Sebastian is a young demon?

That's pretty much my thoughts on it. For a demon, he might be "young" and somewhat inexperienced, despite any humble bragging or outright boasting.

At some point, the demon gives up "messily sampling" souls and starts accepting contracts. But the only hints we have about his previous contracts suggest there might not have been many. In fact, we only have hints about two previous contracts: one in the second half of the 18th century in Austria and maybe one in the later 15th century in Italy. Those assessments are based on things he says about the Viennese Waltz and the outfits he changes into when our earl seems shocked by his first appearance as a human.

If he slept between those contracts, that means a lot of time spent in his own realm, away from human contact.

I wouldn't say our earl is the first child he's ever interacted with, but he's definitely the only child contractor he's ever had, and he says so. He admits he's not used to caring for a human who can do so little for themselves, and he's not used to masters who expect the demon to cook from scratch, appear to do things the human way, or generally "act human". And even though Sebastian suggests a human lifetime isn't a long amount of time for him to wait for his "meal", Othello suggests that most contracts don't last long at all, because most humans have very simple wishes when they make contracts.

The demon learns knowledge and skills from contracts, and judging by the things he didn't have skills with or knowledge about (like choosing dish patterns [according to the Character Guide], making tea, cooking, bathing a person, water temperatures that harm humans, particular illnesses like asthma, or even how to get the best work out of the other servants), he's never had contracts before where those skills or that knowledge was required.

Sebastian as the main character

Yeah, he’s officially the main character, according to Yana-san. I don’t recall any tweets specifically about that, but she did say so in one of the art books… was it Artworks 2? We also have to consider the fact she went to Editor K with “I want to write about a demon butler”, not “I want to write about an aristocratic boy”. In fact, it looks to me like she recycled an older character concept she’d originally meant for another story to become our “Ciel” Phantomhive; his name was Ao (which means “blue”), and he was some sort of young, aristocratic detective. I used to have an image of him, from her old blog, but I haven’t been able to find that image again these past few years.

Anyway, yes, this means Sebastian should go through some sort of character development. And, even though he’s centuries (or even millennia) old, among demons he might be considered “young”. So, I do often call this series the demon’s Bildungsroman — his coming-of-age story.

I’ve got some old posts about this, so you might check the tags of this post for more information. Probably find the most under #series end, #end of the series, #series ending, #end of the manga, and maybe something like #predictions, #emotions, #epilogue, #character development, #soul devouring, and #soul effect. Maybe even #devoured soul effect? Also please see the Tagging Masterpost for a link that’s about this topic. How and when the series might end.

But mostly, I expect for Sebastian to get the meal he’s been promised. Then, when he eats our earl’s soul, something will happen that he wasn’t expecting. Like a blossoming of emotions that he didn’t know he could feel — love, loss, shame, regret, a heavy burden — stuff like that. The sorts of emotions that make humans cry. He previously told Beast that he didn’t “yet” have a “jot” of understanding about such things as love or loss. Then there’s the scene in the witch arc, where Sebastian is crying, but it’s just from mustard gas, which he had never encountered before. He even says to himself he doesn’t have the ability to cry from emotions. I think he’s gained a little taste of these, but our earl’s soul is full of such emotions.

Demons might be the epitope of “you are what you eat”. Othello says that most demon contracts are over so quickly because the humans who make contracts usually have simple wishes that are easily granted. This suggests those humans themselves are somewhat simple. But he also says there have been notable exceptions, and I think our earl is one of them. Plus, Sebastian has accepted a contract he knows might take a while to fulfill, due to the terms placed upon it. He’s ok with that, since a human lifespan isn’t very long to him, and he thinks the wait will make the finished meal all the tastier. Yana-san calls him a “perverted gourmet” because he likes to “prepare” his meals in a way that alters the taste; he wants to put his Young Master through a lot of ordeals in order to “season his soul”. And his goal is to make this soul taste different than others he’s had before. I think he will succeed in that!

End of the series

@ickosovo I'm not sure why these go to my email but not my inbox. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I'm not counting this as a 🎉 because I have not been able to verify you follow the blog. Besides, this was a basic theory ask, not a specified task, like artwork.

I have at least half a dozen posts about that. Some of them are pretty detailed, too. 😊

Check out #series end, #end of the series, #series ending, #end of the manga, #soul devouring, #dec 13 1889, and other tags about what I expect to happen, if Sebastian gets to devour our earl’s soul. I’ve included a bunch of those tags on this post, too, so you can just click to see what comes up. There’s also a link in the Tagging Masterpost called “How and when the series might end.”

Here’s a pretty good post about it from March 19, 2020.