OKAY BUT I’D LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THIS FOR A MOMENT
In the last two cases of the first game, Gumshoe brings up (several times) the notion that the police and the prosecutors are supposed to be a team and that it’s not just the police working for prosecutors or the police arresting people and prosecutors blindly indicting them. Gumshoe values that idea a lot and if he’s told Nick and Maya about it he’s probably told others about it too.
When Gumshoe brings it up in court, Von Karma instantly shoots him down– probably mostly because it has nothing to do with the case and talking about it is a waste of time, but he’s also very openly disagreeing with the general idea that police and prosecutors are meant to work together rather than use each other for their own reasons.
And then, in another case two months after that, Edgeworth– a student from Von Karma– tells Nick about the very notion that Von Karma openly rejected.
I guess we could argue that Edgeworth is already trying to detach himself from Von Karma’s teachings after finding out that the very man who raised him to become a prosecutor was the one responsible for pretty much all of his traumas, but Von Karma has been hammering ideas into Edgeworth for years and changing one’s mindset isn’t something that can be done with a twirl and a smile, it’s something that takes a fuckton of time.
SO NOW. IMAGINE.
I like to think that Edgeworth already held the “bond of trust” idea long before the Hammond case. Maybe way back when he was still starting out and stood in court the very first time he didn’t believe in that kind of idea and brushed it off the same way Von Karma did. But he’s known Gumshoe just about ever since the man became a detective, and by the time the first game starts they’ll have officially known each other for about four years, and they’ve been pretty much working together ever since then. It won’t have been without a lot of scoffing and eye-rolling, but what if spending so much time with a goofy, open, and passionate person started rubbing off on him?
Gumshoe just being his exuberant self and slowly chipping away at the wall labeled ‘Von Karma’ around Edgeworth, every case, every meeting, year after year.
…Until Nick shows up with a jackhammer.
(TLDR I like to think that Gumshoe was already helping Edgeworth open up and not just be what Von Karma shaped him to be, it’s just that Nick helped speed up the process. A lot.)
