Immortality, Motherhood, and Pain: A Closer Look at Annalise and the Doll
Finally revisiting this from ages ago, because the parallels between these two are just SO fascinating. Content warnings for discussions of misogyny, genocide, abuse, and pregnancy/childbirth.
This analysis will cover the parallels between Miss Doll and Queen Annalise through the lenses of the misery of immortality, the trauma of marginalization, and the liberation they find in motherhood. Both the Doll and Annalise are undying, both coded as mother figures, both marked by death, and both very, very alone.
Miss doll and Annalise are the only characters in the whole game who are undying. You can kill them, but not meaningfully - not in any way that matters - and they seem to know it. Neither will try to stop you, nor will they fight back, should you choose to attack them. They will come back, and your violent betrayal will have seemingly meant nothing to them. They both are very aware they will outlast whatever violence you may inflict upon them. It's evidenced in their dialogue:
If you attack, Annalise says:
“Enough. If only Our life was so easily forfeit… Grieve not, for Us.”
“How sad this is. If only Our life was so easily forfeit…”
If you attack Miss Doll, she used to say:
“I must have displeased you. Go on, shut me down… Even so, this vessel will remain in your service… So have no fear."
I think this point of comparison highlights just how deeply they've both been desensitized to violence and abuse. They do not beg for mercy, they do not put up a struggle - they only remark on it with distant chagrin. They both seem keenly aware that their flesh need not be in one piece to fulfill its purpose.
But where Miss Doll was made to embody the Victorian patriarchal ideal of womanhood, Annalise wields womanhood as her last weapon against the dehumanization of the church’s genocide through her queendom. Upon being resurrected the next time you return to the dream, Miss Doll will act as though nothing had happened at all. However, if you bring her flesh to the Altar of Despair, Annalise will call you an arrant fool, and remind you that “Vileblood or no, forget not; We are thy Queen”. Miss Doll kneels to serve the hunter, while the hunter must kneel to serve Annalise. Miss Doll has been conditioned to passively accept dehumanization and submission, yet Annalise demands respect through your submission even in her dehumanized state. Miss Doll is subjugated by the trappings of womanhood, while Annalise is lifted from subjugation by her womanhood, in some ways.
I find this fascinating, however, because while Miss Doll appears in every way as a pure, demure Victorian woman was meant to, they are also dehumanized through the denial of gender. To Gerhman, their creator, they are nothing more than another tool of the workshop. An object. Even the Doll themself uses neutral "I" pronouns to refer to themself in the original translation. I think it is pertinent to note that the only canonical reference to Miss Doll as a "woman" comes from Eileen. In the original Japanese text, she refers to the Doll with a term of endearment reserved for young girls. Miss Doll's appearance is the historical ideal of the subjugated woman - yet when Eileen confers upon her the status of "woman", she does so in an endearing and humanizing way. Therefore, for both Miss Doll and Queen Annalise, the status of womanhood is a rebuttal of their own dehumanizing subjugation: Annalise as "queen", and Miss Doll as "daughter".
Both characters are arguably seeking/find liberation through motherhood. Miss Doll gets "Childhood's Beginning": their creator and animator have both been put down, the hunt is finally over and they are no longer bound to serve its participants, nor must they watch their beheadings. They cradle the newly ascended hunter. It is a highly atypical “motherhood”. It exists in the performance of the role rather than the biology of childbirth. In the same way, the Doll possesses a highly atypical “womanhood” which exists in performance alone, rather than in biology or even identity — but nonetheless, it is real, and it is hers. I, perhaps too optimistically, choose read it as humanizing for them; because unlike their “womanhood”, Miss Doll is allowed to choose this for themself rather than having it imposed upon them.
In the same vein, Annalise seeks to birth a child of blood for a similar but perhaps more somber reason. She wants a child because she wants an heir — which is to say, because it is the only way she may once again have kin. Because it is the only way she may fulfill her duty as Queen. She witnessed everyone she ever knew or loved — surely her own family included — slaughtered before her eyes. Annalise seems to seek motherhood in order to be a homemaker - in the most literal sense possible. She wants to rebuild the community, the home, which was so brutally torn away from her. She wishes to restore honor to Cainhurst. For Annalise, having a child is an open act of rebellion against the genocidal eugenics-frenzied bloodthirst of the Church. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason Alfred is so hellbet on destroying her, why the Executioners imprisoned her the way they did, was to strip her of bodily autonomy so she couldn’t “reproduce”. Her desire for a child is her way of seeking liberation for her and her people.
