Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-294840-20170719134411/@comment-294840-20170729123719

ChishioKunrin wrote: I actually came up with one theory for one reason Whitley acts the way he does, while I was thinking about The Path to Isolation, the new song in Weiss' character short. I commented it on the page for the character short, but I'll copy and paste it here:

"Mirror, tell me: Who am I?"

Everyone's focusing on the opening of the song, but this line made me think of the manga, particularly when Weiss'... "voiceover" was talking about how she used to carry a distorted view of family pride and didn't have a sense of self, so she seeks to create a sense of self that she can be proud of, just like Winter did.

It's as if the way that Jacques raised them led to them growing up with their identity just being "Schnee", regardless of whether he meant for that to happen or not. Because of Winter, Weiss realized that her identity had been "Schnee", not "Weiss". It makes me wonder if Whitley is still stuck in that "Schnee" identity and does not have a sense of who "Whitley" is. If so, they could do something interesting with him and his development. He's really not a scheming, evil little asshole. He's just someone who hasn't really developed a sense of self and is still living as Schnee, rather than Whitley.

Hell, aside from not liking Winter and Weiss, do we know of any opinions or views that are purely Whitley's, that he came up with himself?

"It's foolish not to do as father asks." - So, he does everything their father tells him.

"Honestly, I find it barbaric. It's beneath people like me. Like Father. What can a single Huntsman possibly do that an army cannot? That's why we have one, even if it is run by a fool." - How much of that is purely Whitley's opinion, and how much of it was influenced or formed by Jacques? "It's beneath people like me. Like Father." He includes Jacques in that statement. And we've clearly seen that Jacques may view Ironwood as a fool or at least have a negative opinion of him.

It's hard to judge, though, since we got so little dialogue from him in volume 4. Hmm... Maybe it's both? It could have started as a defense mechanism to deal with the abuse but it could have ended up being a case of him becoming the mask?