My fucking FACE. I just got caught up and the previous chapter I was agreeing we all called an illusion, but now I was wondering how long it had been going on...
My. Fucking. GOD.
And now he is about to steal everything from the king in his dying moments. Naaaah bruuuuuh. Raoul is the God of being fucking EXTRA lol.
I don't think a full illusion has been going on the whole time.
Obviously Raoul planned some version of this finale since then. But I think what he means is he placed a hypnotic suggestion on the king since then to make him think he had sired princes. At the time, that was to ensure he would discard Victoria.
He doesn't have to have had him in a full blown illusion since then. What's the point? He's just doing nothing while plugged into the machine.
Though there isn't much material difference, except to allow that Raoul is stronger now than he was back then.
Victoria's choices aren't just not good, she seems to have completely broken and accepted some baseline of torture in her future. He's gaslit her into thinking that her life will be hell from now on, as bad or worse than the living death she suffered up till now. Her 'choices', at least in her mind, probably look like:
1. Promise her father that she will carry on his line...but she can't anyway, because she knows she'll end up on the cross basically a zombie for eternity or something equally horrible.
2. Reject her father, which means (she thinks) she still ends up on the cross, but maybe, just maybe,
not for eternity.
This is one of the most twisted forms of stockholm syndrome and acclimatization I've ever seen.