Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ The First Woman In The World ❯ Historical Notes ( EndNotes )

Historical Notes (In case anybody cares)

Eta and Ushi travel across ten thousand years of history, and come across- or are even directly involved in- many real historical events. In case anybody was interested, there are details here, which you can always double-check online if you're really interested. (I spent hours on Wikipedia for this XD) There are also references to a number of events in the manga history, involving the backgrounds of several characters, from Gin to Karasuma Renya.

 

Chapter one- ten thousand years ago

Eta and Ushi's story begins in 8000 BC, Southern England, which is why their native language is English, though the English of today will be almost utterly unrecognizable compared to what it was back then. However, the one time that Vermouth really loses her rag she speaks English, so English, I knew, it would have to be. This was still in pretty much the stone age; this was the earliest days of tribes and society, such as their tiny farming village. Many tribes were still nomadic, rather than settling to begin farming. Britain still contained such wild animals as wolves and bears which are now long extinct on the island. Eta and Ushi's ages are not given, but they are likely to be around fifteen for Eta and maybe eighteen for Ushi; girls were generally attached very young back then, not long after they became physically capable of bearing children (I may be overestimating the ages still; in Ancient Egypt, which didn't even have nomads yet at this point, most girls had their first child at the age of thirteen), and boys at a few years older. Even making it to thirty was considered a tremendous lifespan, and making it long enough to see grey hairs made you almost magical; there were, worldwide, primitive religions which generally worshipped the forces of nature, the powers of animals, and the oldest members of the tribe.

Chapter two-eight thousand years ago

The earliest group dwellings large enough to be recognizable as cities were being formed around this time, although they were more to the east. Britain and most of Europe still worked as small farming communities. However, the earliest evidence of warfare also dates from this time; a pit was found in Germany in the nineteen-thirties containing the skeletons of about forty people, dating to 5500-6500 BC. All of their skulls had been smashed with farming tools. Thus, inter-tribe warfare, as described in the case of the destruction of Eta and Ushi's village, did exist, mainly warring over resources; jewels of any sort were rare, as nobody really had the knowledge or means to find and mine for them, and as such something such as the Pandora would be a valuable trophy indeed.

Chapter three-seven and a half thousand years ago

The village that Eta and Ushi reach, as many guessed, was on the banks of the River Nile in what was to become Egypt; the country itself had not formed yet, but large bands of nomads had for some time been making home on the banks of the river, which provided incredible fertility in the middle of the dry desert. They came from the Middle East, generally, which had already long been building the houses that Eta had described; while huts in Britain and Northern Europe had slanted roofs to deal with the generally wet weather, houses in Egypt and the Middle East had flat roofs, as they had no need to worry about rain and these roofs, especially when painted white, reflected the heat of the sun far better. Anyone who could survive the heat of the desert without immense provisions would have certainly been seen as magical!

Chapter four-five thousand years ago

Eta and Ushi are in ancient Japan this time, around the Jomon Era, as indicated by the pottery; A distinctive type of pottery was practiced at this time, which Eta describes a product of. Trade lines were forming worldwide, although they were generally very self-contained due to the lack of wide travel, and some continents- particularly Australia and the Americas- being cut off almost completely from the rest of the world. Japan was also expanding rapidly at this time due to a population explosion.

Chapter five-two and a half thousand years ago

The ancient Greek civilisation was a fairly full swing by this point, and like any mature civilisation they were at war- with, as the man mentioned at the start of the chapter, Persia. They were to beat back these attacks, due to the power of the Athenian Army and the militaristic satellite state of Sparta (yes, THIS IS SPARTA! XD) but eventually be defeated by the Roman Empire. The Pandora myth is real, and is among the Greek creationist stories. There are visible parallels to the story of Adam and Eve, which it probably in part inspired. You may have heard the story of the God Prometheus, who had a fondness for humans, stealing fire from the Gods on Mount Olympus and presenting it to men, and as punishment being chained to a rock to have his liver torn out by a hawk every day for all eternity (being a God, it grew back each night). Zeus did not only punish Prometheus, however; he also punished the humans by creating the woman Pandora (women had not previously existed). He made her beautiful to tempt men to madness, and also gave her the curse of curiosity (don't you just love the totally not subtle misogynist tones of ancient myth?). He also gave her the gift of a sealed urn, with the express warning not to open it; eventually, of course, her curiosity overwhelmed her and she opened the urn (changed to a box in later translations and artwork), unleashing all of the evils and ills of the world upon mankind, rather as Eve did by tempting Adam to eat the fruit of knowledge. Shocked at what she had done, Pandora hurriedly closed the urn, but what she trapped inside was none of the evils but Hope, which remains locked away from mankind to this day. Pandora's Box is now a popular allegory for the forbidden, or that which will only bring suffering. Anesidora was also a name by which she was known.

