#dragalia analysis

The first thing we need to consider is when the cubes were made. I had initially thought before this that the cubes could have been more of the 'ancient tech' that was slumbering around the continent. However, we don't actually have any comment that I can recall that actually says that. As such, they are free to be a modern invention, which again frees up the possibility that Phares could have created them under the Progenitor's influence.

There's more to this than just feasibility, though.

Let's look at one noted aspect of his character:

(Soumarhea notes that in the original Japanese, he adds a third sentence to this that essentially boils down to 'It's good for your brain!' which is not relevant at all but is charming)

And as we know, the cubes notably had some wonky puzzles built-in, varying from Caesar Ciphers to the Vigenère Cipher to unicode emojis spelling out a pictogram.

Most suspiciously, chapter 13's cube key was tied to hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt.

What was a very quiet part of Phares' character, that they idly noted in his 'fun facts' character sheet much later on?

Talents: ancient languages

Hmm...

This is all a bit suspicious already. Let me add in some more ??? elements to this whole situation.

The final cube was essentially the final test. It used all the previous cubes' ciphers in its own. It rewarded you, in part, with this text:

FIRST, I EMBARKED INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

BUT ONCE THERE, I LOST MY WAY.

SECOND, I TRIED CALLING OUT. BUT NO SOUND CAME.

THIRD, I SPIED A GREAT TOWER. IT MADE ME LONG FOR COMPANIONS TO PLAY WITH.

SO DESPITE MY LIFE OF SOLITUDE, I MADE MYSELF SOME FRIENDS.

LET US CONTINUE ON TOGETHER, PLAYING FOR ALL ETERNITY.

This is where my conspiracy brain kicks on, because I'm here to claim that this might be applicable to Phares, in addition to the more overt connection of Syncom3.

Ahem...

FIRST, I EMBARKED INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN. - The notable catalyst for... everything regarding Phares was that he died. Could that be construed as the 'Great Unknown?'

BUT ONCE THERE, I LOST MY WAY. - The second part of that catalyst was that he couldn't even die quite right, revived by Xenos. In a sense, he's 'lost his way' to even true death.

SECOND, I TRIED CALLING OUT. BUT NO SOUND CAME. - Phares is highly aware (according to Xenos) about Xenos' presence. Could he have attempted to communicate once he realized he was possessed?

Alternatively, we know that Phares didn't exactly like being possessed; The Blood That Binds started from Phares trying to recreate Alberius to try to shuck his possession onto. It could be that Phares wanted to/tried to call for help, but was unable to express it/receive any aid.

THIRD, I SPIED A GREAT TOWER. IT MADE ME LONG FOR COMPANIONS TO PLAY WITH. - Chapter 13, where Phares decides to secret himself away, seems to possess some structures that could be described as 'towers'.

SO DESPITE MY LIFE OF SOLITUDE, I MADE MYSELF SOME FRIENDS. - Phares is a noted loner in the fam despite being perfectly able to be social. Furthermore, the first thing he does once freeing Beren is take him here, to better use the ancient tech here. I'd also like to note one of his lines (again pointed out by soumarhea, ''Beren and I shared an otherness—a burning solitude.'')

LET US CONTINUE ON TOGETHER, PLAYING FOR ALL ETERNITY. - Phares spends the most of his time in the main story before he is freed messing with, -playing with, -others, with Beren at his side. I'm pretty sure he at least once uses the word 'playing' verbatim to describe his actions, as well.

Not exactly a smoking gun, but some more food for thought for sure.

Then, we have to look at where and how the cubes were positioned in the story. They pop up from chapters 10-15... a period where Phares was notably starting to gain presence/steam in the main campaign. In fact, after 14, I'd imagine that it wasn't too hard to guess that Phares and Beren would end up serving as the latest Big Bad, especially after their direct takedown of Morsayati. The classic 'bigger villain takes down the smaller one to show how big of a threat they are' display.

This makes it all the weirder how abruptly they disappear from the main campaign for many chapters on end... until you consider the fact that Nedrick was wholly the director's invention. It's far too easy to see how the Nedrick plot had to be inserted, leaving any Phares plans or arc to be cut+paste for later when he randomly steps in again.

The cubes were also seemingly intended as something important - if they truly were just silly little puzzles they added on a whim, then I'm not sure why they felt the reason to bring them back as 'Xenos' terminals' (again as Phares regains relevance) or for the cast to remember their mere existence.

