#salem is a nonhuman (grimm) person. ergo

[bestworstcase]

@cyanprime

Okay, just wondering since a lot of this was really good analysis of background lore of the world, but...where does the 'Salem is a Faunus' idea come from, other than her being over the Vacuan leader in the WoR thumbnail? V6 explicitly shows that she's from before the Gods wiped everyone out, a time where Faunus didn't even exist yet; so how could Salem be a Faunus?

this is something i natter about pretty regularly, so i tend not to elaborate on it in depth when it’s ancillary to the point of a given post (esp when a post is already running as long as this one did lmfao)

but to break it down,

one thing i think is worth keeping in mind is that, while there is a real physical difference between faunus and humans in that one group has a smorgasbord of animal-like physical traits and the other does not, ultimately ‘faunus’ and ‘human’ are socially constructed categories. the idea that faunus is a different species from human is cultural, and definitionally not true in the biological sense. (interracial human-faunus couples bear faunus offspring, not hybrids.)

thinking about it in those terms: if you took an ordinary person from remnant who had no prior knowledge of anything to do with ozma or salem or the last world, and put them in a room with salem, how do you suppose they would intuitively make sense of what she is? well, there are humans and then there are faunus (who are like humans, plus extra non-human physical features), and here’s a lady who looks sort of human but clearly isn’t, because her skin and eyes are weird. she kinda-sorta looks grimm-ish, in the same way a guy with feathers kinda-sorta resembles a bird. and grimm are sort of like animals. right?

“faunus with grimm(?) traits” is the explanation that makes the most sense, absent historical context. especially because salem really does not look that much like a grimm. like, the most humanlike grimm we’ve encountered so far is the apathy:

…whereas salem is just a really pale woman with weird eyes and markings. if you’re someone familiar enough with faunus culture to know that faunus sometimes alter their appearance to look more like ‘their’ animal (think sienna’s tiger-stripe tats), it’s even more intuitive to read her as a faunus.

so there’s that. i think she would have, historically, an easier time making inroads with faunus than with humans for this reason alone, although that’s sort of a moot point in the present given her exile.

but the main course here is that there’s a lot of textual support. like… a lot.

#1: faunus cultural adjacency to the grimm.

grimm are “the greatest foe to mankind” and “exclusively hunt humans and their creations.” WOR: grimm is narrated by salem—compare her inclusive phrasing (“the aura of humans and faunus”) in WOR: dust or the general language (“every living creature on remnant”) she uses in WOR: aura. in ‘grimm’ she’s discussing historical and modern-day beliefs about grimm, which are not necessarily factual, so this specificity—humans only—is worth paying attention to.

that exclusion gets called back to in WOR: faunus, where qrow leads with “most of us spend a lot of time talking about mankind versus grimm, but technically, there is a third party in the mix: the faunus.” this is the accompanying imagery:

so we have humans vs grimm, with the faunus in the middle. that’s the dominant cultural narrative, again not necessarily factual. qrow represents a sympathetic framing of this model (that faunus are trapped between humans and grimm and must defend themselves from both), but:

historically, grimm were thought to be the corrupted spirits of animals or animals possessed by evil spirits.

faunus are humans with animal-like traits.

historically, faunus were subject to EXTREMELY VIOLENT persecution and the story humans tell about why is, per qrow, that “seeing something that looks like you and acts like you walk out of the forest and reveal a pair of fangs” is “upsetting.”

(note: that’s the story humans tell about why humans treated faunus so horrifically throughout most of human history. the stories faunus tell are “humans are hateful and close-minded, and when bad things happen to them they look for someone to blame instead of fixing the problem, and that someone is usually us.” which is a good case study in the importance of parsing the world of remnant spots as character studies exploring character through the lens of cultural beliefs and personal biases, rather than objective factual lore guides that happen to be narrated by character VAs, because the faunus narrative on this point is quite clearly the one that’s intended to be “correct”—the narrative portrays anti-faunus bigotry as fundamentally irrational and rooted in exploitation and scapegoating, meaning the faunus viewpoint is the one that’s accurate to reality. i am convinced the core reason the fandom is still dragging the corpse of white fang arc discourse around is a lot of people assumed they were supposed to agree with ruby’s drunk kind of racist uncle about faunus being gross and weird and a bit upsetting but hey we’re all human i mean we’re all people, right? instead of compare-contrasting what qrow says against how the narrative treats faunus and anti-faunus bigotry and concluding that were meant to understand that qrow has some pretty glaring unexamined biases that make him an unreliable narrator on this subject. in the unreliable narrators show.)

(<- never-ending frustrated writer scream of FRAMING IS EVERYTHING)

anyways.

on the one hand you have a violently persecuted group of nonhuman people distinguished by having animal traits—on the other, monstrous corrupted or demon-possessed animals that eat humans (only humans, the thinking goes). math!

now add in the fact that grimm are now thought to be attracted by “negativity” (& the implication, in WOR: grimm, that it’s violence specifically), and that these cultural attitudes formed during a period of history when humans were hunting, ostracizing, caging, and enslaving faunus; there probably was a real correlation between the presence of faunus and grimm attacks, because faunus were subjected to violent persecution.

and… in ‘the judgment of faunus,’ literally the first things that happens to the newly-created faunus is they try to flee to safety from grimm and immediately get unjustly blamed for “luring” grimm to attack a human settlement. which suggests that humans blaming faunus for grimm attacks was so historically common that it is engrained as one of the defining experiences of faunus cultural identity.

so this is the history that is being tapped into by things like the white fang grimm masks (“people wanted to make monsters of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters”) and blake’s miserable self-identification with the beowolf being trampled underfoot by human hunters in beacon’s statue as she takes off her bow to reveal her ears to the audience.