Two thousand years ago

This chapter is pretty much the only religious reference I've made, historically, since I don't know much about any religion beyond Christianity (RMPS is still so biased). Bible-buffs may recognize the story of Jesus losing his rag and destroying a market which had set up in a temple. I'm not religious myself, but there are brief mentions made by Roman historians of a Jewish Philosopher had travelled the Middle East around this time, attempting to spread Humanitarian principles (though stories such as walking on water and feeding a thousand people from one person's lunch seem to me to be precisely the kind of fairy tales which grow up around respected figures, especially when their stories exist only as oral tradition for three hundred years- As Hakuba mentioned at one point, a story can mutate terribly even when told by an eyewitness, as they misremember details or deliberately exaggerate something in order to impress; a story handed down over generations would be distorted almost beyond recognition or reality), and was killed for it, as most Jews were at the time. (Why is it all cultures, at some point or another, go through a patch of killing Jews? What is it, like culture puberty?) The Roman Empire was peaking in power around this point as well, the cultures of ancient Egypt and Greece having already been long conquered.

Chapter six-one and a half thousand years ago

Well, closer to 1600 years ago, really; the attack of which Eta and Ushi are discussing is the Sack of Rome in 410. The last time Rome had fallen had been over 800 years previously. There were three sieges, the third ending when a slave revolt opened the Salarian Gate, allowing the Visigoth army to pour into the city and spend three days looting. In this story, it is implied that Ushi, at the beginnings of the power that he would later enjoy as leader of the Shadow Syndicate, had in fact deliberately instigated this revolt so that the looting would reveal where the jewel was hidden, if anywhere. This was a marked point in the decline of the Roman Empire; Rome was to be sacked again less than fifty years later, and within a century the Empire had fallen.

Chapter seven-One thousand years ago

Eta and Ushi now travel to North America; for millennia, this was only possible in the dead of winter, when the icecaps at the North Pole expanded and linked the northernmost points of Alaska and Russia, though by this point in time Viking expeditions had definitely reached Greenland and may have penetrated further into the continent. Cut off from the development in Asia and Europe, the Americas still retained mostly tribal cultures, such as the Native American tribes; further south, the cultures of the Inca and the Aztecs were still to flourish for nearly five centuries before being destroyed by Europeans. (I had wanted to put at least one of these in, particularly in regards to Aztec human sacrifices, but I could never make it work on the timeline.) Every Native American tribe is different, to the point where they all have similar but ultimately distinct languages; all practiced some form of religion based on the spirits of nature, however, as well as herbal medicine, and most had elders who practiced some form of divination, as the old lady does with the smoke. Eta and Ushi's colouring is also brought up here; the very northern European Aryan look of blonde hair and blue eyes, as well as fair skin. This colouring was highly unusual in many parts of the world at the time; the peoples of Asia and the Americas were, almost without exception, dark-haired and dark-eyed. This colouring would stand out even more among the Aboriginal peoples of Australia or the ancient African tribes, which had far darker skin as well. Dark hair and eyes flourished everywhere in the world except in, for some reason, Europe, which is the homeland of both the Aryan colouring and the Gallic colouring of red hair and green eyes.

Chapter eight-Five hundred years ago

Eta and Ushi have returned to England; the King that they are toasting is King Henry VIII, who was crowned on April 21st of 1509. He is most well known for having six wives, killing two, divorcing two, one dying in childbirth to his only son and the last living to be his widow; he was effectively the last true English king, as his son died very young of illness while caretakers ran the country between his father's deaths and his, and neither of his half-sisters, during their times as queen, had any children. The throne passed to King James VI of Scotland eventually, in the Union of the Crowns, which finally united Scotland and England after centuries of enmity and warfare, essentially through Scotland taking over England. All British monarchs now are descended from King James VI and his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. It is around this time that the Christian Church split into Catholicism and Protestantism, starting five hundred years of bloody internal warfare that continues today in Ireland and Glasgow. For centuries, whichever side the reigning monarch was aligned with was deemed the “right” one, and all those of the opposite alignment had to convert or be executed; many chose the latter, though many also chose the former, and most pretended to choose the former to survive until a supporting monarch took power.

Eta also remembers the mediaeval witch hunts, which were in fact continuing at this time. Men and women (mostly women) accused of witchcraft were burned in England and America and hung in Scotland; criteria included making herbal medicine, forming bonds with animals, and predicting the outcomes of relationships, to take some of the less arbitrary markers of witchcraft. Those who would not confess were tortured until they confessed, at which point they were executed; doing so somehow saved the witch's soul, sending them to Heaven. It is difficult to imagine how one who stands out as Eta would do escaping accusations.

