Grimm Forum

Nick's mom was the one who told him about the seven grimms, the crusade, the hiding of the treasure and the seven keys. Renard was the one who told him how many keys the grimms and royals had. Since the numbers eventually proved not to be what he originally told Nick, the possible explanations are that he lied (no idea what the reason for that would be) or that keys changed hands and Renard's spies within the family were not discovering it (I presume that Renard was not on distribution for official family updates on the quest for the keys, and for that matter, if any of the royal families lost their keys to grimms, that's probably not something they'd be quick to report to the other families).

If it required seven keys and the blood of a grimm to open the chest, the knights clearly didn't want anyone but all of them to be able to do it. But somehow they failed to foresee the possibility that one day a grimm with five keys would know someone who could pick two locks at the same time.

I have watched a couple of documentaries on the Templar Knights, and their mission was to guard pilgrims in the Holy Land and to bring religious relics back to Rome. I know they became fabulously wealthy, and there was a legend of a vast treasury. But the knights were very secretive so no one (other than the knights themselves) knew if there was a treasure or not. They were subsequently captured and the King tried to find out where the treasure was, but never even found out if there was one and the knights were killed. Some escaped and the legend goes on to state they took the treasure with them, perhaps to America. I think they are still looking for it at Oak Island. That's not all of it, just a shortened gist of what I can recall.

Kelly knows of the Grimm Templar knights and relates her knowledge to Nick. Marie had a key and entrusted Nick with it. Renard tells Nick what he knows of the keys. Nebojsa knows. So we have Grimms and royals who know about the treasure the Grimm Templars have hoarded away somewhere and that it takes keys and the blood of a Grimm in order to access the treasure. Yet when Nick finally accesses it, he unleashes a force that is no treasure at all, but possibly the devil. Just my own thoughts here, but someone on the Grimm Templar Team did an awful lot of talking and somewhere the message got crossed up. Perhaps that's the reason why the human Templar counterparts were so secretive. We've all played the game of Telephone and know the original message is not the same when it gets to the last player.

I was wondering if Nick ever thought the whole Zerstorer affair through, and came to the conclusion that if he had released Juliette when Marie told him to, he would have never felt the compulsion to pursue Eve to the other realm.

If Nick had followed Marie's advice, there wouldn't have been an Eve for him to want to follow. But if we believe in prophecy, that means some other fool would end up finding the stick and using it on the wrong day and Z would come through looking for some other hexentweener.

I don't recall who first called what the knights hid a treasure, though I'm fairly certain it wasn't Marie or Kelly, so probably Renard. It seems like royal thinking to me to assume that anything people want to deny them must be treasure. Maybe the grimms didn't see it as something to be sought after at all, but one of those "things that Man is not meant to know" things and keeping it out of the hands of anyone who might want to use it was their next crusade?

You brought up a very good point about prophecy, which made me think of something that occurred in the conversation between Sean and his Russian friend. She tells him Diana could be the Shaphat, and Zerstorer is the devil, so prophecy states the devil will return to take a Shaphat as his bride and have a hundred babies. In fact, Zerstorer is not the devil. He has to wait for someone to open the portal and then make sure whoever it is is a Grimm, so that he can piggyback his way to our world. In short, he's trapped and no one really knows why. He never refers to Diana as "his Shaphat", or the "Shaphat". He doesn't reveal what his plan is for Kelly. In fact, he doesn't reveal his plan for the world. Furthermore, the world is all asleep, with the exception of a few people wandering around at night. 

That is not Armageddon where armies are massing all over to fight evil. and his are not the actions of a devil on the verge of taking over the world. I don't like Nick, but of all of them, he and gets it and knows this is not the devil. Thankfully, he wasn't around when all of them were doing their guessing games at what this creature could be or he might have had a different frame of mind.

As for Diana, I'm not saying Zerstorer didn't have a use for her. He may have been interested in getting her powers. But it's not too long before the the primary point of his visit is he wants the stick. He kills everyone around Nick to get it, with the exception of Diana and Kelly. I believe he killed Trubel but brought her back to life as a show of power to Nick. 