(<- reclamation of a grotesque stereotype to make a political statement and self-hatred rooted in internalization of the stereotype.)

the narrative uses grimm to symbolize the harm done to faunus by human violence and also there is an in-universe history of faunus being culturally associated with grimm, and that association being a vector for bigotry.

the question is, how much does salem’s existence—as a nonhuman person who is grimm and fits into the social category of ‘faunus’—factor? for a considerable span of remnant’s history, salem was widely known; ozma travels around for years hearing stories about “the witch” wherever he goes.

(she was also said to live in the wilds among the beasts and monsters… during a time when “creatures known as faunus bore fangs and claws and were locked away in cages.” when the humans who enslaved faunus and told these stories said “the beasts,” did they mean wild animals or did they mean faunus? it is probably not a coincidence that ozma’s total lack of concern for the “creatures” in the cages precedes ozma believing the stories he heard about salem from the human people who built the cages.)

(<- FRAMING IS EVERYTHING i am so tired)

the pieces the narrative has given us about historical persecution of faunus and narratives undergirding anti-faunus bigotry add up to a picture that looks really suspiciously like salem.

salem is a human-grimm -> faunus viewed as being “in between” humans and grimm.

the witch in the woods commanding dark powers among beasts and monsters -> grimm viewed as corrupted animals and faunus as creatures or beasts in a human guise.

salem can control grimm -> being blamed for grimm attacks was a defining experience of faunus identity and is still engrained in the cultural memory even now.

whether or not salem herself identifies this way (i think she does), it seems… pretty open and shut that a lot of anti-faunus narratives trace back to the witch in the woods, by virtue of her (real) grimm-ness being generalized to all faunus, thus forming the foundational cultural justification for persecuting them: if faunus are grimm or are responsible for the grimm in some way then running them out of town or killing them isn’t violence, it’s self-defense, and if grimm attack us when we do it that proves the faunus can summon them. this is how scapegoating works.

(as an aside, i think it’s likelier than not that “grimm are drawn to negativity” is a relatively recent theory as to why grimm do what they do—i say theory because the CFVY novels explicitly flag the possibility that this is an incorrect or at least incomplete understanding—because it’s stated outright in WOR: grimm that the modern effort to study grimm through a scientific lens at all is, well, modern. there’s a certain strain of fandom meta, often critical, that posits grimm as a cultural pressure against bigotry/persecution, which apart from misunderstanding how and why bigotry perpetuates itself in the real world also shades a bit into ignoring the textual framing that what’s known about grimm nowadays is specifically the product of modern scientific study. we used to think disease was caused by imbalances of the bodily humors.)

#2: squinting at the creation myths

this part is why i believe salem does self-identify as a faunus. the fairytales anthology includes two quite different myths regarding the creation of the faunus, ‘the shallow sea’ and ‘the judgment of faunus.’ both depict the faunus as humans who chose to be transformed by divine magic into a new kind of being; note that this belief is apparently contradicted by the historical consensus (per WOR: faunus) that the faunus may have been around longer than humans.

‘shallow sea’ is the older myth and explicitly originated as a faunus oral tradition; the exact origin of ‘judgment’ is left ambiguous, but the fact that it’s newer in combination with the narrative focus on divine judgment and unity as a moral imperative lead me to believe that it is a syncretism of an older faunus tradition into the (human) cult of the two brothers or vice versa.

(for clarity, i use “cult” here in the non-pejorative historical sense of a system of religious devotion or practice oriented around a particular god or set of gods.)

all that to say, ‘shallow sea,’ being an ancient faunus oral tradition that had canonically never been written down before ozpin transcribed it for his anthology of tales, is probably the clearest window we have into faunus culture before salem’s exile and erasure from history—the only question is whether it dates back far enough, and oral traditions can last a very long time.

in essentials, the story of ‘the shallow sea’ is this: the shapeshifting god of animals found humans to be fascinating, but also dangerous. they wanted humans to partake in their world—a harsh but beautiful and magical island—but knew they would have to be cautious about which humans, so they disguised themself and traveled all around the world looking for misfits, outcasts who felt like they didn’t belong among humans. these were the humans the god of animals chose to offer their kinship.

they brought their chosen people to the island on a boat, then invited them to jump into the shallow waters to discover their true selves. some leapt on faith, and some waited to see what happened to the first group and jumped after being reassured that nothing bad had happened. all of those who submerged themselves were changed, regardless of whether they had done it on blind faith or with foreknowledge: they became the first faunus. but there were also a few people who became scared and angry, declared the god of animals a monster, and refused to leave the boat.

the god of animals hardened their heart against this third group and sent them away unchanged, to return to the lives they had lived as humans. and ever since, those people and their descendants have resented the faunus for “reminding them of what they are not and what they never can be.”

now. there are two immediately obvious details in this story that really interest me in regard to salem. the first is that closing line—the humans who refused to change resent faunus for being “what they are not and what they never can be.” that is a really startlingly similar turn of phrase to what salem says when she refuses the divine mandate: “why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans when we could replace them with what they could never be?”

