#meta narrative

alongside talking about each ‘version’ of beatrice, it’s important to lay out what ‘beatrice’ as a concept was first conceived as, and how it morphed over time through each reiteration. 

with bice, ‘beatrice’ exists as the forbidden, tempting female ideal for kinzo: she embodies the aspects of what he fetishizes through his obsession with western culture (european ethnicity and features; blonde hair and blue eyes, important to her fascist leanings & origins), she is his mistress, a role that disrupts upon the ideal family structure within society that kinzo himself is beheld to; she and kinzo committed a sin together (both in adultery and in killing the soldiers to obtain the gold), making her very presence in his life a way to deviate from the societal structures he disdains while never truly stepping out of them. the ‘golden witch beatrice’ is at its clearest through bice, utilizing both ‘the witch as an enchantress, a disruption to the systems that are in fact only a role meant to villainize the oppressed by the oppressor’ and ‘the witch as a force that grants miracles/reprieve, yet limited by what fuels her existence (magic <=> imagination <=> fantasy <=> refusal of reality <=> refusal of change <=> the desire to maintain involution given form.) 

because of this, bice’s existence in the narrative is more object than subject. bice exists not as a character whose thoughts & responses to her circumstances are shown & deliberated upon, but as a the foundational piece (hehe), the basis for ‘beatrice’ that will then be interrogated and examined later on. her acceptance of the title of ‘golden witch’ and claiming that she is a corpse (inanimate, lacking in agency and unable to exercise her own destiny) who can only exist beside kinzo is proof of this— as the foundation for the illusion of the ‘golden witch beatrice’ in his mind, the ‘beatrice’ created from bice both as a character in the story sayo created and within the narrative of umineko itself supplements her successive beatrices, kinzo and is reliant on them as a result: she does not exist beyond kinzo’s own memories of her, and the ideas her presence gave birth to only matters so far as it informs the audience about her successors’ morphing of them.

i’d like to say that this was intentional on ryukishi’s part— to make it so that the very basis for ‘beatrice’ was only an interpretation of reality to begin with, but with the fact that he portrayed bice and kinzo’s relationship to be more on the lines of ‘tragic doomed lovers’ rather than anything else makes us think otherwise. we’re shown glimpses of who bice likely was, but only ever before she and kinzo began their affair. we don’t even get a scene of her last words! you’d think that for a character whose presence informs kinzo’s behavior, we’d get shown her last moments? i can’t imagine that it was for the sake of time. 

perhaps it’s because it’d be better that way. that the version of her shown to us only existed so far as it proves that kinzo & bice’s love was ‘pure,’ to contrast the impure ‘love’ he had for kuwadorian beatrice. if there was even a hint of her dissatisfaction towards her predicament, perhaps it would’ve spoiled this perfect foil. regardless of what it was, i think it was a really regrettable writing decision that left us on a sour note on her character.

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from here, we move onto kuwadorian beatrice. since the title is a rather sickening way to refer to her, and is a bit of a typeful, let’s call her something else. how about.. mayu! let’s go with that, yes.

in mayu’s case, we can observe the change in the idea of ‘beatrice’ as kinzo attempts to recreate it through her. from the very beginning, ‘beatrice,’ in how kinzo conceived of her, was a fantasy— it was a fetishization of his mistress’ origins, ‘a witch’ which bestowed upon him both love and wealth. because of this and bice’s death, this idea was then twisted and forcefully imposed onto mayu once bice’s features came through in her adolescence. the ‘beatrice’ that exists through mayu here is a delusion that kinzo’s idea of bice coming back to life, a fantasy of a fantasy. and this fantasy of a fantasy was then reframed through the idea of ‘the witch of the woods of rokkenjima’ in order to keep people from finding mayu, making it a fantasy of a fantasy of a fantasy— fantasquaring! fantaception! fanta.. theseus? hm, no.. theseutasy? that doesn’t roll well off the tongue at all.. fantaseus? ooh, that’s nice! yes, that’ll work, most definitely!— ehem. erm, our apologies! let’s get back on topic. 

