It will always stay with me that Joker and Ciel never resented each other, they understood one another too well to even blame each other for how things fell apart. (Confirmed by Yana herself btw.)
Joker and o!Ciel are in a way, to sides of the same coin, both of them sacrifice and strample on others in order to gain the goal they long for.
While Joker resorts to extreme measures, kidnapping children to fulfill Kelvin's demands and, in turn, protect the kids back in the workhouse, o!Ciel similarly crushes lives beneath him in pursuit of his vengeance.
The imagery speaks for itself: the young earl is often portrayed atop a throne of corpses, a chilling symbol of the destruction left in his wake.
And it's quite intresting, that during the main confrontation in book of circus, our earl was cruel to Baron Kelvin (as he mf should!!) yet he refrained from mocking Joker.
As Yana Toboso notes: "However, he didn’t say anything about Joker. He neither called him stupid nor foolish. He just calmly confirmed the facts with him. This is because Joker and his crew were aware of their own foolishness - and so was Ciel. Thus he didn’t say anything that would rub salt into the wound."
I really like that o!Ciel "calmly confirmed the facts with him." especially considering that his first response after Joker admitted he knew what he was doing was wrong was to directly challenge that reasoning. And no, I’m not saying our earl condones the kidnapping of children—but he does understand where Joker’s morality and intentions come from.
Joker doesn’t want to kidnap children; he feels trapped by a toxic sense of duty to repay the Baron’s debt. On top of that, without Kelvin’s financial support, neither the circus nor the workhouse would be able to survive.
In a way, o!Ciel sees a reflection of himself in Joker: someone bound by duty, guilt, and a sense of debt. He too is trapped, only his chains take the form of a contract with Sebastian, forged in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and fueled by the need for revenge against those who destroyed his family.
And I think it’s clear that, just like Joker, o!Ciel doesn’t necessarily find any thrill in trampling over others. However, unlike Joker, who still clings to a sense of family, emotional bonds, and the illusion of doing the wrong thing for the right reason, o!Ciel has learned to detach himself emotionally.
He justifies cruelty as a necessity, a tool for survival and justice. Where Joker hesitates, burdened by conscience and affection, o!Ciel acts decisively, even ruthlessly, because he’s already accepted that innocence and morality were luxuries stolen from him the moment his world fell apart.
It’s bittersweet how, in his own way, o!Ciel tries to console Joker by telling him not to cry. There’s a quiet kind of empathy in the way he states that the world isn’t kind to anyone. And in that moment, when Joker looks at him with a faint yet sorrowful smile, it’s clear he understands, perhaps better than anyone, that the earl isn’t just talking about him. o!Ciel is speaking from his own tragedy, his own loss.
There’s something so human in the way they mirror each other: both bound by duty, both driven by grief, and both trying to find meaning in a world that’s taken too much from them.
In that small exchange; Joker’s smile, Ciel’s words, they meet not as enemies, but as mearly two people who saw through each other.
They also share a quiet kind of sympathy for one another, as if both recognize the foolishness in the paths they’ve taken. Deep down, they both know that the cost of their choices is far heavier than they’d like to admit.
And that was their last exchange, a softly deafening mutal understanding.
Joker knew about o!Ciel’s past—Baron Kelvin had told him. He was aware of the horrific abuse the boy had endured, of how deeply he’d been dehumanized. Our earl was treated as an object of exploitation by older men, just as Joker and the rest of the circus troupe had been used and abused by Kelvin.
In that shared history of being used, manipulated, and discarded by those in power, there’s a grim reflection. They were both victims of the same cruelty, forced to survive in whatever way they could.
And after eliminating the circus, o!Ciel chooses to visit the orphanage: the very place Joker and the troupe had fought so desperately to protect. Despite everything, he intends to ensure its survival, even planning to secure a sponsor to fund it.
Joker protected his brothers and sisters back in the orphanage while kidnapping children for the baron, feeling extremely guilty in doing so, o!Ciel parallels this by perserving the workhouse in order to ease his guilt for killing Joker and the circus trope.
And when he arrives to the workhouse, well, we know what happens. There orphange was empty, provong Joker's sacrifices futile in the end. In the same way, o!Ciel’s quest for revenge will prove meaningless.
Both their struggles, though driven by pain and hope, lead to hollow victories in a world that keeps taking more than it gives.
It's important to highlight that before o!Ciel spirals into a maniac laughing tangent about how corrupt humanity is, his thought's immedietly flash to both Doll and Joker, two people in the circus trope whom he connected with in different ways.
As he recalls them, he envisions their screams and cries, desperately trying to protect the orphanage that, as we already know, no longer exists. This haunting image fuels his fury and despair, a raw reminder of all that was lost despite their sacrifices.
In that moment, his rage is not just aimed at the world’s cruelty, but also at himself, for failing to save what mattered, for being trapped in a cycle of destruction and vengeance.
The memories of Doll and Joker become ghosts that both torment and motivate him, pushing him deeper into his chaotic spiral while silently mourning the innocence that slipped away.
That loss of innocence is what i still, to this day, believe that o!Ciel's ribbon that got blown away from the wind symbolizes, this also explains why Sebastian, the ever-so-perfect butler, lets his instincts take over and doesn’t even try to catch that single strand of innocence.
As a demon who takes a twisted pleasure in o!Ciel’s suffering, he’d rather see the boy lose that innocence completely than hold onto it.
Besides Yana's commentary on Joker and o!Ciel's quiet connection, I really do like how Yana specifically highlight's that o!Ciel feels incredibly guilty about what went down in the circus. Specifically how the memories of Joker and Doll continue to haunt him and even influence some of his choices.
If he couldn’t sustain Joker’s vision for the workhouse, then taking in one of Joker and Doll’s beloved family members into his household was his way of holding onto something meaningful, an attempt to preserve a connection to the people he feels responsible for.
Also I want to point out how despite o!Ciel's refusal of being called Smile by Joker, stating how "a servant shall not speak to him with such familiarities"
here is Snake (a servant) reffering to o!Ciel as Smile. And our earl allows him to, and i think this acceptance of the name represents sort of a fresh start for o!Ciel, a way to make some sort of amends with the past.
But even after employing Snake, his past actions continue to mess with him, no matter how tightly he holds his composure, the past keeps finding ways to slip through the cracks.
During the Green witch arc, Joker tourments o!Ciel with the words, "do you want everything to be yours?" forcing him to confront the selfishness and moral ambiguity of his goals.
Joker, even in death, lingers as a voice of guilt and conscience, reminding o!Ciel that the path he walks is paved with sacrifice.
o!Ciel will never seem to let go of the weight of Joker and Doll's deaths, he just continuously represses them as a coping mechanism.
To finish this all up, I just want to say how much I adore the way Joker and Doll (characters who only appear in a single arc) continue to bleed through the cracks of the story, seeping into o!Ciel’s psyche in such a compelling way.
Their presence lingers like a ghost, not just in memory, but in the way they quietly shape his guilt, his choices, and the parts of himself he tries so hard to suppress.
