A Bird that is born for Joy and a Broken Cage: A Visions of V Analysis
Part 4: Little Boy Found
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
After defeating the Angelos, V and Nero split up and go their separate ways. Nero continues traveling deeper into the Qlipoth while V searches for the Sparda.
A while later, V finds not only the Sparda, but also Dante. He realizes that the sword hid Dante's presence, which is why both his allies and enemies were unable to find him.
What we see next is in V's mind.
A bloodied young Vergil sits next to Dante, stating that he was protected once again.
This moment confirms that V(ergil) feels abandoned. It's not difficult to understand why- no one came to help him when he needed it most. He was the one who had to defend himself and kill the demons.
V is able to wake Dante up, but even though he tries to talk to him, Dante ignores V and leaves.
It’s also at this moment that V completely runs out of the little demonic power that he had. His body begins to crumble.
He is running out of time.
V is overwhelmed with fear because he does not want to die. As he pushes himself forward, he says he will do what he has always done.
He will do it alone.
After Dante defeats the Cavaliere Angelo and frees Trish, V waits by her side until she wakes up. Upon regaining consciousness, Trish questions V's true identity because he knows more about Urizen than anyone else should.
V responds by telling Trish he will share the reason he was created (or born) with her, and we see his perspective of the night Vergil stabbed himself with the Yamato.
We have already seen the moment Vergil stabs himself at the beginning of the manga. Below is the panel showing the moment from Chapter One.
As he stabs himself, Vergil exclaims that he will not die being defeated by Dante. He is angry and ashamed at his defeat at his brother's hands.
Here is what V remembers from that moment while talking to Trish.
When you initially look at both- the beginning of the story and V's perspective- side by side, it appears there aren't many differences.
The angles of Vergil's arm and hands are the same in the moment and in V's perspective. The Yamato is also at the same angle, and the blood splatter(s) are the same. His cloak is actually drawn with the same number of ruffles. Even though the style and line art are slightly different in both panels, Ogata sensei did a really good job of maintaining continuity across chapters.
However (if you haven't already noticed), there is a huge difference in both the moment and V's perspective. In the actual moment (Chapter One), Vergil's hood covers his face. You can't see his face.
From V's perspective (Chapter Thirty), his hood is at a different angle. You can clearly see Vergil's expression.
(Here's a close-up)
V remembers Vergil with a pained, desperate expression as he stabbed himself.
Initially, it appears all Vergil wants is to become stronger than Dante, so he could finally defeat him. But V, after everything he has been through, sees another perspective on this moment. Vergil was desperate for other reasons. He also wanted to escape the suffering caused by his nightmares of being Nelo Angelo, and couldn’t see another way except for getting rid of his memories and humanity (V).
V was created because Vergil believed his humanity was nothing but a weakness. To him, it was an unwanted burden that made him feel fear and weakness and prevented him from becoming stronger.
After everything he has been through, V now understands Vergil's mistake. Vergil believed he could become stronger without his "weaknesses"- his humanity, memories, fears, and feelings- but those were exactly what he needed.
Vergil could not handle his nightmares, so he cut them out. Just moments ago, V, by accepting that he was afraid, finally understood why. Now, he is no longer afraid of his nightmares.
After explaining his creation and thus his true identity, V tells Trish that he is running out of time.
Even though Trish only asked V who he is, V continues talking. He tells her about all of his realizations- that everything he once thought unneeded was actually necessary. So, he went to Dante in the hopes he could fix V(ergil)'s mistake.
V is displaying a vulnerability that he hasn't shown anyone else with Trish. He is confessing his regrets and thoughts to someone he hasn't even interacted with much.
V finally notices that he is sharing more with Trish than he should. Even though Trish looks like Eva, they are definitely not the same person.
V is not talking to his mother, so why is he telling her all of these things? Why is he suddenly being vulnerable with Trish?
Despite being aware of this, V asks her if he was wrong.
Trish tells him to find the answer himself and leaves.
At the same time, the Qlipoth has finally reached full maturity, and everything starts crumbling as the tree grows further out of the ground.
The Qlipoth fruit Urizen waited for is ready. Once he consumes it, he will gain immense power, the very thing Vergil wanted.
As V runs away from his crumbling surroundings, his mind returns to what he had told Trish- that the weaknesses he threw away were the very things he needed to become stronger. By embracing them, he was able to move forward, past them.
So, even if he (or specifically Urizen) obtains more power, because he hasn't accepted his weaknesses, he won't be able to defeat Dante.
V has actually predicted the outcome of the (upcoming) fight between Dante and Urizen. Even after Urizen consumes the fruit and gains more power, he will still lose against Dante.
Suddenly, the cliff V is standing on crumbles, and he falls into the abyss.
