I think yall are looking too much into it. No matter how stupid Leon’s decision about bbb-ing MC without digging more into it is, there is still the issue they offed someone in a rather important position and several guards/paladins, all without as much explanation as a vague ‘‘trust me buddy’’.
If the collar is indeed undetectable, if MC makes no attempts to speak, proving the inability to do so due to the collar, if there is no one else besides Mireil and Thalia who can take it off, then this would have dragged on for days on end and still would’ve ended with MC being executed because we don’t know how long exactly it took Ilya to decode the journal.
I want to feel better about it too. But sometimes people just dumb
My mc hates nothing more than that annoying arcane collar trick that he can never defeat, as of course that is information Mireil took to her grave as by the time mc can get to the old torture chamber of Thaubal there is almost nothing remotely useful left.
I’m thinking that this someone is Ante, in my opinion anyway, plus there’s this scene where my mc is romancing Leon and ask him that he trusted him with his life blah blah blah then Leon said he do that’s why he keep ignoring Ante’s warning.
I just don’t get why she has some sort of agenda on us from the start, It’s understandable if it’s a pragmatic mc since y’know self-interest first, but a noble one we’re literally putting others well being before ourselves.
I’m curious what’s her reaction when Ilya shared what she learned to the whole of param
I also think Ante is suspicious af, but I’ve been badmouthing her in almost every comment I wrote here, so I decided not to form my thoughts into words lmao
Agreed with both of you. Aste has it in for you even during the war, but it’s not yet clear if this is a case of her taking her job very seriously or something else.
It’s said on tumblr that the response would be, “ah, it’s too bad this is what happened, but those were where the facts pointed–just gotta make sure we properly honour them in the aftermath. This is canonically Ante’s stance on the matter as well–whether you read that as callous or practical is up to you, of course.”
And honestly I agree, as far as anyone could tell MC was a random mage who appeared with links to the enemy - I didn’t blame Ante for being cautious. And then after the war they find the mage having either hurt people/drugged them/enchanted them or pretending to have been attacked in order to get to the Saintess and kill them. Ante saw the MC kill the Saintess and several of the people with Ante, and Ante almost died. MC couldn’t defend themselves, the people demanded justice and they had to do something and MC could also play the antagonist if they wanted which would cement their guilt further.
But this isn’t true, is it? If the MC is working with the enemy and they want the Saintesse dead, well, the enemy had the Saintesse in their possession for a long time. If they wanted her dead, there’s absolutely no reason to expose a mole to do it. And this is even ignoring the fact that the MC literally wins the war for Param, so they’re clearly not working against Param and they’re the only reason Param even recovers the Saintesse in the first place.
I’ll give them some honouring, alright, though to be honest if I ever have to pick between offing Ante or Leomar, Saine is getting a promotion. I’m mostly done with either of them, in any case, to the point of irrelevancy. If it comes to the battlefield and I need to off Leomar or Aste to help, say, Yu or Flyss, it’s going to be unhesitatingly done.
If my mc have a chance to kill her in the future he wouldn’t pass it, plus when he has the chance to interact with Leon in the future he’ll probably say this " hey Leon as long as I get the chance to kill Ante, we’re good I’ll even forgive you for roasting me"
Im sorry but I don’t understand. What does that have to do with placing a collar on someone else for a secret unrelated to the one placed on your collar?
I remain convinced you’re not allowed to talk about the collar in the first place*. Even if that isn’t so, the collar can’t be activated by just anyone. It is basically a spell completion: the activator needs to know what they’re doing and, possibly, have the magical ability themselves.
*presumably, if you could it would have come up at some point during your reveal to the Fangs after Mireil’s attack
You are not allowed to talk about anything related to the collar. In the scene before you burn, when Leon is interrogating you, you think about how you are forced not to say anything about Mireil or the bomb and the collar activates, albeit in a more subdued way than usual. Like @JBento says, it is a spell and not someone physically controlling you, it’s like a program executing a pre-established order.
No idea, but I still think Thalia taught her how to cast a collar. From the flashback it looks like she took her as a protege (is that the word?). I wouldn’t be surprised if she taught her enough Arcadian secrets and spells to ‘‘draw out her true potential’’ as a Matheus and serve the cause.
Probably, then let me rephrase: at least as another Arcadian.
Doesn’t really matter where the collar came from, mc needs to learn to defeat those damned things somehow if they ever really want to be free. Sadly it is one of the things they’ll probably never learn how to do themselves.
Besides in the escape route Thalia uses one on the mc herself, maybe she learned that one from sister? As she seems to have offered Eli an actual, if somewhat dishonest deal, in the past, instead of slavery and a collar. Which makes me think Thalia didn’t know that trick then.
I have a sneaking suspicion Eli knows, or has an idea how to defuse it, but they won’t truly help the mc until it is too little too late and besides doing it that way doesn’t gain the mc any worthwhile knowledge themselves as they’d still be helpless against further collaring in the future.
Well there is the whole Thalia is a living lie detector thingy, kinda makes acting hard to do, and my mc won’t ever genuinely be on their side, since on their side he’'ll be nothing more than a slave at the whims of god-empress Thalia.
There is no pretty little lies option with Thalia, which makes honesty about the only course left. It also doesn’t change much except for some casual torture and Eli openly acting as a gaoler. So, while the mc does get punished for disobedience in arcadia there are no real rewards for cooperating, the mc is a slave and a prisoner either way. At least on the escape route we deny Thalia some free, coerced prison labour for a while.
Thalia never trusts the mc (she probably doesn’t trust anybody really) and she’s the only one who really matters in Arcadia. Acting for the benefit of Yu or F gains the mc nothing.
If you want to escape Arcadia, why not be, I don’t know, a little bit more subtle about it? Don’t try to escape at every possible chance, genuinely act like you’re on their side, wait until they trust you, then takeoff
At this point I would take telling them to put a collar on us in exchange for letting us see our friends again ngl, that way we at least have the freedom to work on getting rid of the collar(s). (that is unless tahlia’s observation magic thingy has unlimited range, which would mean the only way to ever be free is to either kill her via overwhelming her or somehow going around the mind reading stuff to backstab her at an opportune moment)
