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A puppet without its strings is but a doll.

Oichi is that pretty porcelain doll.

She is a person shattered twice and taped back together again and again. But it only lasts so long and so pieces eventually go missing forever, again and again, again and again. She is a person with holes and chips in her, a victim of war.

The first time she's broken, it's by the death of her husband. They had been joined for political reasons but soon came to love each other; however, his way of affection was distant, sometimes cruel. She doesn't understand his way, and is hurt by it, but she loves him nonetheless. Her husband is shot down in front of her, a bullet intended for Oichi herself, by her brother. He tells her as he bleeds out, "You killed him." And she believes it. Oichi descends into despair, her guilt festering and eating her whole.

She was born sister to a man called Nobunaga Oda, the Demon King, a man feared and revered across the country and without a speck of kindness in his heart. He is a man steeped in darkness itself. And being of the same blood as he, Oichi too is steeped in darkness. She is an empath of sorts-- so perhaps this is her true nature or perhaps it is as a result of spending so much time with a man as cruel as her brother. But any way it is, Oichi has a dark streak through her, a whimsical lilt of cruelty.

Her brother treats her with a disdain reserved for garbage. He treated her with a ruthless cruelty before she was married off and after she is widowed, this does not change. She is not allowed time to recover from her loss, and is instead thrown into war. Here is where the first fatal hairline cracks begin to slide through her. She hears voices, the voice of her dead husband; in her mind, he forgives her for what she has done, but things do not stop being her fault. In her mind, he cheers her on when she fights, and killing becomes a joy. She completely throws herself into the fight, every inch. Pieces begin to fall off of her and are lost forever.

Things that weren't funny before are funny now, and as the cracks travel through her porcelain body, she becomes to darkness. More and more and more and more.

She fights and fights day and night, summer and winter, until the cracks become too much and the voices tell her, kill everyone, kill everyone everyone everyone everyone everyone. And she does. She kills the enemy and her own comrades and then she comes to her brother in the burning castle of Honno-ji, lead there by a feeling, a color. There, they fight. And this is how she breaks the second time. After she kills him, there's the emptiness of having achieved nothing. The emptiness of being defeated in victory.

It's too much for her. She falls to pieces. She can't go on living like that. So she forgets. Forgets everything.

And having forgotten everything, she wanders. Wanders far and wide and she's regressed, back to the time where she fought for her brother. She thinks he's still alive, has forgotten her husband entirely, and as a new child she leads the remnants of her brother's forces. They dub her the Demon Queen and she seems to be okay with that. Things are no longer her fault; she's only doing as she's told. She refuses to take blame, much like a child, and feels no active guilt. But still, she knows something isn't right. People aren't miserable like this, they don't hurt like this. So something is wrong; surely there must be a hole in this heart of hers.

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