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Franziska wasn’t human, and she agreed. She was a conglomeration of ideas slapped together sloppily in the shape of a human, a craft project on the verge of falling apart.
She had come to the conclusion of inhumanity at a young age. Her whole identity and personality composed of and by other people, nothing about herself interesting or original or new. The simplest and most logical solution was that she just wasn’t human. She wasn’t like the other kids, the kids who got to play outside and scream and laugh with their friends. The kids who were fully realized ideas. She wasn’t like them, no. Clinging to the shard of hope that wasn’t even really hers, instead born out of an admiration of her father, she told herself that she wasn’t like them. She was better.
And as she grew older, her perception of herself never changed. But it did deepen. She began to realize that she wasn’t just inhuman. She was a von Karma. Being a von Karma, Franziska noticed, was different from being human. Humans don’t concern themselves with perfection, they don’t bother with being the best. Humans are weak, and von Karma’s are strong. She saw this in her ’brother’. His weakness. She still clung to the aforementioned hope, her figurative grip making her figurative knuckles white. She wasn’t a human. She was better.
And as she climbed the ranks, clawing and biting to reach the top, beating men into silence and manipulating situations to go her way, her grip on that hope only got stronger. Figurative knuckles so white they’ve split, meat and bone showing underneath the broken skin. It wasn’t hope anymore, no. She believed it to be fact. She was stronger. She was better. Nobody could possibly compare. She wasn’t human, not by any means, and, safe to say, she was thriving.
And then her brother died. Like all humans, he gave into weakness. Into fear. Into pain. He let his emotions play him like a fucking fiddle, falling into the trap of the Turnabout Terror. But Franziska knew this as well as anyone by now: Those with humanity are weak, and weakness is fatal. The Turnabout Terror may cast a wide, sharp, threatening shadow, but that didn’t make him strong. Franziska saw beyond the shadow, Franziska had escaped the cave the day she was born, and Franziska knew that all Phoenix Wright was, was a man. A deplorable, puny, piteous, inadequate man.
And, perhaps, the worst thing about her brother dying was when he came back, more human than ever. Soft around the lack of edges. He was no longer a von Karma. No. No, he was never a von Karma. He was a child wearing the clothes of a man, he was always a feeble imitation of perfection. But that facade was gone. And Franziska knew, as she looked away, biting back tears in the airport of all places, that when Miles looked in the mirror, he would never again see perfection. He would only see a waste of space, an Edgeworth .
Franziska wasn’t human. Ask any of her former opponents or associates. They’ll agree.
She was a robot. Heartless.
She was an animal. Ruthless.
She was a weapon. Scathing.
But most importantly, and perhaps, worst of all, she was an amalgamation of preconceived notions. A von Karma.