Turnabout Enemies

Break Time! 2

I'm going to take another break from Turnabout Enemies, yet again. Considering how much is going into this story, I need some time to breathe. Since the side characters have been given so much development, they will now be the ones I will be talking about.

I'm going to start with Raymond Shields. Now, I will be honest, I didn't know what to do with him at the beginning. I knew I wanted him to have a deep connection with Gregory, but I didn't know how. I knew of Gregory's connection with Damon Gant and Wendy Oldbag from the get-go, since the most recent one shot I posted in Ace Attorney Collection had been worked on since the start of this fan fiction, but Raymond Shields was the one I was stuck on. All I knew, from the start of this story, was that Raymond Shields was the only character that knew everything about Gregory from his past life to everything he had been hiding from everyone else, including his childhood friends. The question became how.

I began finding the answer as soon as I began starting the flashback chapter with Miles watching the prerecording of his father's first trial with his mother being his father's first client. That's when I began counting the years back and Raymond's backstory came to me. I already started planning Gregory's connection to the smuggling with Blaise Debeste, so Raymond's involvement in that made a lot of sense. Considering the fact that Gregory is leaving a group he considers his family, it makes sense that the only person he would be the most open to would be someone he considers as much his close relative as vice versa. Raymond's loyalty to Gregory makes so much sense in the context of things, being that Gregory was the reason he was able to find his real parents and live a better life. On that note, it makes just as much sense why Gregory would want Raymond to be his official heir to take over Edgeworth Law Offices.

Now, to understand Raymond, it's important to understand where he comes from. He was kidnapped and trafficked as a child, as we all know. This gives Raymond a sense of mercy and love toward criminals, being he was one himself as a child. He also is the kind of lawyer to see criminals from a different perspective. As a criminal, who smuggled drugs to all the kiddies, Raymond knows that most criminals do what they do for the same reason everyone else works at their job. They're just trying to put food on the table, survive and find some form of life through the only way they know how. As a trafficked victim, he knows that a majority of smugglers in the International Smuggling Ring were trafficked as children and have nowhere else to go or any means of surviving in the real world. Raymond was only able to find a way, because of Gregory, thus why he became a lawyer.

Once understanding this, it also becomes understandable what Raymond expects of Miles. I've always considered Raymond's expectations of Miles Edgeworth in Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2 to be different from Gregory's and I believe it's because he was never given the chance to understand Gregory's wishes for his child. Miles was 8-9 years old when Gregory died during DL-6 in canon. All Raymond knew was that Miles wanted to become a Defense Attorney and, after his old man bit the dust, he changed his mind, sided with Von Karma and became the Demon Prosecutor. In the perspective of a former trafficked child, who became a smuggler before leaving that life for a better one, it makes sense why Raymond would not forgive Miles for siding with the enemy. Unlike Phoenix, Raymond is not thinking about what's best for Miles, but what is best for Gregory Edgeworth, which to him is Miles taking over his father's law firm.

These expectations Raymond has for Miles makes sense, but only because those expectations are Gregory's expectations for Raymond Shields, not his son. Turnabout Enemies is the story where Raymond Shields comes to understanding that Gregory's expectations for Miles are actually not for him, but for Raymond himself. Not everything is going to be passed down from father to son. These days, most jobs are passed down to whoever is suitable for the job. In Gregory's case, he's passing it down to Raymond Shields and not Miles Edgeworth, because he doesn't want his son to be ruined by his criminal past. Raymond has been in the criminal world and has a better understanding of helping those in the criminal underworld find a better life. Miles, on the other hand, does not understand this, being he has been raised all his life under a loving father that's always protected him. He'd less likely do well as a Defense Attorney, the incident with saving Simon Keyes being a great example of this.