The final paragraph mentions a shogun who is losing a war; Japan was in the Sengoku era, several centuries of feudal internal war as lords fought for land and gold. This horde that he buries to hide from the oncoming enemy may well be the “Hidden Treasures of the Tokugawa Shoguns” that the Shonen Tantei-Dan have been known to imagine finding.

There is also reference to the “Philosopher's Stone”; in mediaeval to renaissance times, many alchemists searched for the Philosopher's stone, a substance which was believed to be the secret ingredient in transforming lead into gold. Many alchemists thought, for a long time, that sulphur was the key because it was yellow, like gold, and performed endless varying experiments with it. It is unknown where the idea that it also produced the Elixir of Immortality came from, but once it appeared it spread very fast. There are many different descriptions of what the Philosopher's Stone may look like, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who visualized the rough red rock from the first Harry Potter book (Which was, bizarrely, retitled The Sorcerer's Stone in America, effectively cutting it off from the history and mythos which gave the book so much more meaning such as the tale of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, who really did exist and were rumoured to have truly created the Philosopher's Stone and achieved immortality in the fourteenth century), thus making it a parallel to the Pandora legend (which was probably in fact derived from the legend of the Philosopher's Stone). As Eta mentioned, scores of charlatans sought to take advantage of this legend, the most successful appearing at a banquet of rich lords claiming to have a stone; he said that he would multiply any gold presented to him. After being presented with a very large amount of gold indeed, he opened the box that he had said contained the stone; it in fact contained a smokebomb, behind which he made his escape with the gold. A possible ancestor of Kaito's? With those blue eyes, he must have somebody European in his lineage somewhere.

Chapter nine-two hundred years ago

1809-This was the year that James Madison became the fourth president of the USA. At the time, as Eta mentions, there were only 21 states. The Napoleonic Wars were also in their tenth year, with six left to go. The French Revolution which Eta refers to began on the 14th of July, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris; after centuries of revolts squashed and an unbelievable gap between the rich and poor, the people of France took power in this bloody war, which, despite the guillotining of the king in January 1793, continued until 1799, by which point thousands of heads had rolled in revolution, counter-revolution and counter-counter-revolution. With all of this upheaval, it is likely that Eta and Ushi would have up on the guillotine sooner or later. They are in no specific country at this point, but given the toast and the news about the French- who had assisted the Americans in their own revolution over thirty years before, and whose revolution had been a result of the American's success- it is probably somewhere in America.

In the chapter, Ushi receives a telegram; official telegrams were not to be patented for some years yet, but a young man named Campillo in Italy had in fact finished a working design, but had been unable to afford a patent. It is not difficult to imagine a shadowy figure slipping away with rejected designs, giving Ushi a completely private means of communication with what by this point will be the Shadow Syndicate in formation.

Chapter ten-fifty years ago

A massive jump forwards into nearly the present day, and a lot has happened in the meantime; the explanation of the alcoholic codenames is traced back to Prohibition in America in the twenties, when alcohol was banned with little success- gangsters still trafficked in alcohol, the most successful and famous, of course, being Al Capone, who despite basically owning crime in Chicago, was sent to Alcatraz for tax evasion (something attributed here to the notion that he was, in fact, merely a more public pawn of member of the Syndicate, and that Ushi arranged his conviction when he either got too full of himself or was no longer necessary). What became of Al Capone's vast wealth, the majority of which disappeared upon his death, is still a mystery; Geraldo Rivera hosted a much-hyped TV special in 1986 where he opened a hidden vault believed to contain the wealth, but in fact only contained a few empty liquor bottles. It is alluded to here that the money was in fact taken by the Shadow Syndicate.

They are in Japan at this point, meeting Sherry's grandfather (her father's name is mentioned), as well as Applejack and Cider, who some may have guessed are Gin's parents, both bearing psychological scarring as a result of the Second World war, which had ended fourteen years before but which was still affecting the world. Pisco too is mentioned. This is also the confirmation that Eta and Ushi are, yes, Vermouth and the Boss of the Organization- Red Rum. This is probably the earliest point where manga history appears, merging with real history.

Chapter eleven-forty years ago

This chapter tells the truth behind the Crow Association massacre mentioned in volume 30 of the manga, when detectives gather at the Sunset Manor under the premise of being invited by the Kaitou Kid (this is Hakuba's first appearance in DC). Karasuma Renya is given to be a Syndicate member who had stolen a fortune, and the two mystery travellers who brought marijuana are shown to be Eta and Ushi.

