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iustitians · 4 months

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oh god. oh fuck. iudex neuvillette, how can you be laughing? you flushed an innocent man to his watery grave just because he asked if you knew the dinosaurs. and now you're laughing. how does it feel knowing that he's dead now? does it make you feel good? knowing you flushed an innocent? i bet it got a nice little chuckle out of you. a chortle even. i bet it really hit the spot, like a bitchin' cool glass of funky pond water. mmm. the refreshing taste of crimes against humanity. i hope you think of him the next time you drink your water, iudex neuvillette. maybe it won't be water next time if you catch my drift.

What in the name of King Nibelung did you just say about me, you pathetic little cur? I will have you know I was reborn from the purest of the waters from the Primordial Sea, and I have been involved in numerous top secret missions against the Fatui, and I have over 9,000 confirmed kills. I am a master of manipulating the Hydro element, as befitting of a fully fledged Dragon Sovereign of Water, ruler of the endless seas. You are nothing to me but just another insect to stomp. I will wipe out any traces of your miserable existence with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on Teyvat, mark my words. Did you truly think you can get away with uttering such nonsense to me just because you are from Sumeru? Think again, craven. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of both human and Melusine spies across the entire continent and your location is being traced right now, so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. Your time has come, kid. Thanks to my mastery over the Primordial Sea, I can move across Teyvat as I please and find you anywhere you attempt to hide, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that is just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in utilizing Hydro for the purposes of unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire Gardemek arsenal of Fontaine’s Maison Gardiennage and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable behind off the face of the continent, you worthless insect. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe that would have prevented you from uttering such baseless slander. But you could not, you did not, and now you're paying the price, you damned miscreant. I will rain justice all over you and you will drown in it. Make peace with your gods, for Lesser Lord Kusanali cannot help you now.

#✦ ooc.#✦ ask.#shitpost #was gonna instinctively tag this as IC and then was like. wait no sdfjlsdljfkg #thanks Sara #love u and Kaveh mwah #genshin spoilers #fontaine spoilers

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iustitians · 5 months

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ooc; headcanons - on Neuvillette's age, early life and relationship with humans, aka Neffi going insane for 4 Google Doc pages straight

Look, sometimes you just have a lot of feelings. This is something I've been thinking about for a few weeks now, and in a way, also a topic that I've wanted to properly sort out and organize for myself.

Spoilers below for Fontaine Archon Quest (in particular 4.1 and 4.2) as well as Neuvillette's character quest. Also warning because this is long and I just kinda went unhinged.

Neuvillette’s age & early life

So while we know - more or less anyway - how long Neuvillette has been living at the Court of Fontaine, we have precious little information on what he was up to before that. I say “more or less” because the descriptions of his term as the Iudex are frustratingly inconsistent, ranging from “(a little) more than four hundred years” (in his own words), through “almost five hundred years” (in Wriothesley’s words), to “five hundred years” (in Focalors’ words). Personally I lean more towards the 500 year mark - Neuvillette’s story quest implies that his perception on the passage of time and its consequences is somewhat skewed, so frankly his words I find least trustworthy on the matter. In addition there is difference between the length of his tenure as the Chief Justice and the events from his character quest. More on that in just a second.

We don’t have a lot of concrete info, but we have some hints:

Neuvillette states he never personally met Egeria, who died during the cataclysm. The invitation to become the Iudex came to him from Focalors, Egeria’s successor.

Neuvillette is close to the Melusines, but there is no implication of him ever interacting with Elynas, who also died during the cataclysm. He was there to deal with the Narzissenkreuz Ordo, however, which wasn’t much later.

And connected to that:

Neuvillette’s official introduction states that “the Melusines actually appeared much later than when Neuvillette took up his post”. Of course the definition of “much later” is up for interpretation, but we’re talking about what a human would perceive as such.

In his story quest, Carole states the Melusines stayed in their village “for almost twenty years” before Neuvillette brought them to the Court.

Egeria and Elynas both died during the cataclysm roughly 500 years ago. Some time after that, The Ordo and the Marechaussee Phantom clashed within the remains of Elynas, resulting in a violent explosion. Given the appearance of Alain Guillotin in Neuvillette’s flashback, and his words (“They're planning to reanimate the monster… We have to report this to the Chief Justice”), Neuvillette was already the Iudex by then. It was only after that explosion that the Melusines were born, and then according to Carole, some 20 years passed again before Neuvillette brought them to the Court.