As he falls, he sees Trish running, leaving his sight...
Eva stands in the darkness, back facing a bloodied young Vergil who has his hand outstretched to her-
As V falls, he is struck by a thought.
A thought he had long forgotten...
He didn't want to save his mother. He didn't want to be the one doing the saving.
He wanted his mother to-
A hand suddenly grabs V.
Trish grabbed him just in time and pulls him up to safety. V stares at her in shock, prompting her to yell at him to run.
As he runs, V notes that he feels like a child.
Griffon is confused about his comment, but teases V, who ignores him. V looks behind him-
A young Vergil lies in the darkness, covered in stab wounds. He crawls forward, leaving behind a trail of blood. Vergil lifts his injured hand and reaches into the abyss...
Soft, clean hands gently take Vergil's hand, bringing light to his surroundings.
Vergil looks up and, upon seeing who it is, starts crying with relief.
His mother is here. She will protect him after everything that has happened.
Everything will be alright-
That never happened.
Eva never found Vergil.
In the real world, V's expression becomes sorrowful as he fully remembers what he truly wanted.
V's conversation with Trish and the moment she saved him allows him to remember that he wanted his mother to find and save him.
V was vulnerable with Trish and told her all his thoughts because he wanted to be vulnerable with his mother, the person she looked like. Years ago, Vergil trusted his mother and depended on her. He was once a child who turned to his mother for comfort. After Trish saved him, V(ergil) finally remembered that on the day of the attack, he wanted his mother to find him.
Vergil wanted to be vulnerable and have his mother protect and comfort him after everything that happened that day.
But Eva never did those things because she died.
Trish and V eventually find their way to the others, and they figure out that Urizen is at the top of the Qlipoth and intends to consume the fruit there. Dante, Nero, and V all decide to travel down to find Urizen. However, Dante quickly leaves the other two behind, determined to face what was once his brother. Nero and V follow him, and all three end up in a race to reach Urizen first.
Soon after, V finds himself in precarious conditions. His body is rapidly deteriorating, but he needs to reach Urizen before Dante kills him and destroys his only chance at survival.
But he stumbles upon Malphas and accidentally draws her attention to his location.
While hiding from her, V starts panicking, as he is too weak to fight back or run. He has no options, but he doesn't want to die. V is overwhelmed with fear and helplessness.
A bloodied young Vergil sits on the ground, hoping that someone will come-
Another version of Vergil, holding the Yamato, appears and tells himself not to seek out help.
No one came that day, so why would anyone come now?
Vergil was alone then.
V(ergil) is still alone.
He is the only one who can save himself. If he can't, then he dies.
There are no other options.
Vergil reaches out and touches the flame. This is what his life has always been and will continue to be: him alone, fighting to survive.
As he walks into the flames, resigned to his fate, Vergil is stopped by an object in his way.
It is Nero.
In the real world, Nero appears. He reached V's location just in time. He kills Malphas.
Afterward, Nero finds V, who is determined to continue forward to Urizen. Despite his insistence that V stay behind, V begs him to help him.
Nero is not happy with the entire situation, but starts carrying a weak V forward.
Griffon (internally) notes how low they've fallen. Their fate now entirely depends on Nero. But V isn't embarrassed at all. He will do anything to achieve his goal, and in this case, he is using Nero to that end.
However, Griffon points out that V asked Nero for help, and he agreed. V didn't manipulate Nero into help him. And no one else coerced Nero to. There is nothing he will gain from helping V.
Nero chose to help him.
Griffon is right.
Someone decided to help V of their free will. No one is manipulating them or the circumstances.
So, what does V think?
Well, the truth is-
Vergil stands before the fire, exposed and alone.
He looks up and admits that he also wanted to be protected.
In the real world, V echoes this sentence.
The manga does not contain the exact (or similar) words from the game, but instead insinuates that V says those lines. For reference, here is what V said to Nero in the game:
The truth is... I wanted to be protected and loved... But I was alone. My only choice was to survive.
Nero is confused by V's sudden admission and tells V to take a break. However, V ignores him.
In different parts of the manga (not discussed in this analysis), V recognizes that Nero and Vergil share many similarities. Here, he sees that another similarity the two have is a troubled past. However, Nero did not end up having the same life as Vergil. And it was because Nero had people around him who protected and loved him. (We know they were Kyrie, Credo, and their parents, who took him in and gave him some sense of normalcy.)
V feels a need to stay close to Nero, to cling to him as a child would to their parent when they need comfort. He wants to stay close to the person who protected him when no one else did.
V then decides to reveal the truth about Urizen to Nero:
Nero... I will tell you...everything. There is no demon named Urizen... only a man who threw away his humanity, in an endless pursuit of power,
He is Dante's older brother.
