As we’ve spent the past week revisiting the events of the season in Berserk, it’s worth looking back at one of the most fascinating characters in Miura's epic, Farnese!

Overcoming childhood trauma is a major theme in Berserk and Farnese's painful process of moving past her personal tragedies has been one of the most closely observed in the series. Her circumstances are unique among similarly afflicted characters as, where most suffer from active abuse, she was the victim of severe neglect. Growing up in the lap of aristocracy, her experiences reveal that wealth is not an absolute aegis against suffering. Both Guts and Farnese spent their youths similarly lost and directionless, but where Guts’s endless procession of battles provided him with valuable tools that allowed him to eventually grow, Farnese languished in the confines of her family’s mansion. This disparity is brought to the into painful focus during their encounter in the first season, but for part one of this multi-part feature we'll be looking at the factors that created the Holy Knight.

Early this season we were treated to one of its most visually captivating episodes retracing Serpico's experiences growing up with Farnese before the events of the Tower of Conviction. Sh was daughter of aristocracy with a mother who was entirely absent and a father whose rare visits to the household were marked by authoritarian demands. Farnese loved her parents and, in seeking her father's approval, thoughtlessly capitulated to to his demands. Fearful of earning his disfavor but unable to earn his recognition, she toiled in agonizing loneliness within their mansion. In the absence of her parents, her reign over the household was absolute. With little context as to treat others with compassion, Farnese directed her pain downward by abusing the staff, but rather than eliciting some sort of reaction her mistreatment resulted in fear and resignation, deepening her isolation and changing nothing.

Farnese first met Serpico by saving from a slow death of exposure in the winter cold. Lacking understand for her own motives behind her compassionate act, she contextualized her actions as a transaction by demanding that he become her servant in exchange for her generosity. Serpico’s willingness to remain and accept her sadistic treatment was the closest thing Farnese had experience to friendship but the only way she knew to deepen their intimacy was to turn her abuse into tests of loyalty, forcing Serpico to defend her honor in a series of duels, punishing him when he refused to raise a stir by definitively winning, and even tasting his blood to affirm some sort of connection between them.

Serpico is tragically ill-equipped to help Farnese, armed only with his fondness for her and sense of kinship. Growing up alongside her, he comes in understand the causes of her behavior but has no means of helping Farnese pull herself out of her dark hole. Detached almost completely from his own emotions, he can’t act as a role model from which Farnese can learn to articulate her feelings in a nondestructive way. Their shared blood and different social standing also leaves him in a double bind, unable to reciprocate her increasingly romantic advances but fearful of spurning them and driving her into complete isolation. All he can do is leave her to stumble in the dark as she seeks to retrieve some sort of meaning from their relationship.

In the world of her home, Farnese’s worst inclinations were rewarded while her rare opportunities to show charity were met with silence. When confronted with fear and pain, she had no support structure to cope with her emotions and would throw herself into the source of her fear. When her window was broken by a lightning-felled tree, she ran out into the rain and began destroying the garden along with the storm, seeking to become the cause of her distress rather than become its victim.

One of her most formative moments occurred as a small child, before she had even met Serpico. When the screams of burning heretics outside their estate kept her up at night, she ventured out and, tragically, was provided with a torch and met with cheers when she lit one of the pyres, offering an emotional affirmation she had been unable to find within her own home.

That single event marked the beginning of her fascination with fire. Farnese experiences a feeling of warmth while watching flames which becomes a refuge during her moments of distress. When her father ordered her to get rid of her ragged stuffed bunny, a precious memento from the only vacation they’d taken together as a family, Farnese remained obedient but opted instead to burn it, watching over the fire in the winter cold until it finally died out.

The turning point in her life comes as the result of another of her father's orders. He arranges a marriage between Farnese and a member of the royal family. Unable to even raise an objection before her father, she asks Serpico to run away with her. Farnese had, for the first time in her life, truly laid herself bare, both physically and emotionally. The romantic connotations of her requests were more than implicit, yet she was met with rejection. Even worse, Serpico was her only friend and confidant in the world. His decision represented a form of abandonment which drove a wedge between them, but still she relied on him absolutely. Despite how deeply painful it was to grow up in isolation, the unknown of the world outside was too frightening for her to face alone. Without Serpico, she couldn’t imagine leaving her gilded cage. Doomed to become just another commodity in her father's endless dealings robbed of her only confidant, Farnese could only retreat to her flames.

Her desperate act saved her from the arranged marriage, but the way she grasped Serpico amidst the flames implied that, in that moment, she had chosen death over the uncertainty of her future.

Despite the immense cruelty of her actions, Farnese is still a frightened and lonely girl who could never work up the courage to say no to her father. Miura plays out her plight delicately to display that her abuse is born from her own torment and an ignorance of emotional communication. The events of her childhood might seem like the origin story of a villain in another context, but even the worst monsters in Miura's world are all essentially human. Farnese is a fundamentally compassionate person and Serpico's recollection of their relationship is bookended by evidence of this. Sent off to a monastery after the fire, Farnese was later chosen to act as the figurehead of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, who seek out and execute heretics. During their travels, Serpico is reunited with his mother, tied to the stake.

After he unthinkingly calls out to her, Farnese once again saves Serpico's life. Now suspected of consorting with a witch, Farnese knows the only way out of the situation is for Serpico's mother to die at his own hand. Once again, she contextualizes her generosity as a transaction, demanding he burn his mother to renew his vow of loyalty to her, but she doesn't release the torch when he grasps it. Together, they lower it into the pyre, and she remains with him as it burns.