So to sum up:

The cataclysm (~500 years ago) → Neuvillette becomes Iudex → battle against Narzissenkreuz Ordo within Elynas → Melusines are born → ~20 years pass → Neuvillette brings Melusines to the Court of Fontaine → institutional reforms that put society’s trust in him to the test → the Carole & Vautrin tragedy

Something that's interesting is that Neuvillette seemed to instantly know what he was doing as soon as he arrived at the Court. The guy didn't comprehend feelings or human customs, but he sure did know his way around both the work of a judge and administration, eventually rising to the position of Fontaine's top political figure. My theories and explanations for that are as follows:

As the Hydro Dragon, Neuvillette possessed innate knowledge and ability for these things from the moment he was born. Basically he's the "Dragon of Justice" in a similar way as how the Hydro Archon is the "God of Justice". This might be also supported by the game pointing out a few times how "the Iudex is the real him" and not just "a role he plays". Focalors also seemed to know from the start she could entrust this position to him.

Or more mundane: the Archon simply threw Fontaine’s legal code at him and he learned everything he needed quickly because he's just that smart. We do know he has an excellent memory.

It could also be a combination of both.

With that said, it’s worth noting that - unlike what his story quest kind of implies - the political reforms he introduced that resulted in the Carole tragedy weren’t something he did right away. As I mentioned before, this would have happened at least 20 years after the Narzissenkreuz Ordo had been dealt with, with him already as the Chief Justice at that point. It’s not that he appeared at the Court, instantly introduced a new species to the people and turned the Fontaine system upside down - more that his introduction of Melusines and the subsequent uprooting of the old regime were the biggest tests for him and Fontaine’s trust in him at the time.

OK, cool. How long had he been around before becoming the Iudex, and what had he been up to? In all honesty I think the answer is “not much”. He came to the Court to search for the meaning of his existence, after all - before becoming the Iudex, there likely wasn’t one as far as he was concerned. There is next to no info about what he could have been doing before he was invited to the Court. That said, considering the Heavenly Principles’ treatment of the Seven Sovereigns, that may have been a good thing.

The way I see it, the hints I listed point towards Neuvillette being born either during or not long after the cataclysm. It’s not impossible that the Dragon of Water had reincarnated earlier, but if that is the case, I feel like he wasn’t active - for all we know, Neuvillette may have spent a period of time in slumber or something. He never mentions any kind of “awakening” for himself, but also he never really talks to anyone in game about his earliest years, not even the Traveler. At any rate, his beginnings would have been spent in seclusion; there probably exists some kind of underwater sanctuary that served as both his birthplace and possibly also the grave of the previous Hydro Sovereign, lost to time and history.

And yes, that means he was quite young when he came to the Court of Fontaine. I personally believe that he literally didn't have a childhood - I don't think it's out of the ordinary for the Dragon Sovereign to reincarnate as an adult right away. He's not a new being, but a continuation of an old one.

As for what he would have been doing… again, probably not much. There wasn’t really anything of note for him to do, after all, when he didn’t understand the point of his existence. He probably simply lingered there. I imagine, however, that through the water, the whirlpool of emotions of Fontaine’s human residents would have reached him, causing him a lot of confusion. Upon realizing that these came from the ones who share his physical form, as well as how he found himself able to resonate with these emotions, he would have grown at least a little curious, and considered that maybe the meaning of his existence could be discovered there… which is how the letter from Focalors would have found him.

Neuvillette & humans

Which lets me segue into the next thing I want to talk about, namely how Neuvillette feels about humans vs how he used to feel, and just how huge a gamble Focalors had to take with this guy in order to try and save the people of Fontaine.