This could have easily been a 'what the heck are those?' moment, but no, the party is familiar with the cubes:

This makes me think that they always had ties to something in canon, and presuming Xenos wasn't always in the 3 writers' scripts (a bold guess, I know)... the biggest connection is to Phares.

I also might like to suggest that Phares miiiiiight have left these cubes for Euden as a sort of test or hidden message he wanted to say but couldn't bring himself to do so in-person.

The cubes, notably, appeared in an order the exact reverse of Euden's pacts with the Greatwyrms.

His went Wind-Water-Flame-Light-Shadow, and the elemental cubes went Shadow-Light-Flame-Water-Wind.

More concretely, the first cube puzzle's solution was tied to two numbers above all others, as again pointed out by soumarhea:

2...and 7.

In other words, Phares and Euden's positions in the family. We also know that Phares considers Euden 'talented' in some unknown way, and seems to like seeing what he can do. His earliest actions in game are, in part, poking Euden with a metaphorical stick to see what he does and cheering him on all the way.

The cubes are also notably non-hostile. Even if you walk directly up to them, getting the ! of 'notice' from them that signals 99.% of the game's enemies to attack, they will not move nor attack until you strike the first blow.

That's an... oddly permissive design, were they purely just an evil deity's minion. It's not as though they only activate when attacked, either, as again, they're fully aware of you when you first move in the boss fight. And I would generally expect things of that nature to blast everything within a certain radius to stop anyone from messing with them.

Perhaps they were intended in part more as quiet records of secret messages Phares wanted to communicate/record but not say freely instead of beat-em-up targets by Euden.

For more minor, least-likely to be relevant observations from both willofwinnie and soumarhea:

-Phares has a bit of an odd connection with 'things in the sky'. There's Uranus, a heavenly body, but he also notably was in possession of a device called a 'World Ark', which kinda reminds one of the ark in canon, the people living in the sky. Potentially related to the 'things in the sky' the cubes referenced?

-The chapter 11 cube is keyed to Laxi and Masculas' names as the key to unlock the solution. Xenos... really has 0 reason to use these names. Phares, as a human living in a singular world with a smaller outlook and closer ties to Chelle+her archaeology efforts, has better reason than most to know and place any importance in their names.

-We know Phares has been to at least 3 of the places where cubes were found: Clave Loy'elune, Lake Reeve, and of course Sol Alberia. The first cube is found almost immediately after encountering him in Clave Loy'elune, to boot.

So, uh... yeah. I may not have definitive proof where Phares says 'haha yeah I made the cubes, you caught me', there certainly is a number of very odd coincidences that seem like they could point to him as the creator.

The biggest and only point I can really think of against this theory is the sheer number of cubes that seem to be present when Xenos finally attacks with them. While Phares is an Industrious Young Lad Schooled In Many Fields, I'm not sure he'd be casually making as many as seem to be shown.

Nedrick. The world's easiest character to give a pokemon solely because of his Gala outfit design and color scheme.

Nedrick is funny because he tries so hard to be a cool, calm supervillain revolutionary and all that... but is still predominately just an angsty teenager underneath all that.

Why do I say this? First, note how Nedrick speaks during his ch.15 introduction.

He is composed. Eloquent. Speaking with much the same royal cadence as many in the family do, with a rich vocabulary and flowing sentence structure.

Contrast this man who uses phrases like 'incontrovertible proof' instead of more common constructions like 'undeniable' with the Nedrick we see at the Sacred Tree:

Here, Nedrick tends much like Leonidas: curt. He speaks fairly plainly, and briefly when he can. He rarely will construct less common phrasing, but largely sticks to simple and direct words.

And I'll tell you why: This boy has probably been practicing for YEARS for ch.15. I'd bet on it.

Think about it: Nedrick has cultivated this elaborate idea and hatred of Euden. How useless and worthless he is and how much he is unfit to be apart of 'his' family. How he 'deserves' Zethia. And now, for the first time in his whole life, Nedrick has finally been presented the opportunity to reveal himself to Euden.

You better bet he wanted to make his not-so-sterling opinion known and utterly wipe the floor with Euden. So he prepares this elaborate speech with all the words he's hand-picked to represent just what he thinks and feels about Euden. He wants to break Euden's little mind and then kill him triumphantly and revel in the fact that now he can reclaim his status as Zethia's brother.

He's probably rehearsed this conversation in his head so many times. What if they bring up xyz point? Well, he'll need to bring the enchanted seal. So on and so forth.

