The Patience Child: An Undertale Theory
Be prepared, this is a long one.
We all know about the seven human children who fell down in the Underground, and the seven traits they represented. (Determination, Patience, Bravery, Integrity, Perseverance, Kindness, and Justice, for those of you who don't know.) However, aside from Chara, we don't know a lot about who they were, or, more grimly, how they died. All that's left to tell their story is where we find their objects. But these objects give very little clues as to the time of death. Fans have debated endlessly as to the timeline of Undertale; when the Monsters where sealed Underground, when Chara fell down, when Asriel died, and finally, when Frisk falls into the Underground.
However, I'm going to try and take a shot at cracking the timeline, just a little bit. . .
There's no way the Patience child could have died in The Ruins.
Not while Toriel was occupying them, at least.
Let's begin by talking about something that's been bugging me for a long time: Toriel is not okay. She is not all right in the head. If she's willing to hurt you to "protect you", she has serious issues. From the very start, Toriel is very obsessive over you and your safety. And originally, this comes from the loss of Chara and Asriel.
Look, I'm not an expert on grief here. In my short lifetime, I've only felt it once, for someone who I was not very close to in the first place. . . and. . . it's very. . . destructive. It destroys you. It's helplessness, guilt, sadness, anger beyond anything else I had ever felt.
I cannot even begin to comprehend what someone like Toriel must be going through. My loss was (comparably) not even a loss at all versus a mother losing not just one, but two children in the same day, and having them die right in front of her eyes.
That's traumatic. Incredibly traumatic. Toriel likely has PTSD. Symptoms of PTSD include agitation, irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, or social isolation, flashbacks, fear, severe anxiety, or mistrust, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, guilt, or loneliness. Read over that list. How many of these symptoms does Toriel exhibit?
- She's hyper vigilant about protecting and taking care of you,
- Even to the point where she gets openly hostile with you, attacking you and trying to make you "go back to your room", essentially forcing you to stay with her.
- She isolates herself in The Ruins. None of the other Monsters even talk to her.
- Why? She intimidates the other Monsters, as shown by her agitation and hostility towards them when she breaks up fights for you.
- She no longer trusts most of Monsterkind, even her now ex-husband, whom she used to love and trust dearly, enough to have a child with.
- She's very lonely, and begs for you to stay and become her child.
- And though this isn't explicitly stated, there's no doubt she feels guilt over Asriel and Chara's deaths.
She might not have the traditional symptoms of panic attacks and flashbacks that we all associate with PTSD, but it's clear that Toriel is not alright.
Alright, I've established that Toriel has issues, but what does this have to do with the rest of my above statement? Well, it has to do with something that happens in game: when Toriel leaves you to go bake a pie for you. It sounds like a cute little surprise, and an opportunity to get out from under her wing for a while, but there are some serious problems with this if Toriel had met the Patience Child.
Do you think that Toriel would ever, ever leave you alone, by yourself with only a cell phone, in The Ruins if she lost a child there?! No! Let's no forget that Toriel is the one that physically ATTACKS YOU in order to stop you from leaving The Ruins. Toriel would never leave your side if the Patience child had died in The Ruins, not even for ten seconds to go hide behind a pillar. No way. She would never have you out of eyeshot. And most certainly, she would give more than a disapproving glare to the other Monsters who attack you. No doubt that if the Patience child died on her watch, she'd probably attack these other Monsters to defend you. She might even clear The Ruins of Monsters entirely!
There's no possible way that Toriel met the Patience child, not with the way things happened when we fell down.
So, what happened to the Patience child, then?
Well, I think that Toriel was not in the Ruins when they fell down.
But how? As soon as Chara and Asriel died, Toriel left, right? That's the catch. I don't think so.
