#and if you're mature enough to deal with the themes presented in DL then I like to think that you should be able to differentiate

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

Who do you think was the first to fall in love with Yui, Carla or Shin? Which of the two relationships do you think has the best development? And finally, if Giessbach and Krone were still alive, what do you think they would think of the relationship between their sons and Yui?

Ohhhh this is an interesting question, sorry I took so long to answer anon but I had to do a deep dive into Shin and Carla’s DF routes for this so it took a bit of time. I’ve split this into three different sections.

Who fell for Yui first?

This is a little tricky as these boys are not great at dealing with their feelings. What I’ve done is included a list of what I view as key moments in their relationships with her and when they occur in their DF routes.

(This post got REALLY long so I’m putting the rest of it under the cut).

Carla’s route

Dark 10 - Carla allows Yui to go to the library at school after she says she wants to read to distract herself from her current situation. Carla reflects that he did the same thing while confined to Banmaden and while this doesn’t show any feelings on his part, I do think it’s interesting that he draws such a comparison. In the Dark Epilogue they then have a conversation about books and this is the first instance of them bonding that we get in the route.

Maniac 06 - Carla catches the scent of a vampire on Yui after allowing her to go to library (she was talking to Mertz) and accuses her of using his fondness for reading to gain his sympathy. Carla himself is surprised at how angry he feels and while he refuses to acknowledge that it’s because he’d started to trust Yui and feels betrayed, that’s exactly what it is.

Maniac 09 - Carla reveals to Yui what he plans to do with her and basically says he’ll have sex with her right there (fortunately he’s stopped due to his Endzeit in the next scene). I don’t think I need to clarify that he’s not doing this because he feels things for Yui but I’ve mentioned a similar thing in Shin’s route so I feel it’s only fair I highlight this moment too.

Maniac 10 and Epilogue - After Carla collapses from Endzeit, Yui goes get help and Carla can’t understand why she comes back (i.e why she doesn’t run away) and starts to take care of him. Yui tells him that it’s because she feels compassion for him. Carla actually opens up a bit here about his feelings towards his father but goes back to being cold to Yui and pushing her away due to his hang-ups about how he should behave as a king. After Yui leaves he notes his heart is beating loudly and he starts to say he finds her scent irritating, before realizing it might be another feeling. Suffice to say Carla definitely feels something towards Yui at this point but good luck getting him to admit it.

Ecstasy Prologue - After a conversation with Yui, Carla notes that he felt happy because of her but is confused as to why. It’s because you like her you doofus. Again Carla is still in the phase of “feeling something but I’ll die before I admit it to anyone including myself”.

Ecstasy 06 and 07 - Here Yui recognizes her feelings for Carla. As for Carla, he allows Yui to hug him and asks her to dance with him. Once they finish, Carla tells her to go to Shin after he dies but when he’s alone he reflects that he actually doesn’t want Yui to go to anyone else. I would actually say that Carla’s started to love her by this point (or at least something very close to love) but he doesn’t properly admit it to Yui or himself until his vampire ending.

Shin’s route

Dark Epilogue - In my opinion this is the first instance where Shin goes from seeing Yui as just a thing to use to surpass his brother and actually seeing her as her own person. Shin takes care of Yui after she gets sick (although this is because he needs her alive and healthy for their plan rather than because he cares for her) and Yui thanks him. Shin is taken really off-guard by this, because the founders were strong enough that they never needed help (and so never had to thank anyone in return). He also notices scars she has from her time with the Sakamaki brothers and they remind him of the incident with his eye

Maniac 09 - Shin and Yui’s first kiss under less than great circumstances. After Carla tells Shin to hand over Yui and Shin fails to sway Mertz to his side, Shin decides to make Yui his by attempting to have sex with her (fortunately Carla interrupts them before he can do any more than kiss her) (Just as a quick aside, Shin very much seems to associate sex with ownership, as this comes up in Ruki’s DF route too. What he’s doing is very very wrong but I just want to explain his mind set a bit). Now what he’s doing here is dreadful and Shin is definitely not doing this because he loves her. I don’t think he feels nothing for her here either (based on a scene that happens immediately after this) but he’s still very much just trying to one-up Carla.

Maniac 10 - As punishment for what happened above, Carla sucks Yui’s blood in front of Shin while Shin begs him to stop. This is again partly about not wanting to lose to Carla but based on the dialogue I also think this is the first real moment we get any indication that Shin might have some form of actual feelings for Yui. Towards the end of this scene, Yui also protects Shin from Carla’s magic by getting in the way and Yui notes that there was pain on Shin’s face just before she gets hit with and blacks out.

Maniac Epilogue - In this scene we get one of the most important conversations in the development of Shin and Yui’s relationship. Shin asks why Yui tried to save him considering everything he’s done to her and Yui replies that she doesn’t want him to suffer because she know what it’s like to suffer. Shin naturally doesn’t understand her actions at all and says he wants to kill her because her attitude pisses him off (he isn’t serious, he just doesn’t know what to do and so acts like an idiot) but before that  he’ll give her a nice memory by holding her close to him for warmth. Here, I believe Shin actually starts to see that he has something in common with Yui, she feels powerless against him in the same way that he feels weak compared to Carla (although you have to read into the dialogue a bit to come to this conclusion).

