Entry tags:
Tiny sad Plegian child sacrifices (AKA worldbuilding through obscure details about Henry)
I was discussing this possibility with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mark_asphodel earlier, but I didn't entirely believe in it until I saw a little quote from Jugdral. And then suddenly everything made sense.
So Henry consistently refers to the place he was at as an "institution" (施設). This is a pretty vague word2 -- an orphanage is a type of institution, and a reformatory is a type of institution, and I'm sure there are other things that also use the word. (By the way, mental asylums are considered a type of hospital (病院) instead, though this usage may be strictly modern.) He never exactly clarifies what this institution is, not even once. SF went ahead and decided it was an orphanage, which is not entirely unreasonable. But it's worth noting that it is not necessarily, by canonical decree, an orphanage.
For some time I thought it was a reformatory school. Those places generally served the purpose of taking in kids with criminal records and beating the crap out of them until they turned into good little wage slave Christians. And it seemed quite plausible to me that this could be the case for Henry, feeding into the army.
But then I came across this quote, Henry's battle quote from The Border between Life and Death (DLC).
Context: A guy is making Risen on a map where there are spikes on the floor/walls/ceiling that reduce your hp to 1 at the beginning of each turn.
【ヘンリー】 Henry
気のせいかなぁ～この場所のトゲトゲ、 Maybe it’s just my imagination~ but the thorns[=spikes] in this place
僕のいた施設にあったのとそっくりだ～。are just like the institution I was at~
悪い事すると、こういう床に放置されたなぁ。 Yeah, whenever we did anything bad, we were left on a floor like this one.
死にはしなかったから、まだマシだけど… We didn’t die, so I guess it was a little better, but…
痛いのは嫌だよね。僕も痛いのは嫌い。 Pain is pretty awful, huh? I hate pain too.
だから…何も感じないよう倒してあげる。 So … I’ll defeat you in a way so you won’t feel a thing.
Wait, what. They were punished with spikes?
Ok ok back up. So in aforementioned mean reformatory schools, when you beat the crap out of your kids you beat the crap out of them with whips, paddles, and other implements that are meant to maximize pain and minimize lasting physical damage. Because these places serve a purpose -- they raise kids so that they can actually be useful to society for a little bit until they die from overwork. So you punish them in a way that causes painful welts, and if there's a risk of flaying open skin, you take basic measures to prevent that from festering. (For example, birch wands were often soaked in salty water before application. Helps the pain factor too.) Corporal punishment almost always takes the purpose of the individual under punishment under account -- this is why pimps beat their charges with canes; no scars! If you throw your kids on spikes, they're going to get serious infections, they're going to die, and neither the government nor chimney sweeper teachers are going to pay you, and your charming institution is going to go under.
So... what's up with the spikes?
I considered momentarily that this could actually be a school for torturers and the kids are the lab rats, not the students. But that doesn't really match up with reality, either. Execution/torture with spikes is only ever carried out with either one long spike to impale people on, or a row of spikes set into a clamp to be driven forcibly into flesh and break bone. There's a legend about a guy who was tortured by being kept in a casket with spikes that just barely reached him, which may have been the source of inspiration for the ultimately fictional iron maiden, but that's as close as it gets -- legend.
There are only two things that come close in the real world: the Punji stake, which was specifically designed for guerilla warfare; and the bed of nails, which doesn't actually hurt.
This is about where I was like "maybe it's some weird spiritual ritual like with a bed of nails but too few nails to be painless" and momentarily gave up. Generally speaking I hate the "lolololol satanic ritual" excuse anyway.
But then I came upon this quote from Thracia 776 (Ch 4).
Yurius:
"Ishtar, I think there's a misunderstanding. I am not telling them to kill the children. I just want to educate them to be fitting citizens for my empire. Those who withstand the training will earn high posts and rule over the other inferior citizens. In other words, they will become new nobles, Ishtar. I'm giving them a chance to grasp their happiness."
Now, it's quite clear that most kids do not survive their imprisonment and it's come to be viewed as, essentially, sacrificial execution. But I think Julius's quote is important in that it shows that it's not lining the kids up like animals to a slaughter and chopping their heads off or whatever. There are survivors who "withstand" whatever it is they do to them.
(EDIT 9/25/13: Found this quote, from Ch 10 of FE4.
Yurius:
Have them sent to the capital. I’ll groom them myself.
After breaking all sibling and friendship ties, I’ll match them up in a duel to the death.
