User blog comment:GotMilk5101520/Silver Backstory & Tartarus and the Tower of Heaven/@comment-7418318-20140602195609

Regarding the first vote, I picked Hiro Mashima.

With the limited information we have on the process it's hard to tell in what way Ultear controlled Jellal. For me the most sense would be to plant suggestions into his subconscious ("Zeref is salvation", "those who aren't with you are enemies", "mocking enemies is good" and such) and additionally block off his positive emotions like empathy or compassion.

That would explain his behaviour and at the same time she wouldn't need to be in his mind to control him whenever he's awake.

If this is how it worked, Ultear might not even have been aware that Simon died until after the fact. Sure she is still the one responsible for turning Jellal into that being that killed Simon, but she wasn't the one to directly pull the trigger so to say. Jellal is clearly not responsible, since he wasn't himself at that time.

For the second vote I went with "some don't make sense". As you even pointed out yourself, it leaves little room to implement the grave, unless it's empty and Silver put it up as a place where he can grief.

For the last one I went with "Doesn't make any sense". Grimoire Law knew that Zeref was still alive, so I can't really imagine that Zeref's own creations, who also happened to be in an alliance with GH would be in the dark about it.

I've come up with four possible answers to what that cultist said:
 * 1) He was lying to save his own skin.
 * 2) The true leader of the cult was away on business when the revolt started.
 * 3) The true leader fled left his two goons in charge of cleaning up the mess, but fled from the island just in case the revolte couldn't be crushed.
 * 4) Ultear was in charge even before she invaded Jellal's mind.

Let me elaborate a bit more on #4: It could be that Ultear was in charge of the whole R-System project from the very start, child hunts and all and manipulated the cult leaders either through promises or maybe even with magic like Jellal.

When the revolt happened, the cultist leadership proofed its incompetence and so she let them fall. To replace them she took over Jellal's mind and you know the rest.

But considering how convenient the outcomes of the revolt were to Ultear (the unwilling slave-labour turned into willing collaborators and she gain control over Jellal who would eventually even be able to infiltrate the Magic Council and lead it to destruction) I wouldn't be surprised if she started to see the cult leaders as incompetent and thus manipulated them into actions that would sooner or later cause a revolt.

At first I thought that this would again be very convenient, since Ultear couldn't know about Erza awakening her magic and defeating the cult, but when I thought about it more I came to the conclusion that ultimately Erza's actions were either irrelevant or even inconvenient to Ultear's plans.

Like it happened Erza was the real Hero and it took some good charisma and persuation on Jellal's part to make the others follow him. If Erza hadn't defeated the mages, the slaves would have been driven back. Now imagine them shaking in fear after being driven into a corner by the enemy and then suddenly Jellal turns up and annihilates the cultists with the powers "granted unto him by the great Zeref! Hail Zeref, our savior!"

That would probably have convinced even Simon to happily and loyally follow Jellal, like Millianna, Sho and Wally did.