#carmilla speculation

Exactly what happened between them before Elle learned of Carmilla’s true nature?  The dream sequences are somewhat contradictory - not a bad thing, they’re dreams, after all, so we wouldn’t expect them to be literal truth.

But the dreams depict Carmilla feeding on Elle while awake, yet that makes no sense if the fact of her being a vampire was a shock to her, and as Carmilla herself had said “I had taken great pains to hide what I was from her”.  Thus, those scenes can only be seen as distorted memories, mixing fact with Elle’s own fears.

Elle accused Carmilla of “drink[ing] my blood”, but it’s unclear whether she was merely assuming that Carmilla had done so, or whether she actually did so.  So, did Carmilla feed on Elle in her sleep?

It would fit the novella, but the relationship between book!canon and series!canon is ... loose to say the least.

It doesn’t seem like it could be coincidence that Elle just happened to have that spell book.  It doesn’t seem like she would’ve been into the occult before she died, and how would she have just happened to find that spell?

And just “thinking about those you wronged” by itself couldn’t’ve had that effect without some powerful magic.

That therapist was definitely either evil, or being manipulated by someone.

Carm: “... well-meaning therapists saying ‘close your eyes and think of those you’ve wronged while I light up this funky incense’”

That was obviously some sort of magic spell she was tricking Carmilla into being part of.  So, either the therapist knew exactly what she was doing, or, like the ghosts in the mansion, was tricked by someone else.  I can’t see that as being an accidental effect.

But who?  Obviously not Elle herself, since she accused Carmilla of “summoning us”, so she couldn’t’ve been involved if she apparently thought Carmilla did it purposefully.

Maybe Lilita/Inanna?  She may not be evil per se anymore, but she’s still a goddess, and still outside of human morality.  Perhaps, watching Carmilla, she understood that Carmilla needed more than just a quick-fix “you’re human now!” spell.  Plus, she probably felt the need to save those who were trapped in the nightmare world, those who were there by her actions in sacrificing to Lophii.

So, still being a manipulative deity, she gets Carmilla to a therapist (getting her to go wouldn’t be hard, since Laura would’ve naturally felt that she should, so the manipulation was probably limited to ensuring that the right therapist for the job was chosen).  Then she gets the therapist to use this magic spell.  Perhaps that was a simple matter of replacing normal incense (meant to be calming) with magical incense.

Then, once everything was in motion, she just needed a few smaller nudges.  Laura mentioned how some of the things that she dreamed about were not things Elle wanted her to see.  It was assumed that that was an accidental effect of “dream contagion”, but maybe it was partly Inanna manipulating the dreams.

Okay, so in light of events in season 3, especially the alternate universe, and rewatching season 1, I’ve formulated some minor changes to my theory that Laura and Carmilla were being manipulated by the Dean all along in Season 1, with her “death” being part of her master plan.

I still believe that the Dean was manipulating things through most of the season.  Given that she was clearly planning something in the alternate universe, it’s likely, then, that her “manipulate Carmilla into ‘killing’ me” plan was probably not her original plan.

The main reasons I believe the final battle of season 1 to have been her plan is that A) her “death” just seemed to easy.  Carmilla only used the butt of the sword, and she was still alive until Laura kicked that boulder into the Pit, B) Laura was not exactly being very discrete about her videos; considering how many viewers she had, how could one of the Dean’s minions *not* have found them? C) other than killing JP, she made no effort to hide incriminating evidence when she possessed Laura, and D) the Dean is just way too clever to be defeated so easily, also E) the Dean herself in Season 3 said that Laura’s actions made all of that possible, although, of course, she could’ve just been saying that to demoralize Laura.

Initially, I’d thought that Carmila being made Laura’s roommate was evidence that the plan extended even before S1, and S0 seemed to provide a possible explanation for how the Dean would know Laura would work to motivate Carmilla’s rebellion  My theory had been that the Town Hall meeting was actually a test, to see if Laura was resilient enough for her plan.

Now, however, I’m revising that part.  I think Carmilla was sent simply to monitor this troublesome girl and make sure she didn’t cause too much trouble for the University with her “save Betty” campaign.  Probably also she was originally planning to use Laura for the sacrifice all along.

When she realized that Laura was like Ell all over again, she realized that there was a possibility to accelerate her plans.  She wouldn’t have to wait a whole year for the Board’s planned arrival on campus.  And she could hide in plain sight, too.  The Board would be clearly watching her carefully, making her original plans difficult.  But if she could, in effect, fake her death, her takeover would be that much easier.  She could hide in another body, use the chaos of the Deanless campus, and much more easily get to the point of destroying the Charter and the Board, and setting the rest of her plans into motion.  It’s also conceivable that she realized Laura could make a perfect host for the Fourth Talisman, one who would be far easier to manipulate into coming down into the Pit than Vordenberg would ever have been (can you imagine how difficult it would’ve been for her to trick Vordie into coming down?  That coward would’ve stayed a thousand miles away from Silas; maybe she could’ve had one of her goons kidnap him and bring him down, but that would be a lot of trouble)

And so, once she made that plan, she decided to give Carmilla a seeming gift, with her offer to “leave you and the little moppet alone”.  But, she made sure that her possession of Laura would be on film, to spark Laura’s anger and make Carmilla believe she needed to redeem herself to Laura through reckless self-sacrifice.  She probably originally hoped that Carmilla’s body would not be found by her friends, and that it could be retrieved by someone from Corvae instead, to be able to hold her captive until the sacrifice to open the Sixth Gate.  If so, Kirsch finding Carmilla’s body was the first crack in the Dean’s plan.  The Hollstein Reunion would’ve forced her to reconsider her plans.  But she probably never expected that it would be as fatal a flaw as it was.

If so, the point of divergence for the alternate universe was that either she didn’t think of that plan, or decided it was too risky and chose instead to keep to her original plan.  Instead of easing up on the “deliver Laura to me” demands, she continued them.  And so, that Carmilla felt she had no choice.  It was that or the coffin of blood all over again.