Those who survive shall go on to serve Loputousu as faithful new inhabitants of the empire.)
The really uncanny part is that there's some evidence that Henry is one of the "new nobles". Henry describes himself to Ricken (C support) not as a member of the Plegian army or anything, but as "Gangrel's underling," and seems to be well-acquainted with several early-game bosses (who were commanders, mind you!). (An anonymous commenter also raised the fact that he has a reputation in the army as evidence, and in combination with the fact that at the same time "few know of his past" (Japanese version only: その素性を見た者は少ない - Tharja C) I think that does point toward a high status yeah. Anon also points out that Henry has a unique dark mage outfit3 while Tharja doesn't.)
The idea that Henry is one of few survivors of some harsh ritualized Grimleal weeding process is alarmingly plausible. After all, that would explain why their punishment carries a high rate of mortality1 as well as why they took in a kid who was probably known to be a mass murderer2.
1 Worth noting that trial by ordeal is historically well-attested as attempting to find divine signs about someone's innocence.
2 It's very likely that Henry killed a hundred people (Miriel C + Cherche B) very close to where his parents lived, if not being his actual village (Panne B establishes some geography) and while he says he was probably handed over because he was a burden to begin with, one must ask why he wasn't promptly sent off to the gallows. Sending him off to a sacrificial temple may have been the case instead because he made a tremendous display of power, and that's just too much potential for Plegia to pass up. See: Mad King Gangrel, something something Ashnard.
Of course, the child-hunting child-sacrificing practice was only conclusively a Thing in the Lopt Empire. But I think it's not unreasonable to transfer that to Plegia. Everything from the resurrection of their god to their talk of sacrificial offerings reeks of an extended Jugdral reference. Aversa was an adviser to Gangrel even before Validar's reign was set up to get things really moving. I think it's not unlikely that he and his predecessors had been persuaded into quietly setting up establishments to breed the new Grimleal elite.
3 Edit 4/7/13 -- The difference between Henry's outfit and the standard outfit appears to be in the part that flares around his neck, is clearly reminiscent of the symbol on Validar's tome (which is also the shape of Grima's brand) likely associated with the Grimleal.
It would be academically dishonest of me not to mention that I do hesitate in accepting this theory for two reasons.
The first is that Henry certainly markedly lacks loyalty toward Plegia. (I mean, he helps the enemy in order to make the war last longer! [Panne C]) You'd think that'd be an important thing to instill at such an institution. Additionally, it's questionable if he's particularly devout1 or not devout -- on one hand he professes a strong belief in the afterlife, but at the same time says he doesn't believe he's being watched by God (though Grima may be a separate divine entity, as I've only ever seen people refer to Grima as "Lord Grima" rather than God (神様)).
The second is that, quite frankly, I hate excuses along the lines of "because they were Satanists" and while canon pulls the sacrifice thing (with adults) anyway, I'm not especially pleased to add more. In M!Robin/Gangrel A, Gangrel describes it as the state religion (and something useful he doesn't especially believe in). That being so I would have much rather preferred to interpret it as something generally reasonable and separate of Grima himself. But alas.
1 EDIT: In Panne C, Henry indirectly admits to being Grimleal:
【ベルベット】 Panne
あなたの名前など覚える気はないわ。 I don't give a damn about remembering your name!
忌々しいギムレー教徒。 Vexing Grimleal.
【ヘンリー】 Henry
その言い方、やだなぁ。 [Now that's no way to talk to anyone.]
宗教なんて気にしないでよ～。 Don't mind my religion~
EDIT 6/26/13: Why they probably didn't use a heal staff to heal spike wounds.
EDIT 7/19/13: Could it be that they were deliberately torturing children as part of a dark mage creation/selection process?
2EDIT 9/9/13: Contemporary Japanese "orphanages," places where children are raised by the state, can be referred to in common speech as 施設. (The twins' aunt uses the word this way in Marumo no Okite, Episode 1.) However, I maintain that Henry is not referring to some kind of cute cuddly family business a la Lucius and Libra -- Lugh refers to his orphanage (in A support with Raigh) as 孤児院 (gojiin), and Libra's epilogue uses the same word. I think the shisetsu word is meant to imply that it's a state institution meant for raising children, possibly with the difference being that the parents don't legally surrender the child so much as dump them there to be raised, hence Olivia's remark of "why didn't they come back for you?" Still, whatever that place was, it did have spikes, so I'd hesitate to assume that these Plegian child dumping grounds are anything... normal.
