All for One
or Prisma is a thief of light.
This theory is a bit silly and doesn’t have much proof, mostly because Prisma doesn’t have much screentime! However, that won’t stop me from writing this theory.
Before I explain what I mean, let’s start by going over the basics!
Every human in this magical world is born with a certain “magical potential” that can range from None to Enormous. As Purple puts it,
Each magician, has a different amount of potential. Some magicians can do a lot of magic in a day, and others can do very little. [...], the magician doing the magic is still extending some of their own energy into every trick they do.
Some people simply have more magical energy then others, and that is this magical potential.
Which means that in order to become a Mancer, a magician must be born with a high potential.
Or so you would think.
I have reasons to believe that Prisma wasn’t actually born with the potential of a Mancer. Let’s go over the evidence, shall we?
Sharing Magic
As my first witness, I call Harold Gloom to the bar. Harold is a very special case, because his hat, and therefore his magic, is not his own. As consequences, his hair turned black, and his eyes turned red. Now, THAT’s interesting!
There are many things of interest for my cause here.
The Dark Overlord can grant “hats” and magic to people
That magic relates to his own personality, since Hobo loves candy and Harold has candy magic
There’s an external marker (black hair, red eyes) when your magic is not your own
Harold is also never seen with a wand, meaning his magic is not really “complete”
However, this may have weakened Amadeus. Petunia implies he can change his appearance, but he hasn’t done so in a while. How long? Perhaps, ever since Harold got his magic, at 17. He’s in his mid twenties now, so thats 5-7 years.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? When you share a limited ressource, you get less for yourself. And so, by sharing magic with Harold, Amadeus “lost” some of his potential.
In summary: Sharing Magic with someone is possible, but it has consequences for both parties.
The Magic of the Colors
As said before, when someone messes with your magic in an unnatural way, there’s an external marker. For Harold, it was black hair and red eyes. For the Colors? It’s their entire body.
Their cases is very peculiar though, and almost completely different from Harold, so the link isn’t obvious. However, I think the hidden cause is the same. Someone messed with their magic! And that someone is obviously Prisma. The Colors were her “servants” and she is implied to have “made” them this way. For unknown reason, this color change repeated itself after (each?) generations.
That’s neat, but... apart from the aesthetic, why would Prisma do that? And what exactly did she do? Did she grant them magic, like Amadeus did for Harold?
Well, no.
All the colors changed when they got their magic. So we know one thing: all the colors have the potential for magic in them. Even an inversian, someone with extremely low chances of getting magic, turned Orange. Someone with no potential, so no magic, could never become a color.
However, none of the Original Colors have shown signs that they’re able to use magic. Green and Violet are only seen a short time, but they do not have any kind of hats or wands, while Prisma and the dark lord are both shown with a staff/wand. The same is true for Yellow. There’s nothing in her room that could be a hat or wand. This may just be an unfortunate coincidence, but until it get disproven, it just adds to my theory.
The colors that Prisma originally “created” can’t use their magic.
And as a fun note, the chapter that finally introduce us to Prisma, Violet and Green is titled “Less Than Humans”. This is a phrase used to describe magicless humans in the past. People that can’t use their magic.
The dominating belief, was that magicless humans were 'less then human' and therefore deserved the terrible treatment. This is obviously false, [...]
There’s a lot to be said about the colors, tbh. The fact that they convert the colors of everything they touch imply that they are leaking magic out of every pore of their body. Perhaps because they’ve been “wired” to “share” their magic with the exterior? Magic usually needs the hat to pull energy from somewhere else, but the magic leak that colors have going on is only centered on their bodies. Their hat/wand don’t spread the color, only their body. Since the Magician’s energy is already used in regular magic use, it’s possible that their body is radiating this magical energy/potential at all time instead of keeping it inside.
Prisma the young Prodigee
In Purple’s book, we are first introduced to Prisma by this line from a letter by the contemporary queen of Stratoverse:
I have a very gifted magician in my country [...]
Later, we’re told this:
Prisma was considered to all, as a respectable, and beautiful magician
This is extremely tame compared to how Amaryllis, Malus, and Hyacinth, the first three Mancers, were presented. There is no mention that she is More Powerful than the norm, unlike the others.
Maybe because she wasn’t. Not in the beggining at least. Yet, at the end of her life, she was powerful enough to... broadcast her memories to numerous people across thousand of years. Or something. And stand up to the dark lord in a fight. Probably. We don’t really know what her powers were.
My point being, that Prisma wasn’t frightingly powerful early on like Malus or Amaryllis. She only became a “threat” later in her life, which made the Dark Lord pay her a visit.
Speaking of,
What did the Dark Lord want?
“You got what you wanted... please, spare me...”, this is how Prisma begs for her life. It’s unclear what happened, but the scene is morbid: Prisma is on her knees, surrounded by the corpses of her closest friends, while a magician drenched in darkness towers over her.
But.... what was it that they wanted? Supposedly they ‘got’ it. What is it? They are in the temple and it doesn’t seem like they ever left it, so whatever it is, is something they can get from Prisma, from the temple..... or from her friends.
There’s a lot of emphasis on the Color’s lifeless bodies! They’re impossible to miss, and very peculiar. More importantly, they were the first victims. They died before Prisma, when in all likelyhood, Prisma is the primary target, being The Mancer, The Leader, The Head of State. So why go through her servants? It doesn’t seem like they died while protecting her either.
Amadeus, our beloved dark overlord, doesn’t seem the type to kill people just for fun. This was done with purpose. The Colors had to die.
It can also be noted that the bodies are scribbled over with a light color. Not black, but white. While it can be taken as them severring, it can also be linked back to Prisma, since white seems to be her magic. Could she have been the one to do it? It’s possible that Prisma killed them herself under threat (she IS very attached to Yellow and her future baby, just saying. A deal may have been struck so that Yellow would survive if she killed the other colors herself. Perhaps by severring them purposefully, since she seems to have some control over their magic potential, and that exceeding one’s own potential is what cause severring).
Why did the Colors have to die? This is where all the build up pays off.
CONCLUSION
Unlike Amadeus, Prisma didn’t “gift” magic to the colors. Instead, she appropriated their magic potential for herself. She stole it. Each new color created, each new servant, made her more powerful than before.
She bypassed the right of limits this way, insuring that SHE wouldn’t suffer the consequences of overusing her magic, but that her servants would. The original colors can’t use their magic, because it now “belongs” to Prisma. However, the mutilation of their magic potential changed them, changed their colors. They are aways “bleeding out” magic and turning what they touch to their colors.
By stealing the magic potential of people like Hyacinth or Malus, she would have been unstoppable. Or maybe she planned to do this to all the future settlers. Out of selfish reasons, or out of careless good intentions, it’s unknown.
Killing the colors weakened Prisma. The Dark Lord “got what they wanted” because the colors died. But Prisma could always have made more. Such a dangerous power can’t be allowed. And thus she was killed. Or was she?
After all, Prisma is the new Vriska.
She’ll find a way to be relevant again.
Because she’s a Thief Of Light, and that’s what she does best!
Thank you for reading.
