#&| meta

[cowboyprosecutor]

To extend further on those tags on the last post, because I don't think I explained myself very well...

I see Gant as a man who has been subtly manipulating people around him for years without anyone really noticing.  On the surface, he's an incredibly likeable person, but with an extremely commanding vibe to him.  Your instinct around this man would be to be friendly to him and do what he wants, and it isn't hard because he does have that charisma.

I think that, especially when paired with Lana, he's hard to suspect. The Lana we meet in the game is the Lana who is being blackmailed into doing Gant's wishes, but before that point, she was supposed to be kind and nurturing.  Even Edgeworth mentions that he felt like she took a special interest in him, and she wasn't even his boss until after SL-9 and Gant's blackmail.  If Gant can be suspected while acting alone, surely the fact that Lana Skye trusts him will clear up any suspicions.

However, given that Neil's murder had absolutely no clear motive in canon, my first guess is that he began to suspect Gant's involvement in...something.  Neil was smart enough to become a prosecutor, and he was a good one at that, since he won the King of Prosecutors award.  It's possible he was clever enough to see through something and start investigating something that Gant wanted left alone.  He didn't ask anyone for help because 1. he knew it was dangerous and didn't want anyone else in danger, and 2. because he wasn't sure anyone else would believe him.

When Gant walked into that room with three unconscious people on the floor, he had a choice to make.  He chose to murder Neil.  It's true that Neil's death would be the most effective way to manipulate Lana, but he could have just as easily murdered Darke and pinned that on Ema.  Why would he choose to murder a friendly when there was someone he was desperate to imprison lying there too?

If Neil was poking around somewhere he wasn't supposed to and Gant found out about it, well, that would explain a lot. And I don't think it's really a stretch, either.

...but I also don't want to make Neil too smart and good and wonderful at everything, because then it's boring.

[prosecutormiles]

Manfred von Karma is a Jerk

I was thinking about the timing of von Karma's attempt to frame Edgeworth for murder.  Now, obviously, it makes a lot of sense to have done it when he did, due to the anniversary of Gregory's death and the fact that the statute of limitations was due to run out that year.  But I can't help but feel like there's more to it than that.

The date was definitely significant, and it was probably the entire reason von Karma acted when he did.  von Karma's greatest weakness was his narcissism that he would be able to convince Edgeworth to confess to his “crime,” and that no one would ever find him out. Had he been content to just convict Edgeworth, then Hammond's death should have been enough, and that could have happened any day, any year.  Getting him to confess to DL-6 was probably the back up plan, should someone actually be able to see through the Hammond murder.  He was trusting someone else to carry out his instructions, after all; he couldn't ensure that it would be done perfectly. Doing it on the last possible day Gregory's murder could be tried ensured no one would be able to poke around the investigation files or figure anything out.

So I'm not arguing against any of that.  If he was going to get Edgeworth to confess, there was literally no other time to do it. However, that doesn't mean there couldn't be further motivation.

Consider: fewer than three months before Turnabout Goodbyes, Miles Edgeworth lost his first case.  Ever.

Fewer than three months before von Karma implicated Edgeworth for murder, Phoenix destroyed Edgeworth's perfect win record.

And what happens when a von Karma loses their perfect win record? Franziska tells us in Farewell, My Turnabout that they are no longer worthy to carry the von Karma name.

Let's also not forget that, despite being a disciple of von Karma, Rise From the Ashes tells us that Edgeworth never dabbled in falsifying evidence.  Yes, he coached witnesses, concealed inconvenient evidence, things like that, but his reaction to finding out he had used forged evidence to convict someone was not the reaction of someone who had knowingly done it before.

However, I doubt von Karma felt the same way about it.  A 40 year win record is infinitely more impressive than a four year win record, and I really doubt he could have kept it up for 40 years without making up his own evidence.  Nor do I feel his ethics would keep him from doing so, since the single most important thing to him was perfection.

What does that mean?  It means that von Karma didn't teach Edgeworth all his dirty tricks.  It means that he knew at some point, Edgeworth was going to get himself into a fight he couldn't win.  It means he was setting Edgeworth up to fail.

Manfred von Karma was not content to merely murder his rival, to take his son and raise him to go against all of Gregory's principles, to sculpt Edgeworth into the very thing Gregory devoted his life to fighting, and finally, to drag the Edgeworth name through the mud by not only framing him for murder but also encouraging the belief that he had been the one to kill his own father.

No. First, he wanted to break Edgeworth.  He wanted to see Edgeworth suffer through the realization that he wasn't good enough, that he would never live up to expectations.  After Gregory died, von Karma was the closest thing Edgeworth had to a father figure, and he wanted this to hurt as much as possible.

This was the Miles Edgeworth that stood on the witness stand and demanded he be put on trial for his father's murder.  This was the Miles Edgeworth who had nothing left to fight for -- the one that von Karma tried to destroy.

...this is probably just me being overdramatic and overthinking things, but that's just what I do.