"Waltz With Me"

Explanation

"Anonymous asked:

I'm so sorry for being slow and dense, but can you please explain the ending to the Waltz with Me Cardverse comic you translated? Everyone seems to be getting it but me T^T"

"Don’t feel bad!  I’ve had a few messages along the same lines- the artist keeps the hints as vague as possible until the very end, so you get that sickening “ugh” feeling when it all comes together.  Getting right to the point: Arthur is long dead, having used the last of his strength to arrange this future meeting with Alfred to prepare him to take the throne and be with him one last time.  The story he tells Al about the fallen King is actually his own.   (This is a slightly different Cardverse interpretation, where they’re brothers instead of King and Queen.)  The only hints that are dropped are Al’s memories of the smell of tea and roses from his childhood before the civil war (clearly his older brother Arthur Kirkland, the previous king) and the mirror in the castle that seems to reflect reality stripped of magic.  

Every time the mirror ought to reflect Arthur’s image, what we see instead is an empty set of tattered clothes, run through with swords and overgrown by roses.  In the mirror’s reflection, the royal family’s arms (the clock, which is whole when you see it in Arthur’s hands) also appears to have been shattered with the strength of his final desperate act.

Add that to the suggestion that the spell is finite and fragile (possibly only sustained until the song is over, since the strip’s original title was “The Last Waltz”) and suddenly: nope.  Nope.  No happy ending here."