There are theories that the dorms of Night Raven College are linked together through the theme of “death.”
All members of the Great Seven were villains that either died in their movies (Scar, Ursula, Maleficent, Jafar (in the second movie), the Evil Queen), or were never alive in the human sense to begin with (Queen of Hearts, Hades).
Death has never been a subtle theme in Twst, with new students at NRC arriving via coffins.
Kalim observes that, with the ceremonial robes they wear to orientation, “it’s like we’re attending a funeral.”
And there are also the ghosts: while it seems possible to be born as a ghost (according to Crowley and Eliza), Lilia says that ghosts “linger here due to powerful attachments or personal motives…they aren’t visible outside of magically suffused locations like Night Raven College,” and that they “linger” by choice.
And this brings back to the prefect. In the manga, all three prefects that we have seen thus far have had names connected to the afterlife:
・Heartslabyul Arc, Enma Yuuken (円満 雄剣): Enma’s family name is pronounced the same (the kanji is different) as 閻魔 (Enma), the king of hell in Buddhism.
From the Kyoto National Museum website: “The King of Buddhist Hell is Enma, who is also the judge of the afterlife.”
・Savanaclaw Arc, Hirasaka Yuuka (比良坂 悠河): “Hirasaka” is written and pronounced the same as the hirasaka of Yomotsu-hira Saka, known as “The Entrance to the Underworld” in Shintoism, explained on Shimane Prefecture’s official tourism website: “Yomotsu-hira Saka appears as the boundary between the land of the dead and the land of the living.”
・Octavinelle Arc, Mito Yuuta (三途 宥太): “Mito” uses the same kanji as 三途川, the “River of Three Crossings,” which is “a mythological river the souls of the deceased must cross by one of three crossing points.”
Credit to blogger Tansho for the discovery that “River Styx” was localized as 三途川 in the Japanese-language dub of the “Hercules” TV show.
So there is definitely a theme of the prefect filling a role between life and death.
While one theory is that the prefect ended up in Twisted Wonderland after they died (in the manga it is insinuated that all three prefects were hit by vehicles directly before waking up at NRC), another theory is that they’re not quite dead yet.
If that is the case then they may be close (Grim wakes them up prematurely, and Crowley says that this is his first time having a student who opened their “gate” (coffin) on their own) and they might just be an astral projection of someone who is between life and death, appearing at the magically suffused location that is NRC.
In other words, a ghost.
The manga is following a theme of naming its characters something involving “Yuu” (which is always the students’ nickname for them) and “Yuu” is also commonly adopted as the default-name for the game’s prefect.
Another word that involves a “Yuu” sound is 幽霊 (Yuurei), which means: ghost.
Twisted Wonderland Reference Note 