Once upon a time, there lived a girl. Like most humans, she was unaware of the true form of the world around her. She didn't know, for example, that her existence was only one of thousands, millions in the wide sea of kakera. She didn't know that because of that, her life was as worthless and disposable as a chess piece's, to those with the power to travel the kakera, the many gameboards they could play around on in order to keep themselves from dying of boredom. Witches.
And, unfortunately for this girl, two of them had taken an interest in the world she lived in. One was Lady Lambdadelta, the Witch of the Absolute — the strongest witch in the universe, capable of making any outcome of any event a certainty to rival destiny itself. The other witch was never named, but she would be the one to have the greatest impact on the girl whom she had chosen as her piece.
Perhaps their "game" lasted for a very long time. Or it could have been over in minutes. Regardless, to a piece on a gameboard, unable to change its own fate, the time between each move can seem like an eternity. So, this girl had no way of knowing how long her life had been toyed with, not at first.
But she was about to find out very, very soon. After all, Lambdadelta's power was a formidable one, and though the unknown witch was the creator of the game they were playing, not even she could win against it. Yet, the witch persisted in trying to defeat her opponent, and the result of her efforts caused a schism between the two sides of the game she had originally planned — the beginning and her intended end. Even after many repetitions of the game, she could think of no way to bring them back together again. In the world of witches, this is known as a logic error, a terrifying hell that locks the mind of a witch away from the rest of his or her existence until the paradox is solved. And, as boredom is the poison of witches, logic errors pose an extremely dangerous threat to their lives — not to mention their sanity. So, fearing this fate, the witch became distraught and left the game partway through without bringing it to any semblance of an end — and thus abandoning the girl who was her piece to the logic error.
The great witch Lambdadelta, with her power to create a crushing, absolute fate, was now her opponent. Hardly an even match. What exactly happened to the girl as a result of that witch's decision is never specifically stated, but if a logic error is hell for a witch, then how much more terrible would it be for a piece, who didn't even know she was trapped in the first place...?
"I am who I am; Frederica Bernkastel. Furude Rika and Frederica are different. Shame on you if you thought so."
The time this girl spent in the logic error was in fact, all the events which transpired in Higurashi no Naku koro ni.1 Her name was Rika Furude, who had been trapped in an eternally repeating summer in the village of Hinamizawa. During this summer, one of Rika's friends would be consumed by the Hinamizawa Syndrome — a disease that would cause paranoia followed by madness — and thus set into motion a bloodstained chain of events that would always end with Rika being murdered, and the destruction of the entire village. Each time Rika died, the guardian deity of Hinamizawa — Hanyuu, or "Oyashiro-sama" as she was more commonly known in the village — would use her powers to send her to another version of Hinamizawa. This essentially "turned back time" and allowed Rika ( who would have kept all her memories formed in the previous Hinamizawa ) to try and prevent the disaster from occurring, so she could stop her death and reach a world without tragedy.
The piece had finally become aware of the hell she had been thrown into, but it was to little avail. For a very long time — about a hundred years to be precise — she was trapped in this tragic life. With each repetition of what seemed like an unshakable fate, Rika fell deeper and deeper into hopelessness. Though she would always act like the little girl she was supposed to be in order to not alarm her friends, she had actually become cynical, pessimistic, more like an adult than a child.
Enter Frederica Bernkastel. Originally, "she" was nothing more than a made-up name, formed from Rika's own name ( Furude + Rika = Furuderika = Frederica ) and the name of the wine Rika drank to temporarily escape from her suffering. It was what Rika called her true self, she who had surpassed humans by being able to live for so long and travel between different worlds. But, as the cycles passed, one after another, Rika no longer thought of herself as the child and human "Rika Furude" — but instead more and more as the adult and witch "Frederica Bernkastel." It was no longer simply a nickname. In essence, it was her darker side, the one who was becoming desensitized to death and horror. It was clear that if things continued like this, if she was unable to stop the suffering of those she loved most, she would lose connection with the child she was meant to be altogether. Rika Furude's heart would be broken.
In the end, Rika did finally manage to reach the miracle of a world without tragedy. A few months later, she made the decision to "give up being a witch" and "return to being Furude Rika, rather than the witch Bernkastel."
Thus, that was the true birth of the witch named Bernkastel, as known in Umineko no Naku Koro ni — created from the struggles and despair of all the Rikas who had lived and died before reaching the world of miracles. Against all odds, she had broken free of the logic error she was trapped in, and so she had defeated Lambdadelta, earning both the right to become a witch and the title of "the Witch of Miracles." Lambdadelta also granted Bernkastel her original title, that of "the strongest witch in the universe" for her victory — but only after swearing that she would win it back one day.
However, it wasn't quite exactly "the end." While Rika stayed behind in the world of Hinamizawa, Bernkastel set off across the vast sea of kakera without a single look backward.
"Since I keep on thinking, I will have an eternity to live. In other words, if I stop thinking, I can die at any time. But, if I begin to think, I'll live again at any time.
Therefore, because I am whimsical, I am inconsistent. Living as I wish; dying as I wish; reviving as I wish."
The events of Umineko no Naku Koro ni start three years after the events of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni end. By this time, Bernkastel had long since separated from Rika and had already wandered the sea of kakera for more than a thousand years. During her journey, she came upon a rather interesting world with an island by the name of Rokkenjima. She soon discovered that Rokkenjima was caught in a time loop, similar to what she experienced in Hinamizawa, except this time the culprit was already known from the beginning: the Endless and Golden Witch, Beatrice.