But when Euden survives ch.15? Well... he's starting to be a bit unsure. The script has been broken. Neddy still wants to play at being an unflappable supervillain, though, so tries to accept the 'loss' with grace.

He's so committed to the principle that he is the cool calm logical one and Euden is the wild emotional one that he's even trying to pretend that he'd be okay if Euden 'accepted the truth' with enough magnanimity.

Problem is... he's not okay with it. Euden gives no real indication that he accepted the truth poorly once he hears it in ch.19. Nedrick seems to think that, -with some reason with his ch.15 reaction, - that Euden would just mentally shut down for good at hearing the full truth, but that obviously wasn't the case.

And yet Neddy still has this deep-running loathing for Euden. He's just shifted the goalpost from Euden's creation to Euden's personality/beliefs as a means of picking his fight with Euden. But somehow Euden is even more annoying to him, because even though Nedrick has tried to shatter him, he's still kicking about with most of his same opinions and beliefs.

So all that planning and gloating gets thrown out the window, and Nedrick is having to start speaking in the moment instead of punching the Euden-sockpuppet he was imagining in his head. He tries his best to reclaim his cool eloquence when Euden does make it up the tree, because we're entering 'the other speech he prepared' territory where he could go on about his master plan and why it's necessary...

But, at the end of the day... Nedrick is still a bit of a petty teenager.

Euden is trying to listen, yet he still tries to delay and shut off because he doesn't want to communicate and eventually foists part of the explanation on a literal tree as he has to gather his words to sound Cool and Eloquent again.

He also introduces little insults for Euden and joins up with Beren and call him 'hollow man'. ch.15 Nedrick really only ever calls Euden by name or by title. His 'above it all' air is slipping.

So. Yeah. Nedrick is very dedicated to appearing high-and-mighty, but I see through it!

That's all I had for his way of speaking, but there's more "Nedrick is just a dumb teenager" food in the form of his plan. How so?

Well, let me start off with a small little footnote: much like he painted Euden, Nedrick was a big fish in small waters and is now venturing out to the sea only to find himself massively outgunned, and he doesn't even know it.

Ch.15 Nedrick is convinced that he's so smart and cool that he knows the breadth of Phares'/Xenos' plots. Calls it 'pathetic', even.

Problem is...

Nedrick is playing Snakes and Ladders - maybe a shortcut or setback here and there, but a linear path. He needs Zethia -> goes to Tree -> gets Dawnshard -> forges full pact with Bahamut -> remakes world...

Phares/Xenos is playing much more abstractly. Because of Xenos' condition, his plans are less a step-by-step sequence game like Candyland and more a checklist he's secretly and idly ticking off. A chess or go trap forming in the background until he's ready to strike and ruin their opponent. Most any goal of his can be done at any time, he's just looking to meet a certain amount of them for Xenos to return. We're talking plans that span centuries and millennia, like the priming of Grams for his return.

Yet Neddy boy there is convinced that just because he knew PharesXenos there was going to have Beren munch on Morsayati that he had it all figured out. No. No he didn't! He doesn't even know that Phares was possessed by the Progenitor, the big thing he wanted to defeat in the end!

Relatedly, PharesXenos also knows exactly how to ragebait him. This is a skill of Phares by himself, but Xenos surely has only augmented it with his additional knowledge:

So yes, for starters, Nedrick has Severely Misjudged who and what he is up against, for starters.

Secondly, his actual plan borders on a logical fallacy so obvious that even the most average of the main cast can instantly clock it.

He's also not even good at communicating it. I know I've seen a few people think that Nedrick is just another Leonidas - that he hates the weak and wants to be rid of them. The opposite is true. Leo at the start was of the 'strong eat the weak' philosophy, while Nedrick believes he will champion the weak.

His argument is that people are kinda forced into bad fates with no choice. A solid start. Poverty, illness, all that unfortunately wreck too many lives even in our world, merely because of the circumstances of your birth. Your appearance, gender, and so many more factors have determined the hand you got. He wants to do away with that. Good job, Nedrick.

How? Well, he's decided that everyone needs to be given the ability to shapeshift, and that that will somehow allow people stuck in their stations and 'rise up'.

This posits.... many glaring issues. First, why shapeshifting? What inherently would allow that for anyone to escape the misfortune of their circumstances? Power certainly lets people do more things, but it doesn't solve everything. What's your plan if you need money? Take it with that extra power? Well, now there's a good chance that the people with the money have more power than you, so good luck taking it.

