hello there!!! i hope you're well on this fine day. now, feel free to ignore this, i have a feeling this is just me being dumb, but i really can't understand what r!ciel's feelings are towards his brother now that he's back (not that he was ever gone). i mean, what is his aim? he says he wants to live happily with his brother again, but he's driven him away? im confused. what exactly are r!ciel's feelings towards o!ciel?
Sorry for taking so long to get to you, it was not for lack of interest! I don’t think you’re dumb at all, because Real Ciel’s actions are very strange indeed.
TW: This post will include discussion of emotional manipulation and abuse. If this topic is hard for you, please sit this post out.
Now with the trigger warning out of the way, let us look into what Real Ciel is doing. How can he say he loves to have his brother by his side, but also drive him away? To the best of my knowledge, this is a form of isolation abuse. Isolation abuse is a horrible method employed by abusers to isolate their victim, cut away their other support, and force the victim to stay with the abuser, to facilitate further abuse.
Key Tactic - Antagonise Others
The key to isolation abuse is to make your abuse victim believe you are the only person who will love them, the only person who they can trust. Chapter 140 is the best and most concise example of classic isolation abuse. R!Ciel proved to everyone that O!Ciel is a liar, that he did something wrong. But then he presents the revelation as a benevolent act: “unlike everyone else, big brother won’t be mean to you. I will relieve you from your pressures!”
O!Ciel understood a bit too well that he will have to suffer the consequences for impersonation crime, and R!Ciel appeals to that understandable fear. The message he is giving is: “Everyone else will treat you badly, except me. I am your safety, I will protect you from the meanies.”
Now R!Ciel has established to his little brother what the dangers are outside, and sold himself to O!Ciel as the big brother who is a true, unconditionally loving ally. Then finally, the most incredible and clever rounding off of “everyone bad, me good. Everyone dangerous, me safe” is in the following panel:
R!Ciel not only presented himself as a protector, he also turned what should be O!Ciel’s biggest guilt into a praiseworthy feat. “If anything, I want to applaud you...” Now, who else but kind, big brother would praise you for your crimes? By saying “...for doing your best all by yourself these past three years,” R!Ciel tells his little brother that he really doesn’t blame him for impersonating him, because he “understands” O!Ciel’s emergency and suffering. Who else would understand you?
By having planned to get the police storm in, and have the Midfords - O!Ciel’s only other family - be on the “enemy’s side”, R!Ciel reemphasises how he himself is truly the only one O!Ciel can turn to.
So, if R!Ciel wanted to establish himself as O!Ciel’s only ally who could protect his little brother, then why didn’t he protect O!Ciel from the police arrest? The answer is probably a combination of a practical one and a manipulative one.
The practical reason R!Ciel didn’t protect O!Ciel from the police arrest is simply because R!Ciel has only just returned to reclaim the Phantomhive Earldom, so he cannot afford to publically obstruct justice. R!Ciel needs this first impression that unlike O!Ciel, he is a law abiding citizen and acknowledges the police’s work. Upon his first return, RIGHTFUL Earl Phantomhive can’t very well defy the police and “legitimate” claims of O!Ciel’s crimes, just because he is family, right?
The manipulative reason is that in this way, R!Ciel can employ the “good cop, bad cop” method on his brother. Being pinned with mass murder, there is no doubt the police would treat O!Ciel harshly. The police would imprison, humiliate, and perhaps even mistreat him, and there’s nothing O!Ciel would be able to do against that on his own.
R!Ciel in this case can utilise his special right as the legitimate Earl Phantomhive, and perhaps combine it with an appeal to emotion to get O!Ciel out of prison if he puts in a good word with the Queen: “I have lost my entire family save for one. Please don’t take my only family away from me.” In being a young child himself, R!Ciel would surely be judged less harshly by the public for doing family politics.
R!Ciel (and/or Undertaker) probably had confidence that R!Ciel would succeed in getting O!Ciel out of prison. Once R!Ciel would succeed, O!Ciel would be subjected to R!Ciel’s mercy, and have nowhere else to go. Should O!Ciel try to leave or even take R!Ciel out, then the world would judge O!Ciel for being an ungrateful kid, a double-backstabber of his saviour. In that case O!Ciel would still be stuck where he is right now: in the spot of shame and distrust, a place incredibly hard to climb out of again.
When R!Ciel has succeeded in uprooting O!Ciel from his entire support network, he can then rest assured that if O!Ciel still wants support, he’d have no one to turn to but his only big brother in the world who loves him dearly. In this way, R!Ciel would have successfully isolated O!Ciel for himself.
This is how real life isolation abusers work too. Uproot you, and keep you to themselves only.
Soooo, even though R!Ciel’s actions might seem contradictory, what he is doing is a very good and classic example of isolation abuse. In the purest essence, isolation abuse is the juxtaposition of the abuser’s own “goodness” against the supposed “evil” of everything else. Bit by bit R!Ciel chipped away the support network, the floor on which his brother was standing. Isolation abuse is the cornering of the victim, into the tiny space called “your only safe haven, me”.
Sebastian is a master of emotional manipulation, and coming from him, the comment “well done” really couldn’t ring more true. Well done.
Lending this as an opportunity I wish to add: please, if anyone recognises this type of abuse around you or your loved ones, PLEASE by all means contact professionals. Isolation abuse is horrible, because isolation abusers make it so that their victim dare not and cannot reach out for help!
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