WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Love of Kill Episode 4, "Real Face," now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Chateau Noble is the heroine of Love of Kill, a seinen-style shojo story where car chases and guns take the place of high school shenanigans and magical girls like Cardcaptor Sakura's young heroine. Fitting Love of Kill's unusually gritty tone is Chateau's mysterious backstory, and her childhood was anything but ordinary.
So far, both Chateau and her would-be lover Song Ryang-Ha are cloaked in mystery, and viewers don't yet know much of where they came from or what drew Ryang-Ha to Chateau, of all people. Episode 4 provides some fresh insights into Chateau's troubled girlhood, and the answers raise just as many questions along the way.
Despite all Ryang-Ha has done to help her and win her trust, Chateau remains a standoffish tsundere type where he is concerned, and she has her reasons. Chateau's life has been anything but happy or normal, and her girlhood was marked by the murder of someone close to her and her adoption into a new family, losing her old identity and life in the process. Not even a Christmas Eve date or help with Chateau's bounty hunter work will convince her to open up to Ryang-Ha, but deep down, Chateau clearly remembers her origins, and in Episode 4, viewers can see exactly what happened to Chateau when she was around eight years old.
Many key details of Chateau's backstory remain a mystery as of Episode 4, but some fresh insights make it clear how Chateau met her foster family, and these details help viewers realize what they don't know more than what they do. One day 17 years ago, the young Chateau was found asleep in the back seat of a sedan on a remote mountain road, with the driver, a young man, dead from a gunshot wound. Mr. Dankworth, an investigator, found Chateau early in the flashback and personally cared for her, whether or not his job called for it. Mr. Dankworth and his wife are shown to be generous and compassionate people who unconditionally accepted Chateau for who she is. They want what's best for her, to the point of erasing her old life out of necessity.
After retiring, Mr. Dankworth and his wife are seen in the flashback adopting Chateau as their foster daughter, and they keep her stated name, Chateau Noble, despite there being no records of such a person ever existing. "Chateau Noble" may not even be the girl's real name, but the Dankworths keep it anyway, evidently determined to distance Chateau from her old life and everyone in it. It's possible that Chateau was the target of an assassination or kidnapping for some reason, and by using the fake name "Chateau Noble," the Dankworths are protecting their foster daughter from harm.
Chateau owes much to the Dankworths, and the present-day Chateau is still close with her foster mother judging on the friendly voicemail Mrs. Dankworth left on the answering machine, while Mr. Dankworth is now deceased. Having Mrs. Dankworth in her life may keep Chateau happy, but there's also a possibility that someone, such as one of Ryang-Ha's enemies, might kidnap Mrs. Dankworth and use a hostage situation to pressure Chateau. It's unknown how many enemies she has and who they are, but based on her flashback, everyone is keeping Chateau safe from something, and that something is bound to catch up to her someday if one of Ryang-Ha's enemies doesn't do it first. Chateau and Ryang-Ha must be ready for the worst.