(i have a whole tangent i could go into here on the subject of interpreting “them” to mean the implied antecedent of “the gods,” as in “why redeem these humans before the gods when we could replace the gods,” because that has continuity with salem’s previous desire to… replace the gods. it’s a bit ancillary to the point of this post but i have to bring it up every time.)

fairytales of remnant was published about two years after the lost fable aired and is in conversation with the lost fable generally (see: the grimm fable, the infinite man, the two brothers, the girl in the tower). salem’s line, “what they could never be,” is the emotional turning point of the episode precipitating the tragic ending and also the only actual line of dialogue in that scene; it is the single most narratively important beat in the episode. likewise, “what they never can be” is the final line of ‘the shallow sea’ and getting there is the point of the story—it is an origin myth but also a myth about the origin of persecution.

what i’m getting at is i don’t think the similarity here can be anything but deliberate. slight syntactical variation aside, it’s the same line, in an ancillary text that was very clearly written with the lost fable in mind.

so. we know that ‘shallow sea’ is a very old faunus oral tradition, plausibly old enough to have existed before the ozlem kingdom did. rwby as a story is very interested in narrative and specifically how people use stories to make sense of their lives and communicate ideas, and salem in particular is not very good at articulating her thoughts clearly.

the simplest explanation is that salem quoted this oral tradition as a shorthand for how she felt about ozma’s task of “redeeming” humanity, which ultimately has the intention of everything going back to how it was. in the context of the myth, “what they never can be” is part of a statement about a specific subset of humans who:

felt unhappy and unfulfilled

were given a chance to change

angrily rejected it

went home

still felt unhappy and unfulfilled

hate the ones who did accept change and found happiness and fulfillment through that choice.

and… it makes a lot of sense to apply this context to what salem says. strip it down to the bare bones, and her counter to the divine mandate is “why should we try to go back to the way things were when we could make something new?”—why reject change when we could embrace it?

(if this is the context she had in mind, and by “them” she meant “the brothers,” then there’s also an interesting layer here of salem rhetorically casting the brothers in the role of “ones who were given a chance to change and didn’t and are now resentful and envious because not changing had consequences they didn’t like,” humanity as the ones who did change, and herself as the god of animals—by virtue of being the one who invited humanity to join her in confronting the brothers, thus the one who offered everyone the choice. which is tracks with how she seems to feel about the brothers and remnant generally.)

…the point being. ‘the shallow sea’ is specifically a faunus oral tradition that prior to ozpin’s tenure as headmaster had never been written down, “not by faunus and certainly not by humans.” in his commentary, ozpin very strongly implies that this is story is part of a closed tradition and makes an effort to provide cultural context for his (presumed human) readers. and that is in the present—a time that is in many ways defined by the unprecedented assimilation of faunus into human civilization. for salem to be familiar enough with this story to quote it conversationally during a historical period when humans hunted and enslaved faunus, she would have to be someone with a right to that closed tradition—i.e. a faunus.

the second interesting detail is that ‘the shallow sea’ brings the grimm three times specifically in order to say “they have nothing to do to this story, so put them out of your mind.” three times, the speaker interrupts the story to have essentially a back-and-forth with an audience member in the vein of “stop asking me about grimm, there are no grimm in this story.” that’s… really weird? it’s weird. if you’re reciting a story to an audience, there are two reasons you might repeatedly mention something that isn’t part of the story only to tell the audience not to think about that thing. either:

you want the audience to think about it, or

you know the audience expects it to be part of the story and you are anticipating interruptions from them asking why you’ve left it out

as written, there is no obvious reason for ‘the shallow sea’ to have grimm in it aside from those parenthetical statements. and while the grimm are an inescapable presence everywhere on remnant, there are a lot of other stories in the anthology that don’t mention grimm whatsoever: the man who stared at the sun, the story of the seasons, the girl in the tower, the gift of the moon. so it isn’t that grimm not featuring in a particular story is shocking in and of itself, especially in the context of a myth that is part of a broader oral tradition. “how did god create us?” is not a question you need to talk about the grimm to answer.

unless it is.

like, oh, i don’t know, maybe…

’cause the thing about ‘the shallow sea’ is that choosing to take a leap of blind faith into divine waters because you’re miserable and desperate for something change, thereby becoming your true self and finding a new life for yourself in an unforgiving new world where humans despise and fear you because you look different but at least you’re free—that is exactly how salem became grimm.

now imagine that you are a faunus in ye olden times and you escape from a mob of humans who want to kill you only to get lost in the woods, and you stumble across a cabin and inside the cabin there’s a person who isn’t human and maybe isn’t a faunus either but is undoubtedly something like you, and you ask her where she came from, what she is, and she tells you that story. she was human, and then she leapt into a magical pool left behind by a god and became something new.

now imagine that you are far from the only faunus who has ever crossed her path and asked that question and heard that story, because she is millions of years old. and maybe the unfathomably lonely woman who lives alone in a rotting hovel who answers her door expecting trouble appreciates these other nonhuman people who look at her and see a reflection of themselves instead of seeing a monster. and also she has terrifying magical powers that include crumpling up giant nevermores like they’re made of tissue paper and not dying even if you blow her up.

who’s the god of animals? IT’S HER. not in the sense that salem created the faunus (necessarily) but rather she was the basis for the mythical figure and the real story of how she shed her old human form and became what she is now is the seed of truth that germinated into the faunus creation myth. before ozma reunited with her, to humans she was the witch of the wild, commanding dark powers among the beasts and monsters; to the faunus she was a god.

