Essentially, Bergard is to Auron as Van is to Tidus – Hellseye47
If there is one character that either vanishes amidst the cast on stage, or raises some people’s eyebrows for how suspicious and at times “deliberately unhelpful” he is, that would be, without a doubt, Bergard Zeman, formally know as the Roaring Lion Gunther Barkhorn and informally known among fans as “Yahariman”. Considering how
deliberate Falcom is when designing a role for each Character, from minor named npcs to the main protagonist and his party, this seems…odd. But then we realize we are in an arc themed over truth and lies, as well as the resolve to face and own them.
Let’s check the chronology. In Cold Steel 3, we are informed Gaius Worzel succeeded Gunter Barkhorn as the Eighth Dominion of the Grallritter. Some time between Cold Steel 2 and Cold Steel 3, on December S.1205, the Nord Highlands were the fighting grounds for a major skirmish between Erebonia and Calvard–one that foreshadowed the coming Great War. Barkhorn, who had visited Gaius’s settlement to discuss his foreboding, was grievously wounded shielding his official disciple. As he lay dying, he did something hitherto unheard: he transferred ownership of his stigma to the boy. Barkhorn then
appeared less than 3 years later looking the same as he did, exception given to the scar over his lost eye.
When one wants to lie, they tell a believable tale, one that mixes truth and lies. First he said he had to fake his death to serve as a secret edge of the Church, as well as prompt his disciples to grow into their respective paths and roles. Hence, he had to keep everyone in the dark and, as revealed in Kai’s prologue, even Gaius himself wasn’t aware of his supposedly fake death.
However, Bergard then revealed he left his life as clergyman behind, which required him to forsake his own name and title as a former Dominion, so how could he serve as this secret edge? From what we can presume, Bergard never interacted with anyone from the Church until his reappearance, not even Pope Orestes, who recruited him to the Gralsritter and is one of the two people he ‘served’ or was indebted to. Furthermore, it is revealed in Kai that the secret trump card of the Church against Almata was Kevin, who would be deployed in case Dantes couldn’t be stopped in Oracion during his Death Game. Something isn’t right, but his lie was even more grievous than it appears, if we take a step back and reflect on what it means to be a Dominion.
In Cold Steel 2 we learn from Mcburn that the Stigma is mixed with it’s owner, perhaps even merged with their soul. We also learn from Sky 3rd and Azure that one is born a Dominion, its not a role one can choose for themselves, only to fully manifest the stigma after the user suffers some heavy trauma and, supposedly, take in an artifact. Gaius never had a stigma, but instead was, presumably, compatible with it. His time in Class 7 served as his test.
Barkhorn throughout the years took countless disciples and guided many people among including members of gralsritter, the papal guard, the nord nomads, and Van. Aside from Van’s circumstances, which are I presume special and due a crack theory of it’s own, another of his disciples also had a special role, that of his official successor. Barkhorn knew his time was due and that the eighth Dominion had to be there for the fated time when the Twelve were to converge and fulfill their role, one grave enough to require all twelve seals to be manifested together in Zemuria for the first time in history.
Barkhorn, thanks to being the oldest and (perhaps) the third ranked among the Dominions, or due to his relationship with Pope Orestes, either accessed forbidden knowledge stored within the church, or the completed form of Weissman’s stigma research Rufina confiscated when she got him excommunicated. So he had the means and the reason to transfer his stigma. Next, we need to ponder about why he knew when he would die, and what lead him to invest years in seeking his successor and then grooming Gaius to be his replacement. More importantly, we need to presented why he had to ‘fake’ his death at all.
The answer to this mystery, as usual in Calvard arc, is Van Arkride himself, in this case, his backstory. After dropping out of Aramis, for reasons yet to be officially confirmed, Van reunited with Barkhorn and was taken to Longlai, where he was trained as his hidden disciple. Van’s relationship with the Church, it’s saint, as well as it’s heretic hunters among the Papal Guard and the Dominions, deserve a theory of it’s own, but I imagine this was among the reasons Barkhorn had to keep Van hidden from his other disciples.
We still don’t know if it was due to Van lacking his core, if the training was to allow him to control the dregs of his power, if it was stimulated by the higher elements present, or if it’s related to the region’s special nature as the Land of Revolution, but Van started to leak his demonic contents during his training. To prevent him from consuming
the lifeforce of every living being near him, Barkhorn used his stigma to suppress Van and keep him from losing himself. Supposedly, Barkhorn had no sequelae from this incident aside from a scratch over his cheek. This is where things get dicey.
