I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.
It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.
Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.
Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.
But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.
The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”
I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”
Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.
In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.
And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.
So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.
(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)
I could be wrong, but I feel like this might be, in part, a response to my rant, and I just want to say that I do agree with you on this. The reason I spend so much time talking about Griffith’s guilt is because a large portion of the fandom doesn’t seem to understand that what he did wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him–to put it simply. But of course his reasons for sacrificing the BotH can’t be boiled down to one emotion, be it guilt or whatever else.
Like you mentioned, part of the appeal of becoming one of the God Hand is you get your emotions stripped away. And Griffith is someone who, I feel, feels things very strongly, but constantly tries to deny that to himself and others. Because he wants to believe that his emotions don’t control him. “Just a pebble in my path” and all that.
Except he couldn’t with Guts. Not only was his obsession with Guts obvious, but it literally ruined his life once, and could have very well ruined it again, and again, and again. He would have “let it happen,” so to speak, it was an obvious weakness. And Guts seemed indecisive to the point where it was clear that he would keep unintentionally playing with Griffith’s heart till it destroyed him.
Griffith hated Guts for leaving him, but he also hated himself for how much it affected him, so the God Hand’s offer was attractive in more than one way.
Like you, I don’t think he regretted his decision. I just don’t think it was an easy decision to make, because that would defeat the point of sacrificing something to gain something else.
Sorry, I’m bad at wording things properly, and always seem to leave out something important, plus I didn’t add anything new to this post but tl;dr I agree with you. And I also apologise if this post had nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier this week, it just reminded me of a lot of points that were brought up.
Actually funnily enough I had a post like this sitting in my drafts for like two weeks but it sounded stilted so I never posted it. Then reading a few things (including I think your post) inspired me to re-write it and focus it better. So not exactly a response but more like, hmm I see a few people talking about the Eclipse sacrifice so now’s a good time to talk about this one aspect of it that I think is awesome that I haven’t seen mentioned. So I’ll add a belated thanks for the inspiration 🙂
But yeah I pretty much agree with you. I’ve gone on at length before about Griffith’s guilt-based motivation and I totally agree that it was not an easy decision (i mean there’s a reason the godhand had to pull out all the psychological stops to manipulate him, and one thing I totally believe is that if Guts had been beside him the whole time he couldn’t’ve done it). Like the idea that he was rubbing his hands with glee and eager to jump on the opportunity as soon as a few magic weirdoes showed up to offer him the chance to exchange everyone he loves for a castle is ridiculous lol, and I’ve seen that belief way too often too. As much as there’s a reason most of the Band went, “oh shit” when they heard the Godhand’s offer, there’s also a reason Guts didn’t believe it until like 10 minutes after Griffith agreed lol, and it’s not because he’s a naive dumbass, it’s because he knew Griffith genuinely cared and he believed in him.
“wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him” that’s a really good way of putting it
I’m always glad when you give us all an opportunity to think and talk about something new, which is pretty much always, so thank you for that!
Also, that thing you said about Guts knowing Griffith well enough to know that he wouldn’t do something like that under normal circumstances kind of reminded me of the scene where Griffith asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel. And I feel like there’s more to be said here, but I’ll just leave it at that.
omg nice connection. Honestly if Guts’ Most Significant Moment That Changed Everything was overhearing Griffith’s speech, then imo Griffith’s MSMTCE was Guts’ non-reply to “do you think I’m cruel?” It keeps coming back to that.
you're the only one 