#i think five screenshots of Ruthven is enough for one post lmao

[digital-dhampirs]

vampire eye rings: power and rewriting the world formula

The number of rings vnc’s vampires have in their eyes has confused me for a very long time. We know vampire eyes are the key to vampires’ abilities to manipulate the world formula, so it follows to assume that the rings have some sort of meaning, right? Right?

It seems like the normal number of rings is one, as a majority of the vampires we see in universe have eyes like this (including but not limited to Noé, Chloé, Jeanne, and (usually) Luca). But then there’s also vampires with no rings— the beastias, for example, and all of the de Sade siblings, and Amelia; and then conversely there are vampires with a lot of rings, like several members of the senate and Luna; and that isn’t even mentioning the vampires with black eyes like Nox and Manet and Jean-Jacques, and the colored sclera some vampires have—

Suffice to say we have a lot of raw information and very little tying it together. For a while, I had absolutely no clue what the eye rings meant or what they did.

But! While I was doing my usual average completely normal and non obsessive staring at Ruthven one day, I noticed something.

After Ruthven loses his right eye, the number of rings in his left eye changes.

Back when Ruthven meets Chloé, he’s almost always drawn with normal one ringed eyes (albeit with colored sclera). There are a feeeew panels where it kinda looks like he has more rings, but looking closely at them it’s pretty much impossible to tell if that’s due to his eyelashes, sclera, or actually him having more rings. However, in a vast majority of these flashback panels, it’s very clear he only has one ring in each eye. The first time we definitively see him having more rings than normal is right after he loses his right eye.

Similarly, current day Ruthven’s eye ring count tends to fluctuate a bit. He’s occasionally drawn with just one ring in his eye, but he’s usually shown with more, particularly during his appearances in more recent chapters.

So… what does this mean?

Let’s start off with something well on the beaten track. I think this change in Ruthven’s eye solidifies the idea that sclera color is something separate from ring count when it comes to vampire eyes. Loki and Lord Paldence both having black sclera implied this beforehand, but Ruthven’s rings changing while his sclera remain the same seems to further this eye-dea (I’m very sorry).

Stepping off the track and onto the rails now… let’s talk about why Ruthven’s eye rings changed. My first thought was that it occurred due to Ruthven’s left eye attempting to compensate for his missing right. Maybe the rings have something to do with vampires’ ability to see and alter world formulas, and Ruthven’s left eye is now working double time to try and make up for his missing right eye. Come to think of it, we never actually see Luna’s left eye, do we? Maybe that has something to do with why they have multiple rings in one eye as well?

But no, that doesn’t make any sense either. We see two other Senator dudes with multiple rings in their eyes, and neither of them is missing an eye. We also never see Baby Noé’s right eye developing multiple rings to compensate for his injured eye as a child.

…or do we.

(I don’t have the voice or the talent for YouTube essays so please just mentally hear that in a dramatic YouTube essay tone of voice)

When we see Noé before he comes to Altus, before he meets the Teacher, before his eye gets injured, he doesn’t have any eye rings.

This isn’t just a missed detail in a random tiny background illustration. It’s shown in both the anime and manga (both digital and published editions, yes, I had to check). Noé did not have eye rings when he was staying with his grandparents. The first time we see him with one ring in his eyes is when he meets the Teacher— aka, when his left eye is injured.

I think I’ve been thinking about this all wrong from the start.

What if having one ring isn’t actually the “normal” number of eye rings for vampires in VnC— what if having one ring is actually unusual, and just seems common due to the large number of extremely powerful vampires we see in VnC?

Let’s go back to those one-ringed characters I listed back at the start. Noé, Chloé, Jeanne, Luca. Thinking about it, all of them are exceptionally powerful vampires capable of large scale formula revision (we don’t really see Chloé do anything destructive on a Luca or Jeanne scale, but she’s able to use that magic piano and break Ruthven’s curse, implying she’d likely be able to if she tried).

If anything, Noé seems like the odd one out. The only formula revisions he can do seem stock standard (increased durability and speed, heightened senses and perception); and the one unique revision he can do is quite weak compared to the things we see Luca and Jeanne do, took a lot of training for him to master, and makes him sick when he does it to boot.

So with that very long wind up in mind, here’s my theory on vampire eye rings.

Vampires’ eye rings correspond to a vampire’s ability to see and manipulate the world formula (tldr, how powerful they are as a vampire). The average vampires (Amelia, Catherine, Mina, Noé) have no eye rings and minimal ability to change the world formula. Vampires with exceptional abilities (Chloé, Jeanne, Luca, Ruthven) have one ring. After that, the more rings, the more powerful a vampire is (e.g. queen Faustina).

Vampires who lose or injure one of their eyes, like Noé, Ruthven, and possibly Luna, often end up gaining rings in their uninjured eyes to compensate for the loss of the other.

