A Very Normal Misericorde Theory
I’ve recently played the two volumes of the visual novel Misericorde by XEECEE. I have some theories.
The series is still not done, and I’m not sure if the third part will even be the story’s conclusion. Still! It’s a mystery story set in the 1400s about a nun’s murder in an abbey. It’s like Name of the Rose but if you had a little less Sean Connery and a lot more gay.
What I’m trying to say is that the series has intrigued me. It has good good writing, a good visual style, there’s a nun convinced she’d defeat every god-forsaken duck that crossed her path, the mysteries are captivating in spite of the slower burn and overall I’d definitely recommend it to anyone even that’s into any of the words I just used.
Which is why, if you haven’t had a chance to play it yourself, you should stop reading this and go play it yourself, because everyone past this point will be spoilers as I give my thoughts on what I think is going on in this story. I won’t bother recapping any important events or provide context unless I absolutely have to. Meaning, if you haven’t played the games, this should be completely incomprehensible.
I will note that two important things. First – I haven’t looked up any discussions or theories regarding the games; if I happen to retread old ground or just give out theories already stated, I do apologies. Two – I haven’t bothered rereading anything. At best, I double checked some images in the gallery. All my musings here are, as a result, based on off-the-cuff speculation that could very well just be wrong because I didn’t remember something in the story that contradicted it.
Actually, a third note – I guess there’s a non-zero chance that some of these ideas turn out to be correct in the end. If this ends up unintentionally spoiling some of the experience for later entries, I do sincerely apologize.
With that out of the way… Let’s see…
Where should I start?
Part One: The Mole
Let’s start with Katherine’s portrait. I think it holds the key to this entire mystery.
At the end of Volume Two, a mole is explicitly painted onto the portrait Flora made. However, we’d already seen the portrait before – in the future sections, starring Alex. It was on the book cover Alex got.
The book cover doesn’t have the mole.
(Incidentally, the eye positioning is also different, but the mole, I think, is more critical here.)
What does this mean? There shouldn’t be another copy of this portrait, since the original, unfinished work had been left in the basement to begin with. Even if we try to assume someone else painted Katherine’s portrait on the book, the portraits look too similar for anyone besides Flora to have been the one to make them. If the portrait in the book is a recreation of Flora’s portrait, then there’s no reason to leave the mole out.
Therefore, this is a contradiction. The future does not match the past. The past has a detail that the future does not have.
Conclusion: the past does not tie to the future. There are two timelines.
We will call the future we see as Alex as belonging to Timeline Alpha. We will call the past Hedwig witnesses as Timeline Beta.
Why do these different timelines exist, though? Were they always parallel and independent?
I doubt it.
I think something like this is much more likely:
- Timeline Alpha happens first. In it, the chain of events does not permit for Katherine to add her mole to her own portrait.
- The future of Timeline Alpha happens. We see the book cover lacking the mole.
- Someone from Timeline Alpha travels back in the past and changes historical events. This leads to the existence of Timeline Beta.
- Timeline Beta is what we see as Hedwig. Part of the events are almost certainly a direct result of someone from the future tampering with the past.
- These tamperings eventually lead to Katherine putting a mole on her portrait.
This resolves the contradiction.
Part Two: The Interloper
The next question is figuring out who the ‘someone’ traveling back in time actually is.
Money is on the mystery woman Alex comes across. She seems to know quite a bit more than she lets on. In fact, some of her lines seem to suggest she has almost omniscient knowledge – both guiding Alex and warning her.
She’s the Interloper.
She’s also, I’m fairly sure, Catherine. She fits the given description of her – primarily the red hair.
How can Catherine exist in the future, though? She’s dead, isn’t she?
Here’s one way to resolve the contradiction:
- Catherine from Timeline Alpha goes into the future of Timeline Alpha.
- She then goes back in time, the act of which creates Timeline Beta into existence.
Going to the future doesn’t necessarily trigger the creation of a new timeline – you disappearing in the past is just a part of the past. You going back – assuming you are traveling through time physically, which Catherine must be doing, since the gap is several centuries – would then result in two of you now existing in the new timeline.
But here, it’s not actually an issue. Not if Beta’s Catherine had also gone forward in time just before or right AFTER Alpha’s Catherine turned up. The latter idea is probably what happens, actually (the diagram may therefore look a bit misleading but I’m giving myself some leeway).
The idea is that Alpha Catherine can tell Beta Catherine everything about the future of the Alpha timeline. The two can then agree on what changes Alpha Catherine would do, and Beta Catherine would validate the results by going into the future.
This repeats ad infinitum, across many many iterations. Their goal is likely trying to stop a massacre in the abbey.
Eventually, with Beta Catherine going off into the future, Alpha Catherine takes Beta Catherine’s place. She uses her experience to inspire the women and pushes their interests even further, appearing steadily to go mad from the perspective of the others. Her ‘phases’ are things she’s trying out to change the course of events.
Part Three: Who Kills Catherine?
If all of this is true, then it leads to one last important question:
Who kills Catherine?
Seemingly, we’re back where we started. None of this achieved anything. There’s still a Catherine.
But that’s not strictly true. We’ve learned people can travel to and from the past. Just as our victim can go to and fro – can our killer not as well?
Here, we must once again return to the future of Alpha timeline. In it, Catherine appears to signal down a driver called Jim, who she claims to know, but who doesn’t seem to know her.
You get it, right?
