ovelia

Ovelia Atkascha

I tend to feel a bit sorry for Ovelia, after having played Final Fantasy Tactics. It was obvious from the beginning that she was a pawn in several major schemes. Her tale is a tragic one that I believe lead to her loss of innocence, sanity and sense of self.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Without the skin,
Beneath the storm,
Under these tears
The walls came down.

And as the snake is drowned and
As I look in his eyes,
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of those times.

I could have cried then.
I should have cried then.

And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
I will die.
It's all right.
I don't mind.

I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,

And considerately killing me.

-'H.' by Tool

Her Story

Gentle, meek, and helpless, that was what they wanted and that was what they got, initially. Ovelia Atkascha, princess of Ivalice, was not raised to be a spirited queen. She was not raised to be strong for her people and lead them to have faith in her and in God.

Ovelia was raised to be a puppet. Nothing more, and nothing less.

What Ovelia became wasn't quite what they bargained for, however. Left in a convent, she was sheltered for most of her early years, never knowing what lie beyond those high walls that surrounded her home. Each day she engaged in quiet prayer to God, studied the ways of White Magic or engaged in mundane hobbies to occupy her time and continued the studies of a princess who would someday be a ruler. Alone, Ovelia never really had anyone to call a friend. The Sisters tended to her, but she was so much younger than they and she knew the difference from the beginning. It was not until she grew older that she came under the watch of Agrias, a knight loyal to the royal family. And soon after her innocent, cloistered life came to a rather abrupt end as the flames of war finally reached even her seemingly safe life, to consume her. She was kidnapped by those who supported Larg's rival, Prince Goltana, spirited away by Delita himself, a man she did not realize then would someday share her fate. The War of the Lions was soon in full swing, and unfortunately for the princess, she hung in the balance. The quitessential innocent tossed into the whirlwind events that defined a time long forgotten by those who later read the histories. Even as her loyal knight, Agrias, came to her rescue, she was only taken prisoner yet again and again, and as each day passed, she discovered more and more that she simply did not want to know.

All her life, she had at least one identity to cling to. She was Ovelia, princess of Ivalice... and then that too was ripped out from under her. It happened while being held captive by the scheming Cardinal Draclau. Vormav revealed it all to her then, that she was merely a replacement used to fool people into believing that the real Princess was still alive. That the princes of her adoptive father's were murdered and it was made to look like an illness so they could continue to manipulate her into the throne and set her up as a queen they could coerce from the shadows. She was... made. She wasn't real, her entire life was nothing more than a lie. A fabrication to further someone else's mad designs.

This was not the rock she thought it to be and the ground broke down right under her, ripping her into the undertow. Ovelia would never be the same again after that.

Now at last she came to understand what her role was... to be used. Not a queen on the chessboard but one of many pawns. Everyone wanted her dead, and those who wanted her alive merely wanted to set her up as a puppet for them to control. Scheme upon scheme upon scheme so entrenched and woven around one another that she could hardly puzzle out one before another confused her. There was no one she could trust... only Alma and Agrias seemed to care for her welfare for her and only her. But in time, she even found herself questioning them. Innocence torn like paper fluttering in the winds... Ovelia knew she had to make a choice, bend with the wind, like the trees did, or break under the strain. In the end, she bent, and prayed to God that somehow he would show her mercy.

Question not thy god. For he doth not listen.

However, strange comfort came in the form of a man, Delita. Though at first Ovelia believed him to be like everyone else, just wanting to use her, she felt a strange attraction to him. He did his best to reassure her, defend her as no one else would in these turbulant times. Impressionable, clinging tenatiously to any sense of innocence that still resided within her sheltered heart, she fell in love with him. Did he love her in return? She would never know for certain, but it was not until much later that she even questioned these things. She was made a queen by those who sought to use the power behind her name, be she the true princess or not, and so whatever comforts she could find, she took. Delita promised her so much... to make her a true monarch, to protect her to...

But he was just like the others. He used her, too. They all used her. Maddened by these realities, she was driven to do the one thing that would spell her own doom. She stabbed Delita... and in return he too plunged his own dagger into her side, killing her almost instantly. Did she regret it? No, for there was release in death that she could not achieve in life. She would rather this sweet death than to continue on as a puppet to Delita, or to any others who sought to use her for their machinations. No one would ever use her again. As she closed her eyes and the world faded to black... she smiled.

So when she opened her eyes again and blinked into the sunlight, Ovelia hardly could believe it... had God saved her in her last moments? The fact that the Convergences gathered up her world and placed it alongside others was not immediately obvious to her. But she learned through rumor and travellers who passed. Strangers who arrived with odd contraptions and weird abilities. No longer able to trust anyone and suspicious of the strange new technologies, Ovelia hid away from the world. If she could have found the Orbonne monastary, she would have returned, but in lieu of this, she became a hermit, afraid that if she had been returned to this strange new world... so might have Delita been revived. Considering she knew her wound to him was mortal, she thought it best they not cross paths again.