His character story is titled “Danse Macabre,” which is a piece by CAMILLE Saint-Saëns! At first I thought it was a Liszt reference but turns out Liszt’s piece is a transcription of Saint-Saëns’ piece lol.

Please take the following information with heaps of salt. I’m not an expert in European history or Classical music, I just like researching them.

Danse Macabre — The French Artistic and Literature Allegory

The Danse Macabre genre first emerged in the 14th to 15th century as a response to the Black Plague. It depicts skeletons, decomposing corpses, and Death as a figure, alongside similar imagery with the message of *memento mori — “*remember that you will die.”

The motif saw a second surge of popularity in the 19th century, the Romantic Period of music. Composers like Saint-Saëns and Liszt were extremely prevalent in this period. In 1975, Saint-Saëns premiered the full symphonic piece, ”Danse Macabre,” based on Henri Cazalis’ poem “Égalité, Fraternité,” the title of which is a reference to the motto of the French revolution, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” meaning, “Libert, Equality, Fraternity.”

Saint-Saëns and His ”Danse Macabre”

Danse Macabre holds a lot of the death imagery found in the art allegory of the Medieval times. According to Wikipedia, the piece is based on the tale of Death playing his fiddle during Halloween and prompting the dead to rise from their graves and dance with him until the cockerel signals dawn, after which they return to their graves for another year.

I won’t do a full analysis of the piece, because that would be very lengthy and off-topic, but all you have to know is that the piece has a lot of techniques that allude to the devil, death, midnight, etc.

From this, we can tell that Camille’s story is probably not going to be a very happy one.

But there’s more!

Liszt’s Piano Transcription and His Obsession With Death

This section is a bonus and has no real evidence, but it’s cool to consider.

Liszt is one of my favourite classical composers, in terms of story. His compositions aren’t as great as some of his peers (but he makes really good piano transcriptions), but that’s not very important. What is important is his obsession with death.

The “Mephisto Waltz,” the “Faust Symphony,” “Totentanz”… the list — or should I say Liszt — goes on forever. Not long after the premiere of Danse Macabre, Liszt (the legend himself) made a piano transcription, because he loves things surrounding death. Under the assumption that Hypergryph knows this and likes Liszt, I will continue with my baseless speculation.

Alan Walker (the musicologist, not the music producer) stated that “Liszt frequented Parisian "hospitals, gambling casinos and asylums" in the early 1830s, and he even went down into prison dungeons in order to see those condemned to die.” If, for whatever reason, Danse Macabre is a distant reference to Liszt, then this is worth considering.

What Can We Assume About Camille?

I’m not well-versed in the lore surrounding vampires, but from the above mentioned points we can assume:

• Camille’s story will contain a lot of death
• The story may be directly related to dead bodies (not just as his job, but maybe something to do with his powers or backstory?)
• The story may be directly related to the Sarkaz, or his identity as a vampire. This is because Danse Macabre makes many references to the Devil, and the Sarkaz are often likened to the Devil or Demons.

Some other stuff I think is cool:

• Camille and Saint-Saëns share a given name. That can’t be a coincidence
• The Danse Macabre allegory is a very fitting theme considering Camille’s race being a Vampire and his job as a keeper of Seš’qa
• The wing theme (although very unlikely) may be a reference to Sephiroth, or fallen angels. Or it’s a reference to how the Devil is usually portrayed in modern media as bat-winged

Overall, very cool design!

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Thank you for reading to the bottom! Please let me know your thoughts about this and feel free add or correct anything, especially about the vampire lore because I am not a lore reader 😅.