#idk i just think its a surprisingly good commentary on corrupt systems

[butchladymaria]

on the subject of amelia — it’s always vexed me that we know so little about her. no history, no background, she doesn’t even have a unique model! but it got me thinking that maybe that’s intentional. the church around her still clearly wields the highest authority in the land with a crop of devoted subjects singing its praises in the streets. however, the vicar — the highest church authority! — is an astonishingly minor character.

i have to wonder if her utter lack of impact on the world around her — punctuated by her explosion into beasthood — is meant to represent the decay of the church, not just morally, but in its fundamental structure. laurence haunts the narrative — but amelia does the opposite. no person or group mentions her by name or by title. for all intents and purposes, it seems that vicar amelia was nothing but a figurehead atop a hierarchy awash with blood-drunken parishioners at the bottom and the madmen of the choir and school of mensis near the top.

i think the void that the character of amelia leaves even before her beastly transformation is highly informative about the state that yharnam and the church find themself in: utter decay. perhaps once the church was an iron-fisted theocracy, but that infrastructure is rotting. the violence committed by the church in the state that our good hunter finds it is utterly arbitrary, and its people too poisoned by blood to care. i think the ultimate proof lies in the fact that killing amelia changes nothing at all: the church in their hubris has meddled in forces far greater than any one man, and now yharnam is paying for it through the nose.