What Happens
Knight of Skeleton
Camping alone in the woods, Guts encounters a mysterious stranger – a knight with a skull-shaped helmet who gives Guts, whom he calls the “Struggler,” a warning: in one year the Eclipse will occur, when Guts and all his friends will be gathered together with “those yet unseen of the fleshless flesh” to face a death they cannot escape.
It is raining back in Windham as Griffith is admitted to Princess Charlotte’s room through the window. She tries to tell him about the emotional turmoil she’s been through in the past half-year, what with his departure for battle and the death of her stepmother, but Griffith just kisses her.
Start of the Everlasting Night
Griffith has no problem seducing Charlotte and proceeds to, ahem, pluck her rose. A maid making her rounds hears noises coming from the Princess’s room and spots them through the keyhole. In the morning Griffith leaves the lodestone Charlotte gave him and slips out the window before she wakes up, but is arrested in the yard. Charlotte tries to act like nothing happened when her father arrives, but between the water on the floor, the marks on her neck and, when he yanks away the covers, the blood on the sheets, he has all the proof he needs.
The Fallen Hawk
The King is furious that Griffith would do something so above his station, whipping and lashing him in the dungeons as he vents his anger, going on about the hopes he had for Griffith and how disappointing it is that he’d throw it all away by taking advantage of a naïve girl. Griffith calls him out on that, saying he just wants Charlotte for himself, which only heightens the King’s fury. Ordering the jailer to do whatever he wants so long as Griffith is not killed and swearing the guards to secrecy, he heads for Charlotte’s room. As she sleeps off her distress he reflects on how she looks so much like her mother, his first wife, but she wakes up as he strips away her nightgown and starts to lick her breasts.
Demise of a Dream
Horrified, Charlotte tries to resist, kicking her father in the face as she calls out for Griffith. He slinks away in defeat, blaming Griffith for everything.
In an open field outside of town, the Hawks are wondering why Griffith called them out unexpectedly. Pippin’s sudden shout gets everyone’s attention, but Midland troops have already surrounded them. As crossbow bolts rain down Casca shouts for everyone to form ranks for a breakthrough to safety. Then five bolts are headed in her direction…
In the dungeons, the jailer sees Griffith’s Behelit around his neck and decides to keep it for himself. He is startled to see it open an eye and drops it, calling it a waste as it fall through a nearby grate into the water below.
Arms Tournament
Many of the best soldiers and knights of the land have gathered for a tournament, but none are a match for the mysterious, turban-clad foreigner named Silat. Decrying the fighting arts of these lands as boring and simple, he seeks a worthy challenger, and Guts feels he’s the man for the job. He manages to defeat his amazingly-swift opponent, and on seeing his victory the hosting lord offers him a job. He held the tournament to recruit soldiers for an upcoming expedition to hunt down a gang of bandits in his territory, one that was active in the hundred-year war and has a woman commander. That gets Guts’s attention…
Fugitives
The Hawks have been on the run for a year. Most are dead or deserted, and those that remain are exhausted. Casca tells Judeau their spies in Windham report that the torture Griffith’s been undergoing seems to have stopped, making this the perfect opportunity to try and rescue him. Mercenaries led by Silat attack the camp, and Casca is no match for the foreigner, but she’s saved by the timely arrival of Guts.
The Fighter
Guts fights Silat and manages to overcome everything thrown at him, from chakrams to steel whips, even breaking through the latter to deliver a strike Silat barely dodges. Their morale boosted by Guts’s return, the other Hawks rout the mercenaries, and Silat orders a retreat.
Comrades in Arms
Guts is surprised to learn that Griffith fell apart the day after he left. Ever since the only one keeping them together has been Casca. Judeau also tells Guts that after their escape Casca was comatose for three days from the wounds she received, but sometimes she called out to Griffith…and Guts. And speak of the devil, she wants to talk to him alone.
Confession
Once they’re alone Casca attacks Guts, blaming him for everything that’s happened, and for making Griffith weak. Once he finally gets her to stop she admits she’s worn herself out trying to keep Griffith’s dream alive for him, but she can’t take it anymore. She lets herself fall off the nearby cliff as she faints, but Guts catches her. She calls him a fool, but he kisses her.
