So I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned/noticed this yet and I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense/is ridiculously long, but the last update of The Arcana featured the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns as background music playing during the masquerade scenes, and next to the fact it’s my favorite classical piece, it also caught my attention for a different reason. There are a few things I realized while reading. You can look it up for yourself somewhere, but in short, Danse Macabre is a movement featured in the suite Le carnaval des animaux or The Carnival of the Animals (keep in mind the animal masks everyone is wearing that tie in to their Arcana card) and the story behind it is that, at midnight, Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance. You know what else calls the dead from their graves? The Last Judgement. And you know how the Last Judgement is brought about? During the apocalypse, set into motion by its Four Horsemen. I think most people who are actively involved in the fandom know about the Four Horsemen theory by now, but to give a quick summary: it seems like the Four Courtiers, Vlastomil, Volta, Vulgora and Valdemar are supposed to represent the Four Horsemen - Vlastomil being Death as he seems obsessed with all kinds of creepy crawlies that eat corpses and was exceptionally eager to condemn Julian to death - Volta being Famine, as she is always hungry and seems to hoard food for herself whenever she gets the chance - Vulgora being War as they are portrayed as extremely aggressive and literally called a warmonger by Nadia - and Valdemar as Pestilence due to their morbid curiosity and obsession with the Red Plague in addition to actually wishing for another plague and even stating to hope to break a mortality record. The colors of the horses also match the color schemes of the Courtiers: a white horse, a red horse, a black horse and a pale horse. Either way, the idea behind this is that the Horsemen are to set a divine apocalypse upon the world as harbingers of the Last Judgment. During the Last Judgement, the dead will rise from their graves after which the Second Coming of Christ (the Lamb of God) occurs. Everyone will then be judged, and will “receive what they deserve” depending on how they have lived their life. Now I’m not sure if any of this should be taken literally or symbolically, but the next chapter is The Devil and it has been stated before that Lucio, and thus the Plague, are coming back. All of this leads me to believe that the next chapter is when Lucio will be resurrected. But hear me out. What if everyone ends up getting resurrected? All the people who died during the Plague? I’m not sure what purpose that would serve plot-wise, and it’s just a wild thought, but considering the clues we are getting about the resurrection and judgement, it doesn’t even seem that far-fetched. Especially because in the Danse Macabre, Death calls all the people from their graves to dance. And what better place than a big Masquerade? Also, small fun fact: Danse Macabre features a solo violin playing the tritone which was known as the diabolus in musica (“the Devil in music”) during the Medieval and Baroque eras. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that since yesterday and I thought I’d share. Maybe someone finds some amusement in it. I might add more to this later.
Here is the template for a grimoire page and a guide how to use it. (I will attach the download link with a reblog ‘cause tumblr hates me and doesn’t indexate posts with links properly) Credit me if you use it!
