so Allen is himself, his adopted father, his adopted uncle, his own twin, and also his own soulmate/boyfriend, and also a weapon of God, and a curse by the Devil, and he's named after a dog who was named after him
People in the manga often remarks on Allen's white hair as how it makes him look like an old man, aka closer to death, and people say it shows he's cursed
but now we know that
Lavi met Allen and didn't see an old man or a curse,
but he saw the dazzling light that saved his life once
where everyone saw more death and curse from Allen at first glance, Lavi was the only one to associate it to the one light that once saved his life.
sorry i was looking for something else in a recent chapter but i'm having a meltdown this was Lavi al along? this was Lavi all along??? THIS WAS LAVI ALL ALONG ALLEN SPENT THIS LIFE REMEMBERING THE ONE TIME HE WAS HELD SO TIGHTLY AND WARM AND IT WAS LAVI????????????????????
so @somehowsomewhat (previously known as @norowareshimono) and I were discussing the latest chapter (for which you can read the translation Noro made here) and we ended up revisiting the Heart Theory with the newest information we've been having those past few chapters.
If you've known me a while, you'd know i'm a firm believer in Lavi=Heart, or, at least, that Lavi's connection to the innocence is so weird and I believe the Heart to be involved. Certain new events, however, blows some hole in the theory.... That Noro and I have ended up filling in the weirdest way in return.
We're probably reaching, but Noro and I have also been talking for about a decade about Past!Allen being linked to what happened to Prev!Junior, so like, we're allowing ourselves to.
We've come up with a new theory that takes into account what we already theorized, and the holes we've been trying to make sense of.
Our conclusion is this: Grave of Maria, the corpse Cross parade around, seems likely to be Katherina's corpse and we think she may also be the holder of the Heart of Innocence. But the Heart may have created personal dupes, or even have fractured itself, and a piece may have ended in Lavi's possession because of Cross, or the Heart is using Lavi's innocence to keep an eye on him, explaining the weird stuff that had happened around him in particular.
More details under the cut.
Why Lavi?
This has been discussed to death so i'll sum it up as quickly as possible. Lavi has always been, in my opinion, the most likely candidate along the known exorcists to be the one connected to the Heart of Innocence.
The main argument for it is the one comment the Earl makes on the Heart: that it is influencing the innocences around it and changing them, mainly to protect itself and get lost in the crowd.
Most of the major innocence changes have been around people Lavi was in emotional turmoil about: Allen's innocence protecting him from dying (though this one is now tricky, see you in the next part about it), then Lenalee's near death experience where Lavi kept freaking out because he didnt want another death after Allen's, then Allen's innocence changing when Tyki taunts Lavi over his anger and revenge over him, then Lenalee gets crystilized again when Lavi loses sight of her while he was trying to protect her, then Allen's innocence evolved to no longer hurt humans while Lavi was getting his mind broken by Road before she would use him as a puppet to attack Allen, then when he recluently agreed to lead Lenalee to where her innocence was during the Invasion arc. The one big hole in this patern has been Kanda's crystalization, which can still be about the Heart wanting more help to protect Allen, or just that now that innocences can crystalize they can crystalize without the impact of the Heart.
There is also the very weird dynamic Lavi has with his innocence in general, out of the main exorcists he seems to have little to no real deep connection to it, which seems significant. There is also the fact that him and Bookman could just find working innocences the moment they wanted to infiltrate the Order. There is too much weirdness and distances which incidentally makes a connection to the Heart make sense.
And there is just also the fact that the motif of "having a Heart" keeps following Lavi. "a Bookman has no need for a Heart" and Lavi having to realize he has one, feel just ironical enough to connect him to the Heart of Innocence.
I could go more in depth but that will be the gist of it.
The Newer Lavi Stuff
Now we also have newer information on the balance: Past!Lavi at least got the Heart attention by messing with the Helix and feeding his life to the innocence to save Past!Allen, and seemingly mixed his own life with Allen's innocence (which I truly believe is NOT the Heart, especially because Apocryphos talks about Allen as "precious to the Heart" and it's made clear the innocence that got unleashed on Allen was a random innocence which got influenced by the Helix later). Allen's protection by the innocence could also be a result of Past!Lavi's influence inside the Innocence Allen holds.
Still, it seems like Past!Lavi is also connected to Current!Lavi, saving his life during his near death experience, sharing the same eye as him, and the latest chapter emphasising on Lavi's birth when Past!Lavi disappeared in Allen's innocence.
IMO: Past!Lavi attracted the attention of the Heart with his desperate action to save Past!Allen. Allen's innocence is favored by the Heart because it's the Innocence that got mixed to the Helix and Past!Lavi's meddling. If Allen ends up getting the Heart's attention, it wouldn't be far fetched that Lavi also is in the Innocence's radar.
