#sanguinarch arknights

[bloodyopvs]

The Sanguinarch isn't a bad villain or a cliched one.

The only thing that his writing suffers from is the fact that a lot of the finer points in his characterisation were easily missed or flew over our heads due to Arknights's ambiguous writing — I also had to do some deep lore diving to the Arknights Terra Wiki to be able to piece a more coherent picture of him, something more profound than merely 'he's just a mindless psychopath and a remorseless war criminal'.

And it strikes me what he was actually meant to be, in Chapter 13, where he was the main villain.

He is, for lack of a better word, an inverted Jesus figure.

There's a lot of things supporting this.

First, we have the crown of thorns (actually the thing that got into this rabbit hole) that his chibi, boss sprite wore in his second phase. His artist, Chuzenji, also drew him with the same thing. The crown of thorns's symbolism is obvious. Jesus wears one, including his depiction in the famous movie, The Passion of the Christ. Though, it's probably not that special on its own; but it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Then we got the meaning of his name, a portmanteau of a Hebrew word and an angel's name —— 'Dook', meaning pierced, and Ariel, an angel whose name literally means 'Lion/Hero of God', at least according to the Terra Wiki —— and things are starting to get intriguing. Put together, 'Duq'arael' means 'Pierced Lion/Hero of God'. The angel's name aside, the lion is an animal that symbolised 'God's strength and command', one that was closely related to God, to the point where C.S Lewis, author of the famous Chronicles of Narnia, use Aslan, a lion, as a stand-in metaphor for God.

And yes, the deeper you go into Sarkaz lore, the more you discover that it was heavily inspired by the lore of Abrahamic religions in real life, although I won't delve too deeply into this or start drawing parallels to real life events, since it's an extremely sensitive issue. But my point is that Arknights has always been deeply influenced by religious mythology and symbolism, and Duq'arael's name goes deep. It hinted at us on his true character——how he views himself.

(Him killing his own elder brother, who was an 'ideal' King of Sarkaz, was also a clear allusion to the story of Cain and Abel, and ties in with the occult theory that Cain was the first vampire in history, but that's an aside. Though this also serves to strengthen the point that Arknights has always been deeply influenced by religious mythology and symbolisms.)

Back to the topic, I would also argue that his design cleverly reflected this hidden allusion. His uncanny colour palette—white, red and black—could be interpreted as a reversal, so to speak, of Jesus's darker robes and dark hair (as he was so often and popularly depicted to be). His entire design screams vampire nobility, but there's something uncanny about it, which was highlighted when we were first introduced to him in Chapter 10 (or was it 11?). He was described as an ordinary-seeming nobleman, one who wouldn't look out of place speaking about current politics in Victorian telly.

More than that, though...although he wears black and red, 'traditional' vampire colours, his main colour is obviously white. White hair, white clothes.

Both the absence of colour, and the colour of purity, innocence, and rebirth.

Duq'arael is also the 'Prince of Blood'. Amiya, during their confrontation in Chapter 13, asks him what does blood means to him. As a concept, as a symbol——a meaning. Now his answer here isn't that important (although it's curious that he equates it with suffering, especially that of the Sarkaz's), but there's a hidden symbolism bomb here: Blood symbolised passion. When someone angers us, for example, we say that it makes our 'blood boil'. When our lover arouses us, or when we were afraid during a horror movie, we say that it gets 'our blood racing'.

In line with this, Dukare's goal——what he hopes to achieve by sacrificing so many people, including his own people——is to give the Sarkaz, who had been robbed of not only their homes and lands but also their entire identity, who had been brutally dehumanised and discriminated against for centuries, salvation.

At least in his perspective. He spilled a single drop of blood for them, a drop of pure Teekaz blood, in order to give them this salvation as well as to once again summon their original sin in the form of the first Originium. He even goes so far that this is their curse——the curse of being a Sarkaz, the curse of Originium. The implication here is that he wanted to SAVE them. But because he's twisted, because he's 'inverted' Jesus, he accomplishes that by sacrificing others on the cross instead of himself. A selfish 'saviour'.

He also blesses the Sarkaz with his blood, granting them strength. Once more: misplaced salvation.

But wait, there's another layer to this.