Jim is an elderly James.
In the Alpha timeline, James, through unknown circumstances, traveled into the 20th century and became Jim.
Because of the fact that Jim will go on to try and create a conspiracy to murder the prime minster and potentially murder Alex, Catherine goes back in time to try and stop James from going into the future in the Beta timeline.
…But the question still remains – why do things go wrong? Who kills Catherine?
Well, it should be the only person with any motive to actually stop her, right?
Jim himself.
So, what if it’s something like this?
Both Catherine AND Jim, for circumstances we don’t know, got sent back in time, to the abbey.
Jim then killed Catherine. Catherine’s cohorts framed the younger version of him, James, as retaliation.
Jim, in turn, takes up the role of the Devil. He uses the disguise to keep the sisters away from him – the ones who believe he is the actual Devil will keep away because… he would be the actual Devil, and the others will simply chalk his roaming to their imagination. Those ‘in the know’ would likely be smart enough not to challenge him head-on due to his combat experience.
Throughout the story, Jim pressures, scares and chases those who get close to Hedwig’s cell.
This is because Jim spends his time studying the engraving – the ‘teleportation spell’ – that can, in reality, send someone forward in time. He experiments with it and ends up sending himself forward in time in short bursts. The goal is to recreate the same conditions that sent him to the future back in the Alpha timeline, so he can ensure the Beta James gets to live the same kind of life as he did.
This is why the Devil keeps going in the direction of Hedwig’s cell and why he disappears. He enters the secret passage and uses the glyph to disappear a little into the future. This is how he avoided detection for most of Hedwig’s stay in the abbey and how he kept appearing seemingly at random.
The Devil also keeps sneaking into the Mother Superior’s room through the window she never locks, in order to take himself out of his cell at night. This is not only to give himself some pity but to also share useful information on the future – information that James likely doesn’t understand. Jim keeps his younger self on a leash so that he doesn’t escape – he needs James to stay put and not run away never to be seen again – as he keeps saying he would. Jim still needs time to figure out how the damn engraving works.
But he doesn’t succeed in this. After trying to chase away Flora and Hedwig, Catherine’s inner circle takes action and steals the glyph. They then go to James and use the glyph to send him into the future – unknowingly to the 19th century, causing similar events to play out in the Beta timeline still.
Jim, not knowing what happened and believing he’d failed, sets off on a killing spree – starting with Mother Superior. The small-minded and paranoid Bishop even assists him, believing him to be the actual Devil.
The Devil then chases Hedwig… but something unexpected happens.
He’s old. He’s managed to run quite a bit due to the good constitution he got in the army. But he’s still an old man. In his last moments, he suffers from a heart attack. He tries to ask Hedwig for help and untangle his mask so he could breathe, but she kills him on the spot.
Through the crack in the mask, she recognizes James’ eyes – but nothing else. She doesn’t realize how much he’s aged, and she’s too dazed to pay much attention afterwards.
As I said, it’s likely that some version of this has played out numerous times. Catherine kept going back in time and giving herself information about the future. That Catherine would then go into the future, and the one from the other timeline would stay behind to use her knowledge to change it.
If she failed, the Catherine that got sent would have to go back and try again.
It’s likely that this incident with Jim has now happened numerous times and that, typically as a result of Hedwig’s action or inaction, James kept being sent forward to the 20th century to become Jim, leading to Catherine needing to constantly go back and try again.
It’s probable that in the Alpha timeline, Catherine wanted to manipulate Alex and give her the information she needed to stop Jim prematurely from eventually succeeding in whatever he’s planning. This failed. It’s likely something specific happens that ends up sending both of them back constantly. Maybe it’s an after-effect of the spell itself?
Either way, Catherine has the advantage of the knowledge from her past attempts, being passed down from timeline to timeline – her actions are the main catalyst of the changes. Jim, at best, has the foresight of his own experience as the previous timeline’s James.
For example, in the Alpha timeline, it’s likely that Jim (from the timeline before Alpha – let’s call it Gamma) managed to kill everyone. In the Beta timeline, he failed. Alpha’s Jim probably didn’t even know he’d be the one committing the massacre at the end, because he’d been sent to the future before the massacre happened.
One thing constant between all timelines, though, is that Catherine gets killed, and Hedwig is released from her cell. Hedwig meets James, and he remembers her later, when he’s Jim. That’s another reason why he uses the Devil persona – it’s only because she saw the things she did that she believed in James’ innocence to begin with.
Conversely, Eustace wants to convince Hedwig that the Devil either doesn’t exist or that it’s a prank by her. This is to lower Jim’s grasp on her psyche and lower her loyalty to James.
Part Four: The Goat
There’s only one “big” trick of Jim’s left to explain. Most of the other things, I think I’ve already answered. But the big one is the goat.
I’ll admit there’s not a whole lot of possibilities. My best guess is a mirror?
By setting the mirror at the very end of the hallway, the Devil can cut the Goat’s head at the end of the hallway. Then, in the commotion, with Hedwig’s vision blocked by the Misericorde door opening, the Devil takes the mirror and retreats into the shadows.
That’s why there’s no blood when Hedwig inspects the hallway. The blood is actually at the very end – but because of the darkness and her own exhaustion, she doesn’t find it in time.
Again – the purpose of this trick is for Hedwig to believe in James’ innocence.
Part Five: Hey What’s up With the Library
Oh, uh, I don’t know.