#mourning lockets

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Mourning lockets, brooches, bracelets and rings of the Victorian era. The artisans of the Victorian era found a way to cultivate the womenfolk’s hair into a work of art while remembering their dead loved ones in a somber yet beautiful jewels.

[abybweisse]

@annoyinglyshinycherryblossom asked on this post what the hair colors were for the people on the lockets.

Locket hair colors

The locket designs are done with their hair, so here's an image from one of the design books (French translation):

Emile C. -- very yellow-blond

Oliver A. -- very pale, kind of platinum blond

Alex B. -- deep ginger/red

Cloudia/Claudia P. -- blue-black or blue-gray, which is apparently the typical Phantomhive hair color. The twins are supposed to have this color of hair, too.

Molly/Mally G. -- brown, perhaps a bright brown

Gilbert D. -- silver gray

Harry E. -- dark grey or possibly blue-black/blue-gray. Looks a lot like Phantomhive hair....

[tiffany-s-boudoir]

How about a cup of tea and some biscuits ?

Undertaker’s bones and Claudia P.´s mourning lockets shaped biscuits

Biscuit base topped with lemon and orange blossom flavored royal icing

[blackbutlercharacterpoll2023]

Undertaker's mourning lockets

What do you think of this object?

Love

Like

Indifferent / What?

Dislike

Hate

Voting ended onMay 5, 2023

[blackreapersreign]

It's strange to see undertaker without his lockets.. i mean, i thought that o/c left them at the manor (in his bedroom or something like that, idk) and since undertaker is there with r/c, he would have found them around the P house at some point, but still we see him without. Could this be plot relevant?

I would say it’s plot relevant. It’d be very anti-climatic if Undertaker was to find the lockets behind the scenes. He said they are his treasure, so they are probably going to appear again when Undertaker’s past will be revealed, and his connections to all of those people (or at least C. Phantomhive) will be explained… this is what I think.

Thank you for the message! I’m sorry if I couldn’t help much.

[silyabeeodess]

I remember a while back seeing a post that talked about the mourning lockets that Undertaker had, but it also being really hard to see the details on some of them.  So, in case anyone’s interested, here is the list of names on the lockets along with the dates of the deaths of who they match to according to the concept art for Book of Atlantic:

Mally G.-- Dec. 10th, 1837

Oliver A.--Nov. 13th, 1840

Emile C.--June 18th, 1848

Harry E.--Oct. 7th, 1851

Alex B.--April 20th, 1854

Cloudia P.--July 13th, 1866

Gillert D.--Mar. 1st, 1884

[abybweisse]

So,what IF the lockets undertaker has with himself orginally belonged to claudia phantomhive herself ?first of all they are just too elegant and also all of them are from the same time period of claudia's life And she is the last person on undertaker's chain so maybe she died and then undertaker added her locket on...It's just a headcanon ofc cuz we literally know nothing of undertaker's lockets but it's possible

Whose lockets?

I used to have a theory that Undertaker treasures these lockets because they are all he has from Vincent, but ch131 shows us Undertaker is already wearing the chain while Vincent is still alive:

It was a slight bummer to realize he couldn't have taken them from Phantomhive Manor in an attempt to save them, or as a memento from Vincent, since that would have matched up with Mother3 incredibly well! Flint (the mirror twins' father) entrusts his Courage Badge ("treasured" family heirloom that's actually the legendary Franklin Badge) to Nippolyte (the eccentric gravedigger) to eventually pass it on to Lucas (the younger mirror twin brother). However, my happiness returned when I realized Vincent could have owned the chain of lockets and similarly entrusted them to Undertaker, quite some time before the attack.

I have to admit it's entirely possible he got the chain from Claudia/Cloudia herself and added a locket for her soon after her death. Then again, the "Courage Badge" is a family heirloom, after all... so... the chain of lockets could be passed down from watchdog to watchdog, and each generation adds lockets of people important to them, the last one being for Claudia/Cloudia, probably added by Vincent (or possibly Undertaker). She was alive when Molly/Mally died but just a little kid; her father, the previous Earl Phantomhive and Queen's Watchdog, would have likely added the oldest lockets to the chain. Either way, it could have eventually gone from mother to son, then it went to Undertaker for safe-keeping, before Vincent dies.

Like Vincent speaks with Diedrich in the same chapter, just before this scene with Undertaker, he might have recently sat Undertaker down (maybe even just before talking to Diedrich), talked about the possibility of dying soon, and handed over the chain of lockets... saying "please keep these safe and pass them over to my heir, when the time is right". That would be a damn near 100% parallel to Flint entrusting Nippolyte with his "treasured" family heirloom... with the instructions to pass it along to Lucas when the time is right.

I noticed an earlier image of Undertaker, when he's sitting on the edge of the pool table, and he's sitting with his legs crossed... so I can't see if he's got the chain of lockets. We just don't know how long he's had them, so we can't tell how he came by them. Whether they came from someone else, collection already started, or he is the one who started the collection.

We also don't know how Gregory Violet ends up with a similar looking chain of lockets when our earl goes to Sphere Music Hall for his special "Sirius" event. Had Undertaker snuck around Phantomhive Manor and taken them back sometime between the events of the Campania and the events at Sphere Music Hall... or is it actually another chain? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I hope we eventually get answers to all this.

I will say, though, in defense of the chain of lockets being Undertaker's the whole time, he has also shown an interest in Alex B's locket, and that's a much earlier death than Claudia/Cloudia's.

[abybweisse]

A new leitmotif approach

I asked @georgemandom (through FB) to compose a new short piece for Undertaker's leitmotif, and he's agreed to give it a try.

Now I'm taking...

...and reading the last initials from right to left, as Yana-san probably would have intended, taking Japanese reading order into account. Then taking the starting E, the existence of an F#, and all the others being natural to suggest it's in the key of E minor.

So, the new composition challenge is:

E D G F# B A C

Key of E minor, mournful

Victorian sensibilities (or older)

Let's see what we get!

Anyone else who wants to accept the challenge is welcome.