If everyone could shift, too, there's not enough dragons in the world for people to turn into. If it's separate from standard pacting, we then run into the next issue, that most people's bodies in Dragalia Lost weren't Built For That.

But let's say that Nedrick somehow wishes so that everyone can handle a shift. Well...

Then the 'milk' of the populace is still going to naturally separate. Everyone will not miraculously have equal power just because they can shift. So even among the shifted, in and out there will be disparate power to separate the strong and weak.

Factor in again the fact that only a small percentage will be able to rise to the top and not curdle, and we have a double whammy: the strong of the weak are going to prosper, and only them. The actual weak are just going to suffer and die as usual.

He writes this off as a 'necessary sacrifice', a one-time payment, but it's still a bit of a halfhearted defense for someone that's trying to champion the weak. This is where people get confused and lump him in with Leo: functionally, his plan mostly just favors the already-strong or those who can be strong.

His dream mostly amounts to a bit of a childish vengeance mixed with some very poorly thought-out social justice attempt with a hint of anarchy seasoning. I'll tell you what's really up: he wants to get back at his family. He yearns to be like them, that he was among them. But since he wasn't allowed to be, he's then decided he needs to take away their special toy of shapeshifting. The 'if everyone's special, no one will be'.

Heck, maybe this is just some super far out plan to try to free up the family to be normal people that he could be with. Unlikely, but hey. I'll throw it out there. In the end, Nedrick's main motivation seems to revolve about

One last loosely related sidenote to this is:

Finlorda is a Jerk

That's right, I said it: Finlorda is by far the one of the good old king trio with the shadiest morals.

Aurelius/Audric make the statement that he did not know Nedrick had survived until recently. That was the impetus for Aurelius going crazy and going to the ruins at the start, trying to find a way to help Neddy (in part), by messing about with some very evil powers. So we have a clear statement on his priority: the minute he finds out his OG son is still alive and kicking, Aurelius almost immediately goes into 'get him back get him back get him back keep him safe keep him safe' mode, with his only hesitancy being what it would do to Euden.

But what about all that time before? Finlorda had years. A decade and a half to let one of his oldest friends know that there was a whoopsie daisy and turns out your son's soul didn't even make it in the new box and he's still alive and now struggling with a godlike entity. But he didn't!!!

And the only notion for why he didn't is that he looked at the free dragonblood and wanted it for experiments. We see repeated stress on the fact that Finlorda was obsessed with cracking the secret of dragonblood - he admits it himself, even. It makes far too much sense as it is that he would see his new human baby that's unexpectedly alive again as free real estate, now that he's sent his friend home with a son.

And oh boy do we get some stress that he followed through on his free baby blood bank:

Finlorda's little experiment resulting in Euden doesn't seem to be the only thing little Nedrick got, based on the phrasing. This wasn't just a one-time thing. While I really don't think it was anything like or equivalent to the Syndicate or anything like that, we've got some really ugly ethics going on here. Nedrick doesn't seem to be all that pleased about Finlorda even as a child - Jinlorda wonders if he wants to take revenge on him for it as well as the Euden thing, and he barks at Finlorda for using him.

To be fair, Finlorda does seem generally invested in trying to make things not cruel and keep Neddy fed and clothed and all that (perhaps an ardent task for people who spend most their lives very tiny). If he's concerned about the impact a court testimony will have on a child, I don't think he was tearing out organs while Nedrick's still awake or something. But, again, he was still using a young child for experiments for an unknown amount of time, enough that civilians of the faerie kingdom seem to recognize and identify Neddy as Finlorda's lab rat, all the while not telling his own friend, the kid's real father and family, that he was alive.

He seems very regretful and is trying to do his best, but oof. This man definitely has a very complicated and messy moral system.

This all ties back into Nedrick having an interesting view on Aurelius. For all he seems inclined to rage at Aurelius, by projecting that Euden should curse him as he intends to kill him...

Or with his insistence that he feels nothing for Aurelius because 'he had no expectations'...

...Nedrick nevertheless seems to put Aurelius on a pedestal. Amid all the fighting, the childish hatred, ideological differences, and more with Euden, the appeal that finally wins him over is Audric saying this:

An oath from 'Aurelius', imploring him not to take the same path. Letting him know that Aurelius' absence in Nedrick's childhood was not a voluntary decision. Accepting the hate from Nedrick despite his lacking intent. All these and more proved the exact cocktail to get to Nedrick's head and convince him to work with Euden. And I think that if Neddy truly didn't feel anything about Aurelius or his past, that wouldn't have worked.

