Yor Briar, Yor, and Yor-san
I was reading an excellent post about the nuance in the original japanese and now I thought I’d take a crack at what this means for Loid (although other people have already made an excellent analysis on this).
Loid has only called her Yor Briar in the beginning and when he was suspecting her of playing him. But Fiona’s insistence on her full name, Yor Briar, and her notice of Loid’s seemingly stubborn refusal to use it seems to me that Loid had always previously referred to assets by their full name. It could also be pragmatic in that he knows Fiona wants the ‘role’ of his wife hence her stubborn insistence of using Yor’s maiden name, so he uses Yor-san to counter Fiona’s way of delegitimizing Yor’s role. But I don’t think Loid can sense the real reason for Fiona’s insistence, so while in his view Fiona may be acting unprofessionally, generally speaking, I think Loid would be the one acting unprofessionally in constantly using ‘Yor-san’ to refer to his ‘wife’ to his WISE colleagues especially if he didn’t use to do that before (which yeah it’s hard to imagine him addressing his other marks that way).
Although the audience knows that Fiona is acting far from being professional, with Loid’s limited knowledge of her feelings, wouldn’t she actually have a point in referring to Yor as YOR BRIAR in a working setting? Because isn’t that all she was supposed to be? An asset or a tool? And yet Loid seems annoyed by that and insists on humanizing her by calling her, Yor-san.
Now someone might say, that’s nothing to make a big deal about. It would have been a big deal had he referred to her as ‘just’ Yor without the honorific. Because using someone’s name without honorifics is supposed to connote a deeper sort of intimacy. But that’s the thing. It would have been a forced intimacy for show. ‘Yor’ is his mode of address when he’s putting on a show of being a loving husband, complete with that <fake> Loid Forger voice. Yor is what he calls her around her colleagues or his colleagues (Nightfall undercover as Fiona at the hospital) to present how they’re a completely ordinary, close and loving family. In a way, it’s a subtle cue to Yor as well that they’re in ‘family’ mode now or ‘husband-and-wife’ mode. Yor denotes her as being a mask.
Which is actually why Yor-san is perfect. If Yor Briar is her as an asset, Yor is her as a mask, then Yor-san is her as a partner. He’s used women to get to his goal before. The only thing different now is Anya and the fact that on some level he is also working together with Yor. Had he actually succeeded in his first honeytrap attempt with Yor when he thought she had fallen in love with him, I imagine that he might have started treating Yor the same way he did his other assets before. But thank goodness it didn’t succeed, and in my view, he ended up falling into the trap instead.
Yor-san is perfect because it parallels the way Yor calls him. It’s perfect because it conveys the perfect level of intimacy. They’re not actually a lovey-dovey couple as ‘Yor’ would imply, but unfortunately for Nightfall, she’s also not just ‘YOR BRIAR’ another tool to him. It’s perfect because it conveys respect which Loid has a healthy amount of for Yor. If he can help it, he doesn’t like using her. And Nightfall is right to be worried that this comfortable mode of address of Loid’s is bleeding over to Twilight as if to blur the two. Loid is supposed to be an entirely different person or character so what does it mean that Twilight also calls his wife the same way Loid does? ‘Yor-san’ and ‘Loid-san’ are partners in a lot of ways. Yor-san is whom he can let down his guard down around, and someone this perfectionist spy can ask help from and rely on.
So what about Yuri Briar? He doesn’t know the true nature of Yor and Loid’s arrangement. Shouldn’t he be calling her Yor in front of him to keep up the ruse? Again, I think part of it is pragmatic. He doesn’t want to further aggravate the siscon. But especially in light of Chapter 86 and Volume 10’s inner cover, I think (at least unconsciously) it’s because Yuri is family. I notice that Twilight hasn’t even kept up the Loid persona as much in front of Yuri anymore (which tbf can’t blame him cause how do you even react to Yuri) but it’s not as if Yuri is someone to be underestimated. Some way or the other, even if he doesn’t fully realize it, I think Twilight is starting to treat Yuri like how Yor treats him or at the very least he can’t treat him like any other enemy or bystander because he’s someone important to Yor. Which again as CH 86 would show, Fiona has already noticed, and Twilight himself is angry at himself about. I don’t think Twilight has realized any sort of feelings for Yor yet, but I guess to Fiona, his mode of address for her is and has always been telling.
It’s actually interesting to think that perhaps it’s when he’s calling her ‘Yor-san’ that he’s most like himself - like Loid, Twilight and the boy before there was Twilight all at once - with her.