(see also, her immediate jump from “these humans need guidance” to “we could become [their] gods”—which on the one hand is just sort of an acknowledgement of reality* but on the other, if she’s been worshipped by faunus for centuries because she defends them from humans then of course it would feel natural to her to approach helping humans through a religious framework. I AM BEING VERY BRAVE ABOUT RESISTING THE “RWBY IS A POLYTHEISTIC NARRATIVE” TANGENT.)

[*divinity is a social construct and nearly every canonical definition of “god” that exists in the world of remnant includes not just salem and ozma but also arguably the relic spirits and the four maidens; an entity that is culturally defined and worshipped as a god is ipso facto a god]

obviously, the faunus god being a grimm lady is something of a double-edged sword, because if you’re a faunus living within her reach she’s real and she can protect you, but her protection will reinforce the human belief that all faunus are grimm-people or make grimm or control grimm somehow, humans outnumber your people by terrifying margins, and salem’s reach only goes so far but the fear and hatred of her is everywhere.

there was a time in remnant’s history when this arrangement would have been tenable. both ‘shallow sea’ and ‘judgment of faunus’ are explicitly separatist texts, the faunus seek to live in their own societies apart from humankind. this is supported by qrow’s historical overview (“faunus began to consider man nothing more than a hostile species”). if the faunus wanted no part in human civilization, worshipping a grimm god makes a certain amount of sense—especially if grimm really do only hunt humans, which might be the case given that nobody in menagerie ever expresses concern about grimm.

but if the goal is peaceful coexistence with humans or assimilation into human societies then you. can’t worship grimm.

and then the ozlem kingdom falls and salem is driven into exile, so after that point the god of animals might as well not even be real, which alters the calculus on whether her protection is worth the intense persecution.

so there is an obvious source of cultural pressure, after salem’s exile begins, for faunus to separate themselves from the grimm and adopt more human-ish beliefs and traditions, hence the repeated “no grimm in this story! stop asking!” disclaimers in ‘the shallow sea’ as it’s told thousands of years later, hence the possible brother-cult syncretism with the mythical character of the god of light being transposed onto the god of animals.

(hence also: ozpin singles out velvet for questioning after the massacre in lower cairn, suspects that blake is salem’s spy and makes thinly-veiled threats to her about it, gives lionheart a replica of salem’s tea set and LEAPS to the conclusion that leo is a spy on the thinnest grounds. man sees a faunus and thinks of salem, because he remembers this history.)

#3: minutiae

lastly, there’s a grab bag of minor details that taken together and in context with everything outlined in the first two sections support the reading that salem still, today, identifies with and as faunus:

the formal mode of address her inner circle uses is “your grace” (which is not commonly used for kings/queens in the present irl, so the narrative choice for salem to be called “the queen” but addressed as “your grace” is unusual). the formal mode of address for menagerie’s chieftain is also “your grace.” salem styles herself as a faunus ruler. or allows her followers to style her that way.

she is also explicitly worshipped as a god by her faunus agent, who is well-spoken and intelligent (and therefore plausibly educated or well-read enough to have had some inkling that the faunus god was historically associated with grimm prior to meeting salem, and making the connection after)

no plans to attack menagerie (all or nearly all of the population are faunus). it’s specifically remarked upon that salem’s forces do not attack mantle (significant minority of people living in mantle are faunus).

actively preferred sienna (a genuine activist with faunus’ best interest at heart and a strong moral backbone, not easy to manipulate) over adam (a selfish man driven by spite and vengeance who treated his own kind like disposable cannon fodder, useful pawn). sent hazel, who is motivated by moral outrage at the huntsmen academies and thus has a cause and beliefs likely to resonate with sienna, and who was also utterly disgusted by the assassination, to talk to sienna on her behalf. hung adam out to dry after sienna was dead.

in a similar vein, salem took an interest in the white fang that she didn’t with cinder’s other allies; she had no idea who neopolitan was, but seems to have been in direct contact with adam after beacon fell based on the way she refers to him in 4.1

grimm don’t attack menagerie. grimm are not even a concern in menagerie; even when blake tells sun the island’s interior is uninhabitable, it’s “the wildlife are more dangerous than in vacuo.” not grimm, wildlife. animals. adam’s lackeys go around having shootouts in the streets for months, grimm aren’t even mentioned. the chieftain’s home gets burned down and a crowd of scared and horrified people gather around the wreckage, not a peep from the grimm. menagerie is the most densely populated city in the world. either they are quietly doing something that is LAUGHABLY MORE EFFECTIVE at managing grimm than the human kingdoms are, or… grimm just don’t attack menagerie. we know there are grimm on menagerie—that’s mentioned in the novels—but to all appearances they’re leaving the people there alone.