Duq'arael's the ONLY one who saw himself as such. He has a saviour complex despite his pretenses to be indolent, and obviously, due to the crimes and sins he committed, others saw him merely as a murderer, a monster, and a blood purist. Someone who can't let go of the past, and is still heavily fettered by it——someone who blatantly refuses to let go.

He, after all, killed his elder brother out of disappointment. He also testifies that he saw several other Kings of Sarkaz come and go during his long life, and with each passing one, he grew more and more disappointed, more and more disillusioned. More and more jaded. That is why he wanted to kill Amiya too; obsessed with slaying her, even. Not because he's blindly obsessed with murder in itself (perhaps not only because), but because he's past the point of saving. Which was his tragedy, and one that Amiya and Logos mourned after they pushed him off the Feranmut.

This motivation of offering salvation is also likely why he agreed to help Theresis take Londinium. He had alluded to it himself; his ultimate goal or even his motivation wasn't to rebuild Kazdel, especially not as the shitty mobile city that most recent Sarkaz remembered it as.

No, he wanted to 'save' them. To offer them salvation; to return their birthright, which is the entire world of Terra, to them. Back from the hands of the Ancients and the Elders, outworlder races who once wrested it out of their grasp and then proceeded to give them misery for centuries. Millennias, even.

Again, that is his role——The False Saviour.

I don't get why Chapter 13's title was 'The Whirlpool That Is Passion' at first, but then I realised that HG was being sneaky. They couldn't possibly call it 'The Passion of the Vampire', which would be TOO on the nose, so that's why they call it that:

The Whirlpool (symbolising Dukare being twisted by his past and his disillusionment) That Is Passion (the Jesus symbolism). It's very clever.

In addition to all of the above, on their 4th Anniversary art, his artist drew him with a white lily. The flower of (you guessed it) purity, innocence, and most importantly, rebirth. It does work with his image as a vampire, plainly speaking, and the Master of the Crimson Court who's obsessed with the purity of the blood, but I'd say it's more than that, since the white lily is also Mary's flower. Mary, as in the Mother of Christ.

So, no, The Sanguinarch isn't a bad villain. While he is undoubtedly a war criminal (wouldn't say that he's misunderstood, since he's an absolute dipshit nonetheless), he's not 'just' a psychopath.

[paepipi]

phancat and sanguinarchcat(?)

based off the kalcat that made me laugh for a good while because of how much she looked like a little freaky alien

[el-loy]

Happy Halloween and good luck with your pulls! a sketch from me🎃 didn't have it in me to render it properly... :(

[burstfoot]

[ryuucha]

What if 🩸

[astranauticus]

this isnt the kind of stuff i'd usually post but im fuckin losing my mind. ive been watching through the bilibili livestream vods of like this arknights lore creator reading through and commentating on like the game stories and right now im watching the vod from his main story chapter 11 stream and his reaction to logos' sprite reveal is so fucking funny i had to clip it. man is really having a crisis on stream

[manaohu]

[elizkras]

vampire? vampire!

[reflectedshine]

❝ Our future is not built atop despair and resignations.

Arknights Main Theme Episode 13 -The Whirlpool that is Passion

[alkalische]

here's manfred and the sanguinarch in front of the big ben

[bloodyopvs]

they live rent-free in my head now and this one will become a keychain for me in an upcoming con

(commissioned piece, by sleepyamaya on twitter. do not use, repost or save without my permission. AI/NFT use is prohibited.)

[spicyvenom]

大妈又掏出一堆梗图：

[el-loy]

changing perspective

[blackwormonlyneet]

🩸

[ryuucha]

So I got too comfortable and drew more of these… that now I can put them together side by side 😂

[eidolonlathi]

A Look at the Dynamics between the Sanguinarch and Lettou

I’ll never get over the irony how a Vampire who detests non-Sarkaz and is so obsessed with the purity of Sarkaz bIood is shown to have the most stable bond throughout the Londinium arc with a Liberi, excuse me, with an outbIood.

