In this post, I argue that it is possible for Reimu Hakurei of the
Touhou Project series of games to be the mother of Cirno (another character of the same series).
I am not, however, arguing that this is actually the case. This is not a fan theory. I do not believe the two characters are related. I don't believe this is the creator's intent and I do not believe such a fact will be revealed in subsequent games. Rather, I'm merely proposing that such a thing is possible
without violating anything established in canon.With that said, there are two major problems with Reimu being Cirno's mother.
Problem 1: Reimu and Cirno are different species.
Reimu Hakurei is a human and Cirno is a fairy. While hybrids do exist in the world of Touhou (think Youmu Konpaku and Rinnosuke Morichika), that is not the case here. Reimu is 100% human and Cirno is 100% fairy. This is firmly established in canon and there is no debate even among the most anally obsessive of fans.
Problem 2: Cirno is, technically, older than Reimu (by a very wide margin).
It's hard to know exactly how old most of the characters in the game are. Reimu and Cirno are no exception. Reimu, at the times the Touhou games were becoming popular, was commonly thought to be in her mid-teens. Assuming the characters age according to the passage of time in the real world, that means she could now be in her twenties. However, even using the most extreme age estimates, Reimu couldn't even be in her thirties.
Cirno, however, is older by Reimu by at least several decades. In the game
Phantasmagoria of Flower View Cirno recognized that the incident shown in the game had also happened sixty years earlier. It is implied she witnessed this first hand, which means Cirno is
at least sixty years old. By any estimate, that makes her far older that Reimu.
These are daunting problems, to say the least. Logic and reason would say there is no way the Hakurei miko is the mother of the ice fairy. But, fortunately for our case, Gensokyo is where logic and reason go to die horrible, violent deaths.
Let's tackle problem 1 first. How do we reconcile the fact that the two characters in question are different species? Let's look at how members of each of those species are "born" so to speak. It's pretty obvious where human babies come from (I think it has something to do with storks), but what about fairies? How do fairies come into existence?
There is no evidence that fairies procreate in a manner similar to humans (those hentai works of fanart on the Internet do not count as "evidence" I'm afraid). According to the Touhou wiki, fairies "spring forth from nature." Their existence is intrinsically tied to that aspect of nature. This means that fairies are essentially immortal and indestructible so long as the aspect of nature they're tied to remains intact. Fairies are apparently stronger when the part of nature they're born from is stronger or more evident in the world (however this comes from dialogue spoken by the characters rather than anything evident in actual gameplay, for example: Cirno is still relatively strong regardless of what season it is or whether any ice is around).
But, this "fairies come from nature" explanation is lacking. It's not necessarily wrong, but it seems incomplete. It explains some attributes of fairies (such as the nature of their attacks and abilities), but not everything. Where do their personalities come from? What about their dispositions and behavior? What exactly about nature determines these things?
Nor does it really explain
when the fairies come into being. If they come from nature and nothing else, shouldn't they be in existence the very moment that nature comes into existence? But no one is arguing that Sunny Milk, for instance, is as old as the sun.
No, there's something else going on. Here is where we reach the limits of canon and must step outside Touhou lore to find an answer. This isn't entirely unreasonable. Zun (the individual currently creating Touhou games) frequently draws from real world mythologies (both western and eastern) for inspiration. So long as it doesn't violate anything established in canon, it's fair game for speculation.
I'd like to point to a 1902 novel by J.M. Barrie titled
The Little White Bird. The novel served as the basis for the
Peter Pan screenplay. In it, the author explained the origins of fairies this way:
When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.
If this somehow factors into the Touhou series, it could mean that humans have some influence on the creation of fairies. Now, granted, a 20th century novel doesn't carry the same weight as a well-established ancient myth (such as the ancient Greek lampad, which is technically what Clownpiece is). One might be tempted to scoff at the idea that Zun would ever use it as a source of inspiration.
However, the game
Mystic Square suggests otherwise. It's heavily influenced by a slightly older novel by Lewis Carroll called
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Both novels are popular works of fantastical literature aimed toward children. Both are in the public domain and both were adapted into well-known Disney animated movies.
The Little White Bird seems like an entirely possible source inspiration (if not now, then possibly in the future).
Considering this possibility, how would it work with established canon? It seems nature provides the means of creating fairies, but it lacks a
catalyst. If humans somehow influence the creation of fairies (like they do in Barrie's novel) then this is what I propose: a strong emotion from a human, at the right time, in the right place, in the right conditions will cause nature to create a fairy. Due to the general disposition of fairies, I believe this emotion is happiness. Some of the qualities of the human would be imparted on the newly born fairy (explaining some of their personality). It would also solve the problem of fairies not being as old as the nature they're a part of.
