“Father” Gascoigne stands out from other church hunters in black for his epitaph. While cut dialogue confirms plans for Healing Church clerics to be addressed as such once upon a time, his equipment denies the concept for the final game in its description. Rather, Gascoigne is known as holy father because a cleric was his previous vocation in a foreign country, insinuating that he emigrated to Yharnam and served a different church. Brought with him was at least his wife. After accepting a request to find her mother, a young girl living in Central Yharnam gives us a small music box playing her father’s favorite song filled with memories — and inscribed on a letter inside are the names of Gascoigne and a Viola. Music boxes were a major new invention of the Victorian Era, with lovers commonly using them to communicate their feelings in a society demanding strict decorum. Gascoigne and Viola apparently indulged this trend, their quiet romance blossoming with two children, as we can later meet the girl’s older sister. And we can be confident that the mother is her from her brooch engraved with the same name.

In short, the good father settled down to raise a family in Yharnam, likely meeting his wife back in his home country. Indeed, we can find the couple’s eldest child in the streets after the red moon appears, identified by her sister’s white ribbon which we give to her beforehand. The girl looks no older than twelve, and her sibling sounds and behaves significantly younger than that; a “little” girl by the eldest’s own description. Therefore, Gascoigne and Viola have only been parents for a little more than a decade, meaning that the foreigners either brought small children with them to reclusive Yharnam in more recent years or came on their own before their first daughter was born. Considering that he is one of the “old” hunters we can summon with their bell, the family has definitely been around longer than Gilbert at the bare minimum. The good father has worked with the church workshop long enough to have a unique uniform of higher quality tailored despite his low rank, even. Overall, Gascoigne’s life in Yharnam appears to be longstanding.

White ribbon worn by the messengers for some reason.

That which is accompanied by a beautiful sheen and delicate lace really would suit a lovey girl.

Another reason to believe that it was originally just the immigrant couple is the motive behind the move. After all, why would a cleric choose to live in a reclusive land with his lover? There is no indication that his wife or children are sickly, and the population are hardly welcoming to outsiders. The only reason to come then is for its seclusion and ignorance of outside culture. After all, if the foreigner was a cleric, then he was liable to be part of mainstream religion in the larger continent. And like Christianity in western Europe, clergy of the countries west of Yharnam may have taken a vow of celibacy. This would complicate Gascoigne’s relationship with Viola, who already appears to be many years his junior; while Gascoigne has a grey head of hair, his wife sports youthful blond on every strand. That alone justifies the letters sent in coded music boxes for their trysts, secrecy becoming all but impossible if she became pregnant. Affairs with Catholic priests became explosive scandals in Victorian Era media, and Gascoigne may well have feared becoming one of those headlines.

In other words, Gascoigne and Viola probably came all the way to Yharnam to elope, no one caring if the man was a “father” in some foreign tradition unrelated to the elder gods. There, Viola gave birth to a daughter, and then the couple brought another into the world after taking a few years to settle in proper. They left home to spare themselves the societal humiliation and, by all appearances, created for themselves a happy life since. But evidently, the man of god just couldn’t leave the cloth behind. As someone who presumably joined the ecclesiastical service to do good in accordance with divine will, “Father” Gascoigne soon found himself enamored with the Healing Church’s narrative to destroy evil for the sanctity of holy blood. With beasts as much a threat to his family as the rest of the populace, the former cleric had every incentive to join the hunt, adopting an axe with which to punish the sinners terrorizing the streets. Between that and his oddly pistol-looking blunderbuss, old Gascoigne proved to be a skilled hunter.

His relationship didn’t suffer for that new vocation either. Viola’s bright red brooch is made using a rare blood crystal, the description inferring that it was a hunter’s gift — and there is only one hunter who would gift her anything. The meaning is clear from the gem’s boost to rallying. With how the regain of life newly lost symbolizes the hunter’s lone survival after a fight to the death, Gascoigne obviously wanted to wish for his wife’s safety, whatever danger come her way. For Viola’s part, she appreciated her husband’s gift, seeming to always wear it based on their daughter’s dialogue. The fond memories the two associate with the music box alone speaks to the love remaining between them after all these years; only appropriate since violets, the flower for which Viola derives her Latin name, were popularly given to mean everlasting love. Despite any hardship with her husband working through the night some days as they lived in a humble home at the dividing line between the north and south sides of town, it didn’t drive them apart.