They’re witnessing from afar how Allerdale’s manor is burning down, it’s the first scene they share together, and it’s already setting the tone for all of their future interactions. Lettou makes a tentative attempt to talk to the Sanguinarch – about what we’ll never know – just to immediately get ordered to stop talking because the Sanguinarch wants to enjoy the view in silence. He is picking up though that Lettou isn’t agreeing fully with methods having become more drastic and does two things: First he suggests (orders) that Lettou stops worrying and learns to enjoy the destruction in front of him while calling Lettou his friend. And second he offers him the slightest bit of justification of his own actions by claiming that witnessing the evaporation of the traitor bIood in front of them is the Sanguinarch’s responsibility, implying that he is driven by more than pure bIoodIust in this moment. Lettou can’t do much more in this moment than to agree that they share a common goal, but at the same time he does a bit more than that: He states that cooperating with the Sanguinarch’s methods is his duty, hence repeating the sentiment that both of their actions are driven by circumstances that go beyond personal motivation.

Those two finding this point of agreement is no coincidence. At their core they both are people who have no higher priority than fulfilling the things they view as their duty. With Lettou no one notices because he immediately gets dismissed as a traitor, and with the Sanguinarch one doesn’t because he’s so cruel and abrasive that it’s hard to notice any nuance beyond that.

You keep reading and see that the state in Londinium has now declined to a degree that now even the nobility who was kept safe in their bubble have become targets. The artillery canons Manfred uses spread terror from afar, the destruction the Sanguinarch and Lettou cause tends to be one committed from up close. We see the Sanguinarch relying on Lettou’s help when disposing of a noble who has become a nuisance and like in the scene with Allerdale’s manor getting destroyed carnage and enjoyment blur together. Once the noble is dealt with, the Sanguinarch suggests (orders) that he and Lettou follow the invitation of the now disposed of noble to sample his private wine reserve. As much as the Sanguinarch claims to despise outbloods, Lettou’s presence clearly doesn’t ruin his appetite, interesting.

You’ll continue reading and see that a destruction that is already spreading is one difficult to contain and control. Lettou tentatively implies to the Sagnuinarch that it might have been a measure too drastic that he has fed a nobleman’s wife and child to his Vampires. Or at least he tries to address the point. The Sanguinarch doesn’t even let him finish his sentence and uses his bIood arts to cut off Lettou’s ability to breathe. Lettou orders his men to stand back when they are about to defend him in this moment – thus ensuring they won’t end up as a guaranteed collateral damage against a Vampire they have no chance against – rather accepting to face his end alone. But that never arrives. The Sanguinarch lets him live.

The moment makes you question why the Sanguinarch is still keeping Lettou around at this point, and he just answers that himself. He calls Lettou his pet Falcon and claims that when other people wonder why he’s keeping around and spoiling a pet that occasionally pecks his finger, that he’s doing it because the personality and intelligence of his pet bird makes the effort still worth it.

At this point it really becomes striking how fear and control have become a constant element of their interactions. But at the same time this appears to be driven more by purpose than mere malice. The Sanguinarch will physically hurt Lettou and compare him to a pet bird when feeling disappointed with him, but in the same moment he will admit that he keeps him around because he values his personality and intelligence. If you continue to look at their interactions you'll notice how there is an ongoing theme how the Sanguinarch won’t hesitate to be crueI to Lettou – usually to ‘teach’ him to do better – but at the same time it is Lettou who is the one person he cares to keep around himself. Keeping a non-Sarkaz close apparently doesn’t count as long as he calls him his pet. Endlessly fascinated by the cope he puts in place here.

Because, you know, the Falcon thing goes both ways. On the first look it just looks like yet another way to humiliate Lettou. On closer look, the Sanguinarch just implied that he had been confronted with people who were wondering why he keeps that outblood this close. Making a point how he only keeps him around as a ‘pet’ sort of solves his problem and also protects Lettou from other Sarkaz assuming that the Sanguinarch cares. And with the tense and distrustful atmosphere around the Sarkaz Royal Court you can see how that would be a point he would like to make.

