Professor Hojo

third part of the triangle

It's impossible to discuss Vincent and Lucrecia without discussing Hojo, so here's a bit of space where I can get my thoughts out about the man. He was a very important figure in their lives, even if his impact was by no means positive.

Hojo was your archetypical mad scientist, consumed by a lust for discovery. Nothing could satiate his hunger for scientific progress. He delighted in experiments, no matter the human or moral costs. Was there something beyond this simple stereotype, though? Did he actually have some smidgen of feeling for Lucrecia? Was there a love triangle in Shinra Mansion? These things were left mainly for the player to ponder, as Hojo's past persona was not all that developed in FFVII. However, DoC threw in a wrench by defining Hojo's character much more clearly. By 'clearly' I mean 'simplified'. Whereas there was a chance that Hojo had some semblance of human feeling in FFVII, he was reduced to a very flat, stereotypical image in DoC. He was vile, wildly unethical and didn't give a damn if he was. He even came with excessive evil cackling!

Even so, a few events remain consistent in both versions of the story: he performed questionable experiments on Lucrecia, and took her newborn away from her.

That said, I don't think Hojo really loved her.

Hojo was a scientist. That was it. I would find it hard to believe if he actually loved Lucrecia; more likely, he saw her as a means of furthering his ambitions, as more of a tool than a wife. While I don't believe that he raped Lucrecia, he obviously did not impregnate her out of love; it was all for his experiment. With Lucrecia willingly 'choosing' him, how could things be any more convenient for Hojo? Ultimania Omega translations further confirm this:

"To Hojo, his wife [Lucrecia] was nothing more than laboratory material to bear his son, Sephiroth, who--as he says--was something for him to study and satisfy his scientific desires."

He treated her accordingly, cruelly mocking her whenever he could. When she was at her most desperate, he simply laughed in her face. He never showed any concern for her when she collapsed or experienced some other horrific symptom. But worst of all, he didn't even allow her to hold her son after the whole ordeal. Such sentimentalies were only unnecessarily time-consuming, especially when mother and son were nothing more than experimental fodder in his eyes.

So why did Lucrecia marry him in the first place? I believe he took advantage of her guilt. He was well aware that she had been running from her mistakes, and was more than happy to use her estrangement from Vincent to his best advantage. It was, you could say, a marriage of convenience, one brought about for purely practical reasons.

In short, I don't think there was a Hojo-Lucrecia-Vincent love triangle. Hojo and Lucrecia never had romantic feelings for each other, one-sided or otherwise. I think Hojo was content to stand on the sidelines, take advantage of the other two when he could, and get in some extra cackling while he was at it.

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