to achieve and almost nothing more. If there's no cause, he won't harm humans, but he also won't actively go out of his way to protect them consciously. We see that in when he breaks into Sparda’s bedchambers in Fortuna in the dmc4 novel and almost gives Sanctus a heart attack, but also in when he raises the Temen-ni-gru and doesn’t really bat an eye at the consequences that might cause.

For Temen-ni-gru there could be an argument made that Vergil had weighed the lives lost in the long run of Mundus' hunters still going after him against the lives lost thanks to the tower and the demons from opening the portal to hell. Gaining power and getting his revenge on Mundus in such a calculation might even save more lives in the long run, since there would be no more hoards, no more incursions and Vergil would be even more powerful, and so even more effective when it came to protection… But that’s mostly a speculation on his mindset, not evidenced fact.

There were enough other reasons to motivate Vergil in breaking the seal to Temen-ni-gru, so he might have mostly dismissed any further reasoning for he saw that perfect clear line to his long-awaited end goal, and he could not let himself be distracted.

When we come to the internal stuff, at this point in time there’s no real divide yet between the human part of him and the demon. Vergil is himself and he holds a lot of respect for both his mother and father, as well as their legacy in him overall, which is quite evident in the way he talks or handles things pertaining to them. I mean, just look what he does when he first attains Dante's amulet.

This seems like him paying respect to his mother to me.

So while Dante has a lot of disdain for his demonic side, Vergil does not seem to yet see a divide between their mixed heritage.

But then Arkham says this:

He accuses Vergil of being an incomplete being, of his demon and human blood making him something lesser, something only half right. Not that Vergil too openly let’s himself be phased by that in the cutscene itself (though he does put an end to the exchange quickly after that), but this sentiment might have niggled in the background during the course of the game from then on. It might have planted the seeds of doubt which we see come to fruition way further down the timeline.

But to briefly summarize at this point, his actions in dmc3 are mostly a struggle for more power for him, not an active malicious attack on humanity, even though people certainly die because of it. Vergil himself in this instance still harbours no animosity against humanity, his own and those outside of him.

Sadly, he then encounters someone who absolutely does.

Mundus makes no effort to conceal his disdain for humanity and he even actively pursues purging Vergil of it. And though Vergil overall is quite resistant, he has no choice but to endure Mundus’ opinions in a way that inadvertently makes him slowly take on these teachings as well. After all, Vergil lost to his brother and to Mundus, and is continuously being tortured, and he needs a reason to explain this. Something that he could direct a lot of this hate for his continued weakness at, that could be the reason, the problem that he can get rid of to absolve himself of all this pain and suffering, so that he may never experience it again…

His human side is mentioned only all too readily in the company he is being held.

Here’s where Vergil’s hate actually starts, poisoning his once quite healthy opinion of himself and we see its effects later on all throughout dmc5. Since there he not only has adopted the view that his human blood is the cause of so much of his loss, Urizen himself also follows in Mundus’ footsteps to gain power and safety after all his misery.

A sad repetition of the abused becoming like the abuser.

But while Urizen openly shows disdain for humanity and their apparent weakness, killing them in the hundreds and thousands to fuel his scheme for power, V’s struggles with humanity are mostly internal. Towards humanity as a whole he continues to carry the apathetic stance Vergil has had for most of his life. Hell, he doesn’t kill a single human being with his own hands even while they threatened to rob and murder him, since at most he severely incapacitates them with his familiars, never going for the final blow.

Later on he then goes on to save humans, but not out of the goodness of his heart, but rather to better understand what makes him so different from Dante. Not the purest of moral intentions, but it should be noted that V goes above and beyond in that quest once he starts it. And while that could be attributed to Vergil’s usual all or nothing approach, it might also be a lingering wish of his to actually help, to actually save these people. Especially once he starts to see himself in them.

I mean he nukes an entire store just to save a boy and his mom, after he’s berated him and projected his own issues onto him.

V’s entire story is mostly about him accepting himself, his own weakness, and with it Vergil’s humanity as a whole. It’s about unshackling himself from all that Mundus did to him, about learning that it’s important to have a heart, to have hope, to allow himself to love himself and those that are close to him personally again.

And we see how that works out in the end.

After his rebirth Vergil starts questioning his entire road up till then, what all happened to bring him where he is, instead of just blaming a part of himself. He also only all too readily agrees to cut the Qliphoth roots once he’s gotten that long-wanted fight with Dante and has gotten to know he has a son and legacy.

So yeah, in conclusion, Vergil does not hate humans. He hated his own human side for a while, but he managed to overcome that learned hatred thankfully. There’s no inherent maliciousness of what Vergil does against humanity, and we even have this bit of Trinity of Fates to confirm that.

And who knows, maybe in the future Vergil will finally be more comfortable falling into the role of protector like his brother. The end of dmc5 certainly gives hope in that direction.

The only real outlier for this entire analysis I could find is the scene where Vergil kills a group of humans harassing him in the dmc3 manga, but I take that with a grain of salt since that manga also has some other questionable moments in its story. Maybe they were demons like Arkham’s secretary who appears in that same manga and was also promptly killed? I mean, he doesn’t even hurt a drunk Enzo just after he already dispatched all those other humans.

It's weird.

But in the end, it’s y’alls choice how you choose to interpret this, I just wanted to highlight what I've pieced together for myself. If you want, you can let me know your thoughts on this subject in the comments or reblogs, I'm honestly quite curious.

These shifting feelings and motivations are to me very interesting, since they give Vergil as a character a lot of depth that also feels realistic. We all change and grow over time, and sometimes that also involves learning and then unlearning certain harmful thoughts and patterns.

The biggest factor being that one has the will and chance to try...