So here’s the first and main issue she would have run into: Neuvillette is a reborn Dragon Sovereign of Water. While he lost a large chunk of his memory, he did know from the start that his predecessor, alongside the other Sovereigns, was defeated by the Heavenly Principles, who then destroyed their world order and replaced it with their own, with humans as the species in control. He also knew that the Sovereigns’ power was forcibly seized from them and given to the Archons to maintain the Heavenly Principles’ control over the land. Neuvillette is in direct opposition to both the Heavenly Principles and the Seven - regardless of their stance on Celestia, they too are usurpers in his eyes. He had no reason whatsoever to think anything positive of either Focalors or the Fontainians. Several of his bios and voice lines that talk about this part of history are worded in a way that portrays these events and their perpetrators in a clearly negative light. Dainsleif also suggests how Neuvillette might feel about humans and the world order in his Collected Miscellany:

“From Neuvillette’s position, every conflict on Teyvat must seem like a comedy acted upon a stage. Fighting for territory that doesn’t belong to them, singing the praises of overlords who imprison them, and committing sins that will long outlive them…”

Neuvillette himself says something interesting on the matter at the end of Act II, while talking to Navia in front of Callas’ grave.

“There was once a time when I didn't want to believe that there could be anything more important to humans than life itself. No, rather than that, it's probably more truthful to say I didn't believe humans were capable of resisting the most basic instinct of living things. That they could rebel against their own nature, or consider certain things to be more important than their own lives. Which is also why I didn't stop your father from beginning that fateful duel… I believed that a truly innocent man would never throw away his life like that. That there was nothing… should have been nothing more important than one's own continued survival.”

What this tells us is that Neuvillette believed humans to be selfish. Which makes sense. They’re the creations of someone who stole his ancestors’ power and used it for their own ends, why wouldn’t they be as selfish as the one who destroyed the dragons’ world to make one for them? The quote above also suggests that Neuvillette considered humans to be… rather basic creatures, governed by instincts. He begins to wonder about that for the first time a little earlier, when Marcel begs to be taken to the fountain and claims the request is more important than his own life (“Humans… will they betray the instinct to live just to satisfy spiritual needs…?”). This is before Neuvillette’s story quest is unlocked, and as such, before he can discover just how much Vautrin sacrificed for him - but still, at this point the guy has been Iudex for around 500 years, and while his opinion on humans has grown better over time, he continues to hold such views of them. It does however also make sense when we remember that, as a judge presiding over trials and distancing himself from the public eye otherwise, most of his interaction with humans involves criminals, prosecutors and attorneys - people who come to the opera house, try to prove that they’re in the right and frequently have to be disciplined by him.

So why did he even accept the position among humans? We ask him that during his story quest, and he explains in detail - he became the Iudex to seek out answers regarding the meaning of his own existence. Trying to understand why he was born as a human, who he was and what he was supposed to do, by interacting with those whose physical form he shared and whose emotions he found himself able to resonate with even if he didn’t understand them. He, too, had rather selfish reasons for accepting this job - and right before Focalors’ execution he confirms that, at first, there wasn’t much else to it.

“In the beginning, I was uninterested in human existence, but these five centuries of living alongside them have gradually brought about mutual understanding between us, and I have even attempted to feel as they feel…”

He didn’t care. He accepted the position of the Iudex to see what was in it for him - hopefully, the answers he sought. The work he did, the position he held, everything else - at least at first and at least to some degree, it was something of an afterthought. He was told “while you’re at it, try to make Fontaine a good place to live” and said “ok”; and near the end of his story quest, he does explain that from his perspective, he just did what his job entailed and as far as he was concerned it was nothing special. If he actually started trying, it happened later, possibly without him even truly knowing; it’s not until he gets the speech from Wriothesley that he realizes just who he ended up becoming for Fontaine, and in all honesty, I believe that even post-Act V, he is still in the process of letting that sink in. He had been thinking of himself as an outsider for some 500 years, this stuff takes time.

This is the guy that Focalors needed to grow to care for the people of Fontaine so much that he would absolve them of the sin of being created from the power of the Primordial Sea. And the best part is that she did it. She placed an ancient dragon who had no non-selfish reason to care in the center of the country, gave him the chance to become part of the human society - of the audience, if you will - and created circumstances where the line between him and humans has become blurred over the centuries, and where he appreciates them and recognizes their strengths even as he continues to struggle to understand them.

She successfully got Neuvillette to care enough that he did what she needed him to do in order to save the Fontainians, while understanding and acknowledging that he was deceived by an Archon, something he would be fully within his right to be mad about even in spite of the fact that she did it to oppose the Heavenly Principles. She got him to value humans enough that he has begun to hand out Hydro Visions - something he is not obligated to do, but he wants to do.

God damn, Focalors. Good job.

#✦ ooc.#✦ headcanons.#long post.

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