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i’m only following like 12 ppl on this blog REC ME PPL TO FOLLOW ??

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THIS BODY DOES NOT BELONG TO OZ VESSALIUS — — 

nothing can belong to someone like you. you can’t achieve anything. you can’t become anything. you can’t! you just can’t! because you are nothing. you destroy everything. so i’d think you’d better remember everything right now.

            — —  ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU’VE BEEN SEEKING?

independent & private jack vessalius of pandora hearts. 

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@cursedvalet ❤’d !

            “AH ... THINGS REALLY aren’t the same anymore.”

            “WE CAN’T GO back to that time, can we?”

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@consecratial​  ❤’d !

            "SO NOW YOU KNOW. Are you excited? Or are you frightened?”

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80 X 80 IS SO SMALL WH

this is a starter call while i icon :*

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side eye emojis u

WHATS GOOD

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To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

Dr. Seuss (via brillantespoir)

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             —— when did my mask become my face ?

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anyway, here’s wonderwall. or at least, a part of it. it’s just me ranting abt the high classes in the series, it’s not really a headcanon or an analysis per se tbqh.

Peerage in the Country Depicted in Pandora Hearts.

did i ever tell you how salty i am that we never actually got the name for a lot of things, including the name of the king, the country, and the neighboring countries that were oh-so important?? if it were up to me, i’d slap on some name at the very least right?? w/e. anyway...

in ‘real’ monarchies, the (super simplified) ranking goes as follows:

emperor, king, archduke, grand duke, grand prince, prince, duke, marquis, count/earl, viscount,  baron, knight, esquire, gentleman. 

the king.

in Pandora Hearts, the highest ranking member of the peerage is implied to be the King, whose name is never specified. but the King definitely has a great amount of power, as he is the only one in the country whose word is able to override that of the Four Great Dukedoms and being merely distantly related to his family would enforce a high social status (hence the Rainsworths). it doesn’t seem that Pandora Hearts has archdukes or grand dukes since the highest reigning power is of the Dukedoms (they’re never specified as arch/grand dukes either). the King from Jack’s time obviously had heirs (princes/princesses) if the monarchy is still alive in Oz’s time, but they won’t be included in my list of ranting because they’re not even mentioned in passing. interestingly enough, the monarch of the country has very little to do with Pandora/Abyss related things, even though the center of it all is in his own country. Jack was the one to establish the Dukedoms, so it’s even possible that Jack met the King at some point because he would’ve needed royal consent to create this sort of clique. and the King definitely knew of the Abyss and the like, since it all happened in their kingdom (in retrace 104, sheryl rainsworth mentions that the near second tragedy would be difficult to explain to the neighboring countries, which is something the king would have to take part in). the King might have been influenced greatly by Jack’s take on information regarding the Abyss, as others were, so he may have been just as ignorant as well.

(so far, the peerage appears to consist of king, (four) dukes, prince, marquis, count/earl, viscount, baron, knight.)

dukes.

right under the king are the dukes. there were multiple dukedoms in the country prior to the tragedy, and of them, the notable ones were the Baskervilles and the Rainsworths, so i’ll talk mostly about those, since we already know a lot about the current four dukedoms.

it’s possible that the Barmas once held this position or something equivalent to it in their country before they were banished, which would be why they would attempt to redeem themselves by reaching so high in this country (they would otherwise be alright with the low rank they have in this country if they were not of a duke household to begin with). if we continue on the basis that the Baskervilles or Pandora did not hide anything from the King regarding the Abyss (other than the things Jack twisted), then it’s likely that the Baskervilles were extremely high in society thanks to the acknowledgement of the King. otherwise, it’s very strange that a dukedom should randomly adopt kids off the street and select their next heir based on the quality of the children they adopt. the family is also said to be seen as very private, strange, and/or dark to the other members of the peerage, as they rarely engaged in social settings and the like, so the King must have had a hand in ensuring their high social ranking.

the Rainsworths got their ranking from being related to the royal lineage. i suspect that perhaps the King’s younger brother/sister who did not receive the crown would be given a lesser, but still powerful rank among society, so the Rainsworths would have been that family. the King’s surname, however, is not Rainsworth, as sharing a surname might indicate being a part of the royal lineage more than being an independent dukedom. 

the Nightrays were said to be allies of the Baskervilles, so it’s possible that they were still a dukedom rather than a household of earls/counts and the like, as ‘allies’ implies an equal standing. personally, i got the feeling that the Nightrays were sort of the valets to the Baskervilles, but not to the extent in which the Regnard household was the knights/valets to the Sinclair household. it’s possible that they were a lower ranking family than the Baskervilles too? the Duke of the time was friends with Oswald, but Jack, who was a viscount at the time, was also Oswald’s ‘friend’, so it goes to show that the Baskervilles didn’t really discriminate when it came to companionship/allying with other families. (fun random fact: everyone legitimately born as a Nightray is dead; the line is extinct and i’m dead inside.)

after retrace 104, in which Sheryl Rainsworth disbanded the Four Great Dukedoms, it’s still likely that the dukedoms still have their dukehood, but the social standing and power is much more balanced than it once was with Jack’s new world order. i say this because i doubt the King would allow his closest family line to lose whatever high standing they had, as it would look bad for the royal lineage.

