NEXT: PURGATORY

An earlier scene between the "adults" (Ashe is still a teenager, and Balthier, for all his worldly experience, is barely into adulthood himself) is also presented in juxtaposition with Vaan, Penelo, and Larsa messing around like kids, again one of the only times we see them acting like normal teenagers, Larsa especially. That scene in particular was meant to show how young Larsa is, to highlight how his convictions come from a place of youthful idealism and set up the tragedy of what happens when his world view, in particular regarding his family/Vayne, is shattered by the realities of war and the actions of people whom he believed to be honorable. We'll get back to that. I just love that the game uses these scenes to showcase what exactly it is Ashe is fighting for: a world where her subjects, these kids, barely younger than herself, can be free to be dumb teenagers pushing each other into the surf and cracking jokes with one another.

All throughout the early game, Vaan and Penelo both are shown as shouldering responsibilities that should be beyond their years, explicitly because of the war and the Archadian occupation of Rabanastre. Penelo takes more of the straight and narrow, to be sure, helping Migelo out with his shop and keeping to conventional work. But even Vaan's hunting of rats in the Garamsythe Waterway and picking pockets is framed as "work", something he does to put gil in his pockets so that he can get on from day to day. Various NPCs throughout the city say some manner of, "Up to your usual 'work' today, Vaan?" in the opening chapter of the game, and just about every orphan child you talk to in Rabanastre talks about picking pockets and running hustles to get money, so it's not even like Vaan's thievery is unconventional in the context of being an orphan in an occupied Rabanastre. Beyond even that, he and Penelo are seen as leaders, or at least people to look up to, by the other orphan kids. They talk about Penelo like she's a manager or some other higher-up on the chain of command for Migelo and Dalan's errand runners. After completing the Rabanastre leg of the Three Medallions quest, Kytes tells Vaan that he doesn't know what to do with himself now that Vaan isn't around as much to need his help, and one of Filo's sky pirate trainees (I think it's Fussbudget?) admits to Vaan that it was always comforting to know he and Dalan were there to help out the younger kids.

But! They're still kids themselves! The other orphans stick so closely to them because they're kids. One of the Demented Merchants in Lowtown tells Vaan their wares "aren't for CHILDREN." The staff in any tavern in Ivalice says they won't serve him because he's too young. Various NPCs throughout Rabanastre express concern for him on account of him being so young and doing dangerous work, especially with regards to him being Reks's younger brother and wanting to watch out for him because of that. The Garif refer to both Vaan (or to be fair maybe Ashe) and Larsa as "Hume child". In one of my favorite tiny bits, when Balthier is trying to get the Dawn Shard from Vaan in the Royal Palace, Vaan clutches it to himself and says in the most teenager-scared-someone-is-taking-something-away-from-him voice, "No, I found it, it's mine!." When the group is absconding from Bhujerba, Fran asks Penelo whether she'll be joining them much in the same manner one might invite a child, and when the same is asked of Vaan he again gives such a teenager response of "Are you kidding? I don't want to stick around here."

It's this tension between "these are kids who act like kids and are young and should be free to act like it" and "these are kids who were thrust into lives defined by war and now have to shoulder the responsibilities thereof, youth be damned" that drives a lot of the emotional weight of the game, for me. Stories of empire and resistance and divine forces and the free will of mortals are epic in scale, but it's these little moments highlighting the smallfolk in the midst of it all that grounds the lofty conflicts. It reminds us who this is all for, and what stands to be lost. Ashe even says as much in that earlier scene. All these children have lost so much to the war. Herself included!