None of this really jives with the prophecy. I'm not even sure it is a prophecy because no one really knows everything about the symbols on the cloth. They're making guesses, including the Russian lady herself. 

One of the last statements she makes is an interesting one....................."I hope I'm wrong".

This big prophecy of doom, and she says she hopes she's wrong? Even worse, Sean doesn't bother to ask the all important question............."how will we know if you are wrong"?

Someone said there was a deleted scene where Diana having many babies was mentioned. The fact that it is a deleted scene tells me the whole intent of the episode was to show that Zerstorer was not the devil.

I still have wondered if perhaps this was a lesson to Nick. He was gangbusters about getting the treasure, even though he didn't have enough keys. He was desperate enough to break many laws, (I'm sure some of those were international laws), and to put his friends in jeopardy. He prevented Monroe and Eve, and even himself from dying, but in the end, Monroe and Eve still died. Nick had to go to a different dimension to bring them all back. Did the Templars know this when they buried the stick and tried to prevent anyone from getting it other than themselves?

Combining the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best with my distaste for the last couple of seasons of the series, I favor Kelly's original explanation, which was the version handed down through generations of grimms. The seven knights discovered something when they sacked Constantinople that they decided was too dangerous to allow their royal sponsors to possess, so they hid it, securing it with seven keys (presumably, to prevent themselves from being tempted to possess it, either).

What we saw the stick actually do before the prophecy was suggested was more than enough to justify the knights' concerns. If you possess the stick you can heal the wounds of your allies and followers; if someone tries to take it from you by force it will repel them; and if someone manages to kill you while you're carrying it, it will bring you back to life. In an age when powerful people were obsessed with conquest, it would be the ultimate tool for marshalling forces that would serve you loyally and insurance against those who would not. Bringing it home would almost certainly have resulted in the seven families going to war against one another to possess it and the winner using it to expand his power across the known world.

As for Z and the other place being the devil and hell, I will once again point to the principle that myth can grow from fact. Start with a powerful being with a magical staff who dominates another dimension and wants to reach out to our world, and by the time someone finally writes it down after a few hundred verbal history retellings (not to mention the narrative being coopted by a hierarchical church or two) the story becomes the devil wielding a pitchfork ruling an underworld of damned souls who wants to take the souls of the living as well.

And yet, the expert Sean turned to doubted herself. To me the whole episode was more of circumstantial supposition than anything else. You believe it to be myth. To each his/her own.

No, I agree that the prophecy in the episode was supposition. It's the devil and hell I see as myth.

Thanks for the clarification. This was the statement that was confusing to me: "As for Z and the other place being the devil and hell, I will once again point to the principle that myth can grow from fact."

It sounded to me like you believed it all to be a myth.

I was positing a Grimm-universe scenario in which historical myths and legends about the devil and hell were rooted in ancient accounts of some encounter/s ancient people had with Z and the other place.

I know. I got that after your explanation. As usual, we see it differently.

Going back to the knights, whether they knew of the shard's healing properties is anyone's guess. I'm thinking that, unless there was some accidental contact, they probably didn't have a clue. Nick never would have known, had Monroe not come in contact with it. He certainly would never have known it was capable of preveting death, unless he had close contact with it.

The obsession is another story. Nick experienced that, and I thought it was to the point of Truble being concerned for his well being, but that is just a guess. Being Grimms, if the knights handled the shard, no doubt they would have experienced the same effects of obsession that Nick felt. Unlike Nick, though, there were seven of them and it collectively, they may have though of wrapping it in the cloth as some kind of magic barrier, allowing them to handle it until they decided to what to do with it.

It's been speculated in threads that it was the knights who broke the staff up into 100 pieces and sent Zerstorer packing to the other dimension. However, I highly doubt any of them would have the skill to do so. I think they found the shard. It's difficult to say if they even knew of the Zerstorer. In any case, I have no doubt the Templar knights found many relics and decided to at least keep some of them rather than returning them to Rome.

I have wondered who took charge of it (and them) after their collective deaths. It's obvious they did not decorate the underground church with their own bones and skulls. It might have been that person (or persons) charged with their after death care, made the box, and the keys, and spread the story around with keys to support their tale.