Being about murderers and their murders, Moriarty the Patriot talks a lot about life, death, and the value of them. What makes a life worth living, and what makes a death worth dying. What is the cost of life, what is the cost of death.
And the answer to these questions, pretty much every time, to every question, is other people.
Other people are what makes life worth living. Other people are what’s worth dying for. Other people are what’s worth killing for. Other people are the reason to live, the reason to die, and the reason to kill. And especially so your loved one who have acknowledged your life and your worth as a person, who have affirmed your value. We see this in all kinds of relationships, in all kinds of situations. And yet the end result is the same: life has meaning because of other people, and what it means depends on those people.
William’s first “adult” murder in the series, the first murder that wasn’t someone who directly harmed him (at least as far as the manga was concerned), was Baron Dublin. The framing of this is important, since given the circumstances, this is really establishing who William is as a character for, well, most of the series. The Burtons chose to murder for the sake of their dead son, and for the sake of their own relationship. Much like the Moriartys, the crime bound them closer together, and William arranges it so that they had to work together to do so. He knows he is, in some ways, remaking their relationship anew. And even more importantly: he devises a will that would, with Dublin’s death, help the people he abused, so his death was not only a horrible crime, but a vehicle to actually help people.
And honestly: that’s what William does. If he has to take a life, he’s going to get the most use out of it possible. It won’t simply be for revenge, it won’t simply be to remove a “devil” from the world, because lives are worth more than that. He kills the original William and the Moriartys, and uses their deaths to access their resources and name, forsaking his old identity and allowing it to die for one more useful. He uses the man on the Noahtic—the poor man he knew Enders was going to kill—to further his plan to remove Enders, and kept his body to use as a show so no one else would also have to die. He uses Ender’s death as a declaration and a statement. We see the same thing with Hope, whose death he uses to test Sherlock, and Whiteley, whose death he uses to promote equality in the country. Even his own hoped-for death was to be used in service to his plan to save his country—even if he wanted a quicker, sooner death, that wasn’t not how his life was meant to be spent. It was worth more than that.
William is a murderer, but he is not one who does not understand the value of life. He values it…well, more than nearly anyone he kills. After all, he’s the incomparable math professor Moriarty, who writes theses incomprehensible to almost everyone else. Of course he’d be able to do a simple bit of math and understand nothing he could ever pay would mean he wasn’t stealing the lives he took. And of course his calculations are not one most would understand.
Most of the other characters are not quite so calculating in their approach, but the meaning is still there. Albert chooses William and Louis over his biological family. He chooses to protect them, and he seals with his murders his bond with them as family, to the point where it’s after that moment that they finally begin to call him “brother.”
Louis chooses to keep living because William wanted him to. William chooses to keep living because of Sherlock, to atone and fix some what he’d done—for other people. And just as they choose to live because of each other, they’re willing to die for each other. Louis, Albert, Moran—they all were willing to die with William, not only because their plan, their goal was over and what would be the point without their goal…but what would be the point without William?
That question is never answered, because there is no answer to it. William and their bond are the point. Louis and his crew devote themselves to carrying on William’s wishes and protecting the world he hoped to create, and Louis believes his brother is alive somewhere. Moran continues following William’s old orders to the best of his ability. Albert decides to spend the rest of his life carrying William’s burden for him, as William carried Albert’s burden for him. Because they love William, and they lost William, and they will not let that loss be in vain, just as even the man none of them knew on the Noahtic who died for their plans to expose Enders could not die in vain. There is no point without William, because William is someone they love and who helped them all carry on when life seemed far too hard to carry on alone.
And when life seemed far too hard to carry on for William, Sherlock came to him and pointed out what use his life could still have. He came with the weight of Louis and Fred’s love for William behind him. Sherlock was even willing to sacrifice his own life if it meant he could figure out what it was William wanted from him, and help his friend. And, all of that worked…eventually.
But William doesn’t even have to be involved. They love each other, too. Sherlock killed for John—when Milverton gave them no way out of the situation, he didn’t even hesitate to end Milverton’s life so John and Mary could be happy.
Fred was willing to die if it meant Moran couldn’t be saved, just as Sherlock was if his own friend, William, couldn’t. He risked his own life for Moran’s, and Moran who called him his little brother was the one who he put his trust in. Just as William handed his life and death over to Moran and to Sherlock, Fred handed his over to Moran and Sherlock (and Louis). Whether he lived or died depended on his family, and he was happy with that decision. Moran needed him, and he was willing to give up everything to that end.
They all know the value of their lives. They know the value of other’s. And that’s exactly why they’ve taken lives: they needed that level of impact to achieve their great goals.
It’s very interesting how the series can use murder to underscore just how important life is.
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