It's been brought to my attention that the narrative takes great care to be as ambiguous as possible regarding Lion's gender.
You know what ? I don't care. Liveblogging Umineko is all about bringing your preconceptions to the fore, and mine is that Lion feels female. I am NOT going to take pains to keep this summary gender-neutral, that'd be too annoying. I am the Reader, and I'm going to let my bias show.
And this is totally not because I'm shipping het!Will/Lion.
Will steps back into the chapel's main room to think a bit. Not that he can do much of it, as Bernkastel immediately shows up to bother give him a new toy, the "theatergoer's authority" (which is apparently much better than the "detective's authority"). Will knows it's pointless to refuse.
As he goes back toward the waiting room, he notices than Shannon is now manning the reception desk. Will manages to discern that Shannon has no clue who Lion is either, which is strange considering she's been working here for 10 years. Oh, and Kanon doesn't know either. What kind of bizarre Fragment is this ?
Will wants to get to the heart of the matter by asking Shannon to get Kanon here too, but he suddenly hits a stonewall. When he tries pressing the issue, the music gets creepy, Shannon's eyes go blank and she starts speaking likE thIS. Will starts using his theatergoing authority, but doeS hE rEALLY WANT TO DO THAT ? Will senses that bringing Shannon and Kanon together would be similar to putting his own king in check, and relents. Shannon then acts as though nothing had happened.
Lion comes to announce she's secured an interview with Grampa, so off they go. (He's in the VIP room with Genji. How many rooms does this chapel have ?) Will is as unsubtle as ever, recounting everything he's learned from previous games, including Kuwadorian's existence. This seems to be the good play, as Grampa is intrigued by so much rudeness and knowledge. Kumasawa suddenly comes in, and together they all decide it's time to spill the beans.
Unsurprisingly, Kumasawa was indeed Beatrice the Second's nurse, so she knew all about the situation. Grampa had had Kuwadorian built so that he could live a double life with his daughter... although he wasn't really thinking of her as a daughter, and more as Beatrice reincarnated, especially as she was growing to look similar to her predecessor.
It takes Lion a while to put two and two together. Her reaction is predictable. Will states it's not his place to judge. But Grampa would probably like to finally talk about all this to someone before it's too late, right ?
And so we start with Grampa's recollection... And thanks to the theatergoer ability, Will and Lion can actually see and talk with Young!Kinzo (who indeed looks quite a bit like Battler...) We start by how he got the headship (nobody wanted it, let's dump it onto that kid with the lucky six toes !), and the 20 mindless years that followed. He got married, has a few children, but those weren't really his decisions. His life was forced on him.
Comes WWII, and he's bored with this enough to join the army as an easy way to get killed. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of mentioning his engineering skills, so instead of the front lines he's assigned to help building a submarine base in a godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere. Rokkenjima, of course (and this does explain some things about all those tunnels...). Not that the submarine base was either used, and the higher-ups eventually abandoned it half-finished with the bare minimum of soldiers to man it.
The mindless wait for the end of the war is broken up by the sudden appearance of an Italian submarine. (Will helpfully makes an history lesson to Lion, pointing out that while Mussolini surrendered in 1943, remnants of the Italian Army kept fighting until 1945.) The journey wasn't without incident, though, and there's barely a single officer left. As the most educated soldier on base, Grampa is tasked as an interpreter. He doesn't know any Italian, but his English is pretty good. And there is one person aboard the sub knowing that language : a woman called Beatrice Castiglioni !
They immediately hit it off. ("So basically, he cheated his wife", says ever tactful Will.) It took two weeks for the Italian soldiers to finally open up about their mission : they were carrying a major bigwig (now dead), his daughter... and ten tons of gold. Considering the submarine is a pile of junk by now and slowly going under, they reluctantly ask the Japanese to help unloading it onto the island.
What happens next is easily predictable : the Japanese commander asks for a 50/50 split, the Italian officer evaluates his chances (10 elite Italian soldiers versus 30 Japanese soldiers who have barely been in any combat ? Bring it on !), and it eventually becomes a bloody massacre. In the end, only the greedy Japanese commander, Grampa and Beatrice are left alive... and Grampa kills him to protect Beatrice.
For, you see, those two weeks with Beatrice restored his will to live, and vice versa (Beatrice had a similar experience). And they're going to live together, everyone else be damned ! A few of her ribs were broken in the fight, so he takes a small boat to bring her to a doctor at the nearest island. Yes, Dr Nanjo, of course. A gold ingot is more than enough to buy his silence... and actually, his refusal to accept more than normal fees starts their friendship.
It's not really explained how Grampa managed to blindside the Army about all this, but we're told it was "the struggle of his life". We know the rest : how he came back and built his fortune, etc. Beatrice was taken to an unoccupied Ushiromiya mansion and they led a double life for a while, but she eventually died in childbirth. After that, Grampa would buy Rokkenjima out to protect the gold and bring Beatrice the Second up in secret.
And that's the end of Grampa's story. Which was quite instructive, but that still doesn't answer the "who killed Beatrice ?" question (as the first Beatrice died of natural causes). So it's the third Beatrice we now have to investigate. And the next witness to be interrogated is... Maria !
Well, that was fun. I summed the flashback up very drastically because there's not that much new information in it, but it's a well-done sequence that makes Beatrice and Kinzo's first meeting meet the expectations drawn up by the previous six novels.
On the other hand, while it's nice to have it all laid out, this is the part of the backstory that was easy to guess and doesn't answer much of the mysteries. Hopefully we're getting into something more meaty next.
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