To analyze the origin of the obtained S 1 -S 2 splitting of CV in methanol, we aim to decompose it into two distinct contributions: 1) from torsional rotation of the aryl rings stabilized by the solvent environment; and 2) from non-covalent interactions between CV and its solvent environment. To quantify the amount of splitting that can be directly ascribed to solute-solvent interactions, we compute cumulant spectra along an 8 ps part of a single trajectory of CV in methanol in the presence of a counterion, but where the electrostatic environment is stripped away when computing vertical excitation energies with TDDFT. The results can be found in the right panel of Fig. . The stripped solvent calculations show only a very minor splitting between S 1 and S 2 peaks of about 80 meV. This energy splitting for CV with its solvent environment stripped away is even smaller than the splitting observed for the trajectory performed in vacuum (see Fig. and Table ), indicating that the solvent environment restricts the motion of CV and thus diminishes the dihedral contribution to the symmetry breaking. Additionally, we notice a significant dampening in the peak intensities for the high-frequency modes of the spectral density when the solvent is stripped from the TDDFT calculations (Fig. ), due to a strong coupling between localized chromophore modes coupling to the energy gap fluctuations and collective electrostatic effects due to the polar solvent environment.