Headscratchers / Carnival Row

• Who provided the sperm to create Piety's darkasher? Wouldn't the donor be its master instead of her?
  • That requirement may only be necessary to bind one to another person. Or it could be that a woman provides an egg, so she would need only wait for when she was menstruating.
• In the opening scene, why are the faeries running along the ground to escape the soldiers? Wouldn't it be better to fly above the trees to get some more cover and completely evade the werewolves?
  • watch the scene again and look at the tree line. It's been strung with wire to tangle any Faerie that tries to escape by air. Several corpses were already hanging there.
    • Doesn't Vignette swoop in from above? Meaning there are no wires there?
    • No, she comes rushing in from the side.
• Where did Vignette get that daguerreotype of Philo? Did I miss something? It seemed like they spent their first romance entirely in that castle. Was there a photographer there who took just his picture alone? Or was Philo carrying around a picture of himself that he gave her?
  • It's not directly addressed so any theory is pure conjecture, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that he would just carry around a picture of himself. In real-life in the late-19th/early-20th century people would often have portraits taken and held ready for use in any necessary event since there was no sort of on-the-spot photography available. So on a big event — like maybe the day he got his uniform or after he'd been promoted to sergeant — maybe he had his picture taken and carried it with him in case he ever found a sweetheart. Or, more pragmatically, maybe in case he ever needed to be identified if he was killed in the field and his body disfigured. Or he needed a record of what he used to look like.
  • The picture was etched into a metal plate, to make it resistant to rain and dirt (or a near-drowning for that matter), which makes it likely that it's the Burgue's Army's version of dog tags.
    • It's on a metal plate because it's a daguerreotype, a very early kind of photograph. Photographs would be a very expensive and ineffective system to identify fallen soldiers.
• Apparently, this "Republic" doesn't believe in setting up official deputies for the elected head of government (i.e. a Vice Chancellor) and other important political offices, in case one of these most likely elderly top statesmen dies in office or is otherwise temporarily unavailable. Instead, the job automatically goes to their child^note Just until the next election, yes. But that can be years of time to wreak havoc on the country. - no matter how young or unprepared the youngster is. No actual elected government works that way, precisely because it's undemocratic and bound to lead to the same problems that existed with monarchies. This point wouldn't grate so much if getting the younger, still college-aged generation of the Logerbane and the Breakspear families into government power hadn't turned out to be the reason behind the entire central murder plot and seems to set up the political drama for season 2.
  • Just because a governmental rule isn't efficient or successful doesn't mean it won't exit. Flaws exist in democracies all over the world. Perhaps when the Burgue transitioned to democracy, the theories of it were still very recent and the case is simply that no one came up with the concept of a by-election, reverting to what they knew instead.
• How can Philo be so sure that he is only half-fae and not full? I could not spot any distinct feature to tell a fae from a human other than the wings.
  • The Fae have these ridges inside their ears, which Philo does not have. If he was full he would have those ridges.
• How did that Jack the Ripper expy from the first episode know about Lady Piety’s Darkasher?