mark_asphodel earlier, but I didn't entirely believe in it until I saw a little quote from Jugdral. And then suddenly everything made sense.So Henry consistently refers to the place he was at as an "institution" (施設). This is a pretty vague word2 -- an orphanage is a type of institution, and a reformatory is a type of institution, and I'm sure there are other things that also use the word. (By the way, mental asylums are considered a type of hospital (病院) instead, though this usage may be strictly modern.) He never exactly clarifies what this institution is, not even once. SF went ahead and decided it was an orphanage, which is not entirely unreasonable. But it's worth noting that it is not necessarily, by canonical decree, an orphanage.
For some time I thought it was a reformatory school. Those places generally served the purpose of taking in kids with criminal records and beating the crap out of them until they turned into good little wage slave Christians. And it seemed quite plausible to me that this could be the case for Henry, feeding into the army.
But then I came across this quote, Henry's battle quote from The Border between Life and Death (DLC).
Context: A guy is making Risen on a map where there are spikes on the floor/walls/ceiling that reduce your hp to 1 at the beginning of each turn.
【ヘンリー】 Henry
気のせいかなぁ～この場所のトゲトゲ、 Maybe it’s just my imagination~ but the thorns[=spikes] in this place
僕のいた施設にあったのとそっくりだ～。are just like the institution I was at~
悪い事すると、こういう床に放置されたなぁ。 Yeah, whenever we did anything bad, we were left on a floor like this one.
死にはしなかったから、まだマシだけど… We didn’t die, so I guess it was a little better, but…
痛いのは嫌だよね。僕も痛いのは嫌い。 Pain is pretty awful, huh? I hate pain too.
だから…何も感じないよう倒してあげる。 So … I’ll defeat you in a way so you won’t feel a thing.
Wait, what. They were punished with spikes?
Ok ok back up. So in aforementioned mean reformatory schools, when you beat the crap out of your kids you beat the crap out of them with whips, paddles, and other implements that are meant to maximize pain and minimize lasting physical damage. Because these places serve a purpose -- they raise kids so that they can actually be useful to society for a little bit until they die from overwork. So you punish them in a way that causes painful welts, and if there's a risk of flaying open skin, you take basic measures to prevent that from festering. (For example, birch wands were often soaked in salty water before application. Helps the pain factor too.) Corporal punishment almost always takes the purpose of the individual under punishment under account -- this is why pimps beat their charges with canes; no scars! If you throw your kids on spikes, they're going to get serious infections, they're going to die, and neither the government nor chimney sweeper teachers are going to pay you, and your charming institution is going to go under.
So... what's up with the spikes?
I considered momentarily that this could actually be a school for torturers and the kids are the lab rats, not the students. But that doesn't really match up with reality, either. Execution/torture with spikes is only ever carried out with either one long spike to impale people on, or a row of spikes set into a clamp to be driven forcibly into flesh and break bone. There's a legend about a guy who was tortured by being kept in a casket with spikes that just barely reached him, which may have been the source of inspiration for the ultimately fictional iron maiden, but that's as close as it gets -- legend.
There are only two things that come close in the real world: the Punji stake, which was specifically designed for guerilla warfare; and the bed of nails, which doesn't actually hurt.
This is about where I was like "maybe it's some weird spiritual ritual like with a bed of nails but too few nails to be painless" and momentarily gave up. Generally speaking I hate the "lolololol satanic ritual" excuse anyway.
But then I came upon this quote from Thracia 776 (Ch 4).
Yurius:
"Ishtar, I think there's a misunderstanding. I am not telling them to kill the children. I just want to educate them to be fitting citizens for my empire. Those who withstand the training will earn high posts and rule over the other inferior citizens. In other words, they will become new nobles, Ishtar. I'm giving them a chance to grasp their happiness."
Now, it's quite clear that most kids do not survive their imprisonment and it's come to be viewed as, essentially, sacrificial execution. But I think Julius's quote is important in that it shows that it's not lining the kids up like animals to a slaughter and chopping their heads off or whatever. There are survivors who "withstand" whatever it is they do to them.
(EDIT 9/25/13: Found this quote, from Ch 10 of FE4.
Yurius:
Have them sent to the capital. I’ll groom them myself.
After breaking all sibling and friendship ties, I’ll match them up in a duel to the death.
Those who survive shall go on to serve Loputousu as faithful new inhabitants of the empire.)