This doesn't mean that a fairy would pop into existence right in front of the human's eyes. Rather, the happiness could linger in the area for days, week, or even years after the human experienced it (long after the human left the spot where he/she experienced that happiness). It could be a long time before nature transforms that happiness into the corporeal form of a fairy.
Nor does this mean that the fairy would have any idea how it was created. It wouldn't necessarily have any idea that a human led to its existence. Just like a human, it wouldn't have any innate ability to know of its own origins.
If this is true, the implications are huge. It means that humans are creating fairies all the time
without realizing it!One could argue this doesn't mean the human creating the fairy is its
parent. In the strict, biological sense, they would be correct. But that doesn't change the fact that fairies are brought into the world as a direct result of something a human experienced. It's a pretty close analogy of a parent-child relationship, closer even than a parent who adopted a child.
This also implies that there are other familial relationships between humans and fairies other than parent-child. If a human created a fairy then went to on to have a human child, then the human child and fairy would be siblings. If the human who created a fairy had a sibling, and that sibling had a child, then the child and fairy would be cousins. In fact, nearly every familial relationship between human and fairy is possible except that fairies can't be a human's parents, grandparents, etc.
It would also mean fairies can be related to
each other. A human who created one fairy could go on to create a second. That would mean the two fairies are each other's sibling. If a human who created a fairy had a sibling who also created a fairy, it would mean the two fairies are cousins. More combinations are possible as well.
But all this doesn't mean
Reimu is Cirno's parent. Another human could just have well created Cirno. While that's true, my point isn't to prove that Reimu
is Cirno's mother, but rather that she
could be.
Besides, Reimu makes a pretty good candidate as Cirno's mother, assuming humans can imprint some of their qualities onto their fairy child. Cirno is the strongest fairy in any of the games (unless you count Clownpiece as a fairy). Reimu is (arguably) the strongest human in the games. Indeed, she's one of the strongest characters in the game period. Both characters are pretty straightforward and confident. Cirno doesn't completely mirror Reimu's personality, but then again, even human children don't completely mirror their parents' personalities.
Still, that leaves the problem of timing. Rather than being Reimu's daughter, Cirno is old enough to be her grandmother. So how do we solve that?
Simple: time travel.
By no means am I an expert on Touhou canon and I don't claim to be such. Although time manipulation does exist (Sakuya Izayoi), to the best of my knowledge, outright time travel has not yet been shown. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to be evident in anything I've come across. But that doesn't mean that it can't happen.
[As an aside, I
strongly believe Zun will create a game where time travel is involved if he continues making Touhou games long enough. Time travel stories are infamous for creating plot holes, but Zun doesn't seem too concerned with maintaining continuity (at least not to the same degree as many of his fans).]
The potential options for allowing time travel in Gensokyo are many. The most obvious is magic. Maybe at some point we'll be introduced to a youkai that can time travel. Maybe we'll see an object that will allow time travel. Maybe Yukari Yakumo will be able to eventually gap through both time and space.
There's also the sci-fi route. Maybe the kappas create a time travel machine. Maybe humans in the future (from the outside world) create a time machine and end up in Gensokyo. Heck, time travel could result from both magic
and science! There is nothing we've seen in Touhou that would suggest its absolutely impossible to time travel, and much stranger things have already happened in-universe.
So now we can come up with a plausible scenario for Reimu to be Cirno's mother. At some point in the future, Reimu ends up travelling back in time (probably as part of solving an incident). The exact means of this time travel are irrelevant for our purposes here. She could end up in a very cold winter that occurred in Gensokyo's past.
In the past (whether during the incident, or immediately after) she experiences a very happy emotion. She later returns to the future, but her happiness lingers in the area and nature eventually turns that happiness into Cirno.
While it's true the scenario requires us to use elements not yet introduced into
Touhou Project, it doesn't violate anything that's been established. Everything described above could function within the canon framework.
Anyway, thanks for entertaining my own little piece of head canon. I hope you enjoyed it.
You can actually have a lot of fun with the possibilities I've described. Why limit it just to Reimu and Cirno being related? Sanae Kochiya seems like she could make a good candidate for Daiyousei's mother. Besides their similar personalities, Daiyousei seems to have a similar dynamic to Cirno as Sanae does to Reimu.
Do you have any ideas for a particular human to be a parent for a fairy? Any interesting combos you can think of? I'm kind of interested in learning what kind of fairy Marisa would create. Let me know in the comments!