30 Days of FE, Day 15: Favorite Villain
Apr. 18th, 2011 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
professor_tammiFE, imo, has quite a few interesting villains. My biggest problem when it comes to this day's question, though, is that some of the villains I feel most intrigued by are also the ones I find the hardest to really get into - it's not their motivations, but rather that they feel like confusing characters to me. On the other hand, I also like this about them. In a sense, it shows that they're complex characters.
Sephiran would be one of those villains. The general concept of his character is pretty straightforward - he was an idealist who wished to bring Tellius' people together, but as time went on, he gradually lost his faith in those very people and his outlook on the world turned much more cynical; a hero who fell from grace, so to speak. Actually... typing this up made me realize that he's very similar to Mithos from ToS in many regards (both have very extremist views on how to stop the rampant racism in their respective worlds, both live much longer than other people, both are hailed as heroes by their rest of the world, both pretend to be on the side of the "good guys" before revealing their true intentions, both have someone on the enemy side they feel very close to [Genis for Mithos, Sanaki for Sephiran] etc), which is not overly surprising given that I like both characters quite a bit.
One of the more interesting things about Sephiran is that he - unlike Mithos - appears rather polite and sane, never really letting others see whatever thoughts went through his head when he decided that the world would be better off if he awakened Ashera and let her pass judgment on Tellius. This is actually very unusual for a villain. Most tend to openly show that they're crazy, be it by their trademark evil laugh or other methods, but Sephiran is almost creepily calm. This scene in 4-F-4 in particular really cemented that, to me: he readily admits to all of his wrongdoings and doesn't try to find any excuses.
As for other villains in the FE series, the are several others I considered writing about - Lyon, maybe because I've always thought that his "betrayal" of Eirika and Ephraim's friendship was fascinating (though I decided against talking about Lyon because, in all honesty, I need to play through FE8 more if I really want to get any sort of grip on his character); Zephiel, because for whatever reason I have a very easy time sympathizing with villains who have parental issues, and comparing the Zephiel in FE7 to the one you see in FE6 is quite heartbreaking; or perhaps Alvis from Genealogy, as I've always liked well-intentioned extremists (but, similarly to Lyon, I don't feel confident enough in his character to really discuss him).
As for the "love to hate" kind of villain, my favorite would have to be Sonia from FE7. She is a complete monster with no real redeeming qualities. Nino may not be one of my favorite Rekka characters, but seeing what she had to go through at her hands made feel truly awful for her. Not only was she raised by her real parents' murderer, but she was also tricked into believing that she was her true mother, mistreated by her for most of her life, and then finally, she is, at the request of Sonia, to be assassinated by Jaffar, someone she feels she should be able to trust (though thankfully, he disobeys her orders). All of this in spite of the fact that Nino was always trying to earn her approval.
Needless to say, killing Sonia with Jaffar or Nino always feels very satisfying - especially the boss conversations.
Sephiran would be one of those villains. The general concept of his character is pretty straightforward - he was an idealist who wished to bring Tellius' people together, but as time went on, he gradually lost his faith in those very people and his outlook on the world turned much more cynical; a hero who fell from grace, so to speak. Actually... typing this up made me realize that he's very similar to Mithos from ToS in many regards (both have very extremist views on how to stop the rampant racism in their respective worlds, both live much longer than other people, both are hailed as heroes by their rest of the world, both pretend to be on the side of the "good guys" before revealing their true intentions, both have someone on the enemy side they feel very close to [Genis for Mithos, Sanaki for Sephiran] etc), which is not overly surprising given that I like both characters quite a bit.
One of the more interesting things about Sephiran is that he - unlike Mithos - appears rather polite and sane, never really letting others see whatever thoughts went through his head when he decided that the world would be better off if he awakened Ashera and let her pass judgment on Tellius. This is actually very unusual for a villain. Most tend to openly show that they're crazy, be it by their trademark evil laugh or other methods, but Sephiran is almost creepily calm. This scene in 4-F-4 in particular really cemented that, to me: he readily admits to all of his wrongdoings and doesn't try to find any excuses.
As for other villains in the FE series, the are several others I considered writing about - Lyon, maybe because I've always thought that his "betrayal" of Eirika and Ephraim's friendship was fascinating (though I decided against talking about Lyon because, in all honesty, I need to play through FE8 more if I really want to get any sort of grip on his character); Zephiel, because for whatever reason I have a very easy time sympathizing with villains who have parental issues, and comparing the Zephiel in FE7 to the one you see in FE6 is quite heartbreaking; or perhaps Alvis from Genealogy, as I've always liked well-intentioned extremists (but, similarly to Lyon, I don't feel confident enough in his character to really discuss him).
As for the "love to hate" kind of villain, my favorite would have to be Sonia from FE7. She is a complete monster with no real redeeming qualities. Nino may not be one of my favorite Rekka characters, but seeing what she had to go through at her hands made feel truly awful for her. Not only was she raised by her real parents' murderer, but she was also tricked into believing that she was her true mother, mistreated by her for most of her life, and then finally, she is, at the request of Sonia, to be assassinated by Jaffar, someone she feels she should be able to trust (though thankfully, he disobeys her orders). All of this in spite of the fact that Nino was always trying to earn her approval.
Needless to say, killing Sonia with Jaffar or Nino always feels very satisfying - especially the boss conversations.
