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in defence of julie expedition 33

I haven’t stopped thinking about Julie and Verso ever since I finished E33 months ago, and I was surprised at how little there is about them in the fandom. On one hand, I get it, since there’s very little about Julie in-game, and what there is has to be sought out. On the other hand, she’s crucial to understanding Verso’s character, and her influence is still felt throughout the story even though she died decades prior.

In a game lauded for its nuance, I sadly feel Julie is rarely afforded the same grace as other characters, if she’s mentioned at all. Like many other aspects of the story, her character and her relationship with Verso have to be inferred; I can’t pretend to know for sure what Sandfall intended, but having thought about her a Normal Amount, I wanted to share my interpretation.

A few facts before we begin: at some point in development, Julie was meant to be the playable character in a discarded prologue, during which the player was likely meant to face Verso in battle. The game still contains unused audio files, models, and attack moves for her; I take anything that didn’t make it into the final game with a grain of salt, but in another universe we would have been in her shoes, and likely made to sympathize with her.

I’d also like to point out that Jennifer Svedberg-Yen has named Julie’s expedition as one of her favourites. Considering how wonderful a job she’s done of writing a whole cast of fully fleshed out characters we can empathize with despite their flaws, there’s no reason to think that she wasn’t planning the same for Julie. I think it’s clear that Julie was never intended to be villainous, and that much like many other characters in the game, we merely get a glimpse of her at her lowest point.

With that out of the way: onward! And buckle up, it’s a long one!

Julie’s journal and the continent

The main piece of information we have about Julie is her journal, which reveals her suspicions that Verso is a traitor and her determination to get answers from him:

I KNOW what I saw. He DIED. He fucking DIED. That attack destroyed half his torso, there’s no walking away from that. But when I found him, he was unconscious but whole. His uniform was destroyed, yes, but his chest was merely bruised! He says the blast just missed him and it was chaotic during battle so I probably misunderstood what I saw. BULLSHIT. Absolute BLOODY bullshit. He and his father keep saying the Paintress is the solution, not the problem, but I don’t buy it anymore. I think they’re lying about what happened to Expedition Zero. Somehow everyone else died but they walked out without a scratch? It hurts to think he’d betray us, but nobody ever expects to be betrayed. His mistake though, is thinking his charm is sufficient to sell his lies. We’ll take him tomorrow night. Claude, Louise, and Dion are no fools, they saw what I saw. We WILL get answers. And if he is a traitor, then he will share the fate of traitors.

Not a great look, that’s for sure, especially since we encounter this journal in Act 3: by that time, most players empathize with Verso, or at least understand his motivations, and know the truth about the world the characters inhabit.

Which is exactly the information Julie lacks and seeks. As a reminder, the surviving Lumièrans are normal people thrown into an impossible situation, and desperate for answers. Fresh off the Fracture, the continent is overrun with Nevrons, food is scarce and shelter hard to come by, and a giant entity now lurks in the distance after seemingly bringing about the end of the world.

To quote the survivor’s journal found in Old Lumière:

The Brigadiers are overdue from their mission to the Monolith and we’ve lost half our remaining fighting strength to these creatures and their relentless assault. All adults have taken up arms, but I’m a bookkeeper, what am I supposed to do? Count them before they slaughter us? We’ve hidden the children. At least they’re warm and dry in the cellars, but rations are running low. Things are calmer now at the hospital, but that’s because most die before we can get to them. I guess I’m living out of pure stubbornness at this point. Survival isn’t really survival anymore. Everyone’s so quiet lately, afraid we’ll draw attention. Sometimes I talk to myself just to hear another human voice. Trevor, you promised I could die before you. You promised.

This is what the Lumièrans are dealing with. Not only is Verso Julie’s lover (hilariously confirmed to be canon by this Valentine’s Day shitpost from the official E33 twitter account), he and his father make up the expedition leadership. In other words, she and the others trust these men to make the right decisions on their behalf and not lead them to their deaths. But Julie starts suspecting that their interests aren’t aligned anymore; that they’ve had a hand in the deaths of Expedition Zero and that they’ve possibly sided with the enemy.

It’s also clear from Verso’s journal that Julie did previously try to get answers from him:

I should have known when you started questioning things, that you wouldn’t be fooled. But how could I even explain. You’d have thought I’d gone mad.

And yet he lied to her repeatedly. Whether her actions are defensible or not is up for debate, but the game is made up of characters who do the wrong things for the right reasons, and Julie is no different.

