I've had this idea attached deep into my brain for a long time now, related to James Ratri and the tragedy of imagining him as your secret lover.
Because imagine being married to Mike Ratri, the man who one day would stand among the highest authorities of the clan. You married Mike young, young enough to understand that entering the Ratri family meant entering a world you were never truly supposed to touch.
Mike was never cruel.
That was the complicated part.
He was composed, intelligent, respected by every branch of the family. A man trusted with negotiations, operations, decisions that shaped the balance between worlds. Older than you by decades, already fully formed while you were still becoming yourself.
But he was distant in the way only powerful men can be.
He never felt like a husband. He felt more like a guardian assigned to your life. Someone who provided, observed, corrected when necessary, but never truly reached for you emotionally. Mike liked control, order, predictability. He wanted his household to be calm, elegant, respectable. He wanted harmony more than intimacy.
And then there was James.
Back then, James Ratri was the thirty-fifth leader of the clan. Young for the title, terrifyingly brilliant, raised under expectations heavy enough to crush most people long before adulthood. Peter himself described him as kind, refined, handsome, sincere, almost impossibly noble.
And somehow, beneath all that responsibility, James was still warm.
You met him long before either of you understood what would eventually happen between you. At first he was simply Mike’s nephew. The future head of the clan. Someone untouchable.
But James never treated you like an outsider trying to survive among people born into power. He never spoke down to you. Never reduced you to Mike’s wife. In a family where every interaction felt measured and political, James spoke to you naturally.
That was what ruined the two of you.
Long clan gatherings would end and somehow the two of you always ended up alone. At first it was accidental. Quiet conversations after dinner. Passing remarks in hallways. Brief moments beside open windows while rain hit the gardens outside the estate.
Then those moments became intentional.
A second chance at freedom.
That is why their relationship in this kind of story becomes so devastating once James discovers the truth behind the Promise.
Because canonically, James was raised believing the Ratri clan protected peace between humans and demons through noble sacrifice. Then he discovered Julius Ratri’s hidden confession and realized the entire foundation of that peace had been built on betrayal. Innocent humans, including the descendants of Julius’s own allies, had been abandoned to become cattle for demons.
That revelation destroyed him. Not immediately but quietly.
James began carrying guilt like a second skin. Meetings became longer. His absences more frequent. He started building shelters, coded systems, and escape routes under the name of William Minerva while pretending to continue leading the clan normally.
And through all of it, he kept coming back to you.
Because you were the only thing in his life that still felt human, but James also understood something you hated him for in the end.
Mike’s neutrality protected you because the old man never fully sided with Peter or James.
He remained in the middle where survival was easiest. That neutrality became armor around you and the children. Around your children. Around the life attached to the Ratri name.
James lost that protection the moment he betrayed the clan. And James understood Peter better than anyone else ever could.
That is another tragedy of canon. James never truly hated his younger brother. Even while Peter hunted him, James understood why he did it. Peter loved the clan the same way James once had. The difference was that Peter chose lineage loyalty over morality, while James could no longer survive carrying both.
So when the time finally came, James refused to take you with him.
Not because he did not love you enough.
Because he loved you too much.
Taking you would have destroyed your safety completely. Peter would have hunted you as leverage. The clan would have erased you. Your children with Mike would have inherited the consequences of your disappearance forever.
You hated James for leaving... And worse, you hated him because he was right.
You were only truly safe as Mike Ratri’s wife.
James made sure you knew one thing before he disappeared from your life completely.
Loving you was the one thing he never regretted.
He told you that if there had been another world, another life untouched by the Promise, by the clan, by duty, he would already be somewhere beside you. Somewhere quiet and unnamed. Somewhere neither of you had to hide.
But this world did not allow men like James Ratri to choose happiness.
So he asked you to survive instead.
To stay where you were. To hate him if necessary. To forget him if possible.
And James left knowing the worst part was never Peter hunting him across the shadows of the clan. The worst part was leaving behind the only place he had ever truly been safe.
Your arms, your laughter, your voice whispering his name in quiet rooms no one else knew existed.
So you stayed as Mike Ratri’s wife.
As the elegant young woman seated beside one of the most important men in the family. Safe. Untouched and alive.
And nobody, not even Peter, ever realized that during the collapse of the Promise, during James Ratri’s betrayal of the clan, you had been the only thing keeping the thirty-fifth leader from completely losing himself.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 約束のネバーランド | Yakusoku no Neverland | The Promised Neverland (Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Norman/Ray (The Promised Neverland), Norman & Ray (The Promised Neverland), Norman & James Ratri
Characters: Norman (The Promised Neverland), Ray (The Promised Neverland), James Ratri, Emma (The Promised Neverland)
Additional Tags: Fluff and Angst, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Slice of Life, Falling In Love, Aged-Up Character(s), (but they start as kids), Norman is a Ratri, James Ratri is an amazing father, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Getting Together, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers
Series: Part 1 of shapeshifter au
Summary:
Norman never would have thought that such a seemengly irrelevant thing like helping the small, black, stary kitty, can change his life that much.
I wonder if Peter Ratri thought in confiscate the books of William Minerva from some farm's libraries. To prevent from more children know about the messages in the books, and he knew about the books that his brother wrote.
Hmmm, I think Peter wasn't aware of the books, or he would have removed them, like you said.
The last book, which was from 2015 was planted between that date and 2031 when James went missing/died. Peter was a teenager back from the way he looked in flashbacks (I think he was actually 13 due to Peter Pan reference).