Team Amiya targets the command tower of the Defense Forces and this multilayered dynamic only extends itself. By this point Lettou has lost almost all sense of self-preservation and doesn’t bother to dodge the attacks directed at him. Partially he refuses to leave the tower because he can’t bring it over himself to abandon his men who are still fighting, partially he feels an end by the hands of the Sarkaz has become unavoidable, so why resist? Given this insight it’s a sad irony that the very first the Sanguinarch does when arriving on the tower is to put a shield of bIood between Lettou and Ascalon, protecting him from her attack. He immediately reprimands Lettou for being foolish enough to not dodge an opponent he knows to be stronger than him and puts his ‘blessing’ on the soldiers Lettou feels responsible for, disposing of the one thing that prevented Lettou to think of his own wellbeing first. But you know… For all the tantrum the Sanguinarch is throwing and for all the threats he is making towards Lettou, it’s again one of those odd situations where the words spoken don’t quite reflect the actions that were taken. Like, buddy, if Lettou is really that disposable in your eyes then why go through the effort of shielding him from Team Amiya at all? Why instead not instantly go for the crown you’re so set on destroying when surprise still would have been on your side, hmm? I guess danger forcing one to make quick decisions reveals some of one’s priorities after all.

Episode twelve shows little of those two interacting but the one instance that does is the more interesting because the scene involves Damazti. He treats it as complete routine to tell Lettou that he’d better hurry back to the Sanguinarch because "he had just opened a new bottle of wine, waiting for you, and we have already grown tired of his stories of yesteryear. You are a much better listener than we are". Stranger domestic habits have developed, I guess. It’s sort of telling though how Damazti views Lettou as his instant ticket out of having to participate in a conversation he finds boring, viewing the Sanguinarch and Lettou as some sort of item.

If Damazti noticed this you can be certain that Theresis did as well. I always found the timing a bit too convenient that the Defense Forces got disarmed around the same time Theresis was about to send the Sanguinarch to perform the ritual at Brentwood. One has to ask if Theresis had kept the defense at Brentwood this suspiciously low because he had hoped to get rid of the Sanguinarch. It looks as if from Theresis view it was most convenient to get rid of both annoyances at the same time. I wonder if he had counted on the Sanguinarch disposing of Lettou earlier and got caught by surprise when that never happened.

With the Defense Forces disarmed at the end of Episode 13, Lettou sees little hope for anything. It gets implied that he never really believed Theresis would hand back the Gaulish platforms and only hoped that his actions would create an opening for his compatriots in the Gaulish restoration to act. Witnessing the escalating violence in Londinim, he decides to kiII the old Vieux Vanguard he had been looking after before any of the Sarkaz can get him into their hands. And then he goes to see the Sanguinarch one last time, kiIIing himself right before his eyes.

With what we witnessed so far it comes as little surprise to see the kind of breaking point Lettou has reached, but interestingly amongst his desperation there are still elements of determination. On his way to see the Vieux Vanguard Clovisia approaches Lettou, offering him to join her side and safe himself through it. Not only does he decline, he basically calls Clovisia a ruthless opportunist who is using the chaos for her own goals. It's clear he neither trusts her nor holds any respect for her. But also, given what will happen later… in rejecting her offer he’s staying loyal to the Sanguinarch even when he has already decided that he wants to leave him on his own terms. Lettou kiIIing himself in front of the Sanguinarch while calling him names was an act of spite and desperation, sure, but also one ingrained with a twisted sense of loyalty. Even when acknowledging the dismal conditions he had been in and when checking out on his own conditions, Lettou did so in a way that wouldn't inconvenience the Sanguinarch.

Clovisia’s offer had no chance to shake his decision. Lettou moved in the confinements he was in at the time, sure, but he did so while holding on to the last shred of principles and dignity he had. It was also an act that left the Sanguinarch baffled. He could imagine that Lettou would try and hurt him in the state he was in, but he hadn’t seen the possibility that Lettou would hurt himself. The Sanguinarch gets taken by surprise but can’t even admit that to himself. Instead he tells himself like ten times that Lettou was an insignificant existence and that there’s no reason to care that he died.

The Sanguinarch has been shown to have the most stable bond throughout the Londinium arc with a non-Sarkaz he called his pet, but he tells himself that he doesn’t care the Liberi just cut his own throat, even though not even five minutes ago he told Lettou he should feel honored that the Sanguinarch let him close in ways he doesn’t even with his fellow Vampires. He reminds himself that the insignificant man he wasted the last couple of years with was but a pathetic existence, so insignificant even that he will not waste a single thought more to think about this annoying person who didn’t matter. The Sanguinarch is going to stop thinking about Lettou for sure. Soon. Any moment now. Dude goes and claims he doesn’t care even though we have seen by now that this is not entirely true. Dude goes and claims he doesn’t care and sounds like the person he has to convince the most is he himself.