Responses: True Love (Why Zeki Has It And Yume Doesn’t)
“This whole ship war wouldn't even be a thing if you guys didn't deny Yuuki's eternal and romantic love for Kaname. You make all these posts trying to negate her feelings for Kaname...”
Full post here.
Romantic love is a subjective thing. Every person has an individual notion of what is, and what is not, acceptable within a “true love” scenario. Some people believe in the existence of love at first sight, while others need some time to pass for the couple’s feelings to be considered love as opposed to a crush. In this post, I will explain my own views on what constitutes a genuine romantic love.
The first thing I find to be necessary is for the two partners to know each other. By this, I mean that the two know each other well enough to accurately predict their partners responses to certain stimuli, and even if their partner acts unpredictable, they must understand the motivating factors behind their actions. his knowledge of each other leads directly into their ability to trust each other.
Zero and Yuuki spend the first arc getting to know each other, flaws and all. The more time they spend with each other, the more they come to understand the others motivations and feelings. Zero knows that Yuuki's selfless nature hides the fear that she was unwanted as a child, while Yuuki knows that Zero has always wished for her happiness above all else, even to his own detriment. The pair trust each others judgement even when the two of them are acting as “enemies”, neither getting in the other’s way.
On the other hand, Kaname and Yuuki spend very little time together. Before Zero came into the picture, Kaname was actively putting distance between himself and Yuuki, only coming to see her when he was tricked into doing so. This distance was never bridged and a solid bond of friendship was never truly formed between them. Kaname continues to treat sixteen year old Yuuki as a child, despite claiming to be in love with her, which shows that his image of her hasn’t grown up with her. He still views her as the Yuuki he knew before Juuri sealed her memories. Yuuki puts Kaname on a pedestal, much like the other love struck day class students.
So what does Yuuki know about Kaname? Well, she “knows” that:
1. Kaname is a pacifistic vampire who wishes for co-existence as much as Kaien Cross does. Except that he goes on to indiscriminately murder vampires who work for the senate regardless of whether that individual vampire is corrupt and puts humans on a pedestal of his own, granting them a right to exist that he doesn’t grant purebloods.
2. Kaname saved her as a helpless human girl, a stranger to him, when he didn’t need to. Except that he was her brother and was the reason that she was there in the first place, having temporarily abandoned her to remove the vampire threat behind them.
3. Kaname is her brother. Except that he actually isn’t her brother, but the progenitor of the Kurans and her direct ancestor.
4. Kaname views Cross Academy as his home as much as she views it as hers, and that he will protect the people he cares about as she wishes to. Except that he attempts to have her abandon her friends at the height of the danger in order to escape themselves.
How is Yuuki supposed to form a genuine love based on the person that Kaname is if everything she thought she knew about him was incorrect?
The second important thing for a love to be true is the ability to make each other happy, and beyond that, to be able to put their loved ones happiness above their own. This theme in Vampire Knight is explored through smiling from the heart. Yuuki states, in response to Zero’s asking how she can keep smiling, that she wants Zero to smile also. She has sacrificed her life’s blood for Zero in order to give him a reason to live and to give him some happiness, without knowing that she is already providing it for him.
Zero confronts the vampire that he hates the most to get the answers that Yuuki is desperately seeking, resulting in his neck being torn apart in an effort to make him drink from said vampire. He endures a lot of abuse from Kaname that he would not experience if not for Yuuki. He keeps his own feelings for her under wraps out of respect for Yuuki’s feelings for Kaname. He pushes Yuuki away from himself and the academy in order to be with Kaname, as he believes that Kaname can provide her with all she needs to be happy. He also actively protects her both before and after the reveal of her pureblood heritage.
Kaname is unable to make Yuuki happy, openly admitting that she doesn’t smile when she’s with him towards the end of Vampire Knight, and Yuuki is unable to make Kaname happy in turn. Kaname’s greatest mistake in this regard is craving the bond that Yuuki has with Zero rather than cherishing his own unique bond with her. He admits to wanting the Yuuki who had cut her hair as a symbolic gesture regarding letting her feelings for him go. In this way, he sets up his own misery in his relationship with Yuuki.