Chapter twelve-thirty-five to thirty years ago

This chapter deals with what became of Gin's family, his parents and sister, and Sherry's parents' wedding is also mentioned. Gin's sister's name is not properly given, only a nevertheless very telling nickname. It is mentioned that Gin's father was the one who revealed the Dream to Ushi, accidentally discussing one of his wife's prophetic dreams, though he quickly realized what he had done and altered the explanation only to say that it was a Japanese boy who would become the Syndicate-destroying Silver Bullet. Ushi now knows about the Silver Bullet, though he, unlike Eta, does not know what he will look like; and he knows nothing of the Angel.

Chapter thirteen-twenty-three to twenty-two years ago

This chapter contains two fateful meetings, explaining the origins of the persona of “Sharon Vineyard” and how she came to know Kuroba Toichi and Fujimine Yukiko; fateful because they are two of the four who are to become, as it were, the parents of her son. An image of her children is also mentioned, one that Toichi, at least, will not forget.

Chapter fourteen-twenty years ago

A very quick mention of Jodie's parents' deaths is mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The origins of the Kaitou Kid are also dealt with, as in fact created by Eta's first attempt to recruit Toichi to the Syndicate in order to keep him and his possible descendants close to her- though at this time he was, of course, not known as the Kaitou Kid and it is implied that many staple features of his heists, most notably the hanglider, were added later, which is why Sake, initially, does not know that he is Kuroba Toichi nor that he rejected the Syndicate once before.

Chapter fifteen-ten years ago

Fast-forward to Toichi's death, his identity apparently deduced due to an injudicious comment made by Eta about the Kaitou Kid. It is also mentioned that Eta has seen her son in both Kaito and Shinichi, and also sees her daughter in Aoko as the Angel. She has clearly not yet seen Ran, as the appearance of Aoko leads her to decide that Kaito may be the Silver Bullet.

Chapter sixteen-three years ago

This one, of course, takes place during the Golden Apple flashback arc, by which point Eta is starting to keep up the facades of both Chris and Sharon Vineyard. This is where she meets Ran for the first time, and is shocked to find out that not only do there appear to be two Silver Bullets, but two Angels. This is a highly important scene to reinterpret from Eta's POV, and was a lot of fun to write XD

Chapter seventeen-two years ago

This clearly takes place at the times when Shinichi first shrinks and the whole Haido Hotel business. This episode only serves to further confuse Eta as to who is the true Silver Bullet- but thinking that Shinichi had died once is enough to intensify her desire to protect them.

Chapter eighteen-a year and a half ago

The school play incident, the first time that Shinichi returns to his own body via an antidote. Further confusion for Eta, who by this point is disguised as Dr Ariade (why am I still doing notes for these chapters? I'm just rehashing events that happened in full in the manga from a more revelatory POV).

Chapter nineteen-One year ago

The busjacking case. This is when Eta first begins to have second thoughts about letting Shinichi fight the Syndicate, as this is the first time she's seen him handle a case in his kiddy body and thus been exposed to his limitations. She also entertains the notion that perhaps there are two Silver Bullets as a failsafe, and that she may have to choose which will be the true Silver Bullet. (Aoko and Ran don't cause as much trouble as the boys, so she is not worrying about them; in any case, she may be interpreting the dream as to mean that their role comes after the shooting has ended).

Chapter twenty-several months ago

The Monster Party incident, which is one of the most revealingly enigmatic cases for Eta. Her inner turmoil between her love for her “children” and her love for Ushi, which still exists after everything, is evident, as well as the true reason for her flashbacks- and the point where she finally decided that, perhaps, Shinichi needs to be taken out of the game.

 

Eta's name was derived from the English word “Eternity”, although one could argue that the word may have been derived from her name. Only when researching other possible meanings for the name for the riddle did I discover the vast number of alternative meanings it has, from places to features of subatomic physics. It is also apparently a highly derogatory term for a group called the Burakumin, for which I apologize. I have also been informed that it means “Case” in Vietnamese.

Ushi's name was derived from the Japanese word “Fushi”, meaning “immortality”, from which Mt Fuji's name also derives. It doesn't have much in the way of alternative meanings, thankfully, though apparently it means “Ox” in Vietnamese, which seems oddly apt for the large, strong man.

 

I do not claim to own any of the characters in Meitantei Conan. They are the intellectual property of Aoyama Gosho. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Native Americans etc and their rich and diverse histories belong to themselves, although some would say that they belong to the world- a phrase that generally comes from the kind of person who thinks it's okay to dig up old graves and stick the bodies and mummies into a museum for us to gawk at and clearly does not understand the phrase “final resting place”.