Theory for Legend of the Golden witch

This is the theory of Hound Dogs and Crunter, who are currently playing trough Umineko: When They Cry. The theory was developed after reading Alliance of the golden Witch, and is meant to be an attempt to solve as much as possible of the mysteries before jumping to the answer arcs.

This will be impossible to follow without having read Umineko that far, and here we won't retread most of what happens in the original story.

Part 1: Preface

- Two madmen who couldn't bring themselves to downscale.

First of all. It's important to establish that, most likely, we would be able to come up with something better by reading the first 4 episodes once again. We had to resist the urge to go back and check some stuff, such as compiling all of Beatrice's promises which apparently she keeps, as she says in red here, but we concluded that it wouldn't be worth the time investment, and as much as we had fun combing through all the fine details of this mystery, we are also eager to put it behind us at this point.

Second. Some theories will be more developed than others.
We are fairly confident that our Legend and Banquet theories are good and make sense, our Turn theory is ok, but it has a bunch of "this probably happened", or "something like that must have happened" moments.
However our Alliance theory, at the time of writing, is pretty garbage (but it technically functions from start to finish! they all do!). That is fine to us, the truth is that our notes were pretty good with the exceptions of ironing out the nitty gritty of what happens in the games, which we would, again, need to read back to understand better, which we aren't going to do.

Third. Sometimes, there are some really clever and appropriate solutions that we weren't able to fit within a complete solution. Some other theories are things we used to believe in but they have been supplanted by better solutions. Cases like this will be mentioned if they're interesting enough.

Fourth. Our theories, in some parts, have multiple solutions that both work. Those will be mentioned, as we feel like they probably have some role in the story. Sometimes, one of us feels like a theory functions, the other doesn't.
When something like that happens, we will mention it, and branch the theory if they lead to wildly different implications.
This isn't like firing a single precise sniper shot, but it also isn't casting a wide net like Battler's shotgun strategy. We like to think of it like a 6 bullet revolver, all shots are quite powerful, but they give us some wiggle room in our attack.

Let's also take a minute to showcase the weapons we're using to zero in on this theory. Occam's Razor and Chekhov's gun.

The two are opposites of each others. Occam's razor is meant to cut something short, sometimes we could build a really interesting theory built on some clever element we noticed, and it just doesn't really come together. Occam's razor comes handy to cut it at the root and say "This really simple and basic answer actually works well for the story".

Chekhov's gun, instead, is something we shoot with when we notice some element which is just too juicy and too perfect to just be a coincidence. Sometimes, there is this really satisfying theory that we can't quite make fit with what we know. Chekhov's gun is a way to say: "We are missing something, but as opposed to discarding the theory we will note that there's something missing here, and carry on with it anyway because it would work really well with some other thing we found."

Sometimes, there's a lot of doubt on which of the 2 is best to use. Specifically, in future games, we mean to branch our theories in 2 regarding a significant split in how to attack a point, and we will develop 2 theories that are one parallel to each other.

Finally, let's talk about our approach to the credibility of any given scene.
As it will become more and more obvious the more we advance, any scene not witnessed by a character we can trust (which in most cases boils down to only Battler) is to be taken with an ocean, let alone a grain of salt, and we reserve the right to call bullshit if we believe the story is trying to trick us.
However, calling a scene fake doesn't make it useless. There is still value in examining the magical side of the story, because there are often parallels to be drawn between the magical and the real versions of events that can strengthen a theory.

Or as our lord and savior George Lucas would put it, it's like poetry, they rhyme
Hopefully it works.

So then, let's start examining the events in order and we'll comment on anything interesting.

Part 2 : The Sayo Conjecture

The initial scene with Kinzo happens long before the main events of the game, it's Kinzo interacting with Nanjo and Genji before dying, possibly months before the family conference.
Kinzo is dead. He's been dead for a while at this point, and Krauss and every other person that lives in Rokkenjima with the exception of Jessica and Gohda know it. Everyone is pretending that he's alive per the instructions of Krauss, who is worried about the discovery process of splitting his inheritance.

When the family boards a plane at the airport, we see that for some reason, the pilot of the plane (not a ship!) is captain Kawabata.
We believe that Kawabata is involved in a larger, as-yet-unidentified scheme, with its primary benefactor being the Ushiromiya group. The goal of this plot appears to be placing "Eva Ushiromiya" in control of the group, and we suspect that Kawabata may be receiving orders from a higher-ranking member within the group, potentially Okonogi. But we will come back to this eventually.

