#7ds analysis

Harlequin got the twinge in his back to signal his wings would sprout soon, after Meliodas reflected "Status Promotion" back at him!

And right after doing that is also when Meliodas asks Harlequin about his wings!

Did that have an effect? Did Mel know what would happen?

Does that have anything to do with what I was talking about in this post?

If so, how does that complicate literally everything?

Are we sure that it's supposed to be every Fairy King's shared magical ability? And are we actually sure that it's Gloxinia's?

It's what's listed on the wiki, but if you've seen my posts before you know how much that means to me... There's no citation on the wiki for this being stated as his ability, and he has powers that Harlequin does not.

It occurred to me some time ago that... that's no what Merlin said. She said that Harlequin's power, "Disaster", is "A very fitting power for the Fairy King"(This is the direct quote from the anime), but that doesn't actually mean it's the power of the Fairy King as a rank. Just that it suits the station.

Last year I designed an outfit for him, and I intend to do that this year as well, but since it took me till the 27th to finish Elaine's(her birthdays was the 15th) I'm not super confident that I'll have that finished on time. If I do, you're probably looking at that right now, but if not! Then at least this will be out on time.

Well that didn't work... My sleep schedual betrayed me and I didn't even get this posted on time... I meant to take a nap. I set 3 alarms. Did not work. Slept for 15 hours...

Anyway, this year, along side the outfit design, I'll also be doing an analysis that I've been wanting to do for quite a long while.

A name analysis!

Most of the characters in The Seven Deadly Sins -at least the important ones- have names relating to Arthurian myth, as the story is kind a based in it. But this, oddly enough, doesn't apply to almost any of the Fairies, even Harlequin -AKA "King"- despite him being one of the titular characters.

Meliodas and Ban are the fathers of two of Arthur's knight, Tristian and Lancelot respectively, Merlin is Merlin, iirc there are two different Escanors depending on the story, and Gowther is...apparently Merlin's half-brother according a glance at google... Diane's namesake is a little harder to track down, but she's not directly Arthurian either from what I can gather. As far as I know the only Fairy who does align with Arthurian myth is Elaine, but the Elaine that's Ban's wife is not the only Elaine you'll find in Arthurian stories, it was a common name.

Anyway

Most people know the word "harlequin". Simply put it's a french clown.

-Oh and apparently also a duck XD

BUT

Not everyone who knows that, knows where the word comes from, or what the king of the Fairies would have it for a name.

The origin of the word is actually a lot older than the french clown concept and isn't actually french all the way back. here's what Google has to say;

"late 16th century: from obsolete French, from earlier Herlequin (or Hellequin ), the name of the leader of a legendary troop of demon horsemen; perhaps ultimately related to Old English Herla cyning ‘King Herla’, a mythical figure sometimes identified with Woden."

I actually learned this from a youtube video some years back, by Overly Sarcastic Productions. It's a Halloween episode discussing the concept of the "Wild Hunt". I highly recommend the video and the channel as a whole, they're really great, very funny and you learn a lot. The video is a little under 17 minutes long, though, so if you're only interested in the part relevant this analysis jump to 11:05 in the video.

For anyone who doesn't want to watch that and would rather read me summerize it, in the video it's explained that the Scandinavian version of the Wild Hunt is called "Odin's Hunt" but in Old English it's called "Herlaþing" which means "Herla's Assembly". Herla being a King of the Britons who makes a deal with a dwarf where the two attend each other's weddings. The dwarf is a perfect guest at Herla's wedding and the following year Herla goes to the dwarf kingdom to return the favor. When he leaves the dwarf gives him a hunting dog and warns him not to get off his horse till the dog does. When they get back the dog doesn't get off the horse, Herla asks a random person they pass how his wife is doing only to find out that 3 days in dwarfland = 300 years in humanland. Some of his men are shocked and get off their horses, only to age to dust when they touch the ground, so Herla is stuck riding his horse for eternity.

