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BSD is a piece of literature that exists in conversation with literature: it’s only natural as a story whose central characters are named after and inspired by classical authors. An interesting framework to approach analysis of it is analyzing the tropes and literary conventions it uses for its characters, and today I’d like to start a series of essays analyzing several characters from BSD through the lens of fairytale conventions, more specifically, the dynamic of a Princess imprisoned in a tower guarded by a Monster. In this first essay I will focus on the character of Kyouka, and the way her arc follows her having to break out of her narrative role as a Princess (read: damsel) being trapped in a tower, and being guarded by a monster.
Kyouka has a motif of a captive maiden in which we can draw parallels to the cultural idea of a trapped Princess – when we first meet her, she has no choice but to stay in the Mafia due to Demon Snow, a monster tied to her and yet controlled by another being, the Imprisoner, i.e. Akutagawa. Demon Snow was also handed down to Kyouka from her parents for her own protection, mirroring the trope of Princesses being trapped or sacrificed to monsters by their own parents, as well as the semi-modern trope of the monsters being present for the Princess’ protection. Demon Snow is a symbolic legacy, much like the fairytale Princess being trapped in a tower because of her royal status, because of her legacy. This scenario also presents Atsushi as the knight who rescues the Princess, however it is important to note that there are two levels of freedom Kyouka achieves – first the literal, in taking power away from the imprisoner, and second the symbolic, in which Kyouka has to take back control of Demon Snow for herself – the Princess has to tame the dragon in order to completely free herself from the role of the damsel by escaping the conventions of, and as such the narrative of the Princess in a tower with a Monster.
Kyouka’s whole arc in the first two major story arcs of BSD (vs Mafia and vs The Guild arcs) is about escaping the role of the imprisoned Princess. When we first meet her, she is fully resigned to her role as the Princess with a Monster – her being a little girl is crucial to her work as an assassin. In chapter 7, part of the reason she is able to capture Dazai is because of her innocent and unassuming appearance – it acts as a way to bring down the guard of those she attacks. There’s also the whole thing about her using her “feminine wiles” which suggests that Kyouou was teaching her to use her femininity and specifically her “sexual power” (NOTE: seeing as Kyouka is a child, she, obviously, doesn’t actually have any “sexual power”, and this is just blatant evidence that Kouyou was grooming her, which is unsurprising, considering the Mafia as an organisation), which, in our Princess and Dragon symbology, could be interpreted as the promise of a beautiful Princess luring knights into the maw of the Monster.
The ties between imprisonment and parenthood are also important to the relationship between Akutagawa and Kyouka – he is her ‘mentor’, which in the Mafia loosely means “abuser”, in the cycle started by Mori, and trickled down to them through Dazai. This also frames Akutagawa’s violence towards Kyouka through a patriarchal lens: much as the King in old mythologies sacrifices his daughter to a monster (for example: Andromeda) because of the existing dynamic of daughters being the father’s property, and because the innocence and purity of the daughter positions her as a uniquely valuable sacrifice, Akutagawa uses Kyouka’s innocence and purity (both real and perceived) in order to further his and the Mafia’s power. He exerts control and ownership over her by exerting control over her ability, which in BSD is presented as an extension of the identity and the body (source: the thematic core of Dead Apple). Such, Akutagawa both literally traps her in her role as the damsel by acting as an imprisoner, but also symbolically traps her in her feminine, helpless Princess role as the patriarchal Imprisoner.
Once Kyouka gets physically rescued by Atsushi, and taken away from the Monster by her phone being disabled, she still cannot conceptualize her life outside of Imprisonment, leading herself and Atsushi to the police station in chapter 9. Even outside the influence of the Monster or the Imprisoner she still seeks her tower – she doesn’t want to escape, she wants to go to a tower so tall no knight would be lured to her. This, of course, fails, as her Imprisoner (Akutagawa) shows up once more to reinforce the dynamic of her luring knights into the maw of a beast, kidnapping Atsushi. The chapter ends with an image of a plush toy covered in blood, symbolic for the way her innocence has been perverted into a tool for enacting violence. Her indulging the idea of being rescued by a knight, even for a day, is what ultimately reinforces the dynamic of her as the Princess bait.
She, of course, doesn’t fall back in line in chapters 10-11, but it’s important to note that she doesn’t attempt to free herself: she tries to blow up the ship with her still on it in order to let Atsushi escape. So far, none of her attempts to take herself out of her situation have been about either becoming a rescued Princess, or escaping the role altogether – she works within the framework of being a Princess with a Monster, in which rescue is impossible. She’s been aiming to take herself out of the narrative, either via a prison sentence or suicide, but not in taking the narrative out of herself. When Akutagawa talks about what she’d face in the outside world he evokes imagery of verticality, of falling: he talks about “rock bottom”, and the terrifying abyss beyond her current life. The message is clear: the only way from the tower is down.