There is a group of individuals on Rokkenjima who aim to carry out a plan that would result in the deaths of everyone present on the island that day, and it must have been premeditated, implying some degree of help from the Ushiromiya group.
Based on certain events later the Sumadera family is also suspect, but for now we'll go with the Ushiromiya group.

It's worth noting that there is a scene when the family boarding the plane is going trough a metal detector. I believe that this scene is a red herring for a specific payoff in turn of the golden which, having to do with Rosa having brought the 3 bars of gold to Rokkenjima while being the only one that Godha didn't move the baggage to. Unfortunately, I can't make any part of this theory work, and realistically there are other characters in Rokkenjima already that could have stored the gold there.

Subsequently, the characters are walking towards the mansion, when they stumble upon Kanon moving a wheelbarrow to the Garden storehouse. This is the time to introduce one of the major cornerstones of our theories.

We believe that Kanon, and Shannon for that matter, are two identities of a single person, whom will be referred to as Sayo going forward, for that is the "real" name Shannon told George.
Sayo lives in the orphan house owned by Kinzo, and she fullfils the roles of two different servants in Rokkenjima. Kinzo is aware of this, and so are all the other servants, but no one else is.

We have no clue about their gender, but going off of their depictions and who we believe to be the original person, we'll use feminine pronouns for now.
That's not all the names we will give this character though, because we also believe that Sayo is none other than Beatrice: the Golden Witch and Endless Witch.

Let's expand on this. We believe that originally, Kinzo was able to further his career by pretending to have an incredible amount of gold, and the original Beatrice, the golden witch, is the person that helped him pull that off. It's very possible that she was also Kinzo's concubine or lover, but the fact of the matter is that this person died and Kinzo couldn't quite get over her.

The next Beatrice in our timeline is the one from Rosa's flashback, who was kept in Kuwadorian by Kinzo for many years, and probably even raised there. More about her in the Banquet theory, but Kinzo might have considered her his daughter.
As stated in the Red Truth, she also died. That was 19 years before the two days when the bulk of every episode takes place in.
For reasons we will explain, again, in later games, we believe that Sayo is a daughter of this second Beatrice. She was sent to the Fukuin house after the death of her mother and raised as a servant instead, but she would frequently visit Kuwadorian, and she would refer to Kinzo as grandfather.

But why go on a tangent about a character who may or may not exist?
Simple! It's because Sayo, together with a series of accomplices, is the culprit behind the murders in Legend of the Golden Witch!

You see, someone on Rokkenjima isn't just killing people, they are specifically doing so in ways that will appear magical. Explicitly for the sake of Battler (see the phone calls in Alliance) and maybe for Maria, who at certain points are the only people to be both alive and not in on the plan. This directly parallels the existence of a meta Beatrice fighting Battler in a battle of deduction.
One might say, the witch Beatrice is Sayo's stand.

When it comes to motives there isn't much concrete, but maybe she suffers from a sort of "Simulation Complex" that makes her think she's only a character in a broader narrative. After all Beatrice is supposed to have mistaken her means for her ends.

Maybe growing up her life was so horrible that, much like Maria, she started believing in her own cope, or 'magic', which she later expanded to include the characters Maria crafted for her (see Witch of Origins).
Either way Battler's sin is something related to Sayo (although it wasn't done to her directly... more on this in the next episode), and through some kind of butterfly effect, him forgetting about it has contributed to Sayo wanting to perform the murders according to Kinzo's epitaph (which we definitely solved) or as Beatrice says Because of your sin, people die.
Additionally, through the Bottled letters she ultimately wants to propagate the legend of the witch into the world.

In Memoirs by Lady Lambdadelta the translator makes a point of writing down that the narrations starts using She to refer to the witch after Lambdadelta grants her desire. We think that witch is Beatrice (and also her alter ego, of course), and it's on the table that the reason she's committing the crimes has something to do with her identity, possibly her crafting multiple identities.
We floated some ideas about Sayo possibly being split between a male and female identity, her being a trans woman, or a trans man since Kanon was the later addition. Ultimately we couldn't coalesce this part of the theory into something of substance, so it doesn't play a role.