Ecstasy 07 - While Yui is taking care of Carla after his condition dramatically worsens (due to Endzeit), Shin reflects that it’s the first time he’s met someone like her and that if they’d met normally she probably would have gotten along with Carla and become his. Shin is definitely feeling things at this point and starting to realize it but he’s not quite there yet.

Ecstasy 09 - After Yui asks Shin not to go and fight Karlheinz for Carla’s sake, Shin views that as her choosing Carla over him and in a monologue he says that he wanted her to choose him and thought she already had. Yui finds him because she wants to talk to him and Shin kisses her and accuses her of wanting to flirt with Carla (because he’s hopelessly insecure and also an idiot). Yui then says she belongs to him and Shin frickin melts. This is where he goes from “cares about her and has started to admit it himself” to “genuinely cares about her”. There’s a bit more on Shin’s feelings for her in his Vampire ending but I think this is where I’ll stop for now.

Comparing the two routes side by side I’d actually say Carla starts to develop feelings for Yui faster than Shin does but  has a much harder time admitting it because of his “I am the mighty Founder King, I can’t have feelings for a fragile human” mind set. Shin has a bit more of a narrow worldview in terms of believing in the absolute superiority of the founders and being incredibly focused on surpassing Carla, which is why I think he’s a bit slower to come around to her (although it’s really not by that much) but I do think he’s much more honest with himself regarding his feelings towards Yui when he does develop them.

Which relationship has the best development? 

Urgh... this is really hard as it depends heavily on whether I’m just looking for at them initially falling for her (DF) or the other routes too.

Just based on DF, I’d actually say Carla and Yui’s relationship has the best development, as it actually addresses some of Carla’s issues. Part of Carla accepting his feelings for Yui is him confronting his idea that kings cannot express their emotions and his own loneliness as well. Even when the other founders were alive, Giesbach’s treatment of him and his own duties/position as heir to throne, left Carla very isolated. While his mother genuinely cared for him, there was little she could do, and in asking him to kill Giesbach (although for the good of their people) it put an immense amount of pressure on him. This combined with Yui telling Carla that it’s okay for him to be selfish, or rather to be true to his own feelings rather than trying to act how he perceives a king should be, is why their relationship is really important to Carla’s character.

Now I love Shin to death but I don’t think the progression of his and Yui’s relationship is quite as nice in DF. A lot of Shin’s route is just dealing with his complicated feelings towards Carla, rather than focusing on his relationship with Yui and while she is crucial in getting him to go back to Banmaden and have that final confrontation with Carla in his vampire ending, ultimately the brothers have to discuss things on their own for Shin to get any sort of closure on that front.

However if I’m looking at the series overall (i.e. DF and beyond to LE and later CDs) then I think Shin and Yui’s relationship has the best development, as he goes from the prideful “humans are dirt under my feet” attitude at the start of DF to actually relying on Yui in his LE route and being glad that he didn’t die in the incident where the Vibora took his eye. He says this in his Born to Die CD and for anyone less familiar with his character I want to point out how much of a big deal this is. Shin’s pride as a founder is a huge part of his character and I’d say he loves the first bloods and believes in their superiority even more so than Carla does. So for him, Carla, the person he looked up to above all others and the future founder king, lowering his head to one of the sub-races was not worth Shin’s life. He says as much in the moment and later when discussing it, that to him it would have been better to die than to see Carla sacrifice some of his (and the founders’) pride. Which is why when he then tells Yui that he’s glad he didn’t die because it otherwise they wouldn’t have met, it really shows how much she (and their relationship) has come to mean to him.

With Carla I feel like the majority of his issues are tackled in DF and while the fact he’s willing to become a ghoul, in order to prolong his life with Yui (and admittedly get revenge for Shin) in his LE vampire ending is also pretty big, I don’t think he’s much more of a stretch for him from DF where he went to Karlheinz (Karlheinz, the person who confined him to Banmaden for centuries) to plead for Yui’s life. I think that although Yui is very important to Carla, Shin is more impacted by being with her in the long time and I like that their relationship continues to develop from DF.

How would Krone and Giesbach react?

Giesbach disapproved of basically everything Carla ever did so I can’t see him being happy with Carla in any scenario. At best I think he’d make nasty comments about how founders (and especially founder royalty) should not lower themselves by having relations with a human and at worst I think they’d be actual threats.

I can’t see Giesbach being thrilled by Yui being with Shin either (he was not a very nice person by the end guys), but that’s because I don’t think he’d view her as being good enough for Shin. If Shin was adamant about being with her then, I don’t think he would do anything to force them apart (because Giesbach did love Shin) but it would lead to some awkward family dinners.

Krone, on the other hand, would probably just be happy that either of her sons had found someone who made them happy.

On a serious note, one thing that I don’t normally mention on this blog but think I should here; although I love DF and the Tsukinami brothers, the idea that anyone who treats you as they do at the start of DF will fall in love with you just because you’re nice to them is for fiction only. I trust you guys to be sensible and keep yourselves safe but I thought I should bring this up when discussing the idea of the boys falling in love with Yui because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m romanticizing what Yui goes through. If you were to meet anyone like the Tsuki bros as they are at the start of DF irl then you should run for the hills and not look back.

I hope this answers your questions anon! Again, sorry I took so long ^^;;