Dishonored 2: Mission 9, "Death to the Empress"

Dishonored 2's final level's central message is not subtle. At the beginning of the game you descended from a great height, perhaps as a whirlwind of vengeful bloodshed, perhaps as a shadow flitting from doorway to doorway. Now you'll climb back to where you started, and again the choice of violence or evasion is yours. You might find your playstyle causes you to consider how your approach has changed. Did you take care to avoid casualties when leaving Dunwall, only to have found by your return that the most straightforward route to victory really does lie along a blade? Did you leave bodies in your wake before, but come to shun collateral damage after seeing how much misery had already been allowed to build up throughout the Empire of the Isles during the Kaldwins' reign?

Death to the Empress actually contains a version of the map for A Long Day in Dunwall as well as a new rendering of the Return to the Tower map from the original game. On this visit the tower and surroundings have none of the sparkling clean, stately grandeur they did when you left, nor the bristling defenses seen on Corvo's trip to eliminate Hiram Burrows. In fact, Delilah hasn't even seen fit to prepare any visible defenses at all. You alight from the Dreadful Wale's skiff and step onto a pier formerly crammed with guards unchallenged, with only a few roaming Wolfhounds in sight. To the right is the Black Market shop, operating out of the Black Pony Pub. It is arguably the easiest one to find in the game, apparently experiencing no ill effects from trading in such a public location.

The Hatters have moved into the neighbourhood but are also nowhere to be seen on the docks. This all reinforces how this isn't just a quiet moment you've arrived at - no boats are coming in at all. Most despots would demand tribute following a successful coup and ascension to power, but Delilah clearly has no interest in or use for this. The fabulous wealth, technological accomplishments and weaponry at Dunwall's disposal seems at first to be below her notice, but I think there's something else going on.

As you progress through the streets, some buildings abandoned, some with gang members squatting there, alleyways and exteriors filthy, there seems to be an underlying spite to the dereliction. Even more so within the tower itself, with once-lavishly appointed chambers now piled with broken furniture or overgrown, beds shoved into offices, the Brigmore Witches seemingly treating the palatial surroundings as a moody teenager would their parents house when home alone, as if they're getting away with throwing a house party. 

Surely Delilah wanted all this? The throne, the tower, the vast retinues rushing to accommodate her every whim after a life seething in resentment at her sister living in the lap of luxury while she suffered penury and debasement? But no, she only wanted it in the way a vengeful child wants its siblings' toys - not to have it or play with it, but to take it away and maybe to break it. Dunwall lies used up and broken around its new ruler, intent on spiting her sister even after her death.

Picking your way up Kaldwin Boulevard the protagonist passes the dead and dying, including an overseer who talks about a failed loyalist assault on the tower. Other than the Wolfhounds there is little in the way of opposition, especially considering you can easily stay above street level. There is a witch singing creepily from the hollowed-out remains of one of the blasted townhouses, and if you choose to announce your presence from the loudspeaker up by the door from which you exited the tower in the first level you will be attacked by several more witches.

The real resistance is to be found inside, where many of Delilah's faithful are occupied mixing potions, hanging out and talking, burning bonfires and so on. You'll also see what has become of the overseer force that made an attempt on the tower - they stand petrified like whichever character you didn't choose to play as, showing how Dunwall has been put at a standstill by the coup.

If you played the original game your knowledge of the tower's gardens, entrances and layout will be beneficial, although you can no longer enter via the vent halfway up the wall on its right side. Once inside the objective is to reach the throneroom, which you can do by restoring power to the elevator or through Emily's secret room. This means you have a choice of going down into the basement to turn the power back on or go up to find the hidden room, with both routes taking care to place the chapel in your path where you can prepare ingredients for a corrupted rune. This can be used to trap Delilah in her painting of a (to her) perfect world, a masterwork she intends to use to reconfigure reality to her liking.

This is the non-lethal route, and compared to the fates of characters like Luca Abele, Kirin Jindosh and even Liam Byrne and Paolo should you let them live seems a far cry from the cruelty the series habitually gives you license to exert. Delilah is pulled into her painting to eternally believe that she is existing in a version of the world "as it should be". It doesn't seem to inflict undue suffering or torment on the game's antagonist, but it is tragic. With her niece's and formerly sister's empire left ruined and rotting around her Delilah is apparently no closer to having a reality she actually likes being in. The non-lethal ending sees her left in a permanent delusion as an act of mercy.

If you do take her on in direct combat - for which she will summon clones of herself providing an opportunity to use all those mines, springrazors, bolts you've no doubt been jealously hoarding - her last lines are notable. 

"It's not fair," she gasps as the blade slides home.

The thing is, it wasn't fair. On the approach to Dunwall Tower in the Dreadful Whale's rowboat, Delilah's spirit tells Emily that while she has banished her mother to oblivion, Delilah's mother is buried in a child's coffin, "her skinny legs tucked under her because I couldn't afford a proper burial, while my father rests in the Imperial Crypt." To me this isn't the moustache-twirling snark of a master villain. This is a heartbreaking portrayal of real poverty and suffering, that real people go through every day. Emily refuses to believe her. Emily made the choice to untether Jessamine Kaldwin from the Heart and say her last goodbyes on her own terms, again doing everything at her pace and with her agency intact even if her status as empress isn't. Delilah's life, by comparison, has been defined by overcoming penury and tragedy. Her life was never fair, and she had to become a monster and a usurper to overcome the brutally injust hand she was dealt. From a father who made empty promises and then threw her into the streets with her mother, to burying her mother in a child's coffin following a slow death at the hands of a guard, through the maneuvring and hobnobbing and witchcraft that led her to influence and the Outsider, nothing has been fair despite the power she eventually came to. And with ultimate victory in sight, her niece, born into luxury and influence, or her enforcer and father take it away.

A monarch has been restored, via guile or bloodshed, to her throne. Whether with a newfound realisation of how her former inattentiveness impacts those throughout her kingdom, or a new ruthlessness following a bloodbath in Karnaca, depends on the actions of the player and who is left alive. In Karnaca itself Luca's double might make a more considered regent, or Corvo himself becomes the duke with Dr. Hypatia among his advisors. Should you walk away from the petrified Emily at the end of the game Corvo can even seize the throne for himself, in a bizarre and dark turn of events. The future of the Empire of the Isles was decided during those weeks spent in the Jewel of the South. Canonically of course, a gentle Emily returns to the throne vowing to rule more considerately.

Meanwhile Meagan Foster, revealed to the player character as the former assassin Billy Lurk at the beginning of the mission, is the very last person mentioned as the Outsider reveals the fates of the key players, setting the stage for her search for Daud in Dishonored 2's standalone expansion.

"As Meagan Foster faded from the world, Billie Lurk stepped from her shadow, setting out to discover her truest self, and seeking the closest thing she'd ever known to family..."