Her character progression over the fight on the ship is her accepting that she liked being rescued – “that crepe was delicious” she says, obviously saying that life outside the tower is appealing to her, even if before she never saw another way. Akutagawa says an interesting thing in response to this: “Is that the path you have chosen? Let me reward your hard work with a painless death”. He does proceed to try and kill her, but relents when Atsushi returns and asks him to fight. The message is so: the Princess cannot rescue herself, the best she can hope for is a merciful death in her struggle for freedom, unless a knight comes to fight for her. As long as Kyouka exists within the Princess framework, she only has three options: an even taller tower, death, or a saviour.
The conclusion of this fight, is, of course, that Atsushi saves her, however the Princess dynamic still haunts her. The Monster used for her imprisonment is her ability, after all, so as long as she exists in the framework her ability cannot be anything other than a Monster that imprisons her. This is demonstrated in chapter 17: after a lousy mission, Kyouka has a crepe, a symbol of her rescue, and yet when Atsushi brings up using Demon Snow for herself, Kyouka reacts extremely negatively, saying: “I never want to see that again”. As long as Kyouka is stuck seeing herself as a rescued Princess, she can never see Demon Snow as something she can use for her own, because it is the Monster and as such the tool of the Imprisoner.
This is where the character of Kouyou becomes relevant to the story, and it is relevant to this reading because, while her ultimate goal is to have Kyouka return to her tower, much like the Imprisoner, she is distinct because she, too, is a Princess in a tower. They have exceptionally similar abilities, and her backstory involves a failed escape attempt which lead her to give up on the idea of being rescued. She is also a representation of femininity and the use of said femininity for violence – it is implied she was the one who taught Kyouka to use her “feminine wiles” for assassinations, meaning ultimately Kouyou was the one who groomed Kyouka into the role of Princess. Kouyou insists that it is for Kyouka’s own good if she is never rescued, that her role is to be trapped forever: she is the ultimate Princess in a tower, so embedded in this framework she uses her own Monster to further her imprisonment. Kouyou is scandalized at the idea of harnessing Demon Snow for the agency, because, she, too, is unable to perceive their abilities as anything beyond the Monster, and harnessing the Monster for anything but imprisonment of the Princess is simply not the narrative convention of Princess stories.
A little aside on narrative convention: why is the concept of narrative convention even important for this analysis? For this, let’s look at the central artefact of BSD: the book. The book has an important, and very interesting restriction: it is bound by the rules of narrative. In order to alter reality, it must follow a “story-like cause and effect”. This makes the artefact itself an object of meta-fiction, since BSD is engaging with the narrative on two different levels: it, itself has to play by narrative rules, being a story itself, but the characters inside that story are also affected by narrative rules in-universe. In chapter 70, it is explained that this is the reason the Decay of Angels plot took a lot of meddling in the real world: since they only had one page, they needed to use up the whole space to write out their very long and complicated scheme, and had to “take care of the details” themselves. What this means is that one of the limitations of the book is that the story cannot just up and change gears, once the story locks itself into certain facts of the narrative, it cannot switch up without suitable developments. On a meta level, this also means being bound by convention. A murder mystery, for example, cannot up and turn into a romcom without suitable work being put into developing it through cause and effect, without suitable setup and time in order for that transition to be made.
What this means for this analysis is that, once locked into a Princess story, Kyouka cannot make the sudden switch into being a deuteragonist of an action detective superhero story without first deconstructing her Princess role, which she does at the end of the Guild Arc.
Kyouka starts the culmination of this arc in the ultimate tower: the one she wanted to be confined when she was first rescued, literally chained and imprisoned. Right before her capture, she attempted (and failed) to rescue Atsushi from the Guild: her first real step out of her damsel role, into trying to become something more than a rescued Princess, and she is punished for this transgression by an even bigger tower. In the story she views this as her punishment for ever thinking she could “be in the light”, i.e. her attempted escape from her narrative role. Right before she is taken, Fitzgerald also takes a moment to reinforce the Princess dynamic, by literally calling her “little princess” and Atsushi her “boyfriend” (NOTE: this further reinforces the fact that the Princess role is a harmful one to Kyouka even if she is a rescued Princess: conventionally, the knight rescues the Princess for the promise of her hand in marriage, and that fact evidently haunts the dynamic between Kyouka and Atsushi despite the fact that it is not appropriate and neither of them want it).
Her entrance exam is her rebirth as a character – the fact that she is fully prepared to die, not as a helpless maiden but a martyr, is what allows her to reclaim Demon Snow as the mechanism of her imprisonment and instead use it in order to free herself from the chains and live. She rescues herself by symbolically killing the damsel within her.
Kyouka becoming a detective agency member is symbolic of her ceasing to be a Princess on several levels: first, she ceases to be a damsel, and officially gains the title of the one who saves others. Secondly, due to the president’s ability, she reunites with Demon Snow as a part of her, instead of the Monster: it can no longer be used as a tool of imprisonment, and her being in full control of it is her way of not just reclaiming it, but it becoming a part of her identity. Thirdly, it is a change of title: before, she was consistently called a “flower that blooms in darkness”, the flower representing her femininity, i.e. Princesshood, and the darkness representative of her captivity in the Mafia. Now, that title is fully shed, and she is simply a member of the detective agency, meaning: no longer a Princess, but a deuteragonist of an action detective superhero story.