Wounds, Chapters 1-2
Casca worries that by admitting her feelings for Guts it will invalidate everything she has felt and done for Griffith in the past. They have sex, but the act triggers Guts’s memories of Donovan and Gambino, and in reaction he almost strangles her. He blurts out the grief he still feels over Gambino’s death, even calling him “father.” But Casca reminds him that she’s shared her weaknesses with him, and her gratitude for what he’s done for her. They go at it again, and Guts is reminded of the time Gambino gave him medicine as a kid.
Commentary
Guts was wrong – not only is losing him is not something Griffith can easily get over, he’s had such an effect on Griffith he can make him act out-of-character even if he’s not there. He obviously knows how foolish deflowering Princess Charlotte would be, even without her father’s extreme possessiveness. He barely even tries to resist when he’s arrested – only a token, possibly reflex, reach for his sword (which he doesn’t have thanks to Guts breaking it), and his expression is rather blank as they lead him away.
Then again, it’s not the guards he wants to defy, but the King. Given how he “thought it was strange” that Charlotte, a royal easily capable of marriage at her age, was still unwed when over the last several years “there must have been many profitable proposals of marriage…rather, political marriage is the way of the world for warring nations” he obviously figured things out some time ago; not that that’s really a surprise for someone as astute as he is. Problem is, using that knowledge primarily to piss off the King, especially when he’s got you chained in the dungeon at his mercy, probably isn’t the best way to use it. It’s even worse when you know, as Griffith undoubtedly did, that it’ll put the rest of the Hawks in danger as well.
The reason Griffith would do something so reckless lies in his current state of mind. Not only was losing Guts his first real defeat, but he was someone Griffith thought he had in hand, whom he trusted to the point of showing him his darker side and make a key part of his plans. When you not only have someone that valuable, but think he’s entirely in your control, realizing he’s strong enough to break away from you can be humiliating when you’re as self-serving as Griffith is. The whole affair threw him out of sorts and led him to assert his hold over the other person who’s key to his plans. Fortunately, she’s a sheltered princess who’s all his after a grand total of ‘can I come in’ and a two-sentence seduction (I’m sure Corkus wishes he could get girls that easily).
Granted, it’s in no small part the King’s fault the whole situation happened. As Griffith pointed out, having Charlotte marry would have brought many advantages – alliances, land, funds, fresh troops for the war. Instead, the King held onto her as a shield against his losses and failures as a king. He hasn’t, as Griffith puts it, “tried to harness that monster [you envision]”, accepting the difficulties he’ll have to face and not letting it bother him when he uses them to further his own ends. In a way, and this illustrates it, the King is actually a lot like Griffith. Both have had heavy responsibilities on their shoulders, with the lives of hundreds resting on the decisions they make, but only Griffith truly embraced them, which is why he’s managed to thrive whereas the King has never been more than a mediocrity. Charlotte is a prime example of this – the King loved her, and it prevented him from letting go of her when that might have helped him and Midland, whereas Griffith regards her only as a tool to be used for his own gain. And given how the wedge that now exists between Charlotte and her father works to his advantage, I find it hard to believe there wasn’t at least some planning behind his actions. It was probably conceived in the middle of his post-Guts funk, but it’s just possible he was still thinking ahead.
Not much to say about Guts and Casca right now, although the Skull Knight does make an interesting comment on why Guts is able to survive no matter what gets thrown at him. You can’t get much “closer to death” than being born from a corpse, and he’s been surrounded by it for literally his entire life. He’s just so familiar with it he can see it coming almost on instinct and therefore avoid it.
Casca may seem torn between Guts and Griffith, but it’s probably not as much as she thinks. True, things may have just turned out as they did because Guts is there and she’s kinda vulnerable at the moment, but there’s more to it than that. She’s aware Griffith is beyond her reach, but the love and respect she feels for him is too strong to easily let go, and is even harder now that she’s been acting in his name for a year. But once she’s had a chance to vent her frustrations she remembers that Guts is the one who truly cares about her for its own sake.
No comments:
Post a Comment