Requiem Vampire Knight 2: The lie of chivalry

Why did Requiem need to believe he was an honourable man?

Requiem Vampire Knight 2: Danse Macabre

My original idea for Resurrection was that it would be called SEA, because it was an alternative Earth where land and sea were reversed. Progressively – and certainly by the time we had reached book – it became transformed into Hell. And so it was that Olivier’s partner pointed out to me that if it was Hell, Requiem must have done something really bad while he was alive to be sent to a world of damnation. She was absolutely right, and this set me to thinking that Requiem wanted to be a chivalrous knight and had deluded himself into believing he was an honourable man. And thus the title: Danse Macabre, to remind everyone of the ‘fragility of their lives and the vanity of earthly glory’.

Why did Requiem need to believe he was an honourable man? Because of his love for Rebecca. As the saying goes, ‘Love changes everything’. He might subsequently explain it away as part of a duplicitous karmic plan, as we will see in later volumes, but I believe his love for Rebecca still underpinned and motivated him first and foremost, rather than any Machiavellian scheme played out over millennia.

Nonetheless, knights – past and present – equally like to delude themselves that they stand for forces of righteousness when, in fact, many stand for evil. And all knights stand for forces of evil even if they’re not aware of it. The real-life knights I’ve met were the most egoistic and unpleasant individuals imaginable, preening themselves with their honour and revelling in the public attention. They were all on one big ego-trip. We should honour men and women who have done great services to their communities, but the knighthood system hi-jacks that honour and uses it to give respectability to people and forces that have oppressed the poor and continue to do so to this day. So there is something inherently sinister about Requiem aspiring to knighthood.

Heinrich’s less-than-chivalrous life on Earth

In this volume, we see the real reason Requiem was killed and rightly sent to Hell to become a vampire knight. It’s an unpleasant scene, and no wonder Requiem wanted to believe he had a more honourable death. In war, people seem to delude themselves all the time, conveniently forgetting their crimes and imagining they were heroes. We baby boomers were very aware of how many of the World War Two generation pretended to be heroes when they were nothing of the kind. I once caught out my boss who had claimed he was in the North Africa campaign while also serving in the Far East in the same year, which was most unlikely. He was furious and it may have been connected with why he later sacked me. Real heroes – such as paratroopers – rarely spoke of their achievements.

Sales of Requiem Book One went sky high, and there were plans for French supermarkets to display and sell the series.