When Naenia is in the heavenly realm, she is the goddess of funeral lament, the thief of names, and the granter of malnomen, but who is she now that she has a body? Chloé is dead set on discovering the answer. She’s even altered the universe’s code to do it, posing as a bloodsucking Ada Lovelace and employing what has been accurately identified as the invariant of Charles Babbage’s difference engine. I hadn’t imagined that Naenia may have a physical form until the conclusion of last week’s show, but she most certainly does. It may be even more terrifying than her Naenia guise since she is Faustina, the buried princess of the vampires.
While the nickname Faustina has been given to various women throughout history, it’s more probable that she refers to Faust, the guy who created a pact with the devil in compensation for wisdom and worldly pleasures. While we don’t know if Mobility and flexibility made a very similar deal with such a Charlatan member to get her Naenia shape, as Naenia, she is undoubtedly a seller of Faustian deals, stealing vampires’ actual names in return for abilities they can’t always manage, reports Anime News Network.
We have seen it with Jean-Jacques, who turned into the Monster of Gévaudan while he was in danger of losing Chloé, but the recollection of Jeanne’s history this week also suggests that she’s at an intellectual crossroads when she first encountered Naenia. The former queen seeks out individuals who are faced with a definite choice of two pathways forward and always urges them to pursue the darker path.
It’s a fascinating material, since if Vanitas isn’t cautious, his own lingering hatred of vampires may one day put Noé into a similar scenario. This week’s episode has an intriguing connection between Noé jumping over the edge of the globe to save Vanitas and Jeanne leaving Chloé to plunge, unable to bring themselves have a go at her companion. Both Jeanne and Noé recently lost persons who were once very precious to them.
Even during the vampire war, Jeanne’s prospective parents were beheaded. Whereas Jeanne is despondent and hopeless, letting herself be pushed into the position of the bureau, Noé resists succumbing to his grief. While he’ll never cease hoping that things with Louis might have been different, he has Murr and Dominique to maintain him totally immersed in this world.
