30 Seconds With Bunnies Background

[eternal_night_ends]

I am going to attempt a thirty seconds with bunnies on what is relevant to Soma and Matthias/Dracula, if only because Soma is technically a reincarnation/host for the entire series big bad, so technically EVERY FUCKING GAME IN THE SERIES is part of his history. (Except Lords of Shadow, which is a canon alternate-universe timeline.)

"Dracula" in this series started out as Matthias Cronquist, in the 11th century. He was frail and often in ill health, but a brilliant tactician, which made him a good partner for his childhood friend, the knight Leon Belmont. They had a small territory and were in good standing, and went on the Crusade when it moved, both leaving behind what in that time period at their ages would've been wives, I'm sorry canon-word-choice. Sara and Elizabeth managed the territory in their absence, and the boys were successful, eventually returning home as heroes.

Unfortunately, while they were gone, Elizabeth - Matthias's wife - had taken ill and died; Matthias fell into a depression, frustrated with mortality and their own weakness and helplessness at it. In the meantime, there were rumors of dark things haunting the area, a patch of forest wreathed in fog where nobody came out anymore. Matthias was approached by the source of this trouble - an elder vampire named Walter, who also happened to have gained ownership and power over a demiplane, the Fortress of Eternal Night, elevating him to a virtual demigod. Walter tended to roam around using people as cat toys - show up, gather souls to turn into creatures of the castle, pick up interesting people as pawns, vanish. Matthias struck a bargain with him, with the intent from the beginning of finding out how to take the Castle for himself; Matthias was turned, and lured Sara, Leon's wife, to the castle, leaving behind clues that would make Leon think they'd both been taken prisoner. Leon sought help from the church, but only succeeded in being treated as mad and stripped of his title and weaponry; he went out alone to try to rescue Matthias and Sara. Sara ended up being partially turned into one of the castle's creatures, sacrificing herself to help create a weapon with her spirit that, via her partial tie to the Castle, would be able to hurt its Master; while Matthias quietly pulled strings to ensure that, when Leon managed to defeat Walter, he could wrest control away.

After the elder vampire's death, Matthias asked Leon to stay, offering immortality and power; Leon refused, vowing that as long as Matthias kept to this path, Leon would hunt him. Matthias moved the castle, leaving Leon behind with the enchanted whip-weapon that Sara had become. Matthias chose to use the Castle's power to try to gain control of the world, to rule over it as "God" where God was apparently out to lunch. "Sara", whose name was fairly quickly lost, was passed down among Leon's descendants, in an eternal war to stop Matthias's madness.

There was an almost turning point, as Matthias stumbled over a lady in one of the villages that he fell in love with; she refused to come to the castle and chose to stay human, instead living on the edge of the town as she had been, but they had a close relationship. Matthias kept the creatures of the Castle under control, sparing the area the attacks that would usually happen, instead protecting the area. Unfortunately, this was 1300's Europe, and as far as the rest of the village knew, she was associating with some strange shadowy figure with demonic powers and had a small child by him. The villagers turned on her while Matthias's attention was elsewhere, killing her as a witch, and Matthias barely managed to save their half-human son. With what little faith in humanity and good in the world he'd had shattered, he turned his conquest into a war on humanity in general, falling further into hate, and it's safe to assume the village was wiped off the map.

The last spark of "humanity" in his behavior was reserved for his son, who he did care about; unfortunately, Adrian had inherited his mother's conscience, and being raised among his father's atrocities wore on him. Eventually he couldn't take it anymore and left, where it is notable that Matthias didn't actually STOP him, although he did keep track of his now-grown son. Adrian ended up falling for a girl that was one of Leon's descendents, training her; he tried to attack the castle on her behalf, had a fight with her over her insistence that she was going to fight his father too, almost lost control, and fled to seal himself away, not realizing she was pregnant. (IT'S A MESSED UP FAMILY TREE. The way it's written SONIA probably didn't even realize until after her bout with Matthias and the castle "sealing"/going away to come back later. This also means that the Belmonts from Sonia onward are also descended from Matthias, which actually explains why Leon CAN'T chase Matthias into the Castle's "heart", while later on someone's able to use blood from Trevor - Sonia's son - to open the door and pass through.) Needless to say, this likely did not help Matthias's deteriorating mental state.

