Jimbriel, Satan, the Book of Life, and what it means for Crowley
Acknowledging that what we know so far about the Book of Life from various characters is highly suspect, I'm going to posit to you that Beelzebub is actually the true authority on the Book of Life, and that they bookend Season 2 with very important (and hopefully accurate) information about the Book of Life. With that in mind, let's take Beezlebub's S2E1 description and see how it fits with other canon evidence:
But what does it mean to have never existed in the Good Omens universe? For that, let us look to Satan.
From in-show canon, we know that Adam was able to retroactively change Satan's status as his father to not his father:
Adam altered reality, although Crowley, Aziraphale, the other celestials, and even Adam himself remember those events from a timeline that supposedly has been erased:
But Crowley nonetheless confirms that this is reality now. Satan was never Adam's father.
Additionally, though not technically in-show canon, we know from Notorious NRG that once Satan became Lucifer, this erased Lucifer from existence in the GO universe:
And Crowley's monologue in the bar drives it home; even though Lucifer no longer exists, Crowley still remembers him, and some key events that they were involved in together.
But a more dramatic portrayal of erasure is found in our favorite Good Omens himbo, Jimbo. In the trial of Gabriel, the Metatron makes direct allusion to the fact that Gabriel will no longer be Gabriel after his demotion:
Not "your memory of your time as the supreme archangel will be erased," no, it's:
Your memory of your time as Gabriel will be erased.
Whether he means to or not, Aziraphale reinforces this characterization of memory-loss-as-new-identity:
This can be taken simply as a safety measure, but Jimbo doesn't understand it that way and we see throughout the remainder of the season that Aziraphale is very consistent about calling his unexpected guest "Jim," even correcting Crowley when they're speaking privately and it wouldn't blow his cover to call him Gabriel:
But the final word on memory and identity, especially as they pertain to Jimbriel, again comes from our Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub:
All your you is your memories.
Altogether we see that there is significant in-show canon to support a theory that memory is inextricably linked with identity, and that when memory is removed, identity is so drastically changed that the name of the entity must also change... and the person who existed before, with that former name, exists no longer; it is as if they never had.
(But, as we see in the case of Gabriel, they can be restored.)
I told you in the title that this post was about the Book of Life: it is. Everything discussed here about memory and identity must necessarily characterize how the Book of Life operates, at least with respect to erasure. When someone is erased, they don't vanish, but they are so changed it is as if a new person has taken the place of the old, the way Jim took the place of Gabriel, until he got his memories back. But we can surmise that when someone is erased from the Book of Life, their memories aren't conveniently stored in a TARDIS/Ru Paul fly for later recovery. The memories may not be gone, but I'm going to guess that they would be extremely difficult (or impossible) to retrieve.
What this means for Crowley:
I think we need to give this scene a lot more credit for telling us how this universe works. Surface level, it reads as "you don't understand my trauma, and how I've been changed by it." Which is a very valid interpretation. But we can dig deeper and see that, given everything else we know about celestial beings losing their memories, names, and identities, Crowley is alluding to something far more horrific than just the scars left by flaming swords and halo-grenades.
These are the scars of a lobotomy. Something was taken from him, and he is aware of it.
He knows that his memory has been tampered with. Various people (Furfur, Saraqael) tell him that they recognize him, and of things they've done together. He has no recollection of them, but instead of getting agitated, he brushes it off and ignores it. This lack of questions from the guy who questions everything tells us that he already has the answers; not the memories, but the knowledge of why he doesn't have them.
Furthermore, when he's trying to get Jim to remember the something bad and Jim says it hurts, Crowley says:
I know. Do it anyway.
How does Crowley know that it hurts, to try to recall memories that have been taken out of your head?
Because he's been through it.
He has tried to remember, and some memories, like working on the Horsehead Nebula with Saraqael or monkeying around with Furfur, weren't worth the pain. Or perhaps it was pain on top of pain to remember what he had lost.
It is an especial testament to the cruelty of Heaven that he remembers going into battle, but not the bonds he formed with his friends. He remembers a million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulfur, but not the work he did on the Horsehead Nebula, a thing that brought him joy.
And now, the person he loves most in the world, his only refuge from the terror of his empty nightmares, from his malignant and creeping sense of unease that something is missing, has gone back to that place where his identity was so horribly violated that he lost his name.
How will our hero cope?
For my thoughts on who Crowley may have been before the fall, go here.
For my thoughts on how this pertains to Metatron, go here.
As I continue to produce metas related to this theory, you'll be able to find them all here.