Let's briefly touch on Sayo's accomplices. They include at a minimum Genji, Kumasawa, Nanjo and, in a way, Maria too.
Genji helps her because he sees her as the heir of the Ushiromiya family, as she is the daughter of the Beatrice who died 19 years ago, whom Kinzo loved more that any of his children.
Kumasawa and Nanjo were promised a large sum of money, which will actually make its way to their families in the form of the combination to a bank vault.
Maria believes the narrative of Endless Magic, she is unaware of any plans, but she will do something if "Beatrice" asks her to.

We're not exactly sure of who killed Kinzo. It's certainly possible Sayo did it to jumpstart her plan, or she took advantage of the situation.
She took the ring seal. She prepared everything she needs for the events of the fatidic day on Rokkenjima, including among other things the seven stakes.

Lastly, let's mention the largest gaping problem with all of this...
Why is Sayo so nonchalant with Battler potentially touching her boobs in that initial scene in legend? Of course, if Sayo is Kanon, the boobs would need to be fake, right? We believe that the answer to this is that Ryukishi 07 is a bit of a goofy goober who just can't help himself. Without getting into spoilers, something like this happens in Higurashi too, where a character takes a pointless risk that could have exposed their identity just so the story could have a red herring. And well, after all, Battler was probably never touching her boobs. And the boobs were possibly very well made, right?
See? It's NOT weird now that it's plot relevant! Trust.

We'll touch on this (no pun intended) in later episodes, but there really is a large amount of substantiation for the fact that Sayo is all three of Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice, so we're willing to say that it's a minor thing.

For now you can find a more detailed account of our reasonings grouped under Sayo#Theories

Ok so, back to the events for real this time.

Part 3 : When the seagulls cry

Let's state this; In the context of Legend of the Golden witch, there are 16 people in Rokkenjima.

As established, Kanon and Shannon are both Sayo. They are the only two characters to have zero scenes together with Battler also present.
Kinzo is dead. Besides what we know from following games, it could have been theorized from the fact that he never shares a scene with Battler.

During the scene at the beach, the cousins and Sayo take a glance at Maria's diary. Some things mentioned in the diary are part of the murders that will happen in Rokkenjima. They are elements from Maria's imagination that Sayo injected into the Endless Magic narrative, aka. the ability to create 1 from 0.

Sayo, dressed as Kanon, runs back to tell the cousins the dinner is ready. While doing so she stops to give Maria the letter and the umbrella. It's not clear up to what extend Maria is aware of her position and the meaning of actions. We tend to think she's just going along with the witch narrative because she completely believes it, and she has interacted with Sayo many times, by now she has internalized that this person IS Beatrice, so she will gladly do her the favor of delivering a letter, or closing her eyes during a gruesom murder.

We think the letters are written by Sayo to prime the perception of the people there with the magical narrative. It's weird because the first letter doesn't strictly talk about magic inside of it (Beatrice signs herself a the family alchemist, not a witch), but it's hard to deny Sayo is the one who delivers it. It's certainly possible that the letter was written by someone else but delivered by Sayo, or something like that, but this is something we're willing to Occam's razor away.
Instead it's more likely that that she started easy and used the first letter to, first and foremost, clue the family in on the existence of a 19th person called Beatrice with a claim to the inheritance, while setting aside the magic elements so that it would be easier to believe.

She doesn't think the gold exists, but she's furthering the narrative about Kinzo's 10 tons of gold. That, to us, is the true meaning of Golden Magic and what makes her the Golden Witch, the creation of illusory gold that doesn't actually exist, but gains influence the moment you convince people that it exists. Thus, Endless Realization is simply Sayo incorporating the narrative about gold into the narrative of the endless witch.

Krauss shows the gold to Natsuhi; We believe that Kinzo produced a small amount of ingots that work as tokens to illude people with the notion that all the gold exists, and Krauss happened to find one of these ingots, but it's also possible that Krauss forged it so that it can use it as token in negotiations if it turned out to be necessary.

Part 4 : The First Twilight

Rudolf tells Kyrie and Battler that he thinks he'll die that night, we believe it to be a sign that Rudolf was clued in on Sayo's plan to a degree. After all, Ange receives the same letter with the combination that Nanjo's and Kumasawa's families receive, which to us signals that at least one of Ange's parents have accepted the money in exchange for help with the plan.
Despite this, the way things played out in Legend he ended up playing no role at all, dying immediately on the first twilight.

