#fhurankie posts

Dahlia Hawthorne and Simon Keyes have a lot more in common than just red hair and a penchant for pink. From their family situations, to their motives and fears, and even to the very few people they ever trusted, their story lines run very similar. In the end, while they are both murderers, they are also victims of a broken justice system and poor family lives. Miles Edgeworth even acknowledges that Keyes is also a victim at the end of Keyes' case.

I am putting one more warning here, just in case. This analysis contains heavy spoilers, and I don’t intend to beat around the bush or hint. I will be saying the spoilers straight out. Any trigger warnings related to aai2 or aa3 should be applied as well.

Dahlia Hawthorne’s relationship with her mother is one made purely of use, with no affection on either side. When Dahlia is reunited with her mother before her execution, her mother convinces her to participate in one more murder plot. This is her first time talking to her mother since she was young. It’s clear that her mother doesn’t care about her, as she shows no sympathy for her estranged daughter, only using her to help Pearl Fey. Even Morgan’s love of Pearl is conditional and fake: she only loves Pearl for her spiritual powers. It only stands to reason that she didn’t care for Dahlia or Iris at all. While this is extrapolation, it didn’t seem like she cared much when her husband took her children away from her. She even could have brought Iris back home after she was left at Hazakura temple, yet as far as we know, she never even tried. While Dahlia agrees to the murder plot in prison in order to get revenge on Mia Fey, it can also be argued that it’s a last ditch effort to gain her mother’s approval: if she succeeds in the murder plot, though she will already be dead, she can let her spirit move on knowing that her mother has slightly more respect for her.

Keyes' relationship to his father is similar: though he believes his father left him because he died, in reality, his father simply didn’t care enough about him to find him. His mother, who is never mentioned, is presumably out of the picture. His whole life, he believes not that it was his father who was a murderer, but that Knightley’s father had killed his, and therefore, the way to get revenge was through Knightley. However, whether his father had been the victim or the murderer, does not change the fact that he was left alone in the care of Patricia Roland, who proceeded to mistreat or even abuse him. His father, albeit unknowingly, even managed to poison the one successful relationship he did have: his friendship with Knightley.

Keyes whole backstory revolves around revenge on Knightley, who betrayed him when they were children, and revenge on Roland, Debeste, and the body double, who all wanted him dead (and in Roland’s case, was so horrible to him that he ran away from the orphanage, though we’re not told exactly what happened.) Even if he’d managed to forgive Knightley for what had happened as children, Knightley still worked for one of the people trying to kill him: the body double. Of course, it also has to do with his father, but I’ll get to that later.

Dahlia’s story begins when her father takes her and her sister and leaves their mother. Here, she convinces her father to drop Iris off at a temple, though it’s shown they still keep in touch. The best guess I can make as to why she did this is that she did, in fact, care for Iris, however thought caring was a weakness and so sought to get rid of her. The same can be argued (and I have seen it argued) for Knightley and Keyes: Keyes had Knightley removed (though much later in their lives and to a more extreme degree than Iris and Dahlia) because despite his resentment of his best friend, he still had affection for him.

Dahlia and Keyes did trust Iris and Knightley up until a certain point. Dahlia had originally involved Iris in her kidnapping plot, however, Iris backed out at the last minute. Dahlia seems to have forgiven her for that, enough to let Iris convince her to let her be the one to try and get the evidence back from Phoenix. Iris proceeds to betray Dahlia even more: she falls in love with Phoenix for real, vowing to protect him, as well as failing to regain the evidence. This is when Dahlia throws Iris away for real: while before, she’d always let her affection for her sister get in the way of leaving her behind completely, she now has no such excuse. If even Iris turns against her, Dahlia truly has no one on her side, causing her to become even more afraid and angry, as she sets in motion her plot to kill Phoenix. Not only is she getting desperate for the evidence back, but this way she also gets revenge on her sister and her betrayal, as her sister was the one person she thought to always be in her corner.

Keyes sense of betrayal comes much earlier in his life. Right from some of his earliest memories, his friend had kidnapped him and nearly gotten him killed for the sake of his father. Keyes never had a chance to work through this grudge, instead internalizing it. Yet, Knightley was still his only friend, and therefore by default, his most trusted one. After spending all those years by each other's sides, it’s unlikely Keyes didn’t feel some sort of camaraderie with him. By killing Knightley, Keyes was not only removing the person who betrayed him, but also his weakness: the one person he truly cared about. Like Dahlia, he saw emotion and love as a weakness, something to use and get rid of once it had served its purpose. Yet in the end, he cared more about Knightley’s betrayal than any friendship.

