I was asked about Eva and Sparda. So Eva and Sparda we talk about.
There’s this interesting line Eva has in scene where she talks to Dante after he unlocks his devil trigger. It’s kinda easy to miss. I say that because I missed it until my girlfriend pointed it out to me I think like...two years ago. Which means I spent six years entirely not considering this line at all.
When she’s taking to him, she says ‘your father fell in love with me’. She then goes on to talk about that love, about freedom and choices and everything. But she never says she loved Sparda or anything. She just says ‘your father fell in love with me’.
Me slowly losing all thread of my point as I try to figure out what this means while assembling any understanding I can about Eva and Sparda from game canon below the cut
We know very little about Eva and Sparda in both the original games and the reboot. They aren’t the point of the story I guess, but they are always this constant presence. Eva’s ghost lingers with them, Spardas shadow looms over both twins as Vergil chases it and Dante tries to run away. But we don’t know much about either of them together. Their story is something very...nebulous. I think when it comes to the reboot it’s a little bit less, though.
I mean we know Eva and Sparda were on separate sides of what the game presents as an endless war. We know Sparda was right hand to Mundus for possibly thousands of years. And we know, according to Vergil, they fell in love and ran off together, abandoning both of their sides of the war to be together and have the twins. We know that according to both Dante and Vergil, their childhoods were happy. Up until Mundus found them, of course.
But Eva, in the only moment we get of her reflecting on what she’s done to get Dante in the position he is currently in, says ‘your father fell in love with me’.
And it’s not like she feels negatively about that statement either. It’s not something she says with a heavy heart, she never puts her fall on Sparda or anything else. See, the rest of the plan she seems to be in on. Her speech has such an emphasis on freedom and choice so, we can assume she had freedom and choice in going with Dante. She firmly seems to believe in the choices she made, and that she willingly made them. To her, this statement ‘your father fell in love with me’ is just...a statement. It’s not odd to her, it’s not contradictory, it just is. Sparda fell in love with her.
If she fell in love with him...well, guess that’s not important.
I suppose this is all speculative but we know so little about angels and demons and their culture and their society. Demons I suppose we have more to go on. We know that Sparda loved Eva. We see complex emotions in a lot of the other demons we see to, at least to some degree. We know the twins seem to feel like humans do. But what about Eva?
In religions which have angels or angel like figures, their free will seems to vary quite a lot. Even within one religion, their free will seems to vary also. Some are just nothing but messengers who appear to deliver said messengers and go home. Sometimes they exercise what might be free will, or it might just be them obeying their higher up who gave an order that they’re following through. And there’s of course the classic fallen angel, who made a choice to either follow the other fallen angels or to be with humans or whatever. But they are no longer angels, are they? I discussed in another meta about the term Nephilim and how it refers more to like...the act of falling from grace rather than human/angel hybrids so, in this case, the angels who fell and lived amongst humans are just...also Nephilim. But I mean they also can become demons, they do that in some texts also. Free will and agency and even full, emotional thought seem to vary. A lot.
Until the angels fall of course.
With this in mind I have to wonder if Eva says this because she’s not sure if she understands love. This may be contradicted though by her telling Dante she loves him a moment later but, I think it’s fair to argue that romantic love and familial love are different. And if you are a being who has had no concept of love, you may know that you are meant to feel something about your children so you then can identify the feeling better or just...say you do. I think it’s fair to consider that maybe what Eva can feel is just...different then what Sparda or the twins or humanity feels. It’s a possibility.
I think it’s also fair to consider to that maybe she just didn’t love Sparda. Maybe this wasn’t about being in love with Sparda. I mean I don’t know if she minded her life, in love with him or not. Her and Sparda wanted to take down Mundus, they wanted this so strongly that they fell from their respective graces together and ran off and had two god killing babies. She didn’t need to love him to do any of this, she just had to like him and believe in what he said. He may not even loved her at first either. It could just have been a mutual agreement that they both have similar plans and could definitely use the others help to accomplish said plans. Especially if said plans required new Nephilim.
This is all very speculative but it’s such an interesting mystery to me. Because why would she say ‘your father fell in love with me’? It’s such deliberate wording to. It’s not really something you accidently say.