Again, Ashe is only 19, as much in Vaan and Penelo's cohort as Balthier's. In the flashbacks with Rassler she is a dutiful princess, yes, but she also has a youthful, almost playful innocence about her. When they talk about their responsibilities to their kingdoms and the role their marriage will play in that, she says that she will gladly play her part, in such a sweet, bordering naive way. Ever since Rassler's death and the defeat of the Dalmascan-Nabradian forces by Archades, she has been steeped in the Resistance. She is the figurehead behind which they rally, and the driving force that pushes them forward. For two years she has known nothing but war and revenge, being surrounded by others whose entire lives have also been subsumed by the same. Of course a teenager whose every waking thought for the past two years has been occupied by vengeance, whose resistance forces are headquartered in a backroom in the slums where the majority of her would-be subjects have been forced to relocate to, surrounded every day by children who wonder if they'll grow up without the sun and won't talk to their mothers in front of other kids because it's not fair to the orphans that lost their parents in the war, would be desperate for any power that would restore peace to her kingdom.

Balthier sees that wish for something better, and the allure of a stone that promises the means to accomplish it, and of course he sees his father in her. I also have to wonder how much he sees of himself in Vaan. Here's a teenager whose life has been turned upside down from loss, who wishes more than anything to become a sky pirate so he can be "free to do as [he] will", but in reality is looking for an escape. Wasn't Balthier the same age when he did that exact thing? It's no wonder he took Vaan under his wing. Maybe that's also part of why he decides it's time to stop running from his past. Vaan realized back in Jahara that he was running away, and that he's through running, and wants to make a difference. Like Samal, the former sky pirate in the courtyard of the South Sprawl in Lowtown, says, you can never truly be free if you're only running to escape.

Now, after having escaped, regrouped, and become stronger, he's ready to make a difference himself. And in fact it's that act of running away that gave him the opportunity to make that difference. It's more of a tip on mechanics, but Krjn in the Centurio Clan Hall sums it up nicely: Escape, too, has its place in battle. Having gotten free of his corrupted father and Venat before they could recruit him to their cause, he was able to develop his own sense of what is and what should and shouldn't be. Away from the influence of the Empire and the goings on in the Draklor Laboratory, he found his own way. But he, like just about every other character below a certain age (and many characters above it - Basch and Noah were only 16 when Landis fell, after all) in this story, had his adolescence defined by war. He, like Ashe and Penelo and Vaan, was a teenager when his entire universe got knocked sideways. And whereas he and the Rabanastre kids had other perspectives to round out their own (Balthier having Fran, herself having left her insular community in favor of broadening her horizons; Vaan and Penelo having Migelo and the whole of Rabanastre in general), Ashe has by necessity only been exposed to the Resistance and its singular perspective. Now that she's out in the world with others who don't see things the way she does, she has the chance not to be taken in by the promise of power, and Balthier is seizing that opportunity to the best of his ability.

And that brings us back to Larsa. Although he is absent here, the conversation in Phon Coast touches on important aspects of his character arc. Like Ashe, he is a young royal whose worldly perspective has been severely insulated by those around him. In Larsa's case, though, Gramis's aim was to shield him from the violence and conniving of his older brothers. While it seems to have shaped Larsa into an individual who values negotiation and cooperation, it had the unfortunate side effect of blinding him to pretty much all the negative aspects of his family and country. So while Ashe's arc is about broadening her focus from the myopic goal of destroying the empire to free Dalmasca, no matter the cost; Larsa's is about turning his gaze inward and realizing the role his own country and kin have in the current and future wartorn state of Ivalice. This turning point for him is what sets him apart from Vayne, and what sets him up to become the hope of a new future for Archades. Vayne means well, he genuinely believes that everything he is doing is for the betterment of mortals. He doesn't question his methods or the collateral damage because he is utterly convinced of his own righteousness and the correctness of his vision. As one of the Garif chiefs says, the Archadians have relied on power to maintain the empire, and have good reason to trust in it, but it doesn't bode well for Ivalice at large. Larsa then, as Vayne's foil, is the one who has seen the effects of his brother's actions, has witnessed the carnage and grief visited upon the peoples of Ivalice in service to Vayne's vision. Because Larsa has broadened his perspective and been exposed to/incorporated those of others, it is he who ultimately leads the empire into a new era of peace.