A few generations later, Matthias very nearly managed to wipe out the Belmont family tree, getting a mind control effect on the last surviving Belmont; Adrian had left a failsafe in his sealing of himself that would wake him up if Matthias's power was running unchecked - leading to Adrian going in himself to rescue Richter Belmont, somewhat the worse for wear, and confront his father. There are actually several cut-scenes in Symphony that amount to some of the less combat-oriented castle creatures going "Oh, young master! Good to see you again!", while some of the higher-ranking ones are basically trying to shoo him away before fighting him; even Matthias expresses some reluctance to fight him. Adrian, despite expressing that he wasn't entirely happy to be fighting his father either, carries on, attempting to seal Matthias away and vowing to sever ties and join the Belmonts in fighting him until they can find a way to destroy him.

As much as it would be five hundred years before they came to blows again, this probably was one of the last nails in the coffin of whatever was left of Matthias's sanity, and it's worth noting that, of all the "demon" forms he's taken when he was seriously channeling the Castle's power, the end-form he took against Adrian was the MOST distorted.

Of course the seal didn't hold, and the war continued, as Matthias's servants outside of the castle continued to find ways around anything done to keep him bottled. Eventually, in 1999, a group including Adrian and the current descendants of a few of the major Hunter bloodlines managed to use an eclipse to seal the Castle, separating Matthias and shattering his soul. It didn't quite work completely, and the shards slipped out to other people, the main, central one being born into a poor, unsuspecting kid unrelated to anything. One individual with one of the shards decided he was the true reincarnation, and went around killing the others to claim the power from them, trying to reconsolidate it to become the "Lord of Darkness" "again". Soma, as a child, was found by some of the agents of the Hunter families and watched.

Soma had a normal family, and when he went into an international exchange program as a kid, they managed to pull strings so that his host family would be allies - the family that kept the Hakuba shrine in Japan. Soma became close friends with their daughter, Mina, and grew up traveling back and forth to there, while Mina's parents helped keep his power suppressed so he could have a normal childhood and possibly end up being a permanent solution to the problem by virtue of taking the main part of Matthias's soul and living a normal, mortal life, or at least being stable and well-adjusted enough to control it if it did spike up.

Years later, another eclipse occured, and the Castle managed to form a gateway to the mortal realm, calling the pieces of its master back. Soma and Mina unwittingly ended up answering, brought into its pocket realm; Mina was badly affected, and Soma tore off to find a way out, accidentally triggering his powers protecting her from some of the creatures. Adrian and the few others that'd managed to slip in monitored the situation as Soma ran into Graham, the now cult leader that thought he was the true reincarnation; Soma had a moment of lapsing that tipped Graham off, causing Graham to hurry to try and gain control to force his own dominance. As Soma came more into his power, his own control grew wonky, causing him to lapse less human the more of the castle's power he absorbed and closer he got to Graham. Towards the end there was actual conflict over whether they should trust him to be able to keep control and seal the castle, or kill him before he returned to being "Dracula", Matthias's personality reborn, and the whole war started over again.

Soma managed to hold control even after killing Graham and absorbing most of the rest of the fragments, regaining all but two small shards of Matthias's soul and power. With some support from Mina and the others acting as an anchor, he launched an assault on the core of the Castle itself to seal it, only barely being pulled out as the pocket realm closed; his powers fell back quiet with that, and it looked like was going to return to a normal life.

Unfortunately some of the doomsday cults that had started worshipping Matthias hadn't gone away, and one of them had the two people with the last couple tiny shards of potential to gain control of the Castle. Their leader, Celia, decided that if Soma wasn't going to accept being the Lord of Darkness the world "needed", she would take her two minions and kill him so one of them could take it from him. They attacked Soma to re-awaken his powers as he struck out in self-defense, then left clues to lure him into their territory, where they'd managed to summon some demons and bits of the Castle's structure in a small town they'd wiped out.

Soma managed to best one of the two "candidates", absorbing his soul and perking Celia's interest as she saw some of the signs of the dark side he kept suppressed; she formed a plan to push him into losing control. She let Soma find her briefly, with a doppelganger that had changed shape to mimic Mina, killing it before he could get close enough to stop her. The only thing that stopped this from succeeding at pushing Soma over the edge was the talisman Mina had given him, pushing back the flood of power reacting to his emotional state long enough for Adrian to break the doppelganger's illusion and reveal that Mina was safely under protection in a hidden location elsewhere; Soma managed to regain control. Celia retreated, vowing to restore that power one way or another, while Soma has continued on, intent on taking care of the cult so that he could go back to living in peace.