The concept of an eternal wander was popular and in the 11th century a french monk/chronicler used the phrase "Familia Herlequin" to describe a host of demons pursuing a monk, lead by a masked giant. This masked hunt leader would evolve into the character we now know as a "harlequin", a trickster character is french passion plays.

God, king and trickster presented as a fool, that actually kinda tracks, doesn't it?

We know that there are two methods by which a Fairy gets their wings. Either in a stepped form like Harlequin, or instantly like Elaine.

Specifically, Tioreh and Belte, the only two of Harlequin's kids who have wings so far.

We have the most info on Tioreh.

She has a single set of yellow, translucent*, cell veined wings. They're extremely typical for a Fairy. The only oddity is that she has them so early.

*(while the 3D model from the video game doesn't show the translucence, several of the manga panels here actually do. And while it's inconsistent across media weather Fairy wings are always translucent or not, I'm actually willing to differ to the manga on this one.)

Belte seems to have much the same.

We don't know what color they are, but he still has a single set with what appears to be at least nearly identical vein patterning to his sister. Though his seem to be a little smaller than Tioreh's.

Both children have very average wings.

We know basically nothing about how Fairy genetics work, but from what I can tell, the shape and vein configuration match their father...but it's weird that both kids only have a single set when Harlequin has two.

Even if the kids' wings will eventually get bigger, -which we don't know that they will, they could be fully evolved already since the proportioning looks fine- Harlequin had all four of his wings when they first sprouted so that wouldn't explain the difference.

My studies of Fairy physiology also haven't found any correlation between number of wings and... anything, really. It just seems as random as anything else. Though, having a single set is more common in Fairies overall. By a lot, actually... so genetically, maybe it is a dominant vs. recessive thing?

We also don't know if color means anything. Harlequin's are blue, which is unusual for a Fairy king specifically. Yellow, Tioreh's color, is the 3rd most common among the Fairy clan and Elaine's are also yellow, so genetically that might just be fine.

Since I'm an idiot who didn't know this until like 2 days ago, I don't have drawing prepared... So I'll go head with a long over-do analysis!

I've already spoken about his wings here and here so This will be a flower symbolism analysis.

Most of the Fairies I'd actually analyze seem to have 2 flower/plant symbols; one visual and one scent. But Gloxinia also have his name, making 3.

So we'll start there with

Name

Gloxinia is actually a genus of flower, rather that one species the wiki offers this image for the genus

Naming this flower "florist's gloxinia" though it's actually called "Sinningia speciosa" sometimes called "Brazilian Gloxinia". It's not even in the Gloxinia genus, though it was originally ins 1817[1]

"Incarvillea delavayi" is named "Hardy Gloxinia" or "Flowering Fern" but it's actually neither a gloxinia nor a fern...

Despite all this confusion, when you simply google "gloxinia" or "gloxinia flower" you get Sinningia speciosa so that's what I'll using since I'm comfortably confident nakaba doesn't research this crap as excessively as I do...

Now, one of my main sites for flower meanings atozflowers.com doesn't have any kind of gloxinia on it anywhere... very weird. But my other one allflorists.co.uk does! According to them gloxinia means "Love and first sight". According to daleharvey.com it also mean "a proud spirit".

"Gloxinia perennis" the one shown above that's actually in the gloxinia genus is sometimes called "Canterbury Bells" which allflosits.oc.uk says means "gratitude". However, Canterbury Bells is actually a different plant entirely...

Moving on.

Visual

Gloxinia's visual element is kinda subtle, I actually didn't know about myself till @cupidthewriter pointed it out to me. He wears a silver bracelet or cuff on his left wrist which appears to be a rose.

The short answer for rose symbolism is "love", though it can be specified by color. However silver is not a real rose color so...

Some of the colors who align with the gloxinia flower symbolism though, with some meaning "gratitude" and "love at first sight"(pink and purple here, and thornless and Bouquet Mature Blooms here). So the rose aspect seems to be a little redundant.

Scent

The wiki cites chapter 152 for the information that Gloxinia smells like ginger.

This...wound up actually being kinda difficult to work with.

