Nobody believes Merula is powerful - not even Rakepick. Plus, my take on “the parallel theory”
I wasn’t really planning on making this post yet (and at first I wanted to do it only on Merula), but then I had a discussion with @wilhelminafujita where she mentioned “the parallel theory”. And since it’s kind of related, I decided to go with it. If you’re not familiar with the parallel theory, it’s basically about the similarities between MC’s group (MC, Bill, Merula) and Jacob’s (Jacob, Duncan, Olivia) – where Merula is supposed to mirror Duncan. However, before we dive deeper, let’s discuss Merula and what the heck I mean by this title.
Y5Ch10, when we finally visited Knockturn Alley for the first time, was quite interesting as a whole, but one small thing I find particularly intriguing are differences in Rakepick’s reaction, depending on who you took as your back-up. To be exact, I’m talking about this dialogue:
MC: What are you doing here?
Rakepick: Saving your life. Again. I couldn’t bear to lose my favourite apprentice.
… and then there’s a part which varies.
For Jae:
Not to mention, a promising Dark Artefact dealer in the making…
For Bill:
No offence, Mr Weasley. I have no doubt you’ll become a formidable Curse-Breaker.
For Merula:
No offence, Miss Snyde.
And honestly, I laughed out loud when I saw Merula’s. She’s so desperate for Rakepick’s approval, and Patricia didn’t even throw her a bone, like “Not to mention the most cunning Slytherin student”, or anything. But then it made me think, and I realised that Merula is hardly ever praised by our mentor in general, at least on-screen. Actually, I suppose that even Jae was more appreciated. He was praised after practising Hex-Deflection and in Knockturn Alley. It’s somehow impressive, considering how little he interacts with the current DADA professor. Meanwhile, Merula – whose practice is way longer – was directly complimented also two times, if I remember correctly. Once, when Rakepick explained her choice as one of the apprentices. Second, when we found Bea, and Patricia admitted that Merula did the right thing to inform her right away (and that we also should’ve thought about it). All right, but she IS the Curse-Breaker apprentice, isn’t she? So Rakepick has to see some potential in her, right? Well… yes and no.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Patricia considers Merula as totally worthless. I just got a feeling she might see her as not talented enough to mentor her if circumstances were different. Why did she pick her to our group then? Well, she told us why. At our very first meeting, Patricia said that she has chosen “Miss Snyde for her ambition and strength”. Merula is too ambitious to stop searching for the Vaults, and she’s strong enough just to be a pain in the ass for MC – as she was in the previous years.
I know that the urgency of the current events is not very clear for us, players, due to content realising schedule and filler plotlines, but the assumption is that it is there. And Rakepick is probably a person who reminds us about it the most. She gets annoyed when we’re wasting time on Scabbers, on asking about her relationship with our brother, that we still don’t have the portrait. And she probably knows that in the past we were also wasting time on dealing with Merula. So, she decided that it’s better to include her into the team – she won’t be disturbing us that way, and maybe she could even help. And that’s the first reason. Rakepick gave away the second one when she told Merula in the same scene this:
You see, Patricia might be a bitch, but she doesn’t like to see children dying. It seems that she genuinely cares about teaching those kids how to defence, and not only MC’s friends. She’s engaged as a professor because of that, and that’s why students like her. So when she got such Merula who’s asking life for permanent injury all the time, she decided that it’s easier to keep an eye on her while having her closer. Therefore, when she told her:
… she wasn’t really lying. Even though Snyde probably thinks otherwise.
Merula is starting to realise that she and her mentor perhaps see the situation differently, and she doesn’t like it. She has more doubts about Rakepick, she doesn’t idolize her so much as she used to. She’s faster to put her under suspicion, and I believe she’s way more likely to accuse her than defend her recently.
Also, in Y5Ch20, there was an interesting scene before we approached Kettleburn to ask about his “142 cats” letter. He was talking to Merula who had that angry/upset/”I’m done with this” animation.
(screenshot from I-GGames YouTube channel)
Was she arguing with the professor? Was she trying to find out something about Rakepick from him? Either way, I don’t think it was put there without reason. I’m telling you, despite Patricia’s efforts to keep her in check, Merula is going to do some fuckery (again) by the end of this year.
With all above in mind, we can move to the comparison part. I won’t be talking much about MC and Jacob because I feel this one is pretty obvious. We’re hearing all the time how much we resemble our brother. Instead, I want to focus on two other members and their relationship with MC/Jacob. But let’s start with the basis: houses and personality.
First couple: Duncan-Merula. Both Slytherins. Ambitious, determined, with a mischievous streak. Everything checks.