When Bernkastel first arrived in the kakera of Rokkenjima in Legend of the Golden Witch, she told Beatrice that she was merely an observer, there because she "heard [Beatrice] had begun something interesting": keeping the Ushiromiya family locked in a two-day cycle of eternal torment while one of its members, Battler Ushiromiya, sought to free them by denying Beatrice's existence as a witch. But outside of Beatrice's presence, she offered to lend her power to someone offscreen (presumably the player, though it could also be Battler) in order to prolong Beatrice's show, because "with the way things are now I'm sure to get tired of it."
In Turn of the Golden Witch, it was revealed that Bernkastel came to Rokkenjima specifically for the purpose of being Beatrice's opponent, something that the Endless Witch had already guessed. For that very reason, another witch joined the tea party: none other than Lambdadelta, who still had a grudge against Bernkastel for defeating her. So, sides were taken once again, with Beatrice and Lambdadelta on the witch side, against Battler and Bernkastel on the human side. At the end of Banquet of the Golden Witch, Bernkastel brought in Ange Ushiromiya, Battler's younger sister who did not go to Rokkenjima because she was sick that day, in order to prevent Battler's defeat. Bernkastel had twice visited the world in which only one person, Eva Ushiromiya, had returned from Rokkenjima alive. Once, to poison the six-year-old Ange's mind against Eva — who had become her adoptive mother — so that she wouldn't have any thoughts except wanting her family to return from Rokkenjima. And once, to tell a teenage Ange that her family was trapped in an endless loop of time, and that the Endless Witch Beatrice was responsible for it.
After that, Ange was all too willing to become Bernkastel's piece for the fourth game, Alliance of the Golden Witch. However, there was one condition, imposed by Bernkastel herself: on the pain of death, Ange could not reveal to Battler that she was his sister. Yet when Battler was threatening to lose heart in his fight again, Ange's desire to see her brother triumph over Beatrice and return home won, and she told him who she really was. The spectacle of Ange then being torn apart bit by bit while she was still alive enraged Battler and fueled his determination to end Beatrice's game once and for all. His confrontation with Beatrice at the end of this particular game resulted in Beatrice's "death" in that she all but resigned and lost the will to continue... but not the time loop being broken. Not in Battler and his family being freed.
Just as planned.
It is revealed at the end of the fourth game that Bernkastel and Lambdadelta were actually working together, plotting to have Beatrice and Battler fight against each other for all eternity just so they can be entertained. In a sense, they were slowly turning Beatrice's gameboard into one for them to play on — and by End of the Golden Witch came around, they had usurped it completely. Beatrice was nothing more than a living doll, Battler had been completely ignored, and all of the human lives on Rokkenjima were theirs to do as they pleased. At first, Battler objected to their hijacking of Beatrice's game and refused to participate, but he later changed his mind, and the two witches allowed him to continue.
However, witches don't like waiting around for humans, and by the time Battler rejoined, the fifth game had already progressed to the halfway point. This time, Bernkastel introduced a new piece of her own — a girl named Erika Furudo who had fallen off a pleasure boat and had washed up on Rokkenjima's shores. Her role in the game was that of a detective, and Bernkastel had personally given her the task of shattering the Illusion of the Witch. For Bernkastel, it wasn't enough to simply play with Beatrice's gameboard; no, it would be far more entertaining to smash it altogether. It is in this episode that Bernkastel's cruelty becomes apparent at last; the entire game is revolves around terrifying one of the Ushiromiyas and exposing her most hidden feelings, as well as shattering her hopes and beliefs with a truth that Bernkastel created to paint over the real truth of Rokkenjima, so that Beatrice would never be able to return to life.
Eager to obey her "master," Erika did indeed create a truth that could break the Illusion of the Witch. Yet, her attempt is foiled at the last moment by Battler, who managed to realize the truth behind Beatrice's game and created a truth of his own that could not be denied — though it was not strong enough to obliterate Erika's. However, Erika's vicious onslaught had been enough to make Beatrice lose the will to live. She disappeared, crumbled into dust before Battler could save her, and not even his ascension to the position of Golden Sorcerer shortly after could change that. From a strictly objective point of view, it would have seemed like Bernkastel had won at last. But, it didn't sit well with her at all. To Bernkastel, it didn't matter that Battler had only thwarted Erika with what was little more than a technicality. It didn't matter that Beatrice's game had essentially ended in the human side's favor. It hadn't been the ending she wanted. So, she didn't object to Battler wanting to begin another game, in order to prove that he truly had understood Beatrice's motives. It would just give her another opportunity to grind whatever hope there was left for Beatrice into little bloody bits, to create a truly brutal ending that would stave off her boredom longer than something happier. So began the sixth game, Dawn of the Golden Witch. It would be the last one that Erika would participate in, Bernkastel having already written her off as a piece to be discarded regardless of whether she won or lost.
1. This is not explicitly stated in the visual novel, although the writer of the When They Cry series, Ryukishi07, has confirmed that it is so. "[Bernkastel]’s probably the personality of the 100-year-old witch that Rika separated herself from in Saikoroshi-hen. Isolated in the sea of fragments, she must have become an existence that was a crystallization of only the very cruelest parts left over from inside the 100-year-old witch."
bernkastel ◆ umineko no naku koro ni ◆ not reserved [ II ]