During Daybreak II, the Eighth Genesis ran five local experiments in Edith through the second to sixth genesis units, where one person would serve as the core of each corrosion scenario. Each setting was crazier than the last, all of them rather randomly based on the insecurities of acquaintances of Van, like Ashen, Maxim (or Yume?), Celis, Feri and Cody. Other characters like Kurogane, Halle, Ashladd(), Kasim(), Risette(*), Naje and Esmeray were also eroded, while those who resisted, such as Zin and Kilika, had their souls bound to shard bodies and forced to follow the Eighth’s scenario. Among the corrosion scripts, one of them struck to me as the most oddly specific and realistic–the play where Celis was cast as the grieving avenger of her fallen master Barkhorn.
In this scenario, Barkhorn had died some years after the Longlai incident. His cause of death taking into his body Van’s demonic contents, the miasma of Vagrants Diaspora. Celis proceeded to team up with Ashladd to hunt down Van for being a heretical existence. Because Bergard didn’t appear during daybreak II, occupied in Arteria investigating who was the current Papal Guard Captain behind Iscariot’s recent activities
on Calvardian soil, Van and Leon had no way at first to prove to the corroded Celis that the Eighth had swapped her memories with ‘fake’ ones.
Either way, and regardless of how the Eighth chose its victims or it concocted these settings, this was the one scenario I had to ask myself if it could have happened in a past loop or in an alternate possibility. It was too realistic, unlike the other ones that are almost satirical… such as Van killing Cao, Yume and Paulette being victims of domestic violence by Maxim’s main racer rival, Van collaborating with Almata, or Cody being able to lead the CID and the Guild in a civil war against Gramheart over his legitimacy.
If Barkhorn was cursed by Van and this curse was capable of cutting his life short him, regardless of him being a Dominion, it could be the reason he had to elect a replacement. Conveniently, Bergard never clarified how he dealt with this curse or how he treated and cured himself, thanks to him being outside of Edith during Daybreak II and no one questioning him about this in Kai. Heck, if the Stigma was delaying his death, how is he still alive without it? He shows no signs of being cursed in daybreak and in kai.
Barkhorn’s effective cause of death, however, wasn’t his injuries from shielding Gaius or Van’s curse, but ripping the stigma out of his soul to graft it into Gaius’s. I imagine Barkhorn needed to traumatize Gaius to ensure he could receive the stigma.
The final and key issue is why Barkhorn had to play possum for three years, or, as framed by this theory, how he came back from the dead. Because I lack evidence, I made a conjecture with some logical deduction. In Erebonia, we learned the Great One could reanimate some of the awakeners as immortals bound to the the ritual of the Rivalries
during the Great Twilight. In Calvard, thanks to the Genesis or technology, myriad ways of cheating death became available:
- One could somehow become a being akin to a vampire or a zombie, neither alive nor dead, and even able to merge with other such beings into a demonic monstrosity;
- one could be digitalized while alive and afterwards converted into an AI;
- one could use a demon lord’s diabolic core to execute a ritual where one can become a demon or be brought back as as undead bound to it;
- or one can be chosen by the Alter Core, a Genesis replica, after leaving the mortal coil to be one of the paradoxical Remnants – ghosts who are overlaid from the past or the future into the confirmed present. Kai confirms that the Remnant’s vessel or physical form exists regardless of the state of their corpse, with which they can even
coexist in the present. Rene Kincaid attested this by confirming Giacomo’s corpse was still guarded in a morgue or buried under a graveyard in Edith, despite his Remnant being in Anchorvile. - Finally, Marduk revealed in Kai that they could copy a person’s conscience and create a mechanical body for them, akin to Elysium’s simulacra.
I believe those are all the current possibilities in Calvard. There is no other way of cheating death or rising from your own grave, unless Bergard’s situation turns out to be a (VI) possibility –which may end up being the case depending on how its framed. Bergard’s situation may be closer to the Remnants than Dantes’s situation or, even less, Aida’s. A final step back could explain how this was possible without the Genesis or the necessary technology.
Lets consider Apeiron, the heirloom of the Eldarion Royal Family whose
ownership serves as a claim among the Eldarion scion to the throne of the Kingdom of Calvard. This artifact is called the sword of divine darkness, because it houses or channels both holy and unholy (demonic) energies–a contradiction or a paradox. Well, this was basically Barkhorn’s situation from when Van cursed him until he died. His body housed Vagrant’s unholy miasma, while his soul housed the holy stigma that counteracted the consumption of his lifeforce.
