Oh, Clavis. You love to hate him.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I think the people who like Clavis—really, really like him—do so immediately. For the rest of us, he’s an acquired taste.
Or maybe that’s just me.
He didn’t look good in the first draft of ADT at all. I had only read Chev’s romantic route and nothing else in the game, and that didn’t exactly show Clavis in a good light. He’s a character you really can’t understand until you’ve read his story, and when you do, so much makes sense. The leopard crest? That fits him well. He’s dangerous and sneaky, mysterious and bold, and all sorts of a mess hidden deep, deep, deep in a jungle.
And to untangle that mess, we have to go back to his childhood.
I feel like a psychiatrist.
Okay, so, the LeLouch family is a longstanding noble family within Rhodolite. They’re also the Michel family's longstanding servants. Odd, huh? Noble servants? But that’s how it is. The LeLouches have their own property, wealth, standing, business interests—but they’re servants.
There’s got to be a story behind that.
The LeLouch family has no title (not one that I’ve found, anyway), so I don't know what rank they hold. Maybe they’re untitled nobility. Maybe they lost their title. Whatever the case, although Clavis is a prince and the second-wealthiest of his eight brothers (the wealthiest is Chev), he’s also Chev’s servant.
And this goes back to their mothers. Because everything goes back to the princes’ mothers.
Leticia LeLouch was Chev’s mother’s lady-in-waiting and best friend. When the Michel princess married the king and became queen, Leticia moved into the palace with her, and the two continued their relationship as they had before. They were extremely close. In fact, Leticia may have been Chev’s mother’s only friend.
Side note: I haven’t yet learned Chev’s mother’s name. Which is annoying.
Anyway, the queen loved the king, but he didn’t love her. He was still pining for the Belle who chose him as king, and he was slowly losing his mind without her. He made more political marriages and slept around with everybody, and the queen became a laughingstock because she couldn’t hold her husband’s affections. Everybody ridiculed her. That added to her emotional and mental stress, and then she gave birth to Chev and rapidly grew to fear him…
Oh, and Clavis happened.
Clavis, the son of the king and Leticia.
I haven’t read this revelation in the game yet, but I hear tell that the king raped Leticia. He would get psychotic breaks when he confused another woman for Belle, and I'm guessing that happened when he was alone with Leticia. Which doesn’t excuse his actions in the slightest, and it doesn't uncomplicate the complicated matter of Leticia bearing her best friend's husband's son.
But this didn’t seem to affect the queen and Leticia’s relationship. Leticia remained the queen’s closest friend and the only person who could calm her when she had a mental breakdown. And while Leticia loved Clavis, he always came second to the queen. There was a lot of “go play with your brother” going on.
The brother being Chev.
Clavis is actually a genius in his own right, but he always felt inferior to Chev, and to be fair, Chev rubbed his superiority in. Often. He beat Clavis up in sword practice; he insulted Clavis’ mental aptitude; and he was generally a rotten older brother.
Clavis took all of this as motivation. He started pulling pranks to get his mother’s attention. He studied medical textbooks to prove to Chev that he could understand them.
But although Leticia praised his abilities (as she deactivated traps and cleaned up after him), he remained second to the queen on his mother’s list of priorities
And nothing he did impressed Chev. He studied until he made himself sick and Chev had to drag him to the infirmary, but whatever he tried, Chev could do it better. There was no winning.
When Chev’s mother died, Leticia committed suicide. Her last words to Clavis were, "I love you." He internalized that as her not loving him enough to stay. And he blamed Chev.
That was when Clavis set himself against Chev. When Bloodstained Rose Day came and Obsidian threatened to kill one thousand hostages if Rhodolite didn’t surrender, Chev made the harsh decision to abandon those civilians to their fate. He couldn’t put a thousand lives over an entire kingdom.
Chev valued the kingdom over the individual? Then Clavis valued the individual over the kingdom.
He tried to save the hostages and ended up getting captured and tortured. But he talked his Obsidianite guard, Cyran, into switching sides, and between the two of them, they escaped and saved a handful of people from being burned alive.
Of course, Gilbert caught them escaping. But allying with him was an easy decision for Clavis. Gilbert was Chev’s only real competition, and all Gilbert wanted in exchange for letting Clavis, Cyran, and the few civilians go free was the promise that Clavis would one day bring him Chev’s head.
Reading all of that, it sounds like Clavis should be a dark, gritty, depressed character, right? Quite the opposite. He's the hedonistic prince, the one who always does the unexpected, smiling and laughing while he defies all logic. That's his cover. Fake it 'til you make it. And he refuses to lose to Chev, which means he refuses to give up, and he refuses to let anybody get him down.
He just wants love and recognition. What’s so bad about that?
Well… his methods can leave a lot to be desired at times. And the entire mess that is his relationship with Chev puts Ivetta right in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by landmines.
But hey, that’s plot conflict, right?6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN13LHrPUur
