#castlevania post

This is an interesting and really vague line, and it’s unfortunate Zamfir’s arc is probably the most rushed subplot in the series.  (I mean, I didn’t really care for what Sumi and Taka had going on, but at least they got a brief flashback explaining their motives.)

So let’s dive into the historical context here:

Since it’s founding in 1310, Wallachia was ruled by the House of Basarab, a family that some historians believe may have migrated from Asia.  Wallachia’s first ruler on record was Basarab the Great.

After the death of Mircea the Old in 1418, a direct descendant of Basarab the Great, the ruling family split into two factions:  Mircea’s descendants through his sons known as the Drăculești and the descendants of his brother, Dan I, known as the Dănești.  This split would become the defining feature of Wallachian politics for this time period.  During the last years of Mircea’s reign, he named his only legitimate son Mihail as co-ruler to ease the transition of power after his death.  Within three years of ruling on his own though, Mihail was overpowered by the Ottoman Empire and the boyar lords under him defected to his cousin Dan II and Wallachia broke into a civil war.  Mihail was killed in the spring of 1420, after which several of his illegitimate half-brothers took up the Drăculești line’s bid for power, fighting the each other as much as Dănești faction.  It’s like Game of Thrones but even more chaos and the bastards are 100% valid players in the eyes of the law and society.

Castlevania takes place in 1476, so in between this year and the year of Mihail I’s death, rule of Wallachia (the Voivodate) would change hands 24 times and see a total of 10 separate rulers, only one of whom would die of natural causes.  (In comparison, England’s throne saw three different occupants in the same amount of time.  Although, one of those three was a usurper and one died under mysterious circumstances of the ‘probably murder’ variety.) So Sypha coming out and guessing that Zamfir is the last of the nobles is thought-provoking in that the royal court was already a hostile place even without Dracula bearing down on the capital.

Zamfir’s psychosis may have deeper roots than what happened when Dracula attacked, and I really want to explore that further.  ‘Last person of noble birth’ can have a few meanings.  The Wallachian nobility were the boyar lords, whose power and influence was dependent on wealth and/or land.  At court, there was the princely council who advised (or schemed against) the ruling prince, and there were also a few court positions that weren’t part of the council.  More to the point, Wallachia’s society behaved the same way as most European nations did at the time: ‘You have no power for you are but a woman.’

As for the mummified corpses in the Underground Court, in the interest of loose historical accuracy, the dead prince could only be Vlad III Dracula of House Drăculești.  In November of 1476, Vlad III usurped the throne from Basarab III, who had held it since 1474 after killing his predecessor Radu III (Vlad III’s younger brother, actually.)  In December of that year, Basarab III returned to Wallachia and took back the throne, killing Vlad III in the process.  Basarab III would live another four years.  In addition, the capital of Wallachia was moved from Târgovişte to Bucharest this same year.  So intentional or not on the creators’ part, the show roughly matches up with the historical timeline.  There’s also the fact that it’s not entirely clear exactly how Vlad III died and there is some speculation by historians that Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the historical Dracula only share the same name and the latter was not the actual inspiration for the former.

It’s a bit of a stretch to say Vlad III Dracula and the vampire Vlad Dracula Ţepeş were intended to be two separate people in the series, so I won’t go out there and make that claim.  The mummified royals are probably just nameless artifacts for the plot and we are definitely in speculation, headcanon, string and thumbtacks territory now.

Okay, so I love the dynamic between these two.

Up until the end of Season Three, Sypha, while being irascible and stubborn, does maintain a certain level of innocence that her male counterparts and comrades don’t.  She’s a bit of an idealist and a dreamer.

She hasn’t lost her family like Alucard and Trevor have.  It’s probable her parents have died and that’s why she travels with her grandfather.  Since they’re never mentioned by her or anyone else in the series, I always got the impression they passed away when she was really young.  If they were alive and in that group in Season 1, they would’ve been asking Trevor for his help, too.

In this city where she and her people are despised and abused, she still truly believes in helping them while they suffer.  Even though she knows there is a mob actively forming to murder her and her family, she refuses to abandon her cultural calling.

And Trevor keeps throwing the harsh, brick wall of reality at her.  “No, you’re about to be massacred because people are horrible and frankly don’t deserve your mercy and kindness.”

And considering how furious and frustrated he is in this scene--aside from the fact he’s pissed he did them a favor and they’re not upholding their end of the bargain--I wonder if he was in her shoes once.  Maybe someone tried to warn his family about the mob, they refused to flee, and he watched them die.

Again, in this scene she tells Trevor it’s wrong to desecrate a Night Creature (which probably was originally the body of a human) just to get some money, and Trevor confronts her with the reality they need food and somewhere to sleep.

Meanwhile, back in Season 1, he nearly kills a man because he’s hungry and trying to sneak into Gresit.  He doesn’t even hesitate.  He sees the guard, he sneaks up on him, knife out…. (I mean, to his credit, he doesn’t look thrilled with what he’s about to do.)

…and the only thing that stopped him was the guy happened to be asleep on the job.

So at some point, Trevor blurred the line between morality and survival.  Sure, for his character, that’s par for the course, but the Belmont name is recognized as one of Wallachia’s great houses.  Aside from the general innocence of children, Trevor was born to an aristocratic family.  (And an old one, given Leon Belmont was a French baron before he chased Dracula east.)  Chivalry would have been part of his education growing up, and the core of his family’s honor lay with defeating Dracula and protecting people from Dracula.

At twelve, he saw his family killed by the very people they’d sworn to protect.  Not only were literally centuries of generational beliefs destroyed, the family’s reputation was blackened by their enemies.  He would have been scared, confused, in shock, desperately hoping someone else in his family escaped. That is a very drastic, traumatic transition from a black/white view to grayscale, especially for a kid to handle.

This scene where they’re talking about goats and Sypha asking Trevor, “Do you know some people have sex with them?”  The way she’s all conspiratorial when asking this question.  “Can you believe this?  Crazy, right?”

And Trevor being almost dismissive.  “Oh, sure, right.  Crazy.”  He could’ve told her he already knows this.  (Cause he did overhear this conversation back in Season One.)  But I think there’s a part of him that enjoys this side of her.  For now, he lets Sypha hold onto whatever small bits of innocence she still has because he knows the ‘fun adventure’ won’t last and other shoe is eventually going to drop.  And it drops hard.

The way she reacts to the stunningly empty victory/catastrophe of Season 3, it really seems as though nothing this horrible has ever happened to her.  As a Speaker traveling with her family, she’s probably brought aid and comfort to plague towns, battle fields, prisoners in their last moments before execution.  But these are instances that aren’t connected to her personally.  Like a medical professional, she can uphold a balance of compassion and dissociation.

Season 3 is one hell of a turning point in character development.

The Keep:  The innermost part of a castle, the final refuge if the rest of the fortress was captured in a siege.  It was also the residence of the castle's lord, his family, and guests.