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The Eyes of the World (called individually the Left Eye of Darkness and the Right Eye of Light) were a set of ancient powers and the "treasures" of the Lumen Sages and the Umbra Witches. The sages were given the Right Eye while the Umbra Witches received the Left Eye.[1]

The Eyes of the World are an essential plot concept in the first two Bayonetta games and desired by many differing factions in order to achieve their own goals using their power.

Official Description[]

Legend of Aesir[]

The Legend of Aesir... A legend from the dawn of time.

Nobody knows where the world came from. A struggle caused the Trinity of Realities to be split into three realms: light, darkness, and chaos. Obviously, our world was the one born from chaos. The three worlds all needed rulers. Most of all, ours. And the one that ruled the chaos became known as Aesir. Aesir spent the first eternity quietly looking upon the Earth from his holy mountain. Where we only see reality and make it match our rules of the world, Aesir saw through reality, and those visions became our world. These observations became Aesir's power. Aesir's eyes were truly the eyes that created the world.

However, Aesir pitied the humans for their naivety and lack of free will, so the power he wielded was split into two equal halves and entrusted each to humanity's instincts: the Right Eye of Light, and the Left Eye of Darkness. By dividing the power of the eyes of Aesir, humans gained free will... They could now choose. With control of the Eyes of the World, the eyes that determine destiny, humans could choose their own paths. They awoke to their own identities. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but now we were thinking reeds, and we took our big first step towards grand prosperity.

The inheritors of the eyes of Aesir had been granted the power of creation.

Luka, telling Bayonetta of Aesir and The Eyes' origin.

Antonio's Notebook - Treasure of the Clans: The Eyes of the World[]

Several hundred years ago, the now vanished clans of the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages stood as overseers of time immemorial, thriving from their remote European base in Vigrid.

However, their reign quickly came to a close via a violent war that ended in their mutual destruction... Their war, lasting for 100 years, saw the Witches and their campaign of assassination push them to the brink of victory; yet, the people's fear of these powerful women spawned the witch hunts, and eventually both clans vanished into the ether. Long serving the powers that be, it is said the clans did not use their power to interfere with history, but rather to protect its passage. We are told that they carried out these duties via use of their treasured "Eyes of the World

Yet, what this statement means is anyone's guess. What is clear is that the clans' very existence was closely linked to historical change, so much so that even kings and emperors feared the clans' power. There were two "Eyes of the World," one each controlled by the witches and the sages, which when used together were able to carry out their stated task of overseeing. To prevent the power of these ‘Eyes' from being used for nefarious purposes, they were equally split, and the clans prohibited inter-relations in an effort to maintain the balance of power that existed between them.

The irony is that the grand war that led to the clans' destruction was sparked by these very treasures. After their downfall, the "Eyes of the World" suddenly disappeared. Information about them is extremely limited...

What sort of item were the eyes? What shape did they take? All this remains unknown. The black market recently saw a large gem stone come into the market bearing the name of the "Eyes of the World;" although, it may be a different item under the same name, or even a mafia scam meant to gauge market reaction.

There is no proof that the ancient treasure was actually a gem, but there is reliable, albeit troubling information regarding the treasure and the CEO of the Ithavoll Group. It is said that he is in search of some unknown item for his development project in next-generation energy, but whether it has any relation to this matter requires further research.

History[]

After the Trinity of Realities was formed following the First Armageddon, the God of Chaos Aesir, as part of his role as the god that governed the Human World, watched over humanity and came to pity their circumstances. He decided to give them his power of overseeing and creating history by crafting the Eyes of the World, entrusting each to humanity's instincts of light and dark to grant them free will at the inadvertent cost of splitting himself into two. The group of humans who held and protected the Eyes became known as the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages.[2] Both the Umbra and Lumen watched over history using the power of the Eyes, with a particular member of each clan acting as the inheritor of each respective Eye to maintain the balance of light and dark.

Five hundred years before the events of Bayonetta, a Lumen Sage named Balder had come to inherit the Right Eye and he came to fall in love with an Umbra Witch, Rosa. The two lovers conceived a child, breaking an age-old tenet between the two clans that stated any intersection between light and dark would bring calamity to the world because of the combined power of both of the Eyes potentially being unleashed. As a consequence, Balder was exiled from the Lumen and Rosa was imprisoned, their child raised among the Umbra as an outcast.

The breaking of this tenet led to tensions between the two groups, eventually escalating into the Clan Wars, This conflict resulted in the near total devastation of the Lumen and leaving the Umbra as the victors. However, as the surviving member of his clan and supposedly as a way to claim both of the Eyes for himself, Balder then seemed to enact the Witch Hunts in order to destroy the battle-weary witches and effectively erase both of the clans from history. The Eyes themselves were thought lost to history until five hundred years later.

Story[]

Bayonetta[]

Twenty years after awakening from her slumber, Bayonetta is looking for clues to her forgotten past by searching for the Eyes in order to restore her memory. Having woken up with a red jewel in her Umbran Watch, she comes to believe that the Eyes are actually gemstones that hold magical power and that she already possesses one of them. From Enzo's work as an informant, she learns the the supposed other half of the set is being sold on the black market and travels to the town of Vigrid to obtain it.

It eventually turns out that Balder had used mention the Eyes to bring Bayonetta to him, revealing that he used the agents of Paradiso, her fellow witch Jeanne, and even Bayonetta's younger self to lure her there. He reveals that the Eyes are in fact inherited by people, not physical objects, and that Bayonetta as his daughter is the Left Eye while he is the Right. Wishing to use the Eyes to awaken the god-like powers of creation Aesir possessed, Balder explains he intends to awaken Jubileus, The Creator to rebirth of the universe, using both himself and Bayonetta's powers as the Eyes to do so. With her reclaimed memories now restoring the power of the Left Eye within her, Balder nearly succeeds but the intervention of Jeanne means Jubileus is born improperly after freeing Bayonetta from her imprisonment. Both of the witches are then able to defeat the Dea and Balder.