<- that might be natural grimm behavior, although we’ve seen blake being attacked by grimm plenty of times and all the characters seem to have a general sense that faunus need defending from grimm too, slanted cultural narratives notwithstanding. the other possibility is that grimm don’t attack menagerie because salem did something to ward them away, a la the white fang transporting grimm in airships without coming to any harm but at larger scale and possibly in secret. the only reason for her to do that that really makes any sense is if she felt personally invested in ensuring that this fledgling new faunus state would succeed, and given that menagerie is strategically marginalized (geographically isolated from everyone else, not industrialized, no airport so the only way to get there is by boat, politically irrelevant because humans don’t even acknowledge it exists most of the time) and well outside ozma’s sphere of influence (thus: salem gains no meaningful advantage by cultivating a spy network here), “salem, a faunus, wanted to be sure all faunus had a safe haven to live free from not just human violence but also The War She Is Planning” is kind of just the simplest answer

BUT WHYS HE A FAUNUS

gestures again at ozpin pointing at every faunus he encounters who looks even vaguely like they might possibly have something to hide and going “is this salem’s lackey” because MAN. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. his trust in ironwood vs his suspicion of lionheart when to any reasonable outside observer ironwood is the one with red flags waving everywhere (“council overruled me, i’ve been too busy to check in with no news to share” vs “i have used my two votes to unilaterally close the borders, cut off the world’s biggest supply of dust, and withdraw all my troops from my ally whom i know is the enemy’s probable next target” OZPIN. PLEASE.) this despite his verbal if lukewarm support for faunus rights and likely played an outsize role enshrining faunus equality into law in all four kingdoms after the war; he isn’t an overt bigot and i doubt he thinks of himself as bigoted at all, but there is a pattern here of ozpin Being Racist in a very specific way that only makes sense if he has “salem=faunus” lodged in the back of his mind somewhere. he’s subconsciously assuming that all the faunus in his immediate social circle know her.

salem consistently separates herself from mankind (“these humans” etc)—which the fandom largely interprets as disdainful, that salem doesn’t think modern humans are real people or worth anything (which is in itself a countertextual and pretty fucking wild assumption to make about a character who opens the story waxing poetic about humans being strong, wise, passionate, resourceful, ingenious, and capable of transcending impossible odds through hope and persistence). but. like. salem isn’t human. i mean, in the basic metaphysical sense she is a human being, as are faunus. but socially, culturally, salem is not human and has not been human for literally thousands of years, if not millions. it is entirely likely that salem spent the entirety of this humanity’s history being Not Human. why in the world would she still think of herself as human? she’s a non-human person, and on remnant the word for that kind of person is “faunus.”

tin hats on. let’s talk about the great war.

first, a general point about the relevant world of remnant spots: qrow narrates all of them. i think this is important to keep in mind when assessing the information provided, because he editorializes constantly, and i do not believe that we are meant to take qrow’s obvious biases at face value. rather, this is a narrative choice to introduce us to this history through a very distorted lens; qrow is ozpin’s man, loyal to the bone before to the revelation of ozpin’s lies, and it is also very likely that he had no formal education prior to his enrollment at beacon academy.

#1: the pre-war kingdoms.

vale sits on the northwestern coast of sanus, sandwiched between “steep mountains” and “waters too shallow for any real monsters to pop out of.” throughout the kingdom’s history, every attempt to expand the kingdom’s borders past the mountain range has ended in “colossal failures”—the most recent of which is mountain glenn, in the post-war period.

however, vale was also engaged in a different expansionist effort in the century preceding the great war: the kingdom was building settlements on “the small islands and peninsulas” of the northeastern coast.

to the north of vale lay the kingdom of mantle. qrow does not give a lot of detail regarding the settlement of solitas, just that “at some point, a group of settlers were crazy enough to venture out into the northernmost continent,” but i submit that the founders of mantle came from northern sanus. why?

mantle’s location at the southwestern tip of solitas is geographically closest to the island of vytal, just off the north coast of sanus; had the settlers come from northern anima, they would have more likely landed on the eastern side of the continent.

qrow says this: “the harsh weather conditions proved to be just as useful as the mountain ranges when it came to keeping the creatures of grimm at bay,” and while anima does have mountain ranges, they’re not remarked upon in WOR: mistral. it is vale that depends upon “steep mountains” to bulwark its eastern flank against the grimm, and vale that has made repeated, unsuccessful attempts throughout its history to expand its borders beyond those mountains.

it is unclear how long mantle existed as an independent state prior to the great war, but we know that it’s not very old; qrow also states that the century preceding the great was “filled with so much tension” that it might as well be “lumped together” with the great war. meaning almost certainly that there were smaller-scale conflicts throughout the whole period. sometime during that century, vale began to build settlements in northeastern sanus. mantle was settled “at some point” by “a crazy group of settlers”—and “i guess when you’re that desperate,” qrow opines, “a frozen hunk of rock doesn’t seem like such a bad place to call home.” mantle is geographically closest to northeastern sanus. there are—there have always been—people living outside the kingdoms, who do not want to be part of the kingdoms.

you do the math. or i will: mantle was founded by people displaced from northeastern sanus by valean expansion, probably in the neighborhood of a hundred years prior to the great war.

meanwhile, mistral was conquering anima. notably—because qrow doesn’t like mistral, particularly—there is less ambiguity on this point than on vale’s settlement of northeast sanus: this expansion was an imperial project. a conquest. mistral was (and based on the language used in the present, still is) an empire, meaning its “territories” are all conquered people or polities from whom the imperial core extracts resources, which—both historically and in the text of this story—includes slaves.