To be precise, we believe Sayo tries to strike a deal with several of the adults individually, with promises of wealth which they all needed. This is part of the uncertainty that makes each of the games begin slightly differently, leading to different first twilights and their different consequences.

In this version of the game, the adults who survive the first twilight are Eva, Hideyoshi and Natsuhi.
Eva and Hideyoshi accept the collaboration because they desperately need cash, but with Natsuhi a motive is more difficult to find.
It's very possible that she felt very betrayed about Krauss not telling her anything and not trusting her with the information about the gold he found, it's also very possible that she's very defensive about Jessica's claim to the headship and believes that Krauss isn't capable of securing a future for her family.
We could also say Natsuhi is completely innocent and was never clued in on anything, it doesn't strongly impact most of our solutions, so we'll go for this explanation for now, even though we will slightly regret it later. Another one of our goals is also to minimize the number of wolves, it just wouldn't be fun if we said everybody except Battler was an accomplice while disregarding their motivations.

That night, it's remarked that all the servants except Gohda have been assigned to spend the night in the guesthouse because Krauss suspected them for giving the letter to Maria and didn't want them present while they discussed the inheritance.
As much as we like to say a scene is fake when it has Kanon and Shannon in it, there is no good reason to think this isn't exactly what happened.

George has his confession scene with Shannon soon after. Let's skip over the implications this has for the Sayo conjecture for now, we'll circle back to them in the turn theory.
What really matters right now is that this scene is used as justification for why Shannon was in the mansion that night. She was too embarrassed to go back to the guesthouse with George after receiving the ring.

Eva and Hideyoshi leave the room in the mansion where all the adults are arguing because they know that otherwise they would die. Sayo told them earlier in the day, during a moment where they weren't with anyone else. Natsuhi was lucky to get away earlier.

Sayo rushes in and kills all the remaining adults, plus Godha who was unlucky enough to be there to pad the number of victims, and would have heard the gun shots. The murder weapon was one of the winchesters, with 4+1 bullets for a total of five dead people.
With the help of Genji and Kumasawa, (who didn't kill anyone directly because Lambdadelta said Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo are not killers) they spend the night cleaning the dining room and preparing the scene in the Rose garden storehouse shed. Despite their best efforts, some blood stains will stay visible the day after and is commented on by the story.

They have a lot of red liquid that resembles blood which they use to paint the door of the shed, this is something they could have easily smuggled in with the help of captain Kawabata.
They set up the five corpses in the shed and paint the door with occult symbols... but wait, there were six corpses, weren't there?

There are multiple approaches we can take to explain Shannon's death.
We can't let Sayo die here, she is vital for the rest of the theory, so we need a way for her to be alive. Reading the scene again we noticed how the kids never really get a good look at Shannon corpses, she is explicitly hidden out of sight, and only Hideyoshi and Nanjo are implied to have examined her. Chechov's gun won't accept that this isn't a setup for some kind of deception, but a specific red truth gets in our way.

Alternatively, that was someone alive pretending to be a corpse, after all we don't really need to lower the number of humans to 16, we can fit 17.
But wait... Doesn't the red corner us? Don't we literally already have a functioning solution that we plan to use anyway?
Well, yes, but we have not one, but two top secret secret solutions, that we would prefer to keep secret right now to create suspence for both our turn and banquet theory.
For reasons that will be disclosed in the following games, we would prefer the number to be 16 at this point because our 17th person doesn't fit well in this version of the story. For that reason we'll go with the dummy option, and since it's not a body, it doesn't count as a body double for the red.
It should also be noted that it can't be Sayo herself, because Kanon is present when they discover the corpses and "No one else can go by Kanon's name! A different person can't claim that as their name!".

Of course all of the solutions given require some of the adults to lie.

• Nanjo's word is worth nothing.
• Eva and Hideyoshi are very adamant that the children don't come in the shed, and especially don't see Shannon. The explanation given is that it would be a traumatic experience, and also they need to keep the scene intact for the police.
• Natsuhi does the same thing, but she's otherwise not as suspicious as the other two so we'll let it pass as a normal reaction. She also doesn't seem to get close to Shannon's fake.

