Agreed, I think that the '2nd' Ciel is merely a lookalike planted to undermine Ciels' status, wealth and trusted arm of the Queen. I think they are not even closely related, or he could be a second cousin or something. Often people can closely resemble more distant relatives, I even found my own 'twin" (no relation at all), once, living in a different country from me, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
fake Ciel could even (maybe) be Blue Star ??
Very true.
Also, going out on a limb, if I remember correctly, Madame Red was pregnant before the carriage accident, no? The 2nd Ciel could be her's that was resurrected by a shinigami.
(⊙…⊙ ) Never thought of that!
Now now. Madame Red wasn't pregnant with Vincent 's child. (She found and married another lover remember? She said it was his child).
I never said it was a fleshed out theory
The two Ciel theory/belief is hinted pretty strongly in the early chapters of the manga a lot of times, but most of it was lost due to the translation from Japanese to English. I remember reading a post made by a Japanese fan that Japanese people use the same word for "child" and "children", so it's up to the readers to interpret the meaning depending on the circumstances. Meaning when people were talking about "the Phantomhives children" in earlier chapters, the translators just decided to go with "the Phantomhives child" in the English translation (bc they weren't aware of the theory themselves). This is just one examples, the others provided are very convincing as well. The post also said that that the majority of Black Butler fandom in Japan is sure that there are indeed two Ciels, they just didn't know the purpose of Ciel having a twin (of course no one knew back then that the twin is still alive so obviously he must play a very important role in the story from now on)
I'm taking Japanese, yet I always seem to forget the indistinction between plural and singular unless you add the counter. I find things like this happen a lot in translations, because of the language barrier (Crona for example). I find the non-Japanese audience is always left in the dark about a pun or hint.
Still, as I whole I find the twin thing to be overly cliche, don't you think? The mangaka couldn't have come up with something a bit more original (unless she's going to throw in he's actually a demon or shinigami).
If you followed the manga properly/read through it again. You realised there were quite a lot of hints though I've always wondered why Lizzie never mentioned it, but it's probably because the MC Ciel was sick and maybe he was just hidden all the time.
If you followed up (though forgive me if I might be slightly wrong because I read through the whole thing a few months ago) it becomes quite apparent that there was always another Ciel.
!)In the scene where Ciel is captured, it also showed Ciel in the cell before he was talking to Sebastian but he actually should have been on the altar (or vice versa like I said it's still abit sketchy)
2) Another convincing one was when Ciel had the dreamlike state, where the 'other' ciel is, it made it abit obvious that it's talking about another Ciel and not our MC.
3) The scene with the undertaker coming to Ciel while he's asleep, Ciel wakes up and takes the tea from Sebastian. In that chapter, the Undertaker says that the Head of phantomhive will return(or something like that) and then the end showed Ciel with his reflection on the tea, quite obviously.
4) Ciel threw away a family photo quite suspiciously, why not hold onto it? Since you don't have much memories left? He wanted to hide that there was a second twin/the Ciel in the picture might have looked different to MC Ciel which someone observant, let's say Sebastian, would have noted.
There were alot of hints to Ciel having a twin. It's why people were suspicious from the start.
How is that cliche? How many animes/mangas you have read with the twin thing? There's always some hidden shadow/another you kind of scenario, the twin thing is a rare trope in anime and manga. And Yana has actually done well in foreshadowing it unlike alot of mangakas out there who throw out plot twists out of nowhere just to make the story interesting but it's obvious it was not thought of at the start.
You really jumped off the deep end, huh? We actually went with the identical twin twist.
And I'm still not a fan of this belief because
1) We see the sacrifice from Ciel's point of view, which is extremely biased because of his young age and psychological trauma (placing himself in another sacrifice's place) so it's debatable if both twins were captured or not
2) Lizzy never mentioned a twin, and she has know the Phantomhive family since forever. This could mean they "A Child Named It" it, or the child died in childbirth (the whole stomach thing in the last chapter)
3) Undertaker could have just have used blood taken from Ciel to make another Ciel. We don't know the full power of a rouge Shinigami. In addition, if there was originally twins, he could resurrect him with a perfected zombie thing.
4) Madame Red would most definitely would have mentioned twins during her jealousy rant. She was a doctor and checked up on Ciel as a child.