Poison:

Not exactly addressed, but we see several times where the family just... walks out far less affected by poison than what you or anyone else in-universe expected.

We see one instance of this in Valyx's story, where he and several soldiers are exposed to inhaled poison, the Brume. The soldiers go down immediately, but Valyx holds on long enough to not only get himself out of there, but also shapeshift to shield them from a cave in. He then is unconscious for a while, but the soldiers there are later framed as having been in far dire straits than just being unconscious for a while.

Mind you, these were people who were exposed for less time than Valyx. To be fair, as I initially thought when this example was presented to me, Valyx is a Big Strong Dude, it stands to reason that he simply is a bit harder to bring down than more normal dudes, but as we can see with our next example, this seems to be an ability of the fam regardless of their fitness or size...

Exhibit two is Emile, whom we never really see any hints of physical prowess or fitness to him. Emile's story opens up with Werner attempting to fatally poison him with some very fast-acting stuff, and then throwing him in a river.

Emile falls unconscious. He seemingly stays unconscious (or at least, fails to retain any memories of wakefulness) until his floating body reaches SAINT LOTIER. That's half a continent away!

But, somehow, despite receiving no medical attention, no help of any sort, and his past few days(?) being spent floating, Emile somehow manage to survive what Werner fully and carefully selected to fatally poison him.

Hm. There's twice now that we see the family pull through poison after taking a brief few-day nap instead of dead...

I think there might be a third example I've forgotten, but it's not coming to mind immediately. More importantly, we also have at least one possible tie back to dragons for how this could then explain why this is the case for the dragonblooded, as Uranus, an exceedingly knowledgeable dragon, seems to imply that most poisons don't really phase dragons:

Ironically, this was a headcanon of mine in a fic that I hadn't realized there was any suggestion in canon! I had instead speculated that they had some resistance to most chemicals because of their dragonblood. This was handy historically when it came to dodging assassination attempts or other motives for drugging royalty, but also has been a bit of a pain (literally) because it means that many medicines or other substances likewise don't work as well or at all. They can't take Tylenol together :(

Vasculature

This one's pretty cut and dry. We were told even before the game began that the royal fam seems to have a different vasculature than normal people.

"Unique blood vessels" is a notably distinct wording from "unique blood" or the like, if we were strictly talking about the red stuff actually flowing in them, or even just 'altered blood vessels' if it were the same thing but different. It also gives a possible component for the running suggestion that dragonblood isn't a guaranteed (as is also put forth here with the stress of 'have all inherited the blood of dragons' as notable). Passing on whatever genetic quirk that gives them strange veins may be the thing that enables them to actually use their dragonblood. Maybe it helps them channel draconic mana or something, I dunno.

To combine the above two points, we also have the hilarious notion that something about their blood is especially poisonous itself. Euden darn near kills Vania, an exceptionally powerful vampire described as 'nearly immortal' (albeit while young), solely through giving her a little bit of his blood:

Mind you, it's more framed as though dragonblood would also be a cure-all to a fully grown, powerful vampire, and Euden's indeed later acts as more of a magical steroid to Vania in her story, but still. This also makes the first Halloween event all the funnier, what with Ranzal freaking out about Euden potentially letting a vampire in the Halidom and them all being 'doomed'... but Euden is the one person in the Halidom with the ability to kill vampires if they try to bite him.

And since this is more attributed to dragonblood than any of Euden's other... oddities, the rest of the family also likely has this effect on vampires.

For headcanon material, I use the canonical basis of 'they have extra veins' to then hypothesize that because of this, they bleed easier, harder, and longer than the average human. Extra veins means more places to bleed from! It also plays with the prevalence of hemophilia in European royalty, historically, giving them a similar thing without eternally endangering them to minor injuries - sure, they will bleed for longer, but they still do clot and all that. Healing further helps them live through this extra bleeding.

Finally, related to the blood itself, it's shown several times as an ingredient in especially powerful magics. We see this in Delphi's story, Dazzling Defense, as well as the main campaign, where their blood is tied to sealing magics like the book, the monuments in ch.10, and more. It makes sense- we know that there's a black market for dragons and dragon parts in Dragalia, so it stands to reason that anything attributed to and related to draconic power holds power of its own as a magical thing.