Another aspect of Eva and Sparda in the reboot that I think is really interesting is the Nephilim genocide. We have to assume that Eva and Sparda were alive at the time. We know Sparda was, I mean Mundus has been in charge for thousands of years and Sparda led by his side for a good chunk of that time. Eva might be younger but, we’re never told how long she’s been alive. I think we have to assume angels are long lived like demons and that she might be just as old. And if you’re like me, you like the idea of Eva being just as ruthless and powerful as any demon can be in the reboot context. High ranking angel Eva is the only reboot Eva I want frankly.
But, see, with this in mind, we have to assume they were not only alive. But also that they were somehow involved.
And now here they are, so many years later, probably hundreds or thousands of years later with two Nephilim sons.
I wonder a lot about how that’d impact how they’d raise the twins because they both know what they’ve done. How do you explain that to your children that you are part of the reason they are the only two Nephilim left? How do you do that? Especially if you consider the only reason Eva and Sparda had the twins was so they could act as weapons to finally take down Mundus.
I don’t have a lot of answers with Eva and Sparda here, just a lot of questions that I find really interesting because I think they’re just...really interesting in the context of the reboot. We know very little and what we know is just a really interesting picture. And I haven’t even talked about Sparda yet.
I have less to say about Sparda but I find it really interesting how in the reboot, people who knew Sparda often tell Dante how he reminds them of Sparda. Like Mundus directly says Dante is just like Sparda (’just like your father, too big for your fucking boots’) and Phineas also implies by saying he sees a lot of Sparda in Dante. And I mean it’s not like Dantes not identified by his mother, we see that a lot. But it’s rarely a personal thing. They identify Dante by Eva because he is Eva’s son more or less. Except Phineas I guess who later says he can also see Eva in Dante. But my point is Dante is compared to his parents very few times and two out of two times reboot Dante in the text of the game is compared to his father, it is personal. About Sparda the man. Or, I mean, demon.
This makes me wonder then how much Dante and Sparda have in common. Particularly with Dante’s insistence that he’s not like his father. He’s very firm about that to, in a way that almost feels ironic. Like when you see a character in fiction that's too much like you, warts and all. Personally this is sort of the lens I then end up seeing reboot Sparda in. While I’m sure by the time the twins were born he had to have mellowed out but when he was second in command to Mundus, when he knew Phineas, how much of Dante was there? It sort of brings Sparda to a more human place to think that he might have been cocky and full of bad puns and I think it’s interesting to consider.
Particularly if you think about the whole angle of Eva’s perceived favoritism to Dante it brings up some more questions. Again how this is played out in both the reboot and the preboot is different but if Dante is more like Sparda, is it in the ways that endear her or something? Ways that just make him a more difficult child and thus needing more attention? I feel like I’m asking a lot of questions but I just have a lot of questions and they all lead to head canons that I’m like...half detailing here.
I can’t help but think about that line all the time though. ‘Your father fell in love with me’.
Eva what does that mean?
My personal favorite take on this I guess is that Eva is a high ranking angel who does have a limited understanding of human emotions and isn’t sure what love is. That she’s colder than her preboot counterpart and wants desperately to be this more human, lovable person. That she found Sparda compelling all that time ago because he was more human than her, because he was full of this life she wasn’t used to and she found this interesting. And he, in turn, fell in love with her. And together they ran off to end Mundus, to close the hell gates. Which, side tangent, I feel like the game implies there used to be more with that cave painting, but the only one remaining is the one with Mundus which makes me wonder if Eva and Sparda managed to close more on their own which is how they got so much attention on them as traitors and what not. And then they set out to create the only two beings who could kill Mundus, only to have their plans ruined right before their eyes.
I don’t think she knows if she loves Sparda or not. But I don’t think she regrets her choices, regrets being with him. She says so herself.
Also seriously ask me things about the reboot and I will 100 percent have something to say I promise you. I might also have a follow up about my thoughts on the twins and their parents. I haven’t started it but I might write one.
I apologize for not writing more often here.. It's been quite exhausting for me to get used to so many people and I have to say, things here are definately NOT calm and quiet. I love to be here, don't get me wrong! I just need some space :-)
DmC eva being super sweet and super kind
DmC eva having a beautiful singing voice
DmC eva helping people in need
DmC eva helping lost kids
DmC eva being a literal fucking angel
DmC eva being a good literal angel
DmC eva for fUCK SAKE