So I think he was just too young to know about it. There is this one omake from one of the new volumes about them, but I don't have the trans on me.
James is shown with books, but Peter seems oblivious and happy to be with him.
Btw since Gracefield plant 3 burnt down, the evidence of the books helping them was gone too, so he wouldn't have found out. However, Andrew might have found out from Phil.
Oh shit, it’s backstory time, and it seems it’ll be from the perspective of the one who betrayed Minerva, his brother, I assume younger.
I guess that’s one way to look at that big town.
Thirty-sixth head? James Ratri was thirty-ninth, how does this work? Don’t know much about clan structures. Also, this Peter guy seems like he’ll be a dangerous fellow.
I wonder where is William Minerva ( James Ratri) now. If he is alive, I think he may be doing something in human world in case of some children find the way to go there. Since nobody found him anywhere.
Well, I am not sure if he was never found. Let me dig up those flashbacks
James made his recording in 2031 March.
By September Peter betrayed him but couldn't find a body.
By December they seem to have found all the traitors. James isn't mentioned by name, but it is implied everyone was accounted for (however we do know that Smee has survived... but if Smee has, why haven't he put Norman in touch with the real James Ratri? Since he gave his contact network to Norman)
In the present, Peter talks about his brother like he knows he is dead for sure, and can't be directly responsible. At least that is how I have read it. I think he would be a lot more suspicious and frantic if he had any reason to suspect he might be alive, like never finding a body at all...
So did he later find James' body? Or was he so sure James died since he was eaten by a demon?
Let's say, by Son-ju?
We know Son-ju has eaten humans before and wanted to taste human flesh again. @fyria-hans has theorised before that Sonju was one of the Minervas we saw before, wearing his cloak and talking to the kids in morse, even knowing the password, and potentially knowing how to create tracks to throw off Andrew. The feet and legs and physiques look very similar on these panels, and the morse makes sure none can recognise his voice.
Yes, Son-ju may have had reasons to be a Minerva supporter, and when James was betrayed... could he have decided that the best way to keep his info from the enemy, and to pass all his knowledge to his allies was to have a supporter of him, Son-ju eat him? It may be some wild speculation, but it would make sense to me. Also why there was no body.
Another funny thought. In Peter Pan in Scarlet (the official sequel to Peter Pan) the heroes are helped by a guy who has a different name, and acts differently, but turns out to have been Captain James Hook all along. Hmmm, interesting coincidence...
In the TPN volume 13 cover there's a big clock on the stairs , what do you think it refers to? 🤔
I think it's either a reference to the Gracefield clocktower, or it’s a symbolism for the demon!God that waits for them at the exit to the human world, which lies at Gracefield (James Ratri told them about this in their recording).
So, the cover that you mean is the two top pictures, with the left being the outside cover, and the right being the inside cover.
There are multiple clocks on the cover, with one big one at the top, and many little scattered around. Our view is angled upwards, and we can see the top of the tunnel that they are in.
One of the early chapters I have shown on the bottom left seems to have an identical location, with lots of small clocks on the walls. In both pictures, Emma holds a lamp. It seems to be the same place and time, but our view is angled slightly down, like we are lower down the same tunnel. At the bottom of the tunnel, you see Gracefield.
On the bottom right, we see Gracefield with a huge, tunnel like whole next to it, and Emma and the kids falling into this hole.
I think the hole/tunnel is a reference to the entranceway to the human world that the kids need to find and traverse, to go to the demon!God and/or the humans.
The clock itself could either be a reference to the clocktower at the top of Gracefield that you can see on the bottom pictures, or to the demon!God itself waiting for them at the top, at the surface.
We know that the demon!God has some control over time, since they were able to show Emma scenes from the past.
I have speculated that if there is a reference to Peter Pan for the demon!God and the dragon, it would be the crocodile with a clock inside it. Here is a funny visual representation where James Ratri is Cpt. James Hook.
So it may just be a visual hint that they are going to take the way across the Seven Walls at Gracefield that James says it has, and see the demon God at the top.
Btw fun fact: check those pics again, because ALL of them are connected by having Little Bunny on them as well...
I found it strange that James only give so little info about Lambda. I don't think he's the type to insert meaningless information for the escapees. Shouldn't he at least write his concern about that place, even if he doesn't have much information about it? And yet, he writes so much about the world and the Seven Walls, why? What do you think? Oh, and your latest theory is great btw, you really gone wild in this series 😂💕
Haha, thank you! You are right, I have totally gone wild on TPN, but I think it won't be possible to do analysis like this on anything else, since TPN just has soooo much amazing content both plot and art wise, and it's just so well structured and logical. Any other series I would not bother with, but here the authors had been incredibly consistent!
You are right that it is strange on James' part not to comment further. I guess partially it was still in only planning stage at the time, but perhaps there is more to it. We know that the Ratri clan had been directly involved in it, so was that involvement despite the disapproval of the head of the house, James, or was he not the head of the house at the time? Or did James approve lambda just to not raise suspicions about himself?
Lambda seems like a thing that James would absolutely disapprove of, so how did it get planned with the Ratri clan supporting it? I am guessing the idea must have come since before James became head or before he had his change of heart, and then he simply couldn't stop it from happening. Perhaps it was actually the lambda plans that had caused him to have a change of heart, and then he was too ashamed to admit those in detail?
I can also see James withholding lambda info from cattlechildren in a bid to try to protect them maybe. I am not sure, there are still plenty of questions on the topic, but I think you are right to be suspicious.