There are also exceptions to this rule, like the Beastias and the De Sade family, who likely have very distinct types of eyes (whether inherited through blood, like the de Sades, or given to them somehow, like the Beastias) that overwrite the usual rings system.

Of course, there’s one pretty big problem with this theory. When Noé recovers from his injury, he ends up with one ring in both of his eyes, rather than just in one of them. I do have a potential explanation for this, but I will warn you that we’ve now reached the inevitable part of all of my theories where we go off the rails and into the world of wild speculation.

Here’s my theory— a small number of vampires are able to “strengthen” their eyes by temporarily putting out one of them. This is likely very difficult and dangerous to do (since we know from Veronica that powerful vampires can see through things like masks and eyepatches), but if a vampire manages to render one of their eyes temporarily unusable, both of their eyes will gain rings as their working eye attempts to compensate for their unusable one.

I don’t think this sort of thing actually changes a vampire’s inherent abilities that much (as, while Noé does seem to be stronger than the average vampire, he never does anything on the same scale as the other one ringed vampires we see in VnC), but could definitely be used as an intimidation factor over other vamps. And this absolutely sounds like the sort of thing the senators we see with a bajillion eye rings would try. Vampire society is built on superstition and politics and playing the game of thrones posturing… if a vampire like Lord Paldence thought he could get ahead by purposefully injuring one of his eyes, increasing the number of rings he has in both, I could absolutely see him doing it.

I think this theory could also lend a very amusing edge to the De Sades’ lack of eye rings. The De Sade family absolutely cares about status and reputation, but we do know they’re often viewed as capricious eccentrics by a lot of vampire high society. There’s something so damn neat about Antoine, with no eye rings, perceived as less powerful and clearly playing it up by acting humble and friendly, completely manipulating Lord Paldence despite his five hundred eye rings.

the end (for now)

And with that, we’ve finally arrived at the end of this theory!! Thank you so much for reading this rambling meta theory analysis thing. As always, please take everything here with a massive massive grain of salt— it’s very possible that vampire eye rings are like, feckin sharingan or something and Noé and Ruthven just gained more eye rings after experiencing something deeply scarring / traumatic or something to that effect. This is all just complete speculation based on me spending way too much time staring at this manga.

Thanks again for reading and see ya next time!

TLDR

I don’t usually include TLDRs in my posts, but this was a very long and rambly one, so here’s the basic gist!

Vampires’ eye rings seem to correspond to their ability to manipulate the world formula/ their “power” as a vampire. Most vampires have no eye rings; powerful vampires have one; after that the actual change in power is unclear, but having more rings seems to be perceived as having more power.

There are exceptions to this rule, like the Beastias and the De Sades.

When a vampire loses the ability to use one of their eyes (permanently or temporarily), their working eye gains rings in an attempt to compensate for the missing one.

Vampires MIGHT (this is intENSE sPECULATION) purposefully temporarily injure one of their eyes in an attempt to gain rings in both eyes and be perceived as more powerful.

thanks for reading pls take this with a grain of salt because I’m probably wrong

#vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #meta-ish #here’s some notes I’m gonna hide in the tags: #i try to avoid using the anime as a reference; since it has a tendency to omit small details #(such as the manga detail that vampires’ eye rings fade away when their eyes turn red) #but i really needed to use it to make sure kid noé’s lack of eye rings was intentional #ngl in terms of manga theories I consider a lot of the anime to be dubiously canon;;;;; #aka; i was Big Mad they made anime johann’s hair silver instead of pale greyish blonde #aka; Luca’s hair will continue to be red to me until i see a cover/ inside cover illustration where he has brown hair ddhHHHhhdhdhdhhd #as a side note— if I was gonna take a stab as to why ruthie has colored sclera; #my guess would be that it’s got smth to do with his curse/ swear ability #he’s the only character we know of with yellow sclera; he’s the only character we know of with this ability… it just seems to make sense #i think I’m just a simp for the idea that Ruthven’s always had this ability just didn’t use it for moral reasons prior to the Incident #ofc it’s also possible that he just naturally has yellow sclera #and the ‘swear’ curse was smth he learned and/ or got as a lil present from Naenia #i was gonna include all this in the post but i didn’t want it to seem too Ruthven heavy #i think five screenshots of Ruthven is enough for one post lmao #god i really have a problem #As For the characters with black irises!! #Occam’s razor suggests it’s just a stylistic thing and their eyes are simply too dark to see what their rings are like #since JJ and his dad both have very dark eyes #i didn’t really wanna sift through the anime to see if manet and nox have rings #hopefully we’ll b able to see more with Jean Jacques in s2 #if you read all that you’re legit a god thanks for reading this insanity #i legit went into this post expecting it to just be a fun lil observation about Ruthven’s eye rings #then i noticed that one panel of Noé and it spiraled from there