Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6192846-20141127231817/@comment-6192846-20150818041036

DaughteroftheforestCourt1 wrote:

But Servy, does Allen come off a bit differently now with these changes? Like the fact that he's laughing at the fact he's "won" over Elluka's prophecy, although I would asume that's his pride. Nothing I read came off like something the original didn't already implicitly or explicitly already contain. Allen was made a little more active in his actions in the narrative but nothing actually changing his character, just building upon those preexisting themes and emotions.

For example, the original book has Allen take Elluka's prophecy and then essentially do nothing about it until his inevitable twin switch, narrating or implying through narration his concern about it and desperation to prevent it only a few times in the meantime up through the switch and his death.

The VG version now has Allen not just absorbing Elluka's prophecy but actively responding to it, standing up to Elluka with the same refusal to abandon Riliane in the face of apparently inevitable destruction of their country. The book then adds more narration detailing Allen's frustration and increasing hopelessness with the disintigrating situation as was originally indicated and later referenced a little during the prison scene with Germaine. This frustration gets the added action of Allen trying to influence Riliane to end the war with Elphegort in a last ditch effort to try saving it all before the revolution begins and the story continues with new narration building on that increasing helplessness he's feeling.

As a result, this is mostly just a change in presentation of his character (though I'd argue a stronger one). He's still always too late to act when truly needed and often times caught up in his own head too much; he's still going through the same emotions and feelings and worries. It's just now more padded out throughout the book rather than being so few and far between (which makes for a more invested emotional experience consistently throughout).

His mockery of Elluka and her prophecy is a continuation of how broken and desperate he is at this point, building upon that original scene in prison where, upon learning the revolutionary leader who's telling him he's been condemended (by her) to be executed is his beloved foster sister, cracks up laughing and stays steadfast to keeping to the path he's chosen regardless. Allen is happy to have finally found some sense of victory/success in everything that's happened, which is (sadly) him denying fate by taking his sister's place at the guillotine.

This still returns to Allen's inevitable realization that, yes, his desperate decision to save Riliane (as well as, now, beat a prophecy) means he's going to die and that primal fear of death inevitably overtakes him like in the original (until his vision of Riliane calms him, of course).