so, argus. during the century preceding the great war, mistral’s attention turned to northern anima. according to jaune and ren in 6.7, mistral’s expansion into the region was stymied by the cold until forming an alliance with mantle; qrow describes mantle as an “unlikely friend” to the empire. the goliath in the room that none of these characters acknowledge (and may not know, given their upbringings—bandit, orphaned young, & very sheltered) is that the region was probably not uninhabited at the time.

empire. conquest. controlled territories. you cannot have these things without also having conquered people. what stymied mistral’s expansion into the region was likely not the cold per se but the logistical burden the cold imposed upon military action here; invading a cold region with an army in the wintertime is famously not a good idea. and, if mantle was founded by people displaced by valean imperialism… well, that explains both qrow’s view of it as an “unlikely friend” and why mantle would make such an overture of alliance to mistral in the first place; vale and mistral were the great world powers, and for mantle—a small, vulnerable, dust-rich but otherwise resource-poor state with every reason to fear its closer southern neighbor—cozying up to mistral would have been just rational politics; hug one great power to insure against invasion by the other.

and then there’s vacuo.

WOR: vacuo is easily the least factually trustworthy episode in the series to the point that i think it is probably all but worthless in terms of the historical narrative given; it’s worldbuilding the modern day cultural narratives about the conquest of vacuo, not the actual history.

(the CFVY novels, i believe, support this reading: in the present, many city vacuans believe the narrative qrow offers here that the old kingdom of vacuo was a “paradise,” but “comfort breeds weakness” and its people were complacent, soft, helpless to defend themselves from invaders from more hardened kingdoms… but the first king of vacuo was a man called malik the sunderer, shade’s history teacher states that it’s been centuries since vacuo was conquered and the real history has been so obscured and distorted by myth that it’s impossible to know what it was truly like, and desert vacuans—the nomadic peoples who don’t live in the kingdom—have a starkly different cultural outlook on hardship that is much more in line with the story’s themes and also reality, valuing community, hospitality, and resilience over “strength.”)

but there is one kernel of very interesting information in this episode: “after the great war, a formal government was finally established.” meaning there wasn’t a formal vacuan government before the great war.

vacuo was not a state before the great war.

of vacuo’s entry into the great war, qrow says this:

Up to this point, Vacuo had done its best to stay out of the fight. Mantle and Mistral, having both already established a small presence in Vacuo territory years before promised to leave them alone, provided they didn't interfere. Soon, those talks evolved. It went from "Don't side with them" to "Side with us and you'll be safe". Vacuo did not much care for that, and they came to the conclusion that if Vale were to fall, there'd be no one left to stop Mistral and Mantle from conquering them next. So they did what they considered to be the logical thing. They drove Mantle and Mistral out of Vacuo and told Vale they had their backs.

at this point in history, vacuo did not have a government. at this point in history, vacuo was not a state. the kingdom of vacuo had been conquered centuries ago (by “more developed kingdoms,” qrow says—by whom?), and according to rumpole (<- an actual authoritative source, given she teaches history at shade!), “few documented accounts or records remain from that far back.”

the conquest of vacuo predated the conflicts of the prewar century (and probably predate the existence of mantle). this illustration in WOR: vacuo implicates all three of the other kingdoms—blue for mistral, white for mantle, green for vale:

so there is no question that vale participated in the butchering of vacuo; it did. but this illustration is also impressionistic, ahistorical, not a literal representation of how vacuo was conquered.

by the time of the great war, vacuo was a territory occupied by mantle and mistral, but vale does not seem to have had a significant presence there. in the present, vacuans harbor a lot of resentment for mistral and atlas, less for vale. vale is also, by virtue of being located on the same continent, the kingdom best positioned to invade vacuo if it so chose.

(qrow asserts that vacuo was conquered by “more developed” kingdoms, but it was also dust-rich—the CFVY novels confirm this—and there is a clear correlation between technological innovation and access to an abundant source of dust. it’s possible that a scarcity of, say, iron inhibited ancient vacuo’s technological development and put it at a military disadvantage, but generally i think it’s more likely that qrow is regurgitating historical propaganda there.)

the point being: vale conquered the kingdom of vacuo and then either withdrew or lost a war with mistral for control over the territory at some point prior to the great war.

regardless of the finer details, the historicity of qrow’s account regarding vacuo’s entrance into the war seems… pretty suspect given that vacuo did not have a government. what sort of “talks” do you suppose the mantle-mistrali bloc was having with the non-state actors of vacuo? what kind of “presence” did mistral, the empire that conquered all of anima, actually have in the vacuan territory?

hmm. i wonder.

vacuo “drove mistral and mantle out” and threw in their lot with vale; meaning, the vacuan side of this war was really a war of independence. vacuo wasn’t “doing its best to stay out of the fight” so much as it was under mistrali control until the vacuan people rebelled, then sided with mistral’s enemy.