We do need to explain why Hideyoshi knew about the ring and what it looks like. It's very possible he could have guessed by the way George asked the question, it's also possible that Hideyoshi heard it from Rudolf, who was present near the bathroom stall when George was practicing proposing, finally it's possible that Sayo just told him for some reason. We can only guess.

Outside of the main crime, someone fabricated the scratches on the door of Natsuhi's room using the same fake blood, and the cuprits disabled the phone lines connecting the island to the outside.

Lastly, Sayo secretly set up a giant bomb in the main house, which will blow up exactly at midnight of the next day.
Yes, this is our solution for the the end of Alliance... Let's just circle back to it later and move on.
You might think, was that the best we could do about that?

Yes. Yes it was.

Part 5 : The Second Twilight

Let's rewind a little bit. In the morning, before finding the corpses, Genji made sure that Natsuhi went to check Kinzo's study. Of course both Genji and Natsuhi know that Kinzo isn't there, but she has to play the role. Her testimony will be used later on to create a locked room mystery around Kinzo's study, while Eva will use it to try and frame her as a possible culprit.

After discovering the corpses, Natsuhi sends Genji to contact the police while she goes to check on Kinzo once again, but Eva insists on following her this time. Natsuhi is forced to let Eva inside the study, and of course Kinzo isn't there at all. It's unclear if Eva was briefed about Kinzo's death when she was recruited by Sayo, or if this was just a coincidence.

All along, Eva is intentionally trying to seed conflict and frame other people while defending herself from accusations nobody has actually made yet.
She initially points to the the servants, a low hanging fruit, but purposefully doesn't expose them, she gets into a deduction fight with battler, and then she attacks Natsuhi with the receipt bluff, who obviously can't do anything to deny the accusation. Eva either knew about Kinzo or just picked up on Natsuhi's dodgy attitude and tried poking at her, by setting up the receipt.

Part of this is of course Eva's unpleasant personality, but it's a weird way to act in a situation of danger, it's like her top priority is ensuring she won't be suspected rather than survive, especially considering that when bullying Natsuhi isn't funny anymore, she retires to her room, she knows she has a deal with Sayo so she feels safe, otherwise you would never leave on your own with potentially a murderer around.

One of our theories claims that Eva made the scratches on Natsuhi's door as yet another way to imply that she was spared by the culprits instead of herself, although it could just as easily have been Sayo.

Maria doesn't freak out at the news that deaths are happening, because she's already been conditioned by Sayo to think this is only the magic of the epitaph, and everyone will come back alive at the end of the day.
In the scene later when everyone in the room sees Beatrice except Battler, the explanation is easy. Genji and Kumasawa are lying for Sayo, and Maria is just telling the truth, since Sayo, Beatrice, is there after all.

Now we get to the murders in Eva and Hideyoshi's room. Genji and Kanon are sent by Natsuhi to notify Eva and Hideyoshi that dinner is ready, but they supposedly find the door closed with a chain, and when they break it open the guests are found murdered.

There are two directions we could take. We could say that the murders were legitimate or that they were faked, and Nanjo is lying about the fact that they are dead.

The second option would explain how Eva survives the games and ends up being alive in Ange's future. This is very useful if we want to say that Legend is the real version of the story, and as you'll see it's the best candidate out of the four we have.

But we don't like this theory for a couple of reasons:

First, because Both deaths were homicides and the murder was carried out with both the victim and the perpetrator in the same room. We would have to claim that Hideyoshi was killed in a homicide later in the day with the killer in the same room, and that Eva too was killed 12 years later in an homicide by someone in her same room.

Second, we trip on what is possibly the most annoying red truth.

Instead, we'll go with the more simple option. Eva and Hideyoshi felt like they were safe, but Sayo betrays their trust, she makes them open the door with any pretext, kills them, and then shoots the body parts relevant to the epitaph, and puts a stake there. There is no reason to think it was ever a closed room, as there are no reliable witnesses, and the red doesn't state it explicitly.
They paint the symbol on the door and hastily leave a letter written by Sayo. The letter only contains the words "Praise my name", suggesting they were in a hurry, after all the others were waiting for Genji and Kanon to return with the guests.
Then they simply lie about the fact that the chain was intact, after they finished preparing everything they start making a lot of noise to lure everyone there.