The really uncanny part is that there's some evidence that Henry is one of the "new nobles". Henry describes himself to Ricken (C support) not as a member of the Plegian army or anything, but as "Gangrel's underling," and seems to be well-acquainted with several early-game bosses (who were commanders, mind you!). (An anonymous commenter also raised the fact that he has a reputation in the army as evidence, and in combination with the fact that at the same time "few know of his past" (Japanese version only: その素性を見た者は少ない - Tharja C) I think that does point toward a high status yeah. Anon also points out that Henry has a unique dark mage outfit3 while Tharja doesn't.)
The idea that Henry is one of few survivors of some harsh ritualized Grimleal weeding process is alarmingly plausible. After all, that would explain why their punishment carries a high rate of mortality1 as well as why they took in a kid who was probably known to be a mass murderer2.
1 Worth noting that trial by ordeal is historically well-attested as attempting to find divine signs about someone's innocence.
2 It's very likely that Henry killed a hundred people (Miriel C + Cherche B) very close to where his parents lived, if not being his actual village (Panne B establishes some geography) and while he says he was probably handed over because he was a burden to begin with, one must ask why he wasn't promptly sent off to the gallows. Sending him off to a sacrificial temple may have been the case instead because he made a tremendous display of power, and that's just too much potential for Plegia to pass up. See: Mad King Gangrel, something something Ashnard.
Of course, the child-hunting child-sacrificing practice was only conclusively a Thing in the Lopt Empire. But I think it's not unreasonable to transfer that to Plegia. Everything from the resurrection of their god to their talk of sacrificial offerings reeks of an extended Jugdral reference. Aversa was an adviser to Gangrel even before Validar's reign was set up to get things really moving. I think it's not unlikely that he and his predecessors had been persuaded into quietly setting up establishments to breed the new Grimleal elite.
3 Edit 4/7/13 -- The difference between Henry's outfit and the standard outfit appears to be in the part that flares around his neck, is clearly reminiscent of the symbol on Validar's tome (which is also the shape of Grima's brand) likely associated with the Grimleal.
It would be academically dishonest of me not to mention that I do hesitate in accepting this theory for two reasons.
The first is that Henry certainly markedly lacks loyalty toward Plegia. (I mean, he helps the enemy in order to make the war last longer! [Panne C]) You'd think that'd be an important thing to instill at such an institution. Additionally, it's questionable if he's particularly devout1 or not devout -- on one hand he professes a strong belief in the afterlife, but at the same time says he doesn't believe he's being watched by God (though Grima may be a separate divine entity, as I've only ever seen people refer to Grima as "Lord Grima" rather than God (神様)).
The second is that, quite frankly, I hate excuses along the lines of "because they were Satanists" and while canon pulls the sacrifice thing (with adults) anyway, I'm not especially pleased to add more. In M!Robin/Gangrel A, Gangrel describes it as the state religion (and something useful he doesn't especially believe in). That being so I would have much rather preferred to interpret it as something generally reasonable and separate of Grima himself. But alas.
1 EDIT: In Panne C, Henry indirectly admits to being Grimleal:
【ベルベット】 Panne
あなたの名前など覚える気はないわ。 I don't give a damn about remembering your name!
忌々しいギムレー教徒。 Vexing Grimleal.
【ヘンリー】 Henry
その言い方、やだなぁ。 [Now that's no way to talk to anyone.]
宗教なんて気にしないでよ～。 Don't mind my religion~
EDIT 6/26/13: Why they probably didn't use a heal staff to heal spike wounds.
EDIT 7/19/13: Could it be that they were deliberately torturing children as part of a dark mage creation/selection process?
2EDIT 9/9/13: Contemporary Japanese "orphanages," places where children are raised by the state, can be referred to in common speech as 施設. (The twins' aunt uses the word this way in Marumo no Okite, Episode 1.) However, I maintain that Henry is not referring to some kind of cute cuddly family business a la Lucius and Libra -- Lugh refers to his orphanage (in A support with Raigh) as 孤児院 (gojiin), and Libra's epilogue uses the same word. I think the shisetsu word is meant to imply that it's a state institution meant for raising children, possibly with the difference being that the parents don't legally surrender the child so much as dump them there to be raised, hence Olivia's remark of "why didn't they come back for you?" Still, whatever that place was, it did have spikes, so I'd hesitate to assume that these Plegian child dumping grounds are anything... normal.