As for Yuuki, once she is in a relationship with Kaname, she is unable to see the friends she cherishes, is unable to dress as she wishes and is unable to leave the house at all. The demands that Kaname puts on her strip her of the things that make her who she is. Rima comments on the fact that Yuuki is wearing pinheels rather than the comfortable shoes that are easy to run in that she prefers. This all contributes to Yuuki’s feelings of insecurity. The more Kaname asks things of her that are not natural to her, the more he changes her, the more she is going to feel that she is not good enough. This, in turn, leads to her unhappiness and misery with Kaname. Furthermore, Kaname burdens her with his suicidal feelings when she attempts to stand up to him, making her feel even worse about herself. He claimed to love her for who she is, so why does he try to change her so much?
Another important component in a true love scenario is the partner’s ability to provide comfort for the other. Their presence is often enough to provide the comfort their loved one needs. We can see this with Zero, who finds comfort in Yuuki’s arms, and with Yuuki, who is able to reveal her true emotions to Zero without fear of rejection. Instead of distracting her in this instance, he offers her a solution to her. Both are able to talk to each other and understand each other. The pair are comfortable in each others presence.
When Yuuki attempts to talk to Kaname and seek comfort with him, he often tries to distract her rather than dealing with the cause of her discomfort. When Yuuki is having nightmares because she can’t remember what happened before she awoke on the mountain, he brings her attention back to him instead of comforting her or listening to her concerns. He fails to listen to her when she tries to ask about pureblood families later on as well.
From Kaname’s end, Yuuki is unable to provide the comfort he wants. He reveals snippets of his past to keep her with him and gets hugs from her, but he doesn’t get reaffirmation of Yuuki’s love for him, and she remains unspontaneous with her affection. When he asks her what she truly thinks of him, he is hoping for something positive from Yuuki. Instead, she lists negative character traits alongside superficial traits such as his appearance. She even questions if he loves her, which can’t feel good.
A fourth necessity is the ability to bring out the best in their partner. More specifically, a partner wants to better themselves not only for themselves, but for the one they love. Yuuki often finds her strength through Zero, and many of the actions she takes are, in part at least, because of him. He encourages her to be the kind-hearted, loving woman that she is without demanding anything or taking anything from her. He encourages her to live her life for herself, and to find happiness in the little things. Yuuki provides Zero a reason to continue living once Shizuka is gone, and is able to convince him that co-existence is a goal that should be striven for. She also helps to bring out his kind-hearted side, which he later expands to others.
As much as Yuuki tries with Kaname, she is unable to bring out his best. Though she tries her best to give him a reason to continue living, she can’t help him escape his despair. Due to the feelings she cannot control, she brings out Kaname’s jealous, needy side. Due to these same feelings, he ends up attempting to control her in order to keep her by his side. Eventually, instead of acting with Yuuki to provide an acceptable out for purebloods who have lived too long and fighting for co-existence between humans and vampires, he decides to eradicate pureblood vampires entirely.
Kaname brings out Yuuki’s insecurity and inferiority complex. By placing on her the blame of “leaving him alone” as a child and using that fear and her empathy against her, he causes her to question herself and see herself as the child she is often treated as. He puts so much of a burden on her that she cannot bring herself to stand up to him when she thinks he’s wrong. Yuuki herself states that if she stops doing what she thinks is right, then she will no longer be herself. This is foreshadowing to the Yuuki she will become with Kaname. She no longer shines as she once did, and Kaname doesn’t give her a reason to shine.
Most of the things I think are necessary for a true romantic love have been covered in these points. I hope this provides enough of an explanation for why what you may consider to be “negating” Yuuki’s romantic love for Kaname is actually just Yuuki misdiagnosing what those feelings were in my view. I strongly believe that true romantic love is born from a deep friendship, and is an incredibly powerful emotion that is difficult to shift. That Yuuki was able to put those feelings to bed fairly quickly once she was awakened as a vampire tells me that they were just not what Yuuki thought they were.
I’d be interested to hear what others consider necessary to true love, however. I’m sure there are many different views to mine! And I’d just like to say that I am speaking for myself, and cannot speak for any other Zeki shippers. This also isn’t meant to incite any further ship wars, it was simply meant to explain my point of view when it comes to the topic at hand.
Thank you for reading!