That doesn’t mean that there was no family discord. Although initially distraught to receive her missing sister’s bloodied ribbon betraying her fate, the eldest daughter doesn’t take long to get over it, her weeping turning to giggling at “finally” owning the thing. While under the red moon’s influence, her slip into madness still reveals a deep-seated resentment. Perhaps she felt neglected as her father was busy hunting and her mother was busy raising the youngest. When the older sister was born, her parents were assuredly struggling to make ends meet as outsiders and couldn’t afford to buy nice accessories. Now that her little sister receives those kinds of gifts, the other child understandably feels a little bitter. That might be why she decides to leave the young child all alone at home to go somewhere trivial the evening of our journey, not concerned by her parents’ absence the whole night but immediately worried when the sister she is responsible for has disappeared. The feeling is mutual, as the girl mentions her parents and us but not her older sibling among the people she loves most.

Red ribbon worn by the messengers for some reason.

The odorous dark red is the color of the blood of entrails, so it isn’t hard to imagine its owner’s fate.

Their liking for this is abnormal, but is it possible the messengers’ get-up serves as a memorial service?

But although bullying siblings is far from ideal, this is standard juvenile behavior, and the eldest daughter’s sorrow and guilt sounds equally genuine. Viola did her best to raise two children whilst harboring her own anxieties. That the youngest tries not to feel lonely even when alone as specifically her mother’s daughter echoes Viola’s own loneliness without her husband. The child likewise steels her resolve on an apparent saying about how dawn follows night, likely invented by her mother; with her husband’s safety on the hunt never certain, the housewife must have always felt relief to see him come home the next morning. Certainly, the small daughter recognizes beast hunters through the window by their “nostalgic” smell, showing just how often Gascoigne returned after a long night covered in blood. The girl still respects her father’s work, as no doubt does Viola. There were invariably strains in the dynamic, but no family is perfect. Risking his life for their peace and security, the mother does everything so that her husband can presumably sleep soundly during the day.

For his part, the church hunter is happy to go by his old title, serving as the holy father protecting all of Yharnam. However, all good things must come to an end. The description to his garb notes how he has parted way with the Healing Church, signified by the holy cloth with the church’s symbol unceremoniously wrapped around his neck as a scarf. Just as it is slightly dirtied, so too has Father Gascoigne’s faith, though the hunter still sees himself as a cleric and so continues wearing the uniform even as it goes ragged. In all likelihood, this is due to the Old Yharnam Incident. If the man had such noble reasons for hunting beasts, the city’s burning was sure to shake trust in his institution, leaving so much collateral damage. Dialogue from a scrapped resident of Central Yharnam likewise alludes to an incident which caused the hunter to fear fire. While he doesn’t react to fiery attacks, the concept mirrors the fear the clinic note expresses regarding the church abandoning them. Therefore, it was likely after condemning so many innocents that Gascoigne could no longer follow the Church’s orders.

Nonetheless, the old man has continued to hunt, letting his reputation as Father carry him on as an “independent” cleric in town. In practice, little has changed beyond his cutoff from the church workshop. But while the hunter might consider it “madness” how the Healing Church concluded the Old Yharnam Incident, he has become no better. The blood staining his clothes leaves him constantly immersed in the smell, ultimately turning him into a horrifying beast as we add his own in our battle. Gascoigne himself was aware, as he wears a bunch of small pendants modeled on the church’s incense braziers — almost like charms to ward off the beast within, especially around his black fur sash. Nonetheless, his daughter indicates that Viola has needed to use their nostalgic music box so that he will “remember” his family whilst back home. The man does chuckle when we play it as a companion, though only until one of his summon locations was removed in a later update. Regardless, the sound staggers the boss during our battle, briefly combating his growing insanity. It is the one thing keeping him tethered.