After surviving the subsequent fall back to Earth, Balder struggles to contain a mysterious spirit that tries to escape his failing body. Containing none of his previous malice, he promises to always watch over his daughter before he dies with the spirit trapped inside him. With his death, the Right Eye is lost from the world forever while Bayonetta continues to possess the Left Eye.

Bayonetta 2[]

Due to the imbalance the Right Eye's loss creates, Bayonetta struggles to control the summoning of her Infernal Demons after the balance of power is tipped toward the darkness, resulting in Jeanne being sent to Inferno. Bayonetta travels to the sacred mountain of Fimbulventr to find an entrance to Inferno and save her friend, learning along the way that Aesir once lived there as the creator of the Eyes. She meets a young boy named Loki who appears to have a connection to the ancient god, as well as a mysterious masked Sage that hounds the youth for his own reasons. To her shock, the Sage would turn out to possess the Right Eye and be none other than a younger version of Balder.

Bayonetta eventually learns the truth of the events from five hundred years ago through both the Remembrances of Time scattered over the mountain and being physically sent back to the time of the Witch Hunts. The evil personality of Aesir that had been born from the creation of the Eyes, Loptr, wished to re-take his former power and travelled to the past in order to destroy the clans that held it. With Paradiso acting alongside him and deceiving a young Balder, he instigated the Witch Hunts to wipe out the Umbra in the aftermath of the Clan Wars to claim the Left Eye, killing Rosa in the process. However, due to Bayonetta's actions from being sent back in time, he was ultimately unsuccessful and forced to retreat.

Loptr would then bring the young Balder from the past to the present, knowing that the Right Eye no longer existed in the present but still did within the Sage's younger self. He would then manipulate Balder into aiding in the theft of Loki's "Sovereign Power", the ability to control the Eyes themselves. Upon returning to the present and making amends with the young Balder, Bayonetta arrives with him at the summit of Fimbulventr too late to stop Loptr stealing that power. Loptr then uses it to take both of the Eyes from Bayonetta and Balder and is restored to his former self with the intent to rule the universe.

However, Loki uses the true power of Aesir that he had inherited, "Nothingness", to destroy the Eyes, causing Loptr to become weak. Bayonetta and Balder summon the entity Omne to defeat Loptr and his physical body is consumed by a Gomorrah summoned by Jeanne. Loptr's soul survives the battle and he attempts to escape through a portal to be reborn in a different era, but Balder elects to trap the evil in his body despite the fact that Loptr's pure negativity would eventually corrupt him into committing his past acts of spurring on the Witch Hunts and plotting to resurrect Jubileus. He successful in subduing Loptr and returns to his own timeline to ensure the evil cannot be reborn again.

Both of the Eyes, at Loki's will, remain destroyed in order to let humanity choose their own path.

Abilities[]

Both of the Eyes of the World allow the power of creation that Aesir originally possessed, able to create concepts (free will, fear, humiliation) and even manipulate all of reality. Together, they had the power to merge the Trinity of Realities into one as well as grant nigh-omniscience to the wielders.[1] Individually, both of the Eyes also allowed for a scope of limited omniscience, letting the user to have one nearly equal to that of a god and able to perceive the truth of history via the Remembrances of Time.[1] A skilled user of one of the Eyes is capable of seeing through deception[3] and can even create a beam of light sufficiently powerful enough to destroy a planet.[1]

Trivia[]

  • According to Hideki Kamiya, the Eyes of the World choose their candidates based on their power, with Balder and Bayonetta being the most recent to hold their power. He expressed the situation by applying the Anthropologic Principle, stating that Balder and Bayonetta were chosen because they were the ones who could change history the most.[4]
  • The Eyes of the World are referenced in numerous ways throughout the series. Every masked angel such as Affinities, Applauds or Grace and Glory, have an eye symbol on their masks that hint at the Right Eye belonging to the forces of light. Similarly, when facing demons in Bayonetta 2, the seal that prevents Bayonetta from escaping the battleground is a red eye symbol that hints at the Left Eye belonging to the darkness. In Bayonetta 3, Bayonetta's glasses feature small gold decorations of a sun with a single blue eye and a crescent moon with a single red eye, hinting at her past connections to both of the Eyes via her parents and the prophecy of intersection.
  • In the Christian religion, the left hand is related to the Devil, and the right hand to God very similar to the eyes of the world the left eye represents the darkness and the right eye represents the light

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Bayonetta
  2. Bayonetta 2 - Aesir's Hierarchy of Laguna: "Aesir bestowed upon humans free will by giving them the "Eyes of the World". This, however, also gave birth to the ideas of triumph and defeat, truth and falsehood. People awakened to feelings of hate, betrayal, jealous, and humiliation. The power of free will sparked an unstoppable surge throughout humanity that eventually led Aesir himself to wish to reclaim the power he had originally relinquished. For someone who can travel through time and space, to take back the Overseer is to control the fate of the entire world across all time. Yet, humanity's choice have sown the seeds of evil within Aesir. "
  3. Bayonetta 2
  4. Bayonetta Developer Commentary: BayoTV - Kamiya: Well, Balder doesn't choose the Eyes of the World. The world does. Balder and Bayonetta were chosen because they were the best candidates. From the Anthropologic Principle, they're the ones who could change history the most.
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