Part 6 : They got tired of counting twilights

- Beatrice, the approximative witch

By this point the smell of Kinzo's corpse burning in the incinerator has filled the mansion.
Our best theory about it is that ever since his death he was stored in the incinerator, and Sayo's group started the fire earlier in the day so that it would be discovered as one of the sacrifices. This happens in every game except Turn, where due to different circumstances the body was never burned and stayed hidden the entire time.

After noticing the smell coming from the boiler room, Sayo and Kumasawa run there to stage a fake homicide. The only reasonable solution we could find to the red concerning this mystery is for Kanon to survive and Nanjo to lie about it. That's what forced our hand on including Nanjo among the culprits.
Sayo, currently dressed as Kanon, had a bag of fake blood in her clothes, she just pretended to have been stabbed by the stake, and Nanjo lies to help convince the others of his death.
Battler didn't see Kanon die first hand, and although it's implied Jessica did, it can be explained with good acting from the victim and the doctor. Plus, what they did with Kanon's body afterward is never addressed, so we believe this is all a ploy for Sayo to roam free after both Shannon and Kanon are out of the picture.
The golden butterflies signify are a framing device to kick Kanon out of the equation. Him rebelling against Beatrice could have all kinds of meanings, but we will explore those once we get to some later examples.

Genji proposes hiding in Kinzo's study. This was already planned, and He has a letter to set up.
They go in, at the opportune moment He pulls out a letter which Maria notices, which makes Natsuhi kick out everyone that she knew not to be safe.

They go back to the parlor, thinking they're safe, but they didn't expect the Sayo inquisition to show up with a gun!

It's very easy to imagine how the scene must have played out by stripping the magical elements from Maria's testimony.

Sayo had a master key, so she was able to open and close the parlor door at her will. But the master keys can't open the door of Kinzo's study and she couldn't enter it. So she informed her allies there would be a change of plans and pointed her weapon at them.
Genji, Kumasawa and Nanjo begged for mercy while Sayo told Maria to turn the other way and sing, then she killed everyone else and set up the room with the stakes and all, lastly she started a phone call to Kinzo's room and left one last letter on the table before leaving and locking the door.

Genji, Kumasawa, and Nanjo are not killers. It's possible this red only refers to this one scene, but we still made sure we didn't need them to dirty their hands directly for any of the theories to work.

Natsuhi and the cousins come down to the parlor, and they see the scene. Natsuhi leaves without saying a word, and it's not clear why.
Maybe, she too was one of Sayo's allies all along.
Maybe, she was threatened at gunpoint, and Maria is lying about her reading a letter.
The most realistic answer is that whatever she read in that letter was some kind of threat or blackmail, or some kind of deal. It ideally should be something that works no matter who finds it first, something to the effect of "The final showdown, just you and me in front of the painting, if you come I'll spare everyone else". We really have no clue about what it was exactly.

Either way, she is lured and killed in front of the portrait room, by a bullet from Sayo's gun. It's possible that they both shot each other at the same time, from this point onward we don't need Sayo to be alive anymore.
The children rush in front of the painting, and they find Natsuhi dead, maybe they have an interaction with Sayo, maybe they find both bodies, and Maria acts creepy as usual.

Shortly after, the bomb that Sayo set up explodes killing every remaining human in the mansion.
Nope... it's still not the right time to explain this.

Part 7 : Purgatorio

After the explosion, Kawabata secretly comes to Rokkenjima to place a fake Eva Ushiromiya in Kuwadorian, who will become the survivor in Ange's future. She has to be a different person because no one escapes, all die. This was set up by whoever is collaborating with Sayo from outside Rokkenjima, probably the Ushiromiya group.

Then, the Bottled letters written by Sayo are disseminated by Kawabata shortly after the events.
The credits say that the author of this account signed herself as Ushiromiya Maria, but she didn't write it. Not only is it out of character but it's also disproved in Alliance.

The captain will also end up owning a new / repaired version of the Sakutarou plush that had been made by Rosa. That's what Ange sees in the display case in his nephew's room at his house. We assume he found it on the island when he visited it after everyone died.

Captain Kuwabara may or may not have the power to shoot lightning.

We might have started calling him Kuwabara Kuwabara, and we might have kept calling him that to the point that while writing parts of the theory I (Crunter) had to double check multiple times not only what the name actually was, but if it was ever accidentally written as Kuwabara (It was).
Captain Kuwabara
Kuwabara Kuwabara

When the police arrives on Rokkenjima they find evidence of all the horrible murders (but of course they don't specify WHICH horrible murders, so they could be referring to every episode), and they recover Maria's jaw, the only piece of the kids that survived the explosion.