Yes. And his real name is... Vergil.
This scene and the previous one are straightforward: V is sharing a truth about himself and revealing Urizen's true identity to Nero.
From another perspective, both scenes, together, are also an unspoken confession about how V(ergil) ended up the way he is.
Vergil wanted to be saved. He wanted someone to protect him from the demons, but in the end, no one did. Eva was murdered. Vergil didn't know Dante was hiding in the closet, so he believed the demons killed him, too.
Vergil was alone, left with only the memories of the attack and what he lost. But he needed to survive. So, he focused solely on gaining power and strength because they would protect him from physical harm.
This mentality worked, as having power and strength allowed Vergil to survive the years on the run and constantly defeat the demons Mundus sent after him.
In addition to helping him survive, the idea of power also helped Vergil cope with the pain of being alone.
People who lack power suffer or die because they lack the means to control the world around them. People with power can control anything because no one can hurt them or force them to do things they don't want to. Those with power and strength can control their fates. The alternative idea that people who are willing to protect the weak exist, but none of them were there to save you, is more painful.
It is easier to believe that with only power, you can control everything.
Eventually, Vergil’s belief in power as the determinant of one's fate twisted him into a callous, arrogant man.
When V encounters the boy and his unconscious mother in the supermarket, he reacts cruelly. He stands on the sides while confidently stating that the boy's mother will die. According to him, her fate is determined because she and her son lack strength. In a world where power and strength matter, the weak die. In such a world, there is no chance someone will save them. V does not consider the possibility that he can step in and change their fates.
Vergil also came to not view people as living beings but as a means to his goals. He treated Arkham as a tool to use to raise the Temen-ni-gru. After meeting Griffon, V belittles him, stating that he will use him if he is worth using. This attitude even applies to Dante and Nero. Although they are (technically) a part of the same family, V only focused on the fact that they can help him defeat Urizen.
Over time, by focusing solely on power, Vergil physically and emotionally isolated himself from everyone.
But the fact that Vergil possessed immense power and strength did not erase his pain from the fact that no one was there to save him that day, and no one was there for him afterward. It did not erase the fact that his mother, the person he wanted to save him, wasn't there.
So, he distanced himself from any connection with Eva.
In DMC3, when Vergil and Arkham are in Temen-ni-gru, they discuss the woman who broke into the tower.
Vergil: Does that woman really bother you?
Arkham: What are you talking about?
Vergil: Why didn't you kill her? Perhaps, because she is your daughter? Did some pesky fatherly love get in your way?
Arkham: That is none of your -
This part of the scene is somewhat paradoxical. Vergil mocks Arkham's connection to his daughter and his supposed love for her because of his own experiences. (We, the viewers, know the reason why Arkham kept Lady alive, but Vergil didn't know it at this moment.) The fact that Eva wasn't there to protect Vergil from the demons causes him immense pain. So when faced with an example of a protective parent, he belittles their protectiveness, as if it were a weakness or an obstacle to achieving a greater goal.
From the perspective that only power and strength matter, a parent's act of protecting a child is meaningless. It is nothing but a worthless sentimental act. By believing anything apart from strength as a weakness, Vergil distanced himself from the pain of his mother not being there to protect him.
Another instance is when Vergil ignored his personal connection to the half of the Perfect Amulet.
Dante: So... my mother's amulet is the key that unlocks the door to the demon world. Good plan, pop.
Vergil: Just the opposite actually. Originally it was the key to the demon world but was given to humans as a gift.
When Dante talks about his half of the amulet, he emphasizes his personal connection to it. The first thing he says is that it belonged to his mother, and then it opens the door to the Underworld.
Vergil notices this and tries to correct Dante, saying it was the key to the Underworld, which was then given to humans. Vergil specifically states that the amulet was given to humans, not to Eva or to his mother. If you look at only Vergil's words, it appears as if Sparda bestowed the Perfect Amulet on humanity as a whole.
But the amulet was given to Eva alone by Sparda. It wasn't meant to belong to anyone else. The amulet belongs to the twins later because Eva herself chose to gift one half to each of them.
By stating the amulet was given to humans at large, and thus implying that Eva was just another human, not someone special, Vergil managed to distance himself from her. If she is no one special, then her actions don't matter.
However, it is clear that no matter how hard Vergil tried, he could not detach himself from his love for his mother. At the waterfall, after Dante cuts through Vergil, he drops both the Force Edge and his amulet. Vergil grabs his amulet first, instead of the sword. Earlier in the story, when V meets a woman being mugged, he chooses to only take her money and leaves behind her necklace. It was also a gift from her mother, so he left it behind because it reminded him of his amulet and his mother.
