The Keyblade and The Soul

[The Eternal Hawk]

We all know about the Keyblade's connection to the heart, but a friend and I debated last night about wether or not the keyblade also has a connection to the soul, with me believing it does and my friend believing it does not. Ultimately my friend conceded and I won the debate, but for the sake of fairness I do want to get other people's opinions on the topic. The idea is that people can use a keyblade if they have the soul of a keyblade wielder, even if they don't have a heart, with my evidence mostly revolving around The Lingering Will and Roxas, both beings that have no heart but do possess the soul of a keyblade fielder, Terra's soul and Sora's soul respectively. There's also the case of The Vanitas Remnant which, while it is an unversed, is described as being "A physical manifestation of what remained of Vanitas's powerful thoughts and feelings." Very similar to what The Lingering Will is, so I do believe it's entirely possible that after he lost his heart and body, Vanitas's soul created an Unversed to be it's host and thus giving it the ability to use a keyblade, however that is 100% speculation. Any other opinions, for or against?

 

[Veevee]

Well, the series splits a person into mind, heart and body so I have a hard time to exactly decipher where the soul is within all this. I think a soul has to do with both heart and mind and is kind of a culmination of those two. I always thought that heart and soul were quite close in their meaning in the KH franchise, because people usually use the term "soul" to express the essence of a person, what makes that person who he or she is and consider it some kind of spiritual core that someone possesses that differentiates him or her from an inanimate object. Looking at the Lingering Will who still has his mind, but not his heart, we can see that he can move by force of will, but can't leave his place permanently. He has still feelings that keep him going for a short time, but he is bound to one place and rather reacting to a stimulus than acting independantly on his own, because he lacks a heart and thus kind of a soul that differentiates him from an inanimate object. Roxas is a different case because he had a heart from the very start, if not his own; and Xion began acting like a person rather than a puppet when she started to come in contact with Roxas, thus slowly developing a heart, and in a wider sense, a soul that made her move forward and become an actual person. It's possibly that the Lingering Will could re-develop a heart when exposed to someone with a heart for a long time or gain enough strength to go hunt for his original soul, but we can't know. Powerful feelings can make a body move within a limited range, but the person can't really do much beyond that and can't really live as a person, so I believe that the soul is quite close to the heart. The "feelings" left in the mind are rather memories than actual ongoing or evolving feelings, thus rather something to make the body "work" than being feelings in a more lively, changing sense because those come from the heart.