After skimming the DMC wiki’s section about Vergil’s personality I tried to skim some more, just because I was curious if I would stumble across anything else that seemed weird to me. (Tried because that article is a nightmare on mobile, it is clearly broken and jumping all over the place.)
One day, the man gave Vergil a collection of Blake's poems as a gift, in which Vergil responded by writing his name on the back of the cover. When asked by the man, Vergil told him about his relationship with his brother, and the man understood. Vergil would keep this book throughout his life, even in adulthood.
Nope. Unless the author read a different manga than I did, this is not true.
After his fight with Dante, Vergil ran off to the playground and left his book behind. Eva picked it up and (probably) brought it back inside the house before the demons attacked the house. Much like Vergil, Dante and Eva were probably ambushed, maybe shortly after entering the house because Vergil’s book is later seen discarded on the ground.
As soon as she noticed something was wrong, Eva likely cared more about getting Dante to a safe location and finding Vergil than she did about the book - like any sane parent would, really.
(Okay, whether or not a wooden closet in a burning house is really a safe spot for your half-demon child is debatable but that’s another story. Maybe Dante is flame retardant. And if so, I’d love to hear how exactly she found out about that particular gimmick.)
On the playground, Vergil was ambushed and ran back home but the demons followed him and quite literally stabbed him in the back (might be why Vergil hates backstabbing, who knows). After fighting off his attackers with the help of Yamato, Vergil likely entered the house and saw Eva’s body, then left without the book. (I say likely because the manga is a little ambiguous about whether or not Vergil truly entered the house.)
Honestly, the poor kid didn’t even look for his brother, I sincerely doubt he wasted even a single thought on that book. Head empty, only fear and grief and rage and shock, probably.
The first time we see the book in the manga, V crawls away from Urizen, scared. He notices the book on the ground and we see a flashback of Vergil’s childhood, more or less implying that this is probably the first time in years that V(ergil) even lays eyes upon that book.
V then curls in on himself and holds on to the book as a source of comfort.
And honestly, this scene holds so much more gravitas than it ever could if Vergil had miraculously kept that book for all of those years, even under Mundus.
Because this moment, as V is afraid and dying and thinking of his little brother, is the first time since his whole world fell apart as a child that he openly embraces his humanity - as a source of comfort, no less.
The second time he does it, V is Vergil. What is the first thing Vergil does after being reborn? He picks up that very same book that he left discarded and forgotten for years. I can’t help but think that this is Vergil’s first step of coming to terms with his past, and maybe a somber longing for happier days when he could just be Dante’s brother and a little boy with a hunger for beauty in life.
And the last thing Vergil does before going back to Hell? He gives that book to Nero with an implicit promise to return to him. Nero holds the last truly happy memories Vergil ever made in his hands. I can’t help but think that this speaks volumes about how Vergil truly feels about his son.
In conclusion, Vergil did not hold on to the Blake anthology for decades. He completely forgot about it and only stumbled across it by chance in his lowest moment. And that is perfectly okay because it was in this lowest of low moments that V probably realized just how precious the things and people were that he discarded throughout his life, much like that book.
areudirty
dededos
jacobvanloon
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prguitarman
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
gummygunk
stormborns
romaincrisis
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