In this sense, taking up the role of a mother, of "women's work", is what confers the agency upon both Annalise and Miss Doll which had been otherwise stripped from them. Annalise's by the genocidal eugenics of the Church, and Miss Doll by the pact of servitude she was seemingly born into.
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You've seen me ramble about the problems with Kanade and Chapter 3, so you know how I feel. It really does feel like LINUJ went for pure shock value instead of anything narratively satisfying. I like your take on the idea, where instead of just the shock and horror, there's actual purpose and character behind it.
The twins do really seem like they would be a great cautionary tale of mutual toxicity and obsession, and I like the idea of them reuniting only because there were people in need during The Tragedy.
And I admit I'm biased, but I'm always happy to see more stories where Hibiki actually survives ^^
OH yeah, I have. I've read most (if not all) of those asks on the ASOOT blog as they were coming out and it made me realize how bad SDRA2's Chapter 3 is. And when I actually sat down to play the game myself with my friend, I went from knowing that Chapter 3 is bad to actually experiencing how bad it was for myself. Like, it went from, "Oh, it's kinda okay so far, but I know the shoe is gonna drop at some point-" to "OH WOW, it really IS that bad, dear lord." Like, Jesus Christ, this chapter was...a lot and yet full of nothing at the same time beyond just shock value. It's not as if the whole serial killer thing couldn't have worked, the problem is that all the people that's closely connected to the case gets axed all in one go, and it's kinda just...never brought up again. Like, come on. If you're going to go THAT far, at least give it SOME kind of importance to a character connected to this shitshow, like Hibiki. Who got killed off alongside Kanade. Like, thanks, I hate it. There's so many things wrong with Chapter 3 and how Kanade was handled that the best thing to do for both is to just rewrite it all from the ground up. So when my brain started giving me ideas on how it could be rewritten, I decided I needed to get it out of my system and tried to approach it in a more human and complicated way than something as twistedly evil to the point of shock value. Kanade is at least more pitiable here since you can actually understand her on SOME level but never excuse her actions as she's still toxic in her right towards Hibiki (who's also toxic to her in return). She's just not being a serial killer about it.
AND YEAH, that's pretty much what I was going for for them. I wanted to keep the nuances of their relationship on how they're mutually toxic to one another since that's very interesting to see. There's no such thing as a "perfect" victim, as there are many that have done messed up things in response to what they've been put through but still desperately needing help or even an intervention from a reasonable authority figure, and Hibiki and Kanade could've been great examples of that. But one actively chooses to change while the other doesn't...at least in one of the interpretations of how their rewritten relationship could end as would be revealed in the Chapter 6 version of this. Ngl, I wasn't sure which interpretation I liked more as I can see both versions happening, with Kanade and Hibiki coming back together through the Tragedy as some events are able to give people an opportunity to bond and mend what's broken back together again, while other times not even a world-wide disaster will get someone to change and things remain broken due to one side having an unwillingness to hold themselves accountable for their own actions. Both are feasible in this rewritten version and I decided to let this be something for other people to decide for themselves on whether or not Kanade and Hibiki can mend their relationship after being separated for so long and if the Tragedy can bring them back together through their charity events. After all, some people have their limits and Kanade still did a lot of horrible things to other people, so it really depends on whether or not you'd believe it'd possible for them to repair their relationship, even after so many years of not talking to one another. A possible rebuilt of their relationship that unfortunately gets nipped in the bud thanks to Mikado's killing game reverting them back to a state where their old toxic behavior was at it's peak, and one of them ending up killing and getting executed because of it. Either way, we could've had doomed siblings instead of...whatever the fuck canon is.
And trust me, me and my friend are right with you on that. We really wished Hibiki had survived and complain about it every now and then whenever we bring up Kanade and Chapter 3. It's just...such a waste to kill her off like that. My girl deserved better.
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