I’d written a preliminary Capella character analysis in 2024, and now I’m posting a revision of it with Season 4 content as well as positing that Otto’s the one best suited to curing her trauma of the characters in Re:Zero. I believe that since Otto had similar (Ep. 40) although not 1-to-1 issues as Capella in the past with being feared for his Divine Protection like Emerada Lugunica had been feared for her combination of beauty, intelligence, and cruelty, the last of which may not have always been a core trait of hers, Otto may be the man best suited to curing Capella’s trauma since he has high emotional intelligence, high intelligence in general, and was similarly feared for something he possessed, making him the person most able to relate to Capella on a personal level, in addition to his lived experience in how he’d actually fallen in love with an animal in the past in a cute white cat, which is something Subaru obviously couldn’t push back against when Capella said what she’d did to him regarding if he can still love Emilia if she were a fly whereas Otto can.
Of course, I know Otto has no way of beating Capella in a fight, but in a fight with many people, I believe Otto may be the only person in the world who can alleviate or get to the bottom of Capella’s trauma by talking her down and seeing her for the person she is rather than purely as a monster given Ep. 40 (Season 2 Ep. 15) showed that Otto had lived as a merchant for years and hadn’t really truly opened up to anybody until he decided he’d become best friends with Subaru, and Capella has obviously not opened up to anybody in years, making Otto the best person to cure her trauma from a narrative standpoint.
When Capella stepped on Crusch, which prompted Subaru to tell Capella to get her leg off of her, to which Capella responded whether he’s infatuated with her beautiful legs or just Crusch, who she referred to as female meat, saying she does have quite an erotic figure as she stepped on Crusch’s breasts, that remark about about being infatuated with her legs was clearly an instance of fishing for a compliment. After a bit of a fight, Capella sprouted a long tail and knocked Subaru to the side with it before asking if her beauty rendered him speechless. That was the second time Capella has tried to fish for a compliment, so this likely points to an insecurity she may have.
After she revealed to Subaru that the flies and the black dragon were the hostages, she then prodded him by asking if he found it disgusting, to which Subaru called it blood-curdling. Capella coolly says that it’s so disgusting and repulsive that it makes him hate her. She says seeing that made him hate her on a visceral level, and that’s the “right” answer. She said that no one could love creatures like those. Subaru then requests for her to kill him, to which she says she’d never do something so barbaric and throws out that she wants as many people as possible, for as long as possible, as deeply as possible to love her as being the reason she doesn’t kill him ’cause it’s her wish, which is very particular given she’s been pushing him to hate her, so I take it that she does have an insecurity or perhaps moreso trauma after all, probably about her own worth or ability to be loved.
My takeaway from these incidents is that Capella deeply desires to be loved and that she pushes others to hate her ’cause she fundamentally believes that no one can love her. Capella transformed other human beings into creatures she feels no one can possibly love ’cause that makes these creatures dependent on her to an extent and at her mercy, much like how she may have been treated as a piece of meat in the past by men, similarly at their mercy, and that’s why she refers to others as meat scraps, ’cause she’s projecting her own trauma onto others. Additionally, doing this also makes people hate her, reinforcing her belief that she’s unlovable.
After Subaru says that there’s already someone he likes as being the reason he isn’t into Crusch, Capella remarked that can he really swear he hasn’t had lewd thoughts about Crusch for even a second? She asked him if he didn’t think about stroking Crusch’s hair or kissing her supple lips. Capella then raged about how Subaru shouldn’t dare take his carnal desire for the one he fancies he can’t speak of in the open and call it love ’cause that’s her lived experience with men and projected it onto him. She then belittles Subaru by saying if Emilia were a fly, he wouldn’t still love her ’cause she believes love is not possible without physical attraction.
Wilhelm had noted in Ep. 54 that the Emerada Lugunica who existed over 50 years ago was beautiful and also ruthless, which matches the description of Capella, so whether Capella really was Capella or someone who saw her herself in Emerada Lugunica, both have trauma over seeing themselves as unlovable. Judging from that previous content of Capella, she doesn’t believe that having high sexual desire for someone is the same as having love for that person. When you couple that with her fishing for compliments, I fully believe Capella may have slept around a lot with tons of men, but none of them loved her or accepted her for who she is, which might be why she calls others meat scraps ’cause she personally feels that she herself is a piece of meat like in the manner she spoke degradingly about Crusch. Capella would call others meat scraps ’cause if everyone else is a meat scrap, then that elevates herself by bringing down everyone to her level. Thus, she still fishes for compliments and does all she does ’cause she still clings to the hope that somebody will love her even if nobody has in all her years of living.
Capella’s Authority may have manifested due to her desire to be loved that was tempered by her belief that she’s unlovable, and thus, it allowed her to transform herself and others, making them at her mercy ’cause she doesn’t believe anybody could really devote himself/herself or truly care about her unless she did this, which is how she molded someone like Meili as shown in the flashback of Ep. 76, and that’s why her Authority of Lust ended up being the way it did, as a means to reinforce her toxic belief about herself although I believe her trauma is curable with enough effort and investment in her given she keeps fishing for comments, which is a sign of her not having completely given up.
I may be wrong, but I believe Subaru will increasingly be pushed to make hard decisions in the last few arcs to up the stakes compared to what has already happened, and that may require Otto to be the guy who looks for alternatives or to be greedy, and he has to push through to reverse the transformations of Reala’s husband and the Priestella citizens by thinking of innovative solutions, such as befriending Capella.