So I think it’s pretty clear that Belos was never actually “cursed” in the way that Eda was, and his physical issues were all side effects of what he did to his own body to give himself magic and extend his lifespan. He basically admitted as much with the way he talked about the palismen in Hollow Mind, and then there’s the fact that he carved glyphs into his body with a knife, and also, you know, the fact that you would kind of expect a human who is several hundred years old to be made entirely of necrotic ooze. You just wouldn’t expect him to still be moving around.
So what’s Evelyn doing here?
For a long time people assumed that this was Belos getting cursed, but… Well, even aside from the evidence that he did it to himself, we already see him with glowy blue eyes in portraits that seem to depict scenes before this one. So I don’t think Evelyn cursed him.
I think… she maybe kind of killed him?
I mean, when you think about it, that seems like way more of a normal reaction to watching someone murder your husband and possibly also try to murder you than sticking the murderer with a lingering curse that will hurt and inconvenience him in some ways but also make him more dangerous, and also leave him at large to maybe come after you and the rest of your family again! Obviously he survived because he was already a horrible puppy-eating roachman, but maybe Evelyn never found out, and got to live out the rest of her life with some measure of peace. Maybe this was when Philip first realized he’d gotten himself into way too much shit and needed to change his identity, and used his apparent death to do so. We know he didn’t become Belos until much later, but he could have had other, disposable identities in between.
And when Belos talks about being cursed… Maybe he’s convinced himself that it’s sort of true, because all of his health problems suddenly got a lot worse from the strain that resurrection put on his stolen magic. So Evelyn basically did curse him with her evil wild magic! That makes perfect sense in Belos logic!