#2: salem?? ?

ozpin—and qrow by extension—believes that salem ignited the war with a false-flag op in northeastern sanus (“to this day, no one knows who shot first” + “salem’s smart. she works in the shadows, using others to get what she wants, so that when it comes time to place the blame, we can only point at each other”). much of the fandom not only takes this at face value but also assumes without… really any basis at all that salem was responsible for the “incident” in mantle that the mantelian government used to justify a raft of draconian censorship laws.

but… authoritarian regimes can and will use any pretext to justify repressive new laws whose real purpose is to punish dissenters and strengthen control over the populace; banning art and all forms of self-expression is not a move that anyone would think with any seriousness would protect people from the grimm. qrow is either being disingenuous in purpose or (more likely) just doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about because four years at the monster-hunting college is the sum total of his education: “the people of mantle had come to believe that they would be much safer from the grimm if they could only keep the emotions of the masses in check” is the kind of bullshit nonsense you would expect if the guy doesn’t know how government works, either the modern-day democratic councils or whatever system prewar mantle had; what is the distinction between “the people” and “the masses?”

in. the. unreliable. narrators. show.

mantle’s autocratic government found a pretext to crack down on subversive speech and pumped out a massive body of propaganda to the tune of “we’re just doing what we must for the good of the people :)”—that’s what happened. that’s why mistral imposed the same laws on its territories but not in the imperial core, and why mantle didn’t have a problem with that “selective” enforcement.

maybe salem sent some grimm to attack mantle, maybe she didn’t. maybe there was a public protest that got angry enough to attract grimm. maybe there was a protest that got too rowdy, and who’s going to openly question the government officials claiming that officers on the scene opened fire into the crowd because a grimm jumped out of the sewers? grimm evaporate when they die. kind of a hard thing to fact check.

and in a similar vein… vale’s king rolled out a welcome mat for mistrali colonists who came to colonize valean settlements. it is beyond nonsensical to think that there was no violence involved. colonization is an inescapably and inherently violent process. and remember, the rioting began shortly after mistral imposed draconian censorship laws on its occupied territories, which absolutely would have included parts of eastern vale.

it was inevitable and completely predictable that this situation would explode. might salem have sent someone to fire the first shot? sure? but why would she bother, when the fuse was burning down all on its own?

(and that’s assuming she even had an interest in provoking a massive war at all, which seems rather unlikely given her apparent disinclination to engage in wanton destruction; see also her consistent choices to limit civilian casualties by pulling out of vale quickly / planning a surgical strike on haven academy / not attacking mantle / not sending grimm into the subways of atlas.)

but. but–

they did put her in the thumbnail. the point of this is presumably to imply that she did, in fact, do something to influence these events.

specifically.

they put her in the thumbnail superimposed over the leader of the vacuan rebellion, who:

led what must have been a pretty desperate fight against steep odds to drive an industrialized global power out of vacuo,

kept that coalition together after they won and formed an alliance with vale, and

was a faunus.

ozpin is superimposed over the king of vale because he was the king of vale. so: is the choice to position salem in this way similarly non-arbitrary?

looks into the camera like i’m on the office.

salem is a faunus. she identifies herself as such (“your grace” is the mode of address for menagerie’s chieftain) and she has been socially understood as a faunus for thousands of years (in a time when faunus were hunted and caged like animals, the stories about the witch who lived in the woods among “beasts and monsters” were, uh, probably not referring to wild animals; “beasts” was a euphemism for the people the ones telling those stories hunted and caged.)

to this day, ozpin associates the faunus with salem. he suspects blake of being her spy; he similarly singles out velvet after the massacre of lower cairn (and we don’t get to see what he actually says, only that velvet is in tears by the end). at haven, leo more or less says “the council overruled me and my hands are tied,” and ozpin immediately decides to freeze him out and insinuates to the kids that he suspects leo might be a traitor; meanwhile james “two votes” ironwood is closing atlas’ borders, cutting off the global supply of dust, recalling his troops from an allied state, and behaving so erratically that mistral is evidently anticipating a fucking invasion, and ozpin instructs qrow to take the lamp to atlas anyway. lionheart is a faunus; ironwood is human. the tea set ozpin gifted to lionheart is a replica of salem’s tea set. math.

so the fact that salem is superimposed over the faunus leader here does not seem coincidental; the narrative is very consistent in linking salem to the faunus because she is herself a faunus.

in WOR: faunus, qrow describes the appalling treatment of faunus by humans throughout history (first ostracized and hunted down, later enslaved and exploited) before to the great war and states that, after the great war, “the world was desperate to find compromises that would ensure they'd never see the likes of it again; the faunus were awarded equal rights as citizens of remnant, and as an apology, they were given an entire continent of their own to do with as they pleased. there were some that saw this as fair and just, but many saw it for what it really was: a slap in the face from a nation of sore losers. and so menagerie was born.”

and from the great war:

But whatever the reasoning, everyone bowed to the King of Vale by the time it was over. The Great War had ended. The world was ready to live under the rule of Vale. But the King refused. The leaders of the four Kingdoms met on the island of Vytal, and it was there that they worked together to form a treaty and establish the future of Remnant. Territories were redistributed, slavery was abolished, governments were restructured, and the Warrior King, the last king Vale would ever have, founded the Huntsman Academies and placed his most trusted followers in command of each Kingdom's school.

a few things to unpack here.

first: ozma as the king of vale would have had quite a lot of power to drive the vytal negotiations in the direction he wanted them to go; the other three leaders were given at least a notional say, but these were people who had just seen ozma unleash the horrifying powers of the sword of destruction upon their armies and bowed to him in abject terror—and that’s before getting into the possibility that ozma may have used the crown of choice to compel agreement.

second: “territories were redistributed” mostly appears to mean that mistral was forced to relinquish control over conquered territories that did not want to be part of mistral; vacuan sovereignty was formally restored (…on paper) (shade academy is the de facto government and has been since the war ended, which is worth raising an eyebrow at), parts of western anima were liberated, and… menagerie was given to the faunus.