Second couple: Olivia-Bill. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Not the same, although, Olivia was described as exceptionally brave (so Gryffindor characteristic), while Bill is a very intelligent and talented student (Ravenclaw characteristic). So technically it’s quite alike, and you could say it also checks.
However, this is pretty much where the similarities end, in my opinion. Because look…
Duncan and Jacob were friends from the very beginning. They apparently were spending a lot of time together, visiting Zonko’s and causing some mischiefs at Hogwarts. Maybe in later years, it was their way of dealing with the Vaults stress. From what Duncan said, they saw each other as equals, they were in that mess together.
MC and Merula’s relationship depends on the player’s choices/interpretation to some degree, but most of the time we’re in conflict. If we’re spending time together, it’s usually connected to the Vaults and rather goal-oriented. And if you ask me, there’s no way Merula would stop trying to dominate MC.
But you know what? While Bill and Duncan seem to be a very different people, the more I think about it, the more I can see of Jacob&Duncan in MC&Bill. We’re in a friendly relationship from the moment we met, we support each other. We can go to Bill with our problems which reflects J&D hanging out together. Sure, it’s not exactly identical, but it’s the same kind of energy, only directed in different activities. Moreover, @wilhelminafujita noticed one interesting thing in our previous discussion: Duncan wanted to be a Curse-Breaker. I still have doubts if it could mean that he was the first one to get interested in the Cursed Vaults, but it’s an idea worth exploring.
You see, Jacob wrote in his notebook: “I’ll move my research to that abandoned room on the fifth floor to avoid Filch, Snape, and R”. Not we’ll move, not our research. Therefore, I believe he was still alone at this point. But let’s assume that Jacob got interested in the Vaults out of curiosity, maybe even hunger for power, knowledge, or whatever. However, he wasn’t really into the whole curse-breaking per se. What if, when things got more serious, he decided to risk and reach out for help to his friend who’s passionate in this field? Just like MC reached out for help to Bill? I don’t know, suddenly Duncan and Bill don’t seem to be so different anymore, in my opinion.
(By the way, we all know that Bill is older than MC. Interestingly, Duncan could’ve been younger than Jacob. Notice that he told us: “I was friends with Jacob from the day I got sorted”. Not we got sorted. It might suggest that Jacob was indeed older and therefore already had his Sorting Ceremony in previous years.)
Now, let’s try to look at Olivia-Bill, and I’ll reference again something that @wilhelminafujita said about Olivia having a role of a mediator between Jacob and Duncan, similar as Bill was trying to ease the atmosphere at our meeting with Merula. And that there might’ve been a conflict between the boys after Olivia “met her fate”. The thing is… I don’t really see hints for any conflict occurring. Duncan is so angry at Jacob that he’d surely took the opportunity to mention how terrible our brother was even when he was alive. Meanwhile, he’s rather understanding, he doesn’t even blame Jacob for his death – only that he didn’t use it to expose R.
To be honest, I believe that if there was any kind of conflict in their group it was between Duncan and Olivia. It’s mainly guessing at this point, considering how little we know about Olivia, but Duncan still didn’t mention her even once. And when we talked with Grey Lady, she also said only about Olivia talking to Jacob, not “to them” or something like that. It could actually be another similarity between Duncan and Bill, who doesn’t really get along with Merula. And Jacob&Olivia might reflect MC&Merula. We can’t tell what was the relationship between J&O, but there’s a possibility it was somewhat friendly. Just like our relationship with Merula which might be more or less friendly, depending on the player’s choices.
And if we’re talking about Merula-Olivia already… As I said before, it’s hard to speculate about Olivia since we don’t even know what happened to her. But I have a theory that she got trapped in the next vault because she went after it out of order. And I assume they had to know about the order from R, which would mean that Olivia rebelled against R. Similar to Merula possibly rebelling now against Rakepick.
Another thing that is different between these two groups is their nature. Jacob’s group was probably formed by R, and its goal was to choose the winner (next member) while eliminating the rest. The kids were aware of that. MC’s group, on the other hand, was formed to support and help each other. Even if you want to believe that Rakepick is manipulating them to use them (she’s not), they’re working with a totally different image in mind.
I know I might be biased by my own theories, but I really tried to look at all of this objectively, and there are just too many things that don’t add up to me. While some aspects are indeed parallels, the others seem to be the exact opposite, and that’s why I’m not entirely sold out on the parallel theory. I’m also not really sure what I’m supposed to take from that. Should I make parallel predictions or on the contrary? It feels more like one of those metaphorical theories – you know, like Dumbledore, Snape, and Harry representing the Peverell brothers. It’s a very interesting observation, but does it really change the story? Does it explain anything? Not exactly, to be frank…
