Rants on ToS Characters 3

 

Mithos

 

Mithos at his most basic is Lloyd, only smarter and more disillusioned. An outcast clinging to the memory of his departed loved one, obsessive, selfish, delusional; he cares for nothing so much as himself. He has tasted power, and his powerlessness scares him. He may be able to call on summon spirits and wield the eternal sword, but he still couldn't save his sister's life. He grieves over her, but it's not his grief that drives him. It's powerlessness. He feels compelled to exert his power over everyone and everything to prove to himself that he is powerful. He loves Martel, but loves her as an abstraction, a memory he can keep in a box (or a glass enclosure in the Hall of the Great Seed). He can control that memory—it's his self-created reality. Once that reality is challenged, rather, contradicted by a semi-revived Martel, Mithos breaks down and lashes out.

 

Genis affects him like no one had in a long while. He sees in the persecuted half-elf a mirror of his younger self. Mithos has two possible responses: he could turn around, or try to turn Genis. Let's face facts. Four thousand years is a long time to get stuck in your ways. So he manipulates Genis and tries to twist him against his friends.

 

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Yuan

 

Sarcastic, overbearing, and full of his own self-importance, Yuan is also obsessed. But his obsession is more nuanced than Mithos's. He mourns his dead fiancée and remembers her fondly. Like Mithos his main dedication is to a cause—saving the world she loved so much. And he'll kill anyone who gets in the way of that goal. Many fans see him as a hero (these are the people who also see Darth Vader as a hero), failing to remember that he sent Renegades to Iselia to take out the Chosen and killed at least one innocent person in the process. Tolkien described Gandalf as the person who had worked the longest and hardest to save his world. Yuan is like Gandalf with moral blinders on. He's worked the longest to save his world and left a trail of bodies across the centuries to accomplish his goal. Ultimately his moral ambiguity fails to save the world; he needs the help of a Gentle Idealist.

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