Talk:Pandora/@comment-95.103.211.46-20201002113935

"Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his listing of sins. According to Aquinas, it is the progenitor of Envy."

So, here’s a thought of what the main evil plot of Re Zero might be. I think Pandora was and is the actual big bad of the story and the one who caused most if not all of its suffering, along with Echidna (though not working together). I think Pandora is trying to become the sole Witch of Sin and thus achieve god-like power which would justify her vainglory.

Here’s the theory - we know Satella absorbed witch factors she was incompatible with. We also know that the witches sans Echidna don’t actually dislike Satella, but instead hate the bloated amalgamation of their powers which formed from Satella absorbing them - Envy, Satella’s split personality. We know the Witch Cult (in general) wants to revive Satella, largely operates using their Gospels, and we know Pandora has limited reality-warping powers which could definitely affect written word.

So, the actual theory - why would someone like Satella - someone with a sweet and caring personality, simmilar to Emilia’s - try and absorb all the other Witch Factors? Well, my theory is she did it as a sacrifice - so that no one else had to. She saw how the Factors twisted and demented the other Witches, how much harm they caused, and decided she could volunteer and contain them all within her.

She couldn’t, of course. She broke more completely than any other of the Witches. But why? If she understood how the Factors worked, how she could not hope to take in Factors she was incompatible with, why did she go through with it?

Well, my theory is she didn’t.

I think that someone gave her deliberately harmful advice. Someone, on purpose, wanted her to collect the other Factors, either from the Witches themselves or from their corpses, so they were all in a single bundle. And that someone, I think, is Pandora.

Now, Pandora seems to have a pretty OP ability at first, right? Even compared to Regulus’s Greed  or Capella’s Lust, Pandora seems more potent in that she can seemingly rewrite anything, even her own death. But we know she isn’t. We know she has limits of some kind. We know Echidna holds her in very low regard, and Echidna is not that powerful either, in terms of comparative raw power. Much like Vainglory itself, she looks and talks big game, but when push comes to shove, I think it doesn’t take much for her power to start cracking. So there have to be some strict limits to what she can do. And I personally think those limits are the reason why Pandora couldn’t simply steal the other Factors herself.

So Satella loses it, Envy is born, goes on a rampage and is sealed away. The real question is - what did Pandora hope would happen? Did she want Satella to be sealed away for some time? Would it weaken her to return back from her seal, make her vulnerable? She seemed allright when she returned in Emilia, but maybe Pandora would have a way around that by now. Maybe that is why she needs the remains of the other Witches. Maybe that is why she is seemingly so cautious about saving her own strength. Maybe that is why none of the cult members are even allowed to mention her outloud.

This is all mostly theory and conjecture, but I think it holds water. Unless I missed something. Thoughts?