[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Fine, but I haven't discarded any evidence in the actual text of Umineko that wasn't already heavily suspect.

Though you have to admit that at least 50% of your definition of suspect enough to discard is based on what you want your solution to be like.
Your way of reasoning is pretty similar to Erika, only that you know what you don't want it to be and you do anything in your power to reach a conclusion that is to your liking.
Everything and everybody in Umineko is heavily suspect. That's the core of the whole story and I always think that the most elegant solution is one that combines all and does not discard.

I could make up a theory which frames Kyrie as the most obvious of all culprits, because she is actually the only person beside Krauss with the necessary connections (Yakuza) to turn the gold into money. And given the fact how mentally unstable her sister is, it wouldn't be farfetched to assume that Kyrie isn't any better. Considering the fact that Kyrie was a sort of X-factor to Yasu and her not knowing enough about her (which might be why she disposed of her in both Legend and Turn) it is not impossible to reason that she was in fact the one who took the items Yasu prepared and killed everybody.
It was also Kyrie who gave the necessary spark to the pact between the siblings in order to make them conspire against Krauss. It was Kyrie who made Ange stay home. It was Kyrie who, despite being a proud woman, chose to stay with a womanizer of a husband.

It's Bern. She's presenting the narrative that is most painful, cruel, and heartless to Ange. This isn't deniable, she even comes clean with it later saying that if Ange can't accept the worst case scenario, she should just give up and stay ignorant.

Yet she never proves it right or wrong. But it's still probably something close to the truth, because what else would have the power to hurt Ange that much? Do you actually think that George culprit would make her even blink for a second, when she was ready to silently watch her aunt die? Maybe she'd be sad, maybe it would hurt her, but it wouldn't drive her maniacly insane for even a moment.

You can call Bernkastel what you want. A bitch? Yes. Conniving? Yes. Devilish? Yes. Devoid of compassion? Probably. But she never did anything to actually make her a liar.
She turned sentences upside down in order to make them appear better than they were or even make a horrible sentence into something good...but she never lied. Even her most evil, if you even smile at your aunt Eva once in your life your whole family is forever dead and gone, is no lie. Once Ange would have decided to move on she would have accepted her familys death...Bern just made that act sound much more heavy than it actually was.

It doesn't have to be magic. Lightning bolts have caused concussive landslides before; it forms a lot of Japanese mythological history due to such naturally occuring omens striking fear into the hearts of ignorant feudal Japan.

But why exactly in 1985? And why was it incorporated into the story as Shannon forming a pact with Beatrice in which she has to break a magic mirror to remove a magical seal that keeps her powers locked up, so that Beatrice can send down a lightning bolt as a sign of her returning magical powers? Why was it that Maria commented it as being an "evil omen" in EP1 when she saw the shrine had vanished?
Of course lightning is an important part of Japanese myths and folklore, that is why people in the story believed it in the first place. But you are implying that the whole story, about Shannon causing that event in order to gain enough power to have the resolve to approach George, is completely discardable.