The Holy Grail of Eris

Episodes 5-6

Who was Scarlett Castiel? Was she a villain or a victim, a society belle replete with power or a pawn in someone else's games? One thing we know for sure after episode six is that she certainly didn't try to kill Cecilia. That was Aisha Huxley, née Spencer, a young woman who desperately wanted to be Scarlett. In her mind, killing Cecilia is what Scarlett would have done herself, and in so doing, Aisha would feel closer to her idol. But instead her actions led to Scarlett's execution, and Aisha has been wasting away ever since, slowly killing herself with the numbing power of Jackal's Paradise. Things didn't play out the way she envisioned at all.

That feels significant. Even without questioning why Aisha didn't step forward when Scarlett was arrested and slated for execution, the events of these two episodes should make us wonder why the king was so eager to kill the young Castiel lady. The smirk on his face in the flashback seems to indicate that he didn't care about the reality of Scarlett's innocence or guilt; he had an opportunity to get rid of her and he took it. The bigger issue is why. Did Scarlett really have so much power that he was afraid of her influence over his son? Or was there something more going on?

I've asked a lot of questions in this review so far, and I think that's one of The Holy Grail of Eris' strengths. It runs like a fair play mystery in that it presents us with information and the means to analyze it, but whether or not it's enough to fill in all the gaps remains uncertain. Cecilia and Lily especially leave us with more questions than answers as we try to sort through their motives. Cecilia is very clear in episode five that she has zero interest in providing her husband with an heir, so whatever power she's after isn't related to that. Since that's the primary way a woman in the sort of pseudo-19th century European world the story is set in, that should definitely raise a few eyebrows. The other women exercising power we've seen are doing it behind the scenes, but Cecilia is in a position to take more overt action.

Of course, one of the primary reasons people think Connie is like Scarlett is that she's taking action; even when she's not actually providing Scarlett with a body, she's actively investigating. (Her fiancé seems to like that, which is interesting.) Scarlett's overt actions may have led to her death in some way, so Connie's taking a real risk here – especially since she's making a few people decidedly nervous. Those people include Scarlett, who is less than pleased that Connie prevents Aisha from committing suicide, but the key difference is that Connie is playing a long game. She wants Aisha to live and suffer for what she's done, while Scarlett wants the satisfaction of a fleeting moment. Cecilia seems more aligned with Connie's view of things, and that might make them a better detective/villain pair than Scarlett and Cecilia ever were.

Clearly Daeg Gallus thinks so, too, because they take some real steps to neutralize Connie in episode five, going so far as to kidnap her friend Kate. More than anything else, this firmly allies Cecilia with the group since the main kidnapper Salvador is obviously Vado, the man providing Cecilia with her special tea and who has kidnapped Prince Ulysses at her request.

It's worth taking a moment to note the preponderance of literary names in this story, which may or may not be important. Constance and Randolph of the Richelieu family both have names originating in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, while Cecilia takes her name from Fanny Burney's 1792 novel about a social ingenue. Ulysses, is of course, is "Odysseus" from the Latin translation of The Odyssey, and Scarlett could be tied to either The Scarlet Letter or Scarlet O'Hara of Gone with the Wind. How these literary allusions play into the characters and their motivations isn't fully clear yet, but there are too many of them to simply brush off as a coincidence.

We're only halfway through this story. That should make the revelation of Aisha's role in Scarlett's execution slightly less important than it seems in the moment, because there was obviously more than just her clumsy efforts involved. The waters are darker and deeper than even Scarlett believes, and it's a good thing Connie's coming into her own, because keeping her head above water is going to get much harder.

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The Holy Grail of Eris is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.