Chapter 3 - Curiosities

 Not everybody knows this but before the black plague of the XIV century people used to bathe a lot and were very very clean.



To the point that if you visited somebody the first thing you were offered was a bath and you ended up even bathing with your host and stuff hahaha... embarrassing much?



Then medicine went kind of crazy over the belief that a bath would open your pores and invite bacteria in your body and the world became stinkier and stinkier as we approacedh the modern world.



Kings and queens bathed even less than poor people and fully clothed too, and they would drown themselves in make up and perfumes to cover the smell.



Circe's lifestyle derives from ancient times, who knows these witches go way back, to the times of the Sybils and maybe even before that.



She knows the rest of the world is smelly.




 This is a bit of an odd fact but nutmegs shaped history and countries.

I suggest you read the following book  that will totally explain why nutmeg is brought up so often in this comic as something very precious.



Circe manages to grow a nutmeg tree - the fruits of that tree alone might be the main source of income for the entire Circeius and the reason why they lead such a luxurious lifestyle.



Nutmegs were thought to cure al sorts of illnesses and were considered aphrodisiacs as well.



Nutmegs are the reason New York became New York.



Thousands of people died because of this spice.

Today we use it in mashed potatoes.



Back then  you had a nutmeg and you were a millionaire.









Kane and the library.

Circe knows very well that Kane loves books, it was the entire foundation of her plan in Long Overdue, remember? That's how she framed him...



She was probably seriously trying to hypnotize him away from the library... but probably should not have started the dialogue with the word: library.

I mean the moment he heard the word he stopped listening to her and walked in, instead.

So her power of persuasion did not work.






 





Of course there are several reason as to why she does not want him there: he would disturb Gemma in her studies; it's her library and she probably has valuable books in there; he is a stinking pirate and most of all... he did tear the Book of Power she had created for Nicoli.
















 Circe's tattoos in the meantime keep appearing, disappearing, changing.



Her constant transformation also makes me wonder what are her husbands really into hahaha she looks like a fish here.





Weird dudes.



So, if what we see is an illusion, I wonder how grooming this woman works.

Is her hair really long or not?





I wonder....

















Argi is taller than Martin.

All the more Kane doesn't want him to stand close to him, hahaha.








 This chapter was released across the month of November and December.



November 11th is my grandmother's birthday.

December was the month they told us she was going to die.





My grandma used to talk to the mailman exactly like Dora talks to Argi.



I drew this on her birthday too.





















Let's talk about this polishing business.

There's a common misconception that a pirate's treasure would be made solely of gold or precious materials. Clearly gold and copper are not polished the same way.






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Truth be told all the gold coming from the colonies had created such an inflation that a huge economical crisis swept across Europe. So a treasure is actually anything lucrative.
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Like I mentioned before, at one point, nutmeg was more precious than gold.
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For Kane is no different and in fact we see the treasure room several times full of all sorts of things.
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In chapter 6 we see it for the first time, when Castalia is sent to polish it... as a punishment.
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Here's a series of images from that chapter where we see the treasure room.
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In chapter 7 we get to see that the room is full of salame, cheese, fabric, barrels probably containing water, wine, preserved food of all sorts, maybe apples and the doctor's lemons. 
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Kane explains that the room is never completely full, and at the moment they have enough stuff to carry on for 4 months, and this happens right before they attack the ship from Parma - where they get more prosciutto and sausages and the sisters end up dancing on the table.
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In chapter 13 we see Josh polishing the treasure (and we see behind him some of the prosciutto from the ship from Parma) and in chapter 15 Castalia punishes herself and goes back to polish. The prosciutto is still there.

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In Long Overdue, Nicoli picks this room as her cabin. It's here that Pifo keeps his cucumbers for cucumberfest.


So all of this to say that what we see the characters polish is not necessarily gold, it could be silver, it could be copper, it could be pewter... but most importantly what matters most is not the concept of the material to be polished, the important concept is: whether this things needs to be polished or not, you've got to keep polishing and Kane has polished for 4 years. That's why he is so good at it.
















































The last thing we need to address is the mercurial nature of Kane.

We had grown so used to see the quiet serene looking guy that we had forgotten how much of that is the product of Castalia's presence.



Remember what happened when Castalia was away and Josh died? Emoking happened.



But do you also remember what Kane is like when Castalia is not around? Let the doctor remind you XDDD








For myself all I can add is...  Kane can be quite passive aggressive at times.

When you drop somebody in a new environment with different rules, you truly see the stuff they are made of, so some of their true nature will honestly shine through hahaha.