r/ShadowHearts

SPOILERS AHEAD

She was my favorite character in the game by far. At first, I thought her character was somewhat predictable and passive, just another eye-candy that mostly reacted to events happening around her. Similar to my first impression of Alice, but a bit more mature, assertive, and less subjected to Yuri's sexual comments(I know it's a common character trope in JPRGs and anime where the male character is meaning well but comin, but thank God they toned it down in Covenant)

As the story went on, I began to like her more, the way she's a constant presence without taking over the scene, and she often felt like the only serious adult in the room along with Gepetto.

By the time we got to Japan, it was clear that she was going to take a much bigger role in the game, with lots of foreshadows being placed. This is also where I began feeling bad for her. She clearly had feelings for Yuri, and Yuri seemed aware and wasn't exactly opposed either, but Alice obviously was not going to be replaced. It's another well known trope, the dead girlfriend/wife, expect that Karin is on the receiving end of this.

Alice is the reason he started this journey, and the game regularly mentioned how much she meant to Yuri. Karin knew this, had to accept that her feelings for him likely won't be reciprocated.

With the game's ending Karin is send back to the past, married Yuri's father, and gives birth to Yuri himself. Imagining how she must've felt makes me sad. She couldn't be with the man she loves, and ends up becoming the mother of that man instead. It's a different kind of love, a bit of "sweet home Alabama", but she doesn't have much of a choice, if that's how she has to love him, then she will, and she did. When she is later killed, protecting her son/first love, she already knew well in advance that this is how she'll die. All those years of keeping this knowledge to herself, pretending like everything is so normal, raising a son named after his future self, and that her younger self will fall in love with him...oof!

Assuming Yuri's mother was some generic, mysterious woman instead of Karin, and the time and reality didn't get warped after the final battle, then the two of them could've been together in the singular timeline.

If that's the case, then from Yuri's perspective, although overcoming a grief of a dead lover and moving on to love someone else is extremely difficult, that's what widows and widowers do in real life, and that's what their dead lover would've wanted, for the surviving partner to be happy. So there is at least a bittersweet closure.

But the way game's story ended, from Karin's perspective, being overshadowed by her lover's longing for his dead partner, which isn't anybody's fault including Alice, and having to accept the different way of loving him, and ending up literally dying for him, while he pursues his path to be with someone he truly loves, someone that's not her...that's rough, isn't it?