Verso’s journal and Renoir’s involvement

Like many people, I first imagined that Verso killed Julie in self-defence or in a dissociative rage, but re-reading their journals, it’s implied he got away, spoke to Renoir, and then returned to do “what had to be done”—i.e., kill Julie, Louise, Claude, and Dion (emphasis mine):

I miss you. I don’t have the right to miss you, but I do. I wish I could talk to you. Tell you… Fuck, I don’t know what I would tell you. Just… ask that you forgive me. Julie… Forgive me… I’m not… I’m not a traitor. I’m NOT. I’m trying to save– I’m trying to save us all. But you’re right. I am a coward. I’m a fucking coward. You deserved to know why. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t face you properly… Not and still do what had to be done. Papa believes you’re Clea’s creation. And even if you’re not, we can no longer trust you. But I think you just wanted answers. Why? WHY couldn’t you just let it go… Why did you convince them to abduct me? Interrogate me? I– No, fuck– I shouldn’t say that. You thought I was a traitor, you were doing what you thought was right. Just like we are. I swear to you, I’m doing what’s right. I should have known when you started questioning things, that you wouldn’t be fooled. But how could I even explain. You’d have thought I’d gone mad. Doppelgangers, canvas worlds… Merde. But Papa’s right, we can’t take the risk, too much is at stake. It had to be done. It had to. Clea already took our sister… If we want to save our family, our world, our people… We can’t take any chances. And once we free Maman, she… she’ll bring you back… It won’t be forever. I promise.

Verso getting away and coming back to kill her also explains Julie’s reaction in the “Maelle’s Nightmare” cutscene: she drops to her knees next to one of her dead friends, then notices Verso and summons her sword, realizing he’s the culprit. Her unused audio lines also have her say, “You did this? Everyone…? And now me.” Again, if he’d lashed out in self-defence, that reaction wouldn’t make sense.

Back to the journal. It’s pretty apparent that Verso still deferred to his father at the time: he still calls him “Papa” and uses the first person plural a few times. Now if we know anything about Renoir (both Renoirs, really), it’s that he’s an “end justifies the means” kind of guy. He draws very clear lines between his family and everyone else; no sacrifice is too great to defend his family, and once Julie turned against his son and threatened their plan … she had to go. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re reading some of Renoir’s words in Verso’s journal.

Does Renoir actually believe that Julie and the others were Clea’s creations? Maybe, or maybe he just wanted to make it easier on Verso and give him an out when it came to killing her. Either way, it’s clear Verso doesn’t actually believe Julie was Clea’s creation, and held out hope that she would come back to life at one point … but all of this to say, it was not a crime of passion or self-defence. It was a strategic, calculated move.

I’m convinced Julie is at the heart of Verso’s and Renoir’s falling-out, and why it took him so many years to turn against his father. Doing so meant admitting that he was wrong for killing Julie, and that she died for nothing.

The torture, or: more parallels

It’s widely accepted fanon at this point that Julie tortured him and that Verso’s talk of an “interrogation” is merely euphemistic. And it might very well be the case, but … I also don’t think Verso has any reason to sugarcoat her actions in a journal meant only for himself, and in which he’s clearly trying to convince himself he did the right thing by killing her. If he thought her actions were misguided he could have said so; if he thought she’d been needlessly cruel, he could have said so. It would have been ample justification for his later actions. Instead he doesn’t appear to resent her, but rather his failure to keep her on his side while trying to obey his father and save his world and family.

I don’t doubt the confrontation turned violent, and hey, maybe I’m wrong and torture was involved. There is concept art of Verso run through with four swords, which likely represent Julie and her three acolytes. Is it a literal representation of what he endured at their hands, the ensuing battle during which he killed them all, a symbolic representation of the betrayal and pain he felt? I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure, but I don’t think Julie was being deliberately cruel or malicious. She loved the man. And you might say she doesn’t sound like she did in her journal, but there is unused line of dialogue in the game files that goes “I—we trusted you.” It sadly doesn’t have matching audio left, but it leads me to believe that she was attempting to create some emotional distance in order to do what had to be done.

Which reminds me of something: “I couldn’t… I couldn’t face you properly… Not and still do what had to be done.”

They are two sides of the same coin: Verso was hiding behind his mask, and Julie behind her righteous anger, to accomplish what they believed was right. Even he acknowledges she was merely doing what she thought was right, “just like we are.” In his journal, he cuts himself off when he’s about to cast blame on her for what happened; despite everything, he understands why she did what she did, and she’s still on his mind after the better part of a century. Hell, in Act 3, when he tentatively lets himself think about what the future might look like, he says he misses her and would like Maelle to bring her back, just like he did all those decades ago:

In many ways, their story mirrors the final duel and decision of the game. In fact, Verso’s explanations as to why he let Gustave die and why he didn’t tell them what would happen once they killed the Paintress are the same excuses he gives Julie in his journal: he couldn’t take any chances, so it had to be done. Knowing their final encounter was originally meant to serve as a prologue to the story, I think the parallels were intentional: two people who love each other, but whose goals and convictions led them on opposite sides of the battlefield.

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