The root itself, which I imagine is what's meant here, has all sorts of symbols and meanings and religious significance that I couldn't quite pin down a straight answer. Some that I ran into include "transformation and renewal, protection and purification, vitality and energy"[3]

The flowers of the ginger plant are a little more straight forward with greg.app saying "prosperity and health" and "innovation and adaptability".

According to flowerleis.com leis made from white ginger flowers symbolizes "love and affection" white a red one means "passion, tolerance and wealth".

Conclusion

So in general is seems like Gloxinia's symbolism is anything but straight forward, which seems to suit him well. Though the symbols themselves aren't really shown much in the little we see of him in 7DS.

First off, here's the vid if you'd like to watch for yourself. It's Overly Sarcastic Productions, very funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A86fIELxFds Oh and maybe a disclaimer? I did grow up Baptist, though I admit I was never a devoted church goer... And I'm far from any sect of Christianity now. But to the best of my ability I'm gonna try not to talk out of my ass on this topic...

So anyway, what's...up with this?

Why is this kid covered in crosses?

The short answer, if I have one, is because he's King Arthur.

Arthurian myth didn't start as a Christian story, but it became Christianized. The channel I linked above has a video about King Arthur as well.

So out of context, it makes fines sense for King Arthur, in a pop culture situation like this, to be adorned with this symbol. However... It kinda makes no sense in context.

Despite what we as viewer easily recognize as traditionally Christian motifs, I mean it's in the name, Christianity doesn't actually show up in-universe. People say the word "god" all the time, but it's always used either as simple vernacular (e.g. "oh my god") or to refer to a deity in a generalized sense.

The only kind of religion we see in-universe is that the Druids worship the Goddess clan, and yeah they're literally just angels with the label half scraped off, but then their leader/creator is a female deity. Whereas the Christian god is male.

So the closest thing Britannia, as far as we can tell, has to Christianity is the Goddess clan. And they're...really not very close in anything but name and image. So...

I was talking with @juiceyobsessionist about headcanons and they said that since the Fairy Kings look rather different than the average Fairy they might classify as a kind of subspecies. I suggested it was more like how queen bees look different from the rest of the hive and we agreed on that.

But that got me to thinking a little deeper. Because the Fairy Kings aren't the only ones who look quite like they do, they certainly have distinguishing features, but there are other Fairies that look similar. Fairies like Elain and Gerheade. But they're princesses so maybe that just counts the same in Fairies. Still what about Fairies like Helbram? He's not born from the Sacred Tree as far as we know, he's just a Fairy.

The point is, maybe it's like in bee hives there's the queen, workers and drones. And all three types look different from each other and serve different purposes in the colony.

Of course it's not 1:1.

Fairies don't really have "work" so there's no need for "workers" and Fairies don't typically breed so there's no need for "drones". And, obviously the Fairy King doesn't serve the same literal purpose as a queen bee.

Though looking at Harlequin and Diane, you could have fooled me ;P

The Fairy King's job is to protect the Fairy King's Forest, the Fountain of Youth(while it was a thing) and the Fairy Clan as a whole.

The average Fairy would be like the workers? Or maybe it's more like drones since they don't really have much a social purpose, beyond existing as a population.(Again, not 1:1)

And then there's third kind of Fairy. The kind like Helbram and a number of other Fairies we see in the Fairy King's Forest. They have a more human-like appearance and seem to be stronger than average Fairies, but are still smaller and weaker than fully grown Fairy Kings. Perhaps these are meant to be sort of like soldiers in ant colonies.

Something I've observed is that between Fairy examples we've seen from various locations(The Fairy King's Forest, Benwick, Echo Gorge, and Alpa Forest) The Fairy King's Forest has the lowest percentage of "drone" Fairies. Though that wasn't always so. Prior to Helbram's "human incident" there were a lot more of this smaller, weaker type of Fairy. And the other locations listed have few, or even zero "soldier" type Fairies observable.(Data on this is provided by animated sources wherever possible. If an animate source is not available the manga is used. Note that factors regarding Fairy physical traits is harder to parse and compare, and has reduced consistency in the manga. This is why animated sources are favored.)