Let’s talk about Zhan Tiri’s followers
Apologies if someone else has noticed this and posted it, I haven’t seen anything about this though.
End of writing note: This actually spiraled into several theories so you can pick and choose which ones you might agree with, if any. Also, each theories ended up ending with a jumping off point, so if you want to end with one and ignore the theories that are after it there’s easy separations. They all combine in to one massive theory that all connects, but it’s going further down the rabbit hole so if you say to yourself, “hey, this is getting too wild,” you can jump off at the next exit and not continue to the next “And what if!”
First, lets look at Zhan Tiri’s followers (Demanitus’ former pupils) who summoned them. Specifically the one in the middle
We met her earlier in season one in “Painter’s Block” posing as the art teacher Mrs. Sugarby. However, by the end of the episode we learn she is Sugracha the Eternel
Oooooo, spooky! She, of course, still wanted to raise Zhan Tiri and, of course, failed. She went into the portal she was trying to summon Zhan Tiri through, wah wah. I won’t pretend to know for sure how it works so let’s pretend it works in a way that supports my theory.
Let’s look at her silhouette again
What if we made her stance less menacing and curled over and didn’t have her arms curled out. Ugh, that description isn’t that good. Just imagine she’s standing normal instead of creepy hunched over summoning posture. And what if her pigtails were curled into buns. That silhouette would look awfully similar to someone else in the show. . . . .
The Enchanted Girl (is that her official name at this point? I just call her Spooky Blue Girl to myself) has a similar outline doesn’t she? What if either through The House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow weird magic or with Matthews/Tormus’s help (or a combination of both) she was able to come back and take another innocent looking form (a little girl instead of the little old lady she was in season 1). What do y’all think?
Actually, let’s continue down this path. I think we need to take what she showed Cassandra in The House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow with a grain of salt, because part or most could be fabricated to manipulate Cassandra, which we see her doing more of in season 3 episodes.
If it’s not fabricated, why would Gothel have a kid. Remember the main arguments against the “Cass is Gothel’s daughter” theory back towards the beginning of the show (Gothel is too vain to be pregnant but also the doubt her sundrop modified body could actually carry one), plus we see in this flashback and in Tangled (the film) that Gothel doesn’t like dealing with the kid Cassandra and kid Rapunzel. So why have and keep Cassandra, who doesn’t even have the benefit of the sundrop to keep her young, like with Rapunzel? Let me answer.
Listen, I love Moon!Varian with all my heart, but this is an alternate theory. What if the three followers (Gothel, Sugracha, and Tormus) had/stole Cassandra to groom into wielding the moonstone in the future, but when the guards followed Gothel home when she stole Baby Rapunzel and found their house, she decided to cut ties (literally, haha) and take the sundrop/Rapunzel for herself to stay young forever and abandon the plan to gain the sundrop and moonstone and free Zhan Tiri. What if Cassandra’s destiny really was to wield the moonstone?
Okay fellow Moon!Varian lovers, I can stretch this a little farther, but keep in mind the farther I stretch the thinner it gets, but hey, that’s what fanfictions are for. Hold on and here we go!
Look at Varian’s Mom in the family portrait
Her face has the same shape as Sugracha the Eternel. Her Mrs. Sugarby disguise has a longer chin, but look at her in her spirit form.
The nose is longer in the portrait but that could be part of that for, like Mrs. Sugarby’s longer chin, or the artistic license of the painter.
Perhaps Gothel was charged with watching Rapunzel (since Rapunzel became the sundrop she couldn’t be replaced) while the other two focused on another person to wield the moonstone, since they couldn’t risk stealing from the palace again to get Cassandra back. Maybe, Sugracha found Quirin and feigned love for him, and had Varian with him to be groomed to wield the moonstone.
There’s a few options I can think of for how this could have ended up since Varian’s mother is still a mystery on the show. She could have decided to stick it out with Quirin because why not, he could help raise Varian for awhile, maybe until he started developing concrete memories. It would be less work for her.
Another option would be to join Gothel in the tower, hide them both (shout out to “darkness exists to make light truly count” by @aquaquadrant for her AU with Varian and Rapunzel being raised by Gothel together. I can’t wait for updates to happen again!)
Or, Sugracha could go off with Tromus and pretend to be a happy family while grooming Varain, near enough to society to get needed supplies but far enough away that no one would be able to get too close in their personal affairs.
In any of these cases, the plan was probably to kill Quirin, this being the safer option over faking her and Varian’s deaths and leaving him behind, or trying to keep the secret from him. Or risking including him in the plan, or just leaving one day and hoping he wouldn’t follow or search for them.
This leaves two outcomes. Quirin, being part of the Brotherhood and knowledgeable about these things, realizes what/who Sugracha is (personal opinion here is that she’s go by the name of Sugar in this disguise) and confronts her and kills or banishes her the spirit prison she was in by the time right before we meet her. This option would likely be the one if she was staying with Quirin for a time after Varian’s birth.
The other option is when she tries to kill Quirin he fights back and wins, either killing or banishing her. Either way, this ends their plans to free Zhan Tiri with the sundrop and moonstone, or have them ready for when they free Zhan Tiri.
But Varian has the blue streak in his hair to show his connection to the moonstone? (In this case, at least) How did that happen??
If whatever happened with Quirin and Sugar was when Varian was a baby, I would have to assume she did something to help amplify his connection to the stone while she was pregnant with him, thus explaining the blue streak. Alchemy potions and herbs and magic, etc.
It could also have been rituals or experiments after he was born, possibly being what reveals Sugar’s true identity to Quirin when he happens to catch her in the act.
But Cassandra doesn’t have any physical markings to the moonstone??? This connects to her theory from above so why wouldn’t she have a blue streak or something, too??
This could have happened with Cassandra too and she just happened to not show any sign of her connection. Or they had more to go on with Varian because of extra years of research and so he had more of this connection than Cassandra had.
Or it could have been something they started with Varian, since at his point they knew the sundrop was linked with Baby Rapunzel and wanted the moonstone to link to the second vessel to ensure their ritual would work or increase its effects.
Yikes, the more I wrote out, the more possible this all seems. What do you all think? Is this too off-the-wall-crazy?
Uh oh, time to go make 5,000 tags with everything I talked about. Again, if anyone else had any part, or all, of this theory out already, I truly haven’t seen it and had no intention of using anyone else’s theories as my own. To be fair, most of the time I’m looking through the Varain tag, because I love him, and wasn’t in the main tags to see it.