this fantaseus is even further twisted when it makes its way to mayu, who kinzo has convinced that she’s ‘a vessel through which the witch beatrice’s soul is caged in,’ paralleling her own feelings about being a bird locked in a cage that is the identity of ‘beatrice’ and the kuwadorian mansion. one of these cages is fake, while the others are real; we glance back at the archetype of the witch in bice’s section: “…’the witch is an enchantress, a disruption to the systems that are in fact only a role meant to villainize the oppressed by the oppressor’..” just as the role of a witch as a disruptor is false, only meant to further perpetuate the systems at hand, the idea that ‘the witch beatrice’s’ soul is housed inside of mayu’s body is a narrative that removes mayu’s agency from the conversation. in being ‘the cage that holds the witch,’ she is no longer a subject, but an object. but unlike how the nature of bice’s function within the narrative, mayu exists outside of kinzo’s memories. we get to see appearances of her outside of kinzo’s reframings, and even though it’s through the eyes of someone else, it is in those moments that she defines herself as subject in contrast to bice declaring herself as object. 

unfortunately, the moment that mayu can act upon her desire to become her own person, is also when the narrative decides that she must die. a watsonian reading of this would reason that she committed suicide— after all, if kinzo were to find out that rosa took her outside, the one person who ‘rescued’ her would be in trouble. she likely knew she wouldn’t be able to leave the island, and the consequences for her own active agreement to that escape attempt would be even worse so. committing suicide meant that she would save rosa from kinzo’s wrath (by distracting him from her participation through her own actions), and in a way ‘free’ herself from the cage that she’d be put right back into. that then parallels bice’s own acquiescence of agency (declaring herself as a corpse (dead) to remove her agency, subject -> object / committing suicide to maintain agency, object -> subject.) 

at the same time, her own refusal to embody ‘beatrice’ functions with the principles of magic in umineko. as the basis for the existence of ‘the magic which held the witch beatrice inside a human vessel,’ her own denial of that fact, declaring herself just a person separate from this, was a logical explanation for her situation that discarded the idea of a witch entirely. she was not a vessel for a witch, she was a normal girl, trapped in a cage, forced to emulate a woman she never knew of. this causes the magic to be ‘undone,’ thereby ‘freeing the witch beatrice from her human vessel,’ thereby killing her. when viewed this way, the ‘beatrice’ that existed through mayu, just like how the legend framed it, never truly disappeared. in creating the portrait and trying to maintain the narrative of ‘the witch beatrice escaping her vessel,’ both kinzo and sayo ensure that the part that remains of mayu are that which define her as a ‘beatrice,’ parts that affirm their desire for involution.

and of course, this role cannot be fulfilled if she’s alive. by dying in the way she did, mayu’s presence haunts the narrative through the portrait of beatrice, through sayo’s emulation of that farcical version of her, through kinzo’s inability to move on and endless self-pitying and self-imposed atonement; she haunts it indeed, but not as herself, but as ‘beatrice.’ here we have the doylist reasoning for the narrative choosing to kill her at her clearest moment of agency: by presenting such a tragic character as mayu, showing us piece by piece the reasons behind her circumstances, her feelings regarding them, and taking it all away once she (and the audience) get a small taste of freedom, we are also placed in the same position as kinzo and sayo. we witness the process as such: you create an archetype (the witch beatrice) -> you develop the archetype, allow the audience to bond with that developing version -> you reveal a part of the truth behind that farce, one that is far more horrible than something fantastical like witches or demons -> the audience, desiring reprieve, will want the same thing as the characters themselves, no matter how wrong. there’s a reason why ‘wishing that the magic was truly real instead’ is common thought within the fanbase, after all. 