But this is what happens in reality. What if we move over to the magic side of the narrative?

As mentioned when we were discussing Eva's death, legend is the best candidate for the "real" course of events. The main reason for it is the continuity between this game, its tea party, and the rest of the story.

The tea party of legend is the "magical" ending of Legend of the Golden Witch, the point at which almost everyone bought into Sayo's narrative and Shannon and Kanon can exist as their own entities, but since they're fictional, they are just furniture and not witches.

The character profiles of the last people to die say that they went to hell, and yet they're in purgatory.
Purgatory, AKA the tea party, is a direct continuation of the world of Legend which has become the hub world of Beato and Battler's fight after he challenged her.
On the most basic level, Beatrice, who is Sayo, feels like she didn't "complete her ritual", and she isn't satisfied that she couldn't convince Battler to believe in her golden land. Or that's how it appears on the surface. We'll talk about this later in more details.

On the other hand, we believe hell is the inside of the games where everyone will keep living the same two days and always die at the end, until they are placed on the chessboard once again.
This theory is supported by a discrepancy in the Character Description Colors where the legend ones use a golden yellow color, later associated with the tea party / witch side of the descriptions.

So to recap, if everything in Legend happens before Battler in the tea party starts actively playing against Beatrice, there's a case to be made for it being the actual original time line.

Part 𝑖 : The tea party of those who are not human

The tea party of those who aren't human is not a golden land, but a dimension above the tea party where Beatrice has been playing a game against Bernkastel. At this layer of abstraction there's no Sayo anymore, it's just the endless witch with her framing device and the witch of fragments trying to see through it.
Nominally, Beato was just showing her "Something cool" and they both act like they aren't fighting against each other, but even at this point they both know that they are.

There are scenes in Umineko that even meta Battler doesn't see, but they are clearly meant to obfuscate the truth for the reader, even in Legend where meta battler doesn't even exist yet.
Those scenes can be explained as being instead directed to Bernkastel as well as us the reader.

The POV characters, at least initially, are Battler and Bernkastel, and when she breaks the 4th wall she is simultaneously talking to us and to Battler.
After all, her character profile tells us: "Sometimes she is you, and sometimes she is your greatest friend", so overall, we think the figure of Bernkastel is meant to represent a reader of umineko and she has no alter egos inside the story so far, although we expect this to change as soon as episode 5 because of the name of a certain character...

Incidentally, there's a point where Maria implies she knows or has heard of the witch of miracles. She doesn't say it explicitly, so maybe it's just a meta reference, but let's keep in mind the possibility that Bernkastel is already a part of the endless witch narrative to some extent. Maybe it was picked up from Higurashi directly, after all it's actually a book that exists in the world of Umineko and Battler has read it, maybe so has Maria.

Beato "not even letting the dice fall" might mean that she literally min-maxes every aspect of the game to fit her narrative, but it could also mean that she plays scenarios that are already resolved, and is only playing with stories. It also probably refers to her not letting the events on Rokkenjima truly resolve, if the outcome is unknown, your imagination is free to fill it however you like.

Beatrice is not "one individual woman" and "her existence is the personification of the rules of this world".
This refers to her being an amalgamation of the concepts that make Rokkenjima magical and mysterious (see Bernkastel's letter#The three rules), plus it can be read as a clever foreshadowing for the whole Sayo situation.

Beatrice's profile says that there is only one way to kill her, and We hold it on the palm of our hands. This might mean a lot of things. Is it about Battler having an easy out, ignoring Beatrice? Is it about her having one glaring weakness that we couldn't identify? Is it the reader closing the game and not playing anymore? Please tell me it's not the reader closing the game and not playing anymore, it's so cliche! Although, it probably wasn't when Umineko came out.

Now... it's the end of Legend of the Golden witch, but it isn't the end of our theories! Soon(tm) our Turn theory will be ready... and we'll introduce our new friend! Who is this friend you might ask? You'll find out soon enough! We will call them person X for the time being!

We need an editor. We need someone who is willing to tell us that it's time to stop. This is a cry for help. Ahaha more like a when they cry for help Ayyyy Gottem!