Cadenza and Shadow Knights
There's this big beautiful tragedy that unfolded before our eyes in MCD that you don't realize is as tragic as it is until you lay it all out. Put simply: Everyone Cadenza has loved turned into and/or died at the hands of a Shadow Knight.
It starts when she's a child. She and Laurance are adopted by both Hayden and Joh. While Cadenza's relationship to Joh is unknown, it's safe to say that she likely saw him as a father figure given Laurance did, and they both call Hayden "dad". And we know for a fact that Laurance and Sasha were friends in childhood. Is it a stretch to say Cadenza wasn't the same?
Hayden, Cadenza's primary caretaker, is kidnapped when she's younger. A teenager, perhaps young adult at the oldest. Her brother, her surrogate mother Glenda, her surrogate uncle Castor, and her best friend Sasha all go into the Nether to save him. Sasha doesn't come back. Laurance witnessed her death and won't tell Cadenza what happened, just that she's gone.
An unknown amount of time later and suddenly Joh is dying in Laurance's arms in the middle of the night. Cadenza doesn't know this, but her best friend has now become a Shadow Knight and killed her father. And then her best friends fiance starts undergoing a grief crash out that makes him fall in love with her, and also try to oppose her still living father when he tries to take on the mantle of his dead partner. Being in Meteli is overwhelming, so she visits her crazy uncle in the woods to play with his chickens and find some respite only for her to be turned into a chicken herself.
This is where we start with Cadenza. She is in the middle of a political nightmare, being pulled two different directions she doesn't want to be pulled, and trapped in another body. Aphmau is the only person who seems to care enough to try and help her. And what results from that help? Nothing...
Cadenza sets off on her own to help herself, since no one else will. She doesn't know that right after she leaves Castor's house he gets kidnapped. She doesn't know Aphmau and Laurance are in pursuit. She doesn't know that Laurance is about to go into literal hell to save her. She's just wandering the woods as a chicken praying she finds someone who can help her one of these days.
And while stuck in this form her brother is kidnapped, tortured, probably beaten within an inch of his life, and made into a shadow knight through possible means of undeath, or possibly something else. When Cadenza finally finds Phoenix Drop, finds some hope or salvation, the first person who sees her picks her up and starts getting ready to cook her.
Once more Aphmau is her only respite, and able to get her to someone who will actually help instead of drinking the day away. Finally Cadenza is in her own body, living her own life, free from the confines of Meteli and the people there, free to have a life outside of what she's always had. And then her brothers pet wyvern tears a hole in space time to save him, killing himself in the process, and also NOBODY TOLD HER ABOUT IT!
She had to find out second hand that he was even in the Nether, let alone out of it, AND her brother is blind now. Somebody. Help. Her. Laurance may get his vision restored, but Cadenza still cared for him before hand, and clearly worried over her brother. Because at this rate she can tell the world is absolute chaos, she has to do something about it, but she can't do anything about it. All she can do is care for her brother and try to make the most of the life her father is letting her have in Phoenix Drop.
...
AND THEN HER DAD IS KILLED BY HER UNCLE BUT ACTUALLY HE WASN'T IT WAS HER MOM FRAMING HER UNCLE SPECIFICALLY SO SHE COULD KIDNAP AND TRY AND SACRIFICE HER DAUGHTER!
SOMEBODY! HELP! HER!
But wait, we're still not done. Her dad is alive now, but then they have to go to war and her entire hometown is burned down. And then her brother and all of his/her friends go missing less than a week later. And they stay missing. Her brother has gone to another dimension before but... there's no way to know where he is or how to get him out of there. She doesn't have awesome wyvern powers to rip a hole in space time.
She's just herself. So Cadenza does what she can do, picks up the pieces of her home, rebuilds it anew, works to keep it going, and then her dad dies. It's unknown what Hayden died of, but if I were to guess, maybe it was a heart attack after years of stress because shadow knights keep killing or trying to kill everyone in his family. Just a guess.
Now Cadenza is alone. Her mother is dead and she doesn't even know why she tried to sacrifice her. Her best friend is dead and apparently responsible for the death of her first father. Her brother stands at the precipice of death and living and then disappeared without a trace. Her only living relative dies due to being unable to carry the burden of their family tragedy. All she has is a husky for comfort.
And yeah, it does start to get better for her. She makes new friends, meets new people, even befriends a Shadow Knight against all odds. But she's still alone. Until her brother comes back, as if he never left, and has missed an entire 15 years of her life. She's not the person he left in Phoenix Drop. And he's far from the person she grew up around.
She's not completely alone anymore but... she can't ignore the emptiness of her home. She can't ignore that so many of her memories have become tainted. She can't ignore that if Shadow Knights didn't exist, she might still have a family.
And that is the ultimate tragedy of Cadenza Zvahl.