Gascoigne’s descent into madness has gone on for quite a while. Eileen just assumes that we kill him in self-defense, the Hunter of Hunters already knowing that he was losing it. Like her and so many hunters after the Old Yharnam Incident, Gascoigne makes the south side of town his turf, especially around the sewer bridge as the cut resident attests. The night of our hunt, he has taken the key to Oedon Chapel’s gate and relentlessly guards the area from the mob, piling up a number of bodies before we arrive. Even after leaving the Healing Church, he won’t let anyone infiltrate the Cathedral Ward, the last bastion of goodness to his addled mind despite everything. And while the rioters are half-beastified, the few too many axe swings after the fact conveys how he zones out in the hunting fervor; all it does is add more blood splatter for him to smell. And in this fevered state, he decides to kill us not because he thinks we are a beast, but because he thinks we will become one eventually. Like the Church in Old Yharnam, all he can see is all the beasts everywhere and not the innocents caught up with them.

For all his skill and experience, the former cleric obviously needed a break from the hunt and that “nauseous” smell from his foes. But as Gascoigne himself admits, the temptation is irresistible. According to their daughter, Viola left home in search of her husband since our hunt night begin. Given that the sun has yet to set by this point, she was clearly more concerned than usual, and for good reason. When we encounter the hunter, his eyes and hands are bandaged up, suggesting that he has recently suffered serious injury to his eyesight. Even assuming it was a beast’s lucky claw, he should be staying home. Instead, he has gone out again, relying all the more on his nose to track down prey. That only makes him more sensitive to blood, to say nothing of the beastly behavior. Viola was undoubtedly panicked that Gascoigne had suddenly disappeared from home in his condition. She thus immediately went to check his old stomping grounds, the “scatterbrain” forgetting the music box in her rush to stop him. And when the couple reunited at Oedon Tomb, their love story ended in tragedy.

We find Viola’s corpse on a rooftop at the end of a trail of blood from the gate to Oedon Chapel, implicitly killed by her husband like the mob laying in similar pools of blood. He evidently didn’t recognize her, and there was nothing she could do but try and fail to flee — first to the chapel, then back to the sewer bridge through the unconventional path scaling down the rooftop. Not even the music box has an effect after the first few uses, so there was no hope of him remembering her that night. One can only imagine Viola’s terror as she was cornered by her beloved thanks to a locked gate. But as far as Gascoigne is concerned, we are all “pretending” to be human until the very end, and he can’t resist the thrill of hunting either way. The man may not have given in, but he had already given himself to the beast inside. Whatever his noble intentions long ago, the clergyman by nature became just another blood-crazed monster preying on the streets. After murdering his wife and then challenging us, the man has left behind two orphaned daughters, and that isn’t their worst fate.

Hmph… pretending to be human till the end, eh…? But it was an irresistible hunt…

For their youngest, handing over her mother’s brooch brings nothing but misery, immediately realizing that she will forever be alone with no one coming home; despite her initial front, she can no longer be brave by nightfall. But if we use her insecurities to instead direct her elsewhere, her life takes a horrifying turn. Sent to Iosefka’s Clinic, she will become another of the imposter’s experiments, loitering in the halls. Pointed to the safety of Oedon Chapel, the girl ends up falling into the sewers where the local maneater pigs gobbles her whole, leaving only the bloodied ribbon for us to extract from its guts. The latter is her fate even if we remain silent or share the brooch, unable to wait without at least trying to pick up her parents or in denial about them never coming home. Meanwhile, the eldest goes mad without her “precious” sister there to chain her down. We can later find her dead in a pool of her own blood outside their home, probably killed by the brutish manservant standing nearby on her way back from washing the blood off the white ribbon at the public wash pumps.

Truly, if there is any hope for the two, it is when we receive no response from either at the window after ignoring the house until the red moon. Perhaps the two have run off together in search of their parents and avoided death or madness. Even still, they are now orphans in a town collapsing to rampant beasts and lunacy — the odds of survival are stacked against them. Sacrificing the innocent for the hunt might have been beyond Father Gascoigne’s wildest imagination during the Old Yharnam Incident, but in his pursuit of justice, the idealist has done the very same. Blood eats away at the sanity and morality of all, and if you don’t compromise to stop the evil there, the good will perish anyway. At any point, Gascoigne could have left Yharnam with his wife and children, find some other town where no one would learn of their “sordid” past. But the good father couldn’t leave these people crying for salvation behind. Like Ludwig, Gascoigne needed to be their hero. The cleric put flock above family, always wanting to have both. For that hubris, the sinner has received the ultimate punishment.

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