#because it was bringing Lucanis back to the Diamond to find Caterina “dead”

[midnightwind]

oh man, might’ve finally finished chapter 5 of the fic

now I just gotta figure out what chunk comes next .w.

[thegeminisage]

thing of the day that's making me crazy:

prior to rescuing lucanis, caterina tells you she knows lucanis is alive because the body brought back to her a year ago was not his, but it had been altered with blood magic to look like him. how she knows this we never find out (does she have the ability to sense it like lucanis does...?) but we have just been introduced to the idea that deaths can and will be faked sometimes, even if you see a body

after you rescue lucanis from the ossuary, he returns to cantori diamond and is told caterina is dead. actually, the exact wording is "the venatori got her in the confusion." NO ONE SAYS DEAD. rook can say it, if you pick the right option, but nobody else does!

later, teia even says "they took caterina from my house." not "they killed caterina in my house," "they took her." NOBODY IS SAYING THE WORD DEAD. NOBODY IS TAKING ABOUT A CORPSE.

lucanis doesn't ask how she was killed. he doesn't ask to see the body. he just accepts that the same woman who survived the murder of nearly their entire family is dead and moves right along to god-killing with rook

...UNTIL THE FUNERAL PREPARATIONS

when you go back with lucanis to meet teia and plan the funeral, THEN he asks about means of death

furthermore, teia turns to illario and ASKS FOR CATERINA'S ASHES. i did some googling and i can't recall a single instance of a thedas funeral but surely the task of cremation is PART OF THE CEREMONY? surely before the funeral there should still be a body to see?

furthermore, even if nobody is smart enough to go "maybe caterina's body is a fake like lucanis's was," lucanis can, canonically, sense blood magic. it makes the backs of his eyes hurt. there's NO WAY he could be tricked by a fake body, and there's NO WAY he would not ask to see it before it was burned

ALSO WHY ARE THEY HAVING THE FUNERAL IF SHE HAS ALREADY BEEN CREMATED.....funerals are about grief and bodies!!! ig maybe thedas funerals do all that before the funeral itself but that doesn't make much sense either.

so maybe illario was smart enough not to pull the "corpse altered with blood magic" trick again. did he instead pretend to cremate caterina before lucanis got back from the ossuary? they can't have been gone from treviso long because the ossuary is close enough to get to via rowboat. he would have had to do some serious shagging ass. did nobody think it was weird that he was cremating his grandma .5 seconds after she died so lucanis couldn't get a look at her before he got back from the torment nexus?

furthermore, the proposed motives for this crime - that either the gods killed the first talon, or zara did as revenge for lucanis' prison break - are both really flimsy. why would the gods give a shit about caterina dellamorte? how would zara know lucanis had broken out if she wasn't in the prison? i know these aren't the ACTUAL motives for the crime, but why is viago the only one in the room going "yeah that timing is kinda wack" and only if rook brings it up first??

finally, did lucanis seriously not go to HIS OWN HOUSE while caterina was being held hostage there? what? not once in all that time??? did he not have to pick up some clothes or his good throwing knife or whatever? (we cannot even get into the fact that in dialogue it says the venatori stole his clothes to put on the fake corpse WHERE DID HIS FANCY LITTLE OUTFIT COME FROM THEN)

conclusion:

i sincerely believe that caterina being presumed dead was a last-minute addition and she was supposed to have been kidnapped by the venatori this whole time. nobody talks about a corpse because there isn't one. they only changed it because if she was kidnapped, lucanis would not be taking you on coffee dates or killing gods for you when he could/should be looking for her (this game already has a problem with a lack of a feeling of urgency).

other conclusion: between the conflicting information regarding the ossuary's location and the demon blood binding thing being inconsistent with lore from the other games, nothing about lucanis's storyline actually holds up to scrutiny at all and it's making me NUTS like i'm not even TRYING to be hashtag veilguard critical i just want to write a sequel to my damn fanfic and bioware is making it SO HARD