When he died, Barkhorn somehow and accidentally matched the same
requirements to become a Remnant. The reason we still don’t know what Barkhorn did these past 3 years is because he probably “came back from the dead” between CS4’s ending in S.1206, or Reverie’s ending in S.1207, and Daybreak’s prologue in August of S.1208. Perhaps he even reemerged between October’s chapter 4 and November’s interlude. The Remnant are somehow aware of events that happened beyond their death, and even information they shouldn’t be aware of, so perhaps something similar could have happened to Bergard, and it allowed him to conclude he had one final role to play at Van’s side. Because he really did die as Barkhorn, he no longer feels worthy of using his name as a living person.
The Remnants are a glitch or bug in Zemuria’s rules, a byproduct of the destruction of the Great One in S.1206 making the Grand Reset a fixed and predetermined occurrence in S.1209. As the possibility of Laegjarn’s Chest (the sept-terrion of time) being destroyed by the Zemurians approaches, the timeline unravels due to the competing possibilities and a little push from the Genesis/Alter Core. Once the Chest is destroyed, the inconsistency will be corrected and any Remnant still on stage will be banished back to the date they died or will be sent back to Aidios–again, depending on how its framed. In a sense, Bergard Zeman is Gunther Barkhorn’s encore.
Bergard is basically an undead, so to say, a person who lost his future and has no clear path to take anymore. This is why, despite always being an outlier to the other members of the Arkride Solutions Office (ASO), or singled out as different somehow (and not just because of his age), he fits the common theme of it’s members. Van, Agnes, Feri, Aaron, Risette, Quatre, and Judith stand at a crossroads in their own lives, lost in stagnation for one reason or another, usually related to a fear. Van fears himself and therefore fears bonding with other people; Agnes fears being a naïve and inadequate girl, sheltered by someone or beneath their expectations; Feri not only fears to be found lacking as a Kruga (Jeager or Priestess), but more than that she perhaps fears losing her heart and innocence by committing to something she can’t take back; Aaron fears the responsibility on his shoulders as the next Tyrant and letting down those who believe in him; Risette fears not being human and, later, remembering her true past repressed due to trauma; Quatre fears losing what ties down his sense of self, his bonds and rapport with his Basel family (his mother-figure and sibling disciples); Judith fears being a inadequate successor to the Grimcatz mantle in comparison to her mother and grandmother.
Bergard’s fear is failing his role as Van’s father figure, or finding out his encore was pointless. This is why Bergard lives as if he were checking a bucket list and is always attempting to make himself useful or make his time fruitful. We can see this when he silently mentors the ASO in Daybreak, when he intentionally withholds information he knows so he can find out by themselves if possible; when he intentionally visited Arteria to secretly give his former Dominion comrades and successor his parting words; when he used the aforementioned visit to also investigate Nina Fenley; and when he clearly favors his hidden disciple as if he had something to pay him back or he was somehow duty bound to watch over him and share his wisdom with him.
Even in his first kai connect we can see him attempting to have fun as a biker and doing interviews about it, while in his second he reminisces with Van about his life journey and it’s humble beginning 50 years in the past. Back then, he met Orestes disguised as an eastern merchant, and after traveling around, he was taken in by his old former master for 2 years over the Ishgal Mountains – in what I presume later became
Ryuga’s dojo, where he housed Van during his training in Longlai.
Bergard Zeman isn’t the church’s hidden edge, but Van’s hidden ace. He is the only person who is aware of all the events that transpired in Van’s life, and I even dare to include his stay in Oracion’s Arkride Orphanage. In Agnes’s final kai connect, Van revealed Barkhorn would communicate with Director Arkride through his contacts in the Church. Unless I am crazy, drugged or overly cherry-picking, there is too much smoke to
just ignore this crack theory. It looks complicated because the man himself is keeping mum, and his first hand account will be shorter than this.
Bergard doesn’t want Van to feel further traumatized over indirectly killing him, nor he wants Celis and Leon to reject Van over this. I also believe he withheld this information to serve as a last resort if necessary, which could end up being the smart decision now that Rene backstabbed Van. Van himself probably knows something is wrong about his master withholding information, specially after the Daybreak II Celis’s scenario. Van is always afraid of facing the truth, and only does so when left no choice. He doesn’t want to confront his teacher over his white lies, instead waiting for him to come clean about the past three years or nudging him to open up little by little about it. Considering how Bergard makes a point of not sharing Van’s past without his permission, I think this situation is consistent and in character for both of them.