Q:Speaking of Virgilia, there's something that bugs me. In EP3, she's first referred as another Beatrice and only after she goes talk to Battler does she name herself Virgilia. Yet, from EP4 onwards, she always calls herself for her new name even in flashback scenes. Was her calling herself Beatrice part of Beato's narrative for EP3 and once that was over she didn't need to twist the story anymore? Or is it something else?
Well…
among the ‘offscreen truths’ of Umineko we know that the birth of Virgilia was due to a retcon. Originally the character of Virgilia wasn’t planned but when Ryukishi saw the readers’ reaction to EP 2 scrapped his projects for Ep 3, Land of the Golden Witch, and created Banquet of the Golden Witch including in it an unplanned character, Virgilia.
So it’s entirely possible that, when Ep 3 was written, Ryukishi still hadn’t planned Virgilia’s whole background story… or that later he had to retcon it.
Narratively speaking the story more or less old.
We’re basically told that Virgilia was the previous Beatrice and that later she gave up that name and passed it to Beatrice when Beatrice became a witch. Meaning that since in the flashbacks in Ep 4 Beatrice is already a witch, it makes sense that Virgilia calls herself just Virgilia.
Of course the story she tells to Battler comes a little fishy as it seems to imply she came up with the name ‘Virgilia’ only right then and she had been sleeping in Kumasawa till after she had passed her name to Beato.
…but since we know that the scene in which she fought Beato was purely fantasy and that she’s actually out to trick Battler, this slight discrepancy can be explained as part of her plan to deceive Battler.
Note that the Meta in Ep 5 confirms that Virgilia used to call herself Beatrice in the past…
…although we know that this is a story that Sayo retconned as originally it was Gaap that was called Beatrice…
…then Sayo decided to claim that name and turn Gaap into Beato’s friend…
…and likely, when Kumasawa joined Sayo and Maria in their games in which they pretended to be witches, she ended up further expanding and twisting the story by making Kumasawa Beatrice’s teacher and the previous ‘Beatrice’ as well as Virgilia.
So basically Virgilia’s backstory wasn’t a constant but was changed as Sayo grew…
…even if we see that here and there Ryukishi ended up trampling in his own retcons.
Let’s pick Ep 4.
Beato introduces Virgilia to Sakutarou (and Maria?… it’s unclear if Maria knows her already)…
…and later Virgilia will sign Maria’s diary to ‘acknowledge’ Sakutarou’s existence…
…which allows Sakutarou to have a partially human form…
…but actually we saw in the previous scene that Virgilia got the name ‘Virgilia’ from Maria and while Sakutarou was present and already had his human form.
So yes, it gets messy…
Of course, since Maria and Sayo has no problem to change their own world and the narrative in it, and we learn of Virgilia and Sakutarou’s meeting from Maria’s diary, we can explain this logic error telling ourselves that Maria might have been deliberately written the scene as happening differently.
Truth to be told it’s likely a logic error as in something like Umineko they can happen.
As it doesn’t impact horribly the storyline though, I think we can let it slide… ^_- but it helps to remind us that, when all is said and done, some details just aren’t meant to fit smoothly because mistakes here and there were made.
But well, Ryukishi is just human after all, and it would be scary if he never made mistakes… ^____^;;;
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