you may notice that this part has gotten quite long. that’s because we truly do enjoy talking about mayu! her character, both her story and how the narrative utilizes that story, intrigues us to no end. just by existing in the story as she is, even without doing anything, mayu’s character concept is already worth much analysis by herself (thus is why we are so fixated on amon. sigh), and only really gets better in the way that she plays around with the ideas laid out by both her predecessor and successor. speaking of whom…

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finally, we arrive at the quintessential ‘beatrice,’ sayo yasuda themself. it’s very interesting that despite this role, by the time sayo tries their hand at recreating ‘beatrice,’ the idea had become little more than the fantaseus we talked about before. why would that be the case? 

here we have the role of involution. we’ve gestured to it several times by now, and while you might’ve been able to guess the connecting lines by watching the embedded video within each instance of the term, i’ll explain its purpose here! you can understand ‘involution’ here not as a concept that explains the character’s motivations, but as the shape that’s formed out of the motifs one can grasp from said motivations. like a prism that reveals itself when light shines upon its fragments (magic <=> fantasy <=> fantaseus <=> escapism <=> detachment from reality <=> refusal of change <=> lack of change <=> empty movement => involution), it’s only the sum of its parts. but it’d be rather awkward for me to keep pulling up that chart everytime, no? so we named that shape ‘involution.’

through ‘involution,’ is how sayo reinterpreted the idea of ‘beatrice.’ her ‘beatrice’ was created out of a coping mechanism, her way to escape from a traumatizing situation, constantly recreated, reborn and discarding the identity of ‘beatrice’ once a more suitable successor arrives. the loop is like so: beatrice is declared -> beatrice is negated (by the creation of a new beatrice, by the creation of or arrival at something that denies the premise of ‘the witch beatrice’) -> beatrice is recreated and declared once more. as it is a loop, any kind of determination of any section of it is wiped upon the next iteration. we witness this process throughout all of the games beatrice plays with battler, as the existence of ‘the witch beatrice’ is synonymous with the magic that battler denies. you probably noticed how similar this is to the way kinzo reframed ‘beatrice,’ making it so that these two versions of ‘the witch’s loop’ is then connected to the narrative loops sayo themself writes, once again matching our previously laid down connections towards involution. two paralleling lines, spiraling in empty movement, enveloped in an even larger instance of itself.

and it is because of this that the beatrice they create is the ‘quintessential beatrice.’ ultimately, at her very fundamental core, ‘beatrice’ as a concept was one born out of love. it was a twisted, farcical, destructive love, but it indeed was ‘love,’ in the way that ryukishi wanted the audience to recognize (pure love that transforms, creates growth and movement  / perversion of pure love that malforms, affirms stagnation and empty movement.)

through being the end point of this fantaseus that ‘the witch beatrice’ had become, sayo’s ‘beatrice’ allows for the maintenance of an even larger fantaseus, one that further affirms the involution that fueled its precedents: (sayo’s ‘beatrice’ (clair (gaap)) // kinzo’s ‘beatrice’ (‘the witch beatrice’ (the ‘beatrice’ imposed on mayu (bice’s self-admitted corpsehood))), and from it, sets up the premise for the nature of the golden land (a place of perpetual satisfaction, happiness, fulfillment without suffering (gratification without forward motion, empty movement) // the representation of the underground gold storage & explosives (instant wealth & power over others, gratification without forward motion— empty movement.)

we return back to our very first section once again: “…the ‘beatrice’ created from bice both as a character in the story sayo created and within the narrative of umineko itself supplements her successive beatrices…” this is what we meant by ‘supplement.’ while textually, the ‘beatrice’ created from bice was the foundation for her antecedents, metanarratively, sayo’s ‘beatrice’ was the one whose basis the others relied upon. the premise of her character was what came first, and then her precedents came into being to supplement her, allowing the audience to better understand the nature of her existence. these two statements are contradictory, but they always point towards the same answer, and they run in parallel, existing simultaneously. indeed, this is why she is a self-maintaining archetype, the ‘quintessential beatrice.’

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