every day i think about how codependent the narzissenkreuz institute must have been. mary-ann was the most important person in alain's life and vice versa; they were adopted together, and though emanuel was never their father they were brother and sister to each other. alain built seymour for mary-ann's sake. they went into the same line of work, and followed each other's footsteps everywhere (mary-ann into the institute and alain into the marechaussee hunters). how much more codependent would they have gotten following emanuel's disappearance, and the severance of their friendships with jakob and rene? how much did they rely on each other?

jakob and rene were both witnesses to the violence (?) at poisson. it's unclear what exactly this entailed, only that it ended up with all of their parents dead, which rene personally saw. presumably, on their trip to sumeru, rene witnessed jakob either die himself or grow incredibly close to death, which started him on his own path to discover immortality; rene worked to assist carter because he was "like a brother" to jakob. for four hundred years, jakob carried rene's ideals alone, waiting for him to return.