We think that the order of events went like this: Asriel comes back through the barrier gravely injured, he dies and drops his dust and Chara's body, Asgore gets mad and declares war on humanity, and Toriel gets mad at him and leaves, running all the way to the Ruins and never even looking back. Doesn't that just sound too. . . abrupt? First of all, people normally freeze up a little when their loved ones drop dead in front of them. Was there really no time for shock? Did they not express their immediate grief? Did they not try and. . . comfort each other first? Remember, Asgore and Toriel were very close to each other. Was there no hugging, crying, begging to whatever god above to give their children back? Learning about death, at least in my case, shook me emotionally for at least an hour afterwards. These two just watched their children die in front of them. There must have been time for grief. I'd say that would be two hours at the very minimum, trying to process what just happened, especially because it all happened so fast.
Next is when Asgore would get angry. Angry at the humans. And for all the right reasons, nevertheless. He declares war on humanity. However, these simple words aren't going to make Toriel leave just like that! While this may be something that Toriel deeply disagrees with, and emotions are running high at the moment, don't forget that Toriel loves Asgore. They've been in a steady, faithful, and healthy relationship up to this point for the past. . . well, we don't even know how long, but we can assume it was for a long time. This relationship, this love; it's not just going to disappear because someone said something once. Toriel, of all people, is likely to understand that people say things they don't mean sometimes.
However, the problem comes when Asgore actually means it.
How? Well. . . that's where the Patience child comes in. Imagine this, you're a Monster in the Ruins. The King has just declared war on humanity. Suddenly, a human falls down into the your home, with a weapon (or at least something that looks like a weapon,) even! What would you do? Imaginary scenarios aside, we can conclude, based on the behavior of the Monsters in the Ruins, that they would have followed the Asgore's orders, attacked the Patience child, and took their soul.
But. . . how did the soul get to castle, then if it's a one way exit through the Ruins? The Monsters that transported the soul from the Ruins would never be able to go back. We'd see some random Ruins monsters wandering around in some other area, and wouldn't that be weird? Fighting Ruins Monsters outside of the Ruins. . . now where do we do that?
Only at the CORE.
Final Froggit, Whimsalot, and Antistigmatism are all Monsters that are originally from the Ruins. They were the ones to deliver the Patience soul to Asgore. In return, I think Asgore made them part of the Royal Guard, or something along those lines, which would explain why they're all buffed up. And think about it, killing a human and doing service to their kingdom would probably make them all more confident (Final Froggit and Whimsalot, who have overcome their ignorance and shyness) or maybe even corrupted with the fame and glory (Antistigmatism, who was formally picked on, becomes a bully himself.)
Now, Final Froggit and the rest have now delivered this human soul to the castle. This might be hours after the loss of the children, it might be days. We don't know. But they show up with the soul of a human child.
This is where Toriel loses it.
Asgore has just acted on his promise to destroy humanity, without any regard to the fact that Chara, their own child, was a human. Asgore, in extension, has now killed a human child. Asgore's words could have meant nothing, but an act as despicable as this (in her eyes) is what drives Toriel away permanently, making her leave without ever looking back. It takes a lot to break a relationship as strong as Asgore and Toriel's, and this would be enough, especially right in the emotional aftermath of losing two children.
Toriel leaves, but this "buffer" of time in between the loss of the children and her going away gives her time to grab some things, such as some flowers from the throne-room-turned-garden, some clothes, and to either destroy or take with her recipe for her cinnamon-butterscotch pie, the one that Asgore tries to recreate over and over again while she's gone.
This is why she'd know to go straight to the ruins and set of watch there, looking out for any other child that falls down, so that none would suffer the same fate as the Patience child.
This is why she'd be so eerily certain that Asgore, the person she trusted enough to marry and have a child with, will kill you.
The words "I declare war on humanity" aren't enough to elicit this kind of response. I refuse to believe that Toriel would leave the love of her life over simple words. No, it had to be from an action, and I think that action was the killing of the Patience child.
So, what does all of this have to do with deciphering Undertale's timeline? Well, we now know two definite things: The Patience child fell first, and shortly after the deaths of Asriel and Chara.
And that's only the first step of the puzzle.