I don’t post my analyses on tumblr very often, I prefer the comfort of my friends’ dms and servers for them, but I need to sort out my thoughts on rien limbus company in a more public setting
I feel like a lot of people are drawn to him and his story as though it’s a tragedy, and I agree, there’s something inherently tragic about a lot of the index
the flaw in this judgment though, is that it justifies all of his actions by saying ‘there’s nothing he could have done, the prescripts made him do it!’ which is exactly what he thinks, and that’s the problem
his tragedy starts from a fundamental internal belief that fate is written, and there is nothing for him to do about it… after all, the game spells it out for us: there are few people in the index who actually follow the prescripts out of pure faith, sora being one of the few who really believe in them. rien follows the prescripts because he believes nothing he could do otherwise matters.
the death of his wife and child is tragic, but we need to remember that he chose not to do anything to save them, because the prescripts told him not to and according to his belief, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had tried anyways. saying that he couldn’t do anything would be an assumption we can’t prove, especially because we know even if had disobeyed the prescripts to protect them, he was likely competent enough to protect himself and them from the consequences if he had tried. but he wouldn’t try, because he’s given into that hopelessness.
a lot of what people attempt to see in rien I think is what they should be seeing in yan, who — in case you aren’t familiar — was an index messenger from library of ruina. yan actually goes through the effort of trying to defy the prescripts, only for that to be revealed to be part of their design as well. rien on the other hand makes no attempt at rebelling against them until the very end of the canto where we see him killing index proselytes. even then, however, he gives himself in to the death that the prescripts would dictate for him. yan rebels against the principle of ‘fate’ because he has not yet given into helplessness upon his introduction, rien however gave into it a long time before the game even started.
in this sense, rien’s ‘tragedy’ is a fault of his own mindset: he cannot believe that anything he would do of his own volition would matter, so he gives in to the will of the prescripts. is there a sadness in him for it? yes, but ultimately it cannot be ignored that he plays a part in his own tragedy, and is ideologically prevented from doing anything more than feeding into that cycle
did he love his wife and daughter? maybe, but it cannot be ignored that he could have saved them. and explaining away this fact with the argument that the prescripts made him stand by and watch gives in to the very mentality he shared that prevented him from saving them.
we don’t yet know everything about the flow and the prescripts, but I think that a lot of characterizations of rien I see online forget that the prescripts at the end of the day are just orders, and saying he could do nothing in the face of them is attempting to justify his actions by saying he was ‘just following orders.’
the wind simply made the waves destroy the sandcastles that they built, they have no right to be sad — his own words. are the waves saddened anyways? of course they are. but there was nothing they could do. that’s what he believes at least, and so he let’s himself be pushed by the wind. he perpetuates his own ‘tragedy.’
this is also the guy who kept a murder basement under the house he had with his first family. like let’s not forget about the murder basement and all. the prescripts were always his first priority, no matter how much he may have cared about his family. he only had the family for the prescripts, and he’d leave them for dead for them too. it’s probable he only took sora under his wing because of the prescripts as well, and his care for her only extended as far as the prescripts demanded that it extend. he was apathetic to sending her to her death. he still reveled in araya’s death as it meant ryōshū had become what the house of spiders had set out to make her.
he is not a moral paragon nor is his story a tragedy beyond his control, he’s just a hopeless man feeding into a corrupt system. and he is just as guilty for it.
tldr: people tend to remove culpability from rien for his actions, saying that the prescripts ‘made him do it,’ but this argument is pretty ignorant because it gives in to the very mentality that prevents rien from stopping his own tragedy
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