(menagerie had to have been a mistrali colony before the great war ended, otherwise the framing of “a slap in the face from a nation of sore losers” is nonsensical.)

third: note the implication that awarding the faunus equal rights and giving them an island was a desperate compromise to insure against the perceived threat of a second war. it’s of a piece with ozma’s attempt to appease mistral and avoid war by “sharing” eastern vale with mistrali colonists.

the vacuan leader—his ally in the war—was a faunus, but it sounds very much as though ozma saw her kind as adversaries, at least in potentia, whom he made it a point to appease in the hope of avoiding a war. which is irrational on its face but does make sense in conjunction with ozpin’s clear inclination to imagine connections between salem and faunus, however baseless that suspicion might be.

and on that note, qrow also says this: “a lot of settlements were lost during those years, and most were never reclaimed. rations on food and dust were put into effect, development of technology accelerated, humans and faunus who fought alongside one another became closer and every day, mankind grew more and more efficient at destroying itself.”

pay attention to that rhetorical structure.

many settlements were wiped out

food and dust were strictly rationed

technological (military) development boomed

humans and faunus grew closer

mankind grew ever more efficient at destroying itself

one of these is not like the others.

qrow’s framing of these events likely comes from ozpin, whether directly (things ozpin told him) or indirectly (ozpin’s influence as headmaster over beacon’s curriculum). so the inclusion of “humans and faunus who fought side by side grew closer” into what is otherwise a list of ways mankind “destroyed itself” is perhaps telling of ozma’s mindset at the time; which in turn supports the implication that ozma perceived the faunus as a potential threat to appease after the war.

now!

the question is, how was salem involved—and why?

well. we know that salem is inclined to revolution; she rallied people to rebellion against the brothers millions of years ago, and in her war against the academies in the present, she aligns herself with groups like the white fang. she refers to the global order ozma established through the vytal accords derisively as “your so-called ‘free’ world.”

and we know that salem herself is a faunus, and thousands of years ago she was present enough in faunus culture that their creation myth is just a refraction of her story—transformation into something new by a choice to leap into magical waters.

we know that the faunus did not have rights in any of the four kingdoms before the great war, and mistral in particular is noted for its reliance on (presumably, mainly faunus) slave labor. reading between the lines of qrow’s slanted narration, vacuo was a mistrali territory back then, and in the CFVY novels it’s mentioned that vacuan faunus were regularly enslaved in mistrali-operated mines within that territory.

and we can guess, based on their leader being a faunus, that the vacuan rebels who drove mistral and mantle out of vacuo were predominantly faunus, plus humans willing to follow and fight for the faunus.

in the present, salem preferred sienna khan over adam and dropped adam like a hot potato after he assassinated sienna; she also clearly has no intention to attack menagerie, where the grimm notably do not seem to be a serious problem. salem also implicitly identifies herself as a faunus (“your grace”). so there are grounds for thinking that she does consider the faunus to be her people.

vacuo’s part in the great war was a war for independence. salem is both pragmatic and ruthless; she understands that nothing forces people to cooperate quite like the threat of a common enemy; she has the means to turn the tide of any war by the simple expedient of directing her grimm against the side she wants to lose. if she was in communication with the vacuan rebels—or just had spies—she could have coordinated grimm raids to sever supply lines or winnow defending forces in advance of attacks planned by the rebels, tipping the odds in their favor.

she knows ozma. if she was paying attention to the war, she would have known it began with his futile effort to appease mistral by giving away parts of vale; she has to know he sees her in the shadow of every faunus. the vacuan rebels—most of them faunus, led by a faunus—saved his bacon by joining the war he very much seems to have been losing (the frontlines were in vacuo by the end of the war; all of eastern vale was destroyed, and the king of vale and his army made their final stand in vacuo; vale itself was… probably under mistrali occupation at the time).

i am sure salem did not want, particularly, to throw ozma a lifeline. but she does care about freedom in the abstract—“your so-called ‘free’ world”—and she may think of the faunus as her people. once the war began, once it became clear that vale was losing… well, either vale would fall and mistral would rule the world, which would be undeniably worse for the faunus, or she could grit her teeth and accept helping ozma as a fair price for a shot at liberating the faunus.

and the only thing she would have to do to influence the war’s outcome is use her grimm to disrupt mantelian/mistrali supply lines and specifically target their forces on the battlefield. such attacks wouldn’t stand out against the backdrop of regular grimm activity—there are a lot of grimm in the world beyond her control—but a sustained, deliberate campaign of grimm attacks focused on one side would absolutely add up over time to a significant advantage for the other. especially given that the logistical burden of waging war on a foreign continent is already so much higher than defending your home.

if salem could also keep wild grimm off the backs of vacuo’s and vale’s armies to some extent, a la the apparent absence of a grimm problem in menagerie, that advantage would be even sharper.

…although she probably did not anticipate that ozma would use the sword of destruction to crush everyone who opposed him, or the crown of choice to do… whatever it is he did with it. you win some, you lose some.