At 14, Dahlia enters a relationship with a 20 year old, Terry Fawles. Dahlia is a child, entering a relationship with a fully grown adult. While she didn’t know better, there’s no way he didn’t. No matter how you look at it here, there is an element of grooming and coercion that was not touched on, as she was drawn into a relationship with a 20 year old. Not to mention, he was her tutor, adding even more of a power imbalance than there already was. This also makes her motivations for the staged kidnapping that much more interesting. Her sister, Valerie, was a police woman, also an adult, and, as we know she was involved in the fake kidnapping, she must have been aware of the relationship between her sister and Fawles. If anyone had been in a position to stop this relationship, it would have been her. She was an adult, the sister of Dahlia Hawthorne, AND a police officer, whose jobs are supposed to be stopping things like this. However, she didn’t. This probably instilled a distrust of the justice system in Dahlia, just as Simon Keyes had a distrust of the justice system based on how one of the people looking to kill him was a high ranking official.

Here, we get to Dahlia’s motivations for the kidnapping: not only does she get to have half a million dollars if this goes well, but once she and Valerie betray Fawles, he will be sentenced to life in prison, and unable to harm her anymore.

This is similar to a lot of Keyes’ plots, though he doesn’t tend to use framing. Instead, Keyes simply manipulates people into killing each other for him, getting them out of his way. He manipulates Roland into killing Knightley, getting Roland away from him so that she cannot chase and hurt him any longer.

Dahlia fakes her death and for five years, she is safe. Then, she finds out that Valerie intends to give away the secret to the kidnapping. This is dangerous for Dahlia: if people found out that Fawles had not killed or even kidnapped anyone, his sentence could be greatly reduced or he could even be set free. Then, not only could Fawles be free, but he would know that she’s alive.

This most likely caused her a great deal of worry. Now, we never find out whether her first murder was premeditated or not. In either case, Dahlia likely panicked at the thought of her secret getting out. The only difference is whether this panic caused her to prepare in advance, or if she intended to plead or bargain with her sister, only to stab her in the end when that didn’t work.

This is Dahlia’s first direct murder. However, Fawles later dies at his trial, drinking a bottle of poison that she had given him at age 14. This had likely been her backup plan to the kidnapping, if somehow she had been found out, he would have drank the poison. He only intended to drink it if he thought he couldn’t trust her anymore, which he wouldn’t have if he discovered the betrayal.

You may now by wondering why she panicked and killed Valerie, then. Two reasons: first, this backup plan had a high likelihood of indicting her as a possible suspect. It was a very last resort. The second reason is that if she hadn’t killed Valerie, Valerie would have exposed that they had stolen the diamond. This would mean that Dahlia herself would have gone to prison, a place she understandably didn’t want to go, and it would have opened questions regarding the current whereabouts of the diamond.

I don’t believe Dahlia was lying, on the stand, when she stated that the reason she hadn’t revealed her true identity as Dahlia Hawthorne was because she was afraid of Fawles. It wasn’t the whole truth, not was it a whole lie.

Even after getting away with this trial, Dahlia cannot escape. She is interrogated by Diego Armando, and likely feeling threatened, poisons him. She then gives the evidence to Phoenix Wright, to hide her involvement. This is when Iris enters the scene.

Iris is very much to Dahlia what Knightley is to Keyes. Iris and Knightley were maybe the only people who cared about Dahlia and Simon. They were willing to do almost anything to keep them safe and help them. In a way, Dahlia and Simon were the only people they had to rely on. (Iris also had Sister Bikini, but Dahlia didn’t have anyone else, and Iris felt a sense of obligation about that.) While Dahlia and Keyes also cared for them on some level, in the end, they were more useful to manipulate and use than truly care for.

I have seen some head canons and theories that as Knightley was being interrogated by Roland, he must have realized that Simon had set him up. These theories continue that he could have then ratted Simon out to Roland, but he didn’t, instead letting himself die out of loyalty to the person who set him up. After all, that person was his childhood friend, and Knightley at least cared for Keyes. In that case, he’s even more similar to Iris, who tried to protect Dahlia even to the end despite her knowledge of Dahlia’s crimes and the fact that Dahlia was the one who convinced their father to leave her behind.

In the end, Dahlia Hawthorne and Simon Keyes lived in much the same way: for themselves, and by themselves. They simply couldn’t understand that even if they had been wronged before, there were still people waiting to take their sides. All they could focus on was the things said people had done to hurt them, and not the multitude of other ways these people had tried to help them. That was their final downfall.