marquis & counts/earls.

it appears that the dukes truly hold most of the power in this society, to the point where it is fine for earls to become valets of dukes and it is considered an esteemed position. or it’s possible that any position within Pandora’s ranks is considered good enough for anyone who is not of the four dukedoms, which is why Reim Lunettes is both an earl and a Pandora agent. the wikia said he is the second son of Earl Lunettes. earls are still pretty high ranking in the peerage, so it’s a bit strange that Reim should be less of a noble and more of a servant (especially since he associates himself with the Barma household), so this might imply that any ranking lower than that of the four dukedoms are ranks in which the dukes hold equivalent to valets. of course, people of this rank should have the option to consider themselves too noble to be servants to the dukes the way Reim so passionately serves the Barmas. in this series, however, power is really poorly distributed, even among the high class. the dukes have so much power that it’s almost ridiculous. the Sinclairs, specifically, might have been bitter about this imbalance, so it’s very possible that they were among this class or they were pushed down to this class after the Four Great Dukedoms were established.

viscounts/barons.

viscounts and barons were third rate noble houses, even among the peerage, as Oswald noted when he first met Jack. the Vessalius household was initially a viscount ranked one, prior to Jack becoming ‘the hero of the tragedy of Sablier’. it’s likely too that the Barmas were also this low of a rank, as an exiled household from their own country, so that they were third-rate when they came to this country (which was why they tried to get so good with the Baskervilles).

knights.

in Pandora Hearts, knights were born into knighthood, rather than serving as a military vassal to the King as it was in reality. Kevin Regnard is the most notable ‘knight’ in the series, but he is not the a knight in the sense that he trained as an esquire to become someone who rode a horse in shining armor, but he was a vassal household that was born to serve another higher ranking household. knighthood appears to be very different in Pandora Hearts and it’s understandably so, because despite tensions among other neighboring countries, they never actually were at battle. and since knights seem to be born as knights, there is no need for esquires to train as knights (though it could possibly be a term for someone born into a knight family & is currently training to live up to the title). knights are notably different from servants, in the way Kevin was different from Leo or Gilbert; he was born for a single family whereas the others were sort of randomly selected based on their master’s whims.

prior to Jack’s establishment of the Four Great Dukedoms, the power balance was much more even, as there were multiple Dukedoms (the Baskervilles being the most notable and socially powerful, but still technically having an equal standing with other Dukedoms). the Tragedy did not only create a physical change in the country, but also an extreme social deconstruction, as poverty rates likely increased in what was once the capital city, and Jack rearranged the peerage system in his favor.

and of course, the lower class is a whole other can of worms i’m too tired to write out right now. this was just kind of a very very long rant and less of an analysis than i wanted, but it’s a frame of reference as to how i perceive the rankings in the series, i guess.

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You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (via even-the-walls-have-loved-you)

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people who go around  b r a n d i s h i n g  the banner of justice.

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things i want to explore (tba.)

the rainsworths’ impact on society

the royal family (rainsworths are said to be close relatives to the main line)

since we got to see a lot of pretty nobles and tea parties and fancy clothes and cakes and balls and other dreamy things, i want to see the gritty dirty ugly side of the world where the alleyways smell of smoke and alcohol and theres dirt between their nails and blood tried on their fingers and other ‘ugly’ sides of sablier society

similarly, what was the middle-class life like? i want to know about the baker who gave kids the extras he made or the old lady who lived next door and made a living from selling jewelry she made herself or the lady working at the hat shop and sells her creations to nobles or the family of florists in downtown sablier.

government system (king > dukedom > other nobles) & the nobles’ interactions with lower class people

the knight families (ie. regnard) & their relevance in the world of nobility

neighboring countries and why the barmas were forced to flee to the country in which ph takes place

elaborating on coming-of-age customs & ceremonies

festivals (elaborate on st. bridget’s day story! the tale is very cute tbh i want more on that and to draw parallels of the story to the series)

life for middle class/lower class soon after the tragedy & the rise of the vessalius household/fall of the nightray household/descent of the baskerville household

speaking of vessalius household, i want to know more about jack’s older stepbrothers, stepmother, father, and mother (i’m writing a headcanon on that soon lmao)

juries & multiple universe theory

the core in jack’s old body (technically it’s no longer jack but i kind of want to write this??) & other future endeavors

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truth. plots i want to try:

oswald survives; jack is held accountable for the tragedy, the court gathers & a trial resumes.

torture rp (jack inflicts or receives, idc).

mafia au.

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truth. i’m glad jack has such a plain name. it suits him. the word ‘jack’ can literally mean anything. it’s one of the words in the english language that can be used in anything -- jackrabbit, jackhammer, jack-of-all-trades, jack-in-the-box, hijack. it can even be literally used in the place of ‘anything’ (“i don’t understand jack [shit]). the encyclopedia britannica article on the history of the word “jack” applied it as "jack, a word with a great variety of meanings and applications, all traceable to the common use of the word as a by-name of a man”.

and that’s exactly what jack is in pandora hearts. anything and nothing. just ‘jack’.