What holes in the theory?
The major holes in the theory mostly come from Apocryphos. The way he talks about the Heart in general and the expectation it has on Allen especially seems sketchy with all we had set up so far.
Mainly, the latest Biggest Problem on that theory is that, while Japanese is a language that isn't necessaringly gendered, Apocryphos goes out of his way to refer to the Heart using Feminine Ways To refer to the Heart, mainly, の御方.
What about Katherina?
Katherina would be the most thematically relevent person to hold the Heart of Innocence. She is the reason the Earl, who's fate is intertwined with the Heart, decided to try to live a mortal life, split in two for her. Her full name is Katherina "Eve" Campbell, where the Earl calls himself Adam. The possibility of her being the Heart would fit with the history we've been learning over her connection to the Earl.
Katherina seemingly died. her Death is what triggered Mana becoming the Earl. Now we know for a fact that Cyrus Campbell, whom Nea and Mana called uncle, is actually Cross Marian, and this is a made up name.
And we have Grave of Maria, which has been in plain sight all this time but never really questioned. This Corpse which hold an innocence, that Cross seems to cherish in some way. "Maria" being also the name of one of the most important Motherly figure of the Bible alongside Eve herself.
If Nea and Mana are meant to be the Cain and Abel to Katherina's Eve, Allen (and Lavi?) could become the "Jesus" figure to "Maria"'s good name.
Cross and The Bookmen
Cross has always been an odd and mysterious figure in all this, yet also the most likely Key to understand the story.
The latest chapters offer two reveals about him: He was Uncle Cyrus, a relative of Katherina, Nea and Mana. And he creates weird bunny monsters to protect a Manor that has been the home to protect the Bookmen. Bunnies have always been associated deeply to the Bookmen and especially Lavi's, which seems like a red flag from a character we still know so little about.
Now something that was always pretty odd was the fact that in a Komui Corner, Lavi mentions that "one day, Bookman said we'll join the Order and came back with two innocences that we've been using since" which is SO sketchy because we KNOW an Innocence picks its wielder and needs to connect to them by its own will. How come the Bookmen could just access to Innocences this easily?
Related, how come Cross' own connection with Judgement being so sketchy? When he disappeared, Judgement stopped being connected to him, even Hevlaska concluded that because of that Cross must be dead, but we know it's not true. Cross, who's been known for making weird stuff like Timcanpy and this bunny, or has been known to temper with the Akuma to restore their free will? Would it be far fetched that if Cross managed to cut the connection between the Akuma and the Earl, that he could do something weird with Innocences he could get access to?
Bookman Senior once reacted to Cross' tampering with the Akuma like he knew what he was about. Bookman knows Cross enough to know Cross would do something sketchy like that.
Could it be far fetched if Cross may have been the one to give Bookman and Lavi their innocences? That he would somehow be able to access Innocence with this disconnect?
The Earl has split into pieces before. Why wouldn't the Heart do the same?
The Earl has been known to split before. The Original Earl split into Nea and Mana, and the shadow of the Earl has been following them, influencing them in the form of the Suit of the Earl.
(The Suit could also be the Dark Matter's Apocryphos in a way, a guardian to the core essence meant to show through its duty regardless of how the Holder of that essences feel about it).
What if the Heart did the same? What if the Heart isn't full anymore?
Or, what if the Heart could put a part of its essences in innocences that it could keep a watch on?
We know Allen is the Heart's favorite. It seems odd that Apocryphos seems to not have been hunting Allen down when he was under Cross' care. The Bookmen joined the Order about a year after Allen ended in Cross' care.
If Maria is the Heart, and if Cross is the one who gave the Bookmen their innocences, could he have given them innocences which were personally connected to the Heart, or pieces of the Heart itself?
If The Heart apparently was stunned by what Past!Lavi pulled in the past, wouldn't it be logical for it to keep an eye both on Allen and on our current Lavi as well after all?
My brain is starting to fry and i can't really word it best yet, but do you see the possible vision?
But the logic is, Lavi's connection to the innocence is still too weird to brush off, and now that we know Past!Lavi's stunt got the Heart attention it's hard to believe the Heart would leave Lavi alone. But it seems the Heart have been active for a while, and is a "she", and Katherina can be a thematically strong candidate. Cross being a Campbell makes her very likely to be Maria, which raises questions about the innocence inside of Maria as well. And with the likeliness that Cross is the reason the Bookmen may have had their innocences, those connections would be too weird to overlook.
Anyway you can picture us going
but hey we overread into DGM before and haven't been proved wrong yet!
