Now that the Marchenghast introductory quests are done, I want to review and elaborate on Chekov’s mom theory again. WARNING: This will be half quest discussion, half headcanon and very little actual theorising. I don’t think this theory will happen the way I want it to anymore, but i still wanna talk about my opinions on the questline. If you want to recap the original theory, check out this post.
May not come as a shock but I didn’t really like the reveal of Ruth. The bones of the story aren’t even half-bad: Abigail’s distrustfulness comes from being raised as a child of war by a mother who had given up on any chance of peace; Ruth isolates herself to find a cure for the blight, but is slowly poisoned as she reaches the conclusion that the blight can’t be stopped, leaving her daughter to try to fix what she couldn’t. I like that story on paper! The execution is just…
You know how I said the requirements for a good reveal is that it both makes logical sense and has a substantial impact on the narrative? Sso sets up the mystery of ”Who is Abigail’s mom? Why is she constantly referred to with so much ambiguity?” and answers it with ”Abigail’s mom is a witch who you’ve never heard of before, and thus couldn’t have possibly guessed”. Is this plausible within the game itself? Yea absolutely. Is it good setup and payoff that engages the player? ://///
The first time we are made aware of Ruth’s existence is in the same quest where we find out that she’s actually Abigail’s mom, that Abigail thinks she’s alive, and that she’s actually already dead. It doesn’t impact us the way it should because nothing about Ruth’s character has been set up beforehand, with the (admittedly very cool) exception of shadow witches being revealed to be the spirits of dead witches. Finding her old flute could’ve been an emotional cutscene, but since it’s the first time it’s ever brought up, it’s just all new information to us. Compare it to discovering Catherine’s memories, who we’ve been aware of since the start of the game and slowly uncovering more information about.
Am I setting my expectations too high with SSO’s storytelling? Maybe. But I only do that because this area and these quests have genuinely had a lot of thought and care put into them. I’m expecting impactful setup and payoff because we got that with Margaret unlearning her family’s teachings and the discovery of the abandoned bailey, and I’m expecting tie-ins with previous lore because of the well-made expansions made to the wild wardens, witch culture and the strange state of Goldenhills valley. This is an ambitious project and I want to respect that ambition!
But the reveal of Ruth feels like it impacts the story very little while still requiring leaps in logic to make it work. This is how the first quests explain Ruth’s death:
And this is how the new quests explain it:
How Abigail reacts to seeing her mom’s spirit
Like to me “My mother died at the hands of the castle folk fighting for what we believe in” is a WILDLY different sentence from “My mother left on her own volition to research the blight, and I’m not sure whether she’s alive or not”. Could we stretch this to say its Abigail becoming less pessimistic and that she used to blame the nobles for causing the blight itself? Sure, but that’s still kind of an adhocism; we’re still told two incongruous stories about how and why Ruth died.
The original reason I theorised that Rosalinda was Abigail’s mother was that it would expand on an existing character while avoiding adding new, underdeveloped characters. Sso has a problem with cast bloating to say the least, so it would be more efficient to write these characters as one and the same. The game may not follow this but i will at least try:
Chekov’s mom theory 2: the rewrite
I’m fudging canon a little bit to make this work. Ruth hasn’t been gone for a few months; it’s been years. (if you want an alternative version where the month timespan still works, either the english translation book mr Sands’ 1798 or Margarets 1823 timestamp will have to be ignored. Chalk it up to veil time shenanigans!)
It’s the turn of the 19th century. Lady Rosalinda von Marchenghast, eldest daughter of Duke Wilhelm Jacob von Marchenghast, seems set up for success in life; she is heiress to the Marchenghast family and happily betrothed to wealthy aristocrat John Sandman. But no amount of privilege can shield her from the conflict within and outside the castle walls. Nobles continue to torment beasts in the old abandoned bailey, justifying their actions as “punishing the vile creatures that attack us”. Outside the castle, witches are being forced from their homes while a poisonous blight starts to creep across the forest. Rosalinda cannot make sense of her father’s words; how can we call the witches and beasts dangerous when we commit atrocities like these against them?
One may find it hard to change the world from inside a guilded cage. Rosalinda’s pleas fall on deaf ears; while she tries in earnest to create grounds for diplomacy, she finds herself shut down every time. Perhaps her family is beyond saving. If she cannot create peace from the inside, she has to take action from outside. In secret, she starts visiting the Veiled Hamlet. The Saltus witches are deeply distrustful of a noble in their midsts, but Rosalinda’s sharp mind and inside knowledge makes her a valuable asset in freeing beasts and sabotaging Marchenghast operations.
Rosalinda’s life draws away from her old family and closer to her new one. She strikes a bargain with the Lonely Beacon and starts going by a chosen name different from the title bestowed upon her: Ruth. When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant before she is even married, an excuse of traveling to visit friends is made and her daughter Abigail is left in the care of the coven. John is none the wiser; he doesn’t need to be involved in fighting her battles.
It was only a matter of time until she was found out. In the summer of 1798, suspicion reaches an all time high and the Sixth Hammer puts Rosalinda on trial for witchcraft. They throw her into the poisonous waters of Wanderers’ swamp, testing if those cursed water beasts will keep her afloat.
While Rosalinda is found innocent, the blight has already left its mark on her. Over the next months, she grows weak and feverish, seemingly accepting her imminent death. On September 2nd, 1798, she is proclaimed dead by the castle. Her baby sister Margarete barely even remembers her face. A funeral is held and a closed casket is placed in the ground.
Unbeknownst to all but a few, no body was placed in that casket. While Lady Rosalinda von Marchenghast is dead, Ruth has a little time left to make peace with herself. She absconds into the blighted forests, finding out all she can about the veil, the blight and any potential cure. Of course, she never manages to find one. While she can hold off her own decay for a while, she eventually succumbs to her sickness alone.
The life and death of Rosalinda and Ruth are a shameful chapter in the history of both the nobles and the witches. In the Veiled Hamlet, Ruth’s noble background is hidden away and left out of discussion as the war escalates; easier to remember her as a martyr than to muddy her story with ugly family ties. Abigail never learns of her mother’s entire background. She does remember being taken to play with Margarete as young kids, when things were calmer, but she can never remember why.
In Marchenghast castle, the duke hides all details of who Rosalinda was deep in his personal archives. Such a great failure on his part ought to be scrubbed from history. Margarete grows up being called his eldest daughter until any memories of another sister are all a blur.
Outside the castle, folks slowly start forgetting. The veil cuts Marchenghast off from the rest of Jorvik, and as generations pass on one by one, the name Rosalinda is all but gone from the minds of Jorvegians. Only one man is still alive to remember, and will see to it that the world never forgets her.
