We know the games make a big deal out of Dracula being the Lord of All Darkness and whatever, but... where's good old Lucifer in all of this? Doesn't anyone care about him anyone?
when i was going to do my fan game the last boss would be the devil you find out that really death was the devil working behind Dracula because the devil couldn't act on human kind because God would act so he used humans because they have free will and made a pact with Dracula cause of his loss of his wife and he hated God for it he was easy to control and God would not act because of free will so he could take over the world thew his puppet Dracula and the Belmont's played into his hand as well by putting a human soul in the whip they also gave evil the power to rise every 100 years and bring Dracula back that's just a quick over version of it would had been a lot more story but gave up
Celia believed that for God to be good, he must be opposed by a being of perfect evil, but Dawn of Sorrow spends much of the game proving her wrong, mostly by arguing that such a perfectly being doesn't and shouldn't exist at all. The closest thing we come to seeing a truly perfectly evil villain in the series is probably Menace in the same game, which is fitting, as its an artificial distilling of every single monster in (the fake) Dracula's Castle at that time into a single form.
the Demon King is indeed the opposite of God (What God?)
In the original Castlevania, before IGA added to it, there was no Satan/Lucifer figure as the embodiment of all evil. Dracula took on that role and that was fine by me. It didn't need to be any deeper then that. It worked. It's what made the series a classic to begin with. Dracula was the top villain; the head honcho. The very thing that cults craved and innocent peoples' feared. Then we have the heroes representing God and humanity; The Belmont family. The occasional sidekick would partake in the hunt along with said Belmont, but in the end the Belmonts would always conquer Dracula's evil with good. And the Vampirekiller "mystic whip" was not some alchemical creation with a tainted soul, but a holy relic to be wielded in their never-ending crusade against Dracula's evil. It didn't need to be anything more then that.
God in the traditional sense I've assumed. After all the Belmont arsenal of weapons with the VK at the helm can mostly be considered Holy.
Castlevania may be a case of All Myths Are True. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllMythsAreTrue) In this case, on the CV universe, you play by X god's rules, and in return this god grants you holy power to fight evil.
EDIT: I know Mathias declaring war against god will come up, but you have to understand that Mathias is coming from the exact same place as everyone else: his own beliefs. Him as Dracula may have become a threat to all that is holy, and not just the god he believes in.
Hang on. Wasn't Satan's Ring in one of the Igavanias incorrectly translated from "Dark Lord's Ring" in the Japanese version? (or something to this effect).
I also don't actually believe that Chaos, by nature is "inherently evil", it's simply chaos.
There was no satan's ring in the original Castlevania. There was Dracula's ring in CV II but it wasn't satan's ring.I thought in one of the English versions of Igavanias (DoS maybe) that there was an item called "Satan's ring" which was incorrectly translated, and the figure the Japanese decription referred to was Dracula.
And that is exactly what Chaos is; The opposite to Order. Both exists simultaneously in our universe. Chaos is not evil nor is Order good. Both are merely opposites to one-another, yet both are absolutely necessary for the existence and continuation of our universe. Sadly many CV fans don't understand this as due to translation errors in the IGA games. It wasn't made clear and so they think that the final boss in AoS is Chaos itself. In truth it's not. It is a Chaotic creature, but not Chaos itself as it is absolutely impossible to see pure Chaos let alone destroy pure Chaos. If it was Chaos that was destroyed in AoS then the universe in which the series takes place in would no longer exist. It would literally collapse into nothing due to imbalance.
Cv3, when the manual says that Dracula made a pact with an ancient evil deity. Now Lucifer himself? Never really referenced
I thought in one of the English versions of Igavanias (DoS maybe) that there was an item called "Satan's ring" which was incorrectly translated, and the figure the Japanese decription referred to was Dracula.
Hell
on the ring's first appearance on AoS, it's even modelled after a bat motif. Who would the owner of this ring be??
Hell, on the ring's first appearance on AoS, it's even modelled after a bat motif. Who would the owner of this ring be??
IGA hyuk hyuk hyuk(click to show/hide)
Considering the series has demons, and angels, and that holy water and crosses actually do something, i see no reason why there shouldn't be a devil.
That doesn't mean he's a major player or even involved though. Maybe he just saw Drac trying to make a bad world filled with evil and thought, "hey, this guy's doing alright. I'll just sit back and work on my fiddle playing skills."
Or Dracula could have completely circumvented the devil's power long ago and simply took over as the supreme embodiment of all that is evil. Like what happened with Satan's former pet-turned traitor, malebolgia, in the Spawn series. Hence the reason why there's no Satan in the original CV and why God has chosen the Belmonts to fight for him.
As for how all these tie together to relate to the OP topic:
-The Devil as we know him may or may not have ever truly existed in Castlevania. There doesn't seem to be much concrete canon evidence declaring as such, with "Devils" being relegated to simple powerful demons bearing the name, rather than there being a single "true" Devil. If he had existed, it doesn't seem to be the case anymore, or at the very least he does not exist in his seat of usual power.
-The title of Demon King appears very strongly to be one of rank and power, rather than a singular being like Satan. Since it's such a title and rank, it can change hands and be usurped by stronger entities.
The way I rationalise it is this, Death's existence is to hunt souls, he/ it is a Shinigami, who only has the interest to hunt souls.
This is also another reason why I'm not fond of IGA's CV ideology. The true Grim Reaper was not a shinigami at all, but the actual European (Greek) god of Death; Thanatos, who would be later included in Christian mythology as one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypses. And there was only one of him making him unique in the world of monsters. Shinigami don't use the Syth because that is strictly Thanatos' implement. Outside of popular manga illustrations I've yet to see a shinigami use a Syth as a weapon outside of their traditional Japanese lore implements. And then there is also Death's look; a hooded cloaked skeleton. Shinigami don't dress like that let alone look like that (again outside of popular manga illustrations). It's just one more thing IGA changed around that should not have been touched, just like Dracula.
We need to stop putting everything we dislike on IGA's account.
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FePhFLk2.png&hash=071094f78cbf3db7ed946428c8ceb82fd3df75d3)
This is Death being called "Shinigami" on the very first Castlevania. This repeats on the sequels.
There is another japanese word to mean Death in the more European "Grim Reaper" sense. When IGA got hold of Castlevania back on SotN, Death was renamed "デス (Desu)", the aforementioned word for "Death" in kana. Katakana is used when a foreign word (and quite possibly its intent) is transcripted into Japanese.
If anything, IGA initially made Death into the more european counterpart, not the contrary. It is clear, however, that "Shinigami" was the original intent -- which is most likely the reason why IGA returned "Death" to "Shinigami".
We need to stop putting everything we dislike on IGA's account.
It's an agent of the natural force of Death without actually being that force itself. It causes death because that is its purpose, ergo it's the non-Japanese equivalent to a Shinigami. Death is just a very powerful one of these, that happens to resemble the European lore of Death as a reaper. The European Reaper is not unanimously described as the singular force of Death personified--there's nothing in any European lore dictating that it cannot simply be a skeletal entity that acts as a middleman agent of the force-of-nature aspect of death.
It's really not all that complicated, really.