But his attempts to distance himself from Eva were still successful. It was decades later, after Trish saved V, that he remembered he wanted his mother to save him. V finally remembers that he was in pain (and still is) from the fact that he lost his mother. He loved her and wanted her to be there for him, to protect him.
But Vergil became so emotionally isolated that learning Dante was still alive came too late to change his path. After meeting Dante for the first time in a decade, Vergil does not abandon his plan of raising Temen-ni-gru in favor of joining his brother. Instead, he continues with his plan, and a year later, Vergil invites Dante to the tower to take his half of the amulet. There, he fights and injures his brother multiple times. After losing to Dante at the waterfall, Vergil jumps into the Underworld. He knows that Dante has a life in the Human world, but does not consider that he could have the same life for himself. He has been alone for so long that he cannot recognize that there is a chance for him to stay by Dante's side.
To handle the pain from being alone after the attack, Vergil turned to power and ended up isolating himself from everyone, including his own brother.
Vergil also believed he couldn’t rely on anyone. After all, when he was lying on the ground after being brutally stabbed by demons, the Yamato appeared. Vergil saved himself with his father’s power. No one helped him when he needed it most.
There never was, and never will be, anyone in the world who would go out of their way to save him.
The only person Vergil can depend on is himself.
Decades later, Nero saves V from Malphas.
Nero saving V is a significant moment in the story- there is no denying that. It is heartbreaking because it is a son saving his father (or the human side of him).
But…
At this point in the story, Nero is still a stranger to V.
Earlier, while waiting in Fortuna, V takes a moment to think about Nero and his relationship to Sparda, even considering that Nero might be his (or specifically Vergil’s) son. However, he does not consider any possibility beyond that and pushes those thoughts aside. Based on his experiences with Dante, V believes that the descendants of Sparda will fight and harm one another regardless of their familial connections. So, even though the two are part of the same family and share a common goal, V makes no attempt to get closer to Nero and learn more about him.
This is easy for V to do because he has no previous history with Nero. He does not have a deep bond with Nero as he does with his brother, Dante. And despite not knowing Trish well, he shared his thoughts with her because she reminded him of his mother. V has no shared experiences with or emotional connections to Nero, so they are strangers.
From V's perspective, Nero is nothing more than a stranger he can take advantage of to achieve his goal of defeating Urizen.
But Nero saved V at his lowest moment.
V realizes afterward that Nero saved him of his free will. No one manipulated him into doing so. There is nothing Nero would gain by saving V, but he did so anyway.
And he is still by V's side. He is currently helping V by carrying him to Urizen. Nero, again, is helping V out of his own choice, without any expectation of receiving anything in return. He is helping V for no other reason than it is the right thing to do: to help those who need it and protect those who cannot protect themselves.
V then recognizes that Nero didn't have an easy life. He was also alone, without anyone to help him. But he found people who protected and loved him.
Nero had a life that Vergil didn't think was possible.
He is the person Vergil believed did not exist.
Nero's existence and actions shatter V(ergil) 's beliefs that strength and power alone determine survival. It is not a cruel world where only those who have power can survive. There are people who are willing to protect and help others. People will love others freely, without question.
It is not a world where Vergil has to be alone.
V(ergil) now remembers that this is what he truly wanted. He wanted someone who, despite his weakness, would protect him. He also wanted to be loved.
But he couldn't receive these things because he was alone.
Vergil was alone after the attack, but he remained alone through his own actions. His obsession with power isolated him from everyone, and his belief that he couldn’t depend on anyone else only deepened his isolation.
In an endless pursuit of power, Vergil threw away every chance of getting the protection and love he truly wanted, and eventually, his humanity.
But despite everything, it was always possible for Vergil to find someone willing to protect and love him.
It still is.
V(ergil) doesn't have to be alone anymore.
Note from CK:
Here, I focused primarily on the fact that Vergil wanted to be saved by Eva. I am in no way ignoring the fact that he also wanted to save her. Of course, he did. He felt immense guilt over the fact that, despite his attempts, he still failed to save her.
I believe two truths can exist at the same time. Vergil wanted to save his mother, but he also wanted to be protected. Both Vergil’s desires to protect his loved ones and to be protected by them drove him to become obsessed with power. He ended up isolating himself and becoming trapped in the belief that pursuing and obtaining power, along with being hyper-independent, were the only ways for him to live.
Either truth doesn’t take anything away from the other. In fact, together they highlight the tragic facts that Vergil’s trauma contributed to his beliefs on power and humanity and that he suffered from these beliefs.
Part 1: Surviving Beyond the End | <<<Part 3: Defeating the Black Angel | Part 5: Breaking the Cage >>> | All