Eyes

While my ye olde thought that dragonblood might create the speckle of red or purple that many in the family have in their eyes, that was unfortunately not the case.

However, there still are several characteristics to suggest that there might be a little something different for how the royal family's peepers work.

In short, you know how Morsayati changes the eyes of whomever he's possessing into Scary Red? Well, there's more than once instance of a non-possessed family appearing to do that in art, suggesting it may be just A Thing that they can do. (Of course, this is all informed with a hearty dose of 'taking the art as it is' instead of the possible excuse that we got so many arts of them like this just because it's cool, but hey. )

This leads into the second point, where we similarly see their pupils constrict into more of a lizard- er, dragonlike, pupil, about that same time:

(Also note Leonidas' partial shift here, which is a thing that is never brought up or mentioned...).

It's easy to tie this to their dragonblood, since dragons in Dragalia were often depicted with this sort of reptilian pupil as well:

Soumarhea, some time ago, also speculated that this extends to a broader capacity to just Make Their Eyes Glow with additional examples of Beren and even Emile.

There's actually few components for how this is possibly backed up textually!

First is the continuing tie of eye color changes to dragon mana. Nedrick is a perfect example of this - he outright states that his appearance with his black hair and red circles in his eyes is a result of Bahamut's draconic influence over him:

This is further backed by his colors turning back to his natural blond and green in the ending. So if Neddy, hyped on dragon mana, has part of his eyes permanently changed to red, it's possible that dragon mana gives them this ability to have eye-lights or change their color/pupil size. Note that Nedrick also has the very thin pupils like Euden did in the movie when he shifts his eyes to red. It might be that when they're using or otherwise getting hyped on mana, -usually draconic, -that's how it happens.

Alternatively/possibly concurrently, it could also be a reflection of their emotional state. Most of the times we do see their eyes turning red or glowing when they're not possessed, the fam member is being especially emotional in some way... Usually angry.

Heck, you could even use this explanation to say that's why Morsayati possession turns their eyes red - because Morsayati is a being of such hatred and constant anger that he triggers this response permanently instead of it just being a brief emotional surge.

This also fits well with Valyx, who is pointedly not possessed under the Agito mask. His emotions, however, are very heightened to the point where his logic and self control are diminished. He immediately stops glowing red once he's free of the mask. It also meshes well with whom we don't see shift or glow: Phares and Chelle are generally the most composed in the family, who keep their emotions in check. There never is a time in which either are truly pressed or angered.

Soumarhea also made the good point that this whole thing being a natural capacity of theirs helps to explain how others reacted to the possession of Aurelius and Zethia. It'd be one thing if they suddenly waltzed in, eyes all red when they never were before, but if it truly is a thing that can happen naturally, it raises less immediate flags that something is deeply wrong.

For headcanon territory, I tend to just say that their senses are a bit sharper on average, eyesight included. Nothing especially dramatic, it's not a superpower, but consistent enough to be a noted trait when you're specifically testing them. On the flipside, having weird eyes that simultaneously try to be both rounded and slitted in pupils probably enables some weird problems or disorders.

Also, that this is a thing that they consciously try to not do. If it is an emotional response, well... better to keep that under wraps so others can't see how your mood light eyes are feeling at the moment!

---

So... yeah. That's all the things I recall that we have some possible evidence to concretely suggest. My only other thought I was thinking of throwing in was that a few of the fam that show more than just their first front teeth seem to have more pronounced canines than is usually drawn in Dragalia, but we don't have anything besides the art to back this up.

...I still carry it as a headcanon, though. I say they're not really any more functional than ordinary canines, if anything it just makes it easier to bite their tongue and bite it harder.

That kinda blends in to my next thought regarding headcanons about the fam's biology because of dragonblood: I generally try to make each trait a bit of a wash instead of it being a pure 'upgrade'. Sure, they might have a bit sharper eyesight or depth perception on average, but it also leaves them prone to eye problems. Sure, they have special veins carrying draconic mana, but they're in a bit more danger because all those extra veins make it easier to experience significant bleeding.

I think this also is in line with what else we did know about dragonblood. As previously alluded to...

Here, where I go over some of the other implications of possessing dragonblood, health-wise,

and

Here, where I instead show how even using their cool blood is very dangerous

...The family seems to have quite a few unique problems due to their blood. It itself is a known danger that opens them to unique diseases, seemingly tampers with their biology, and presents new dangers if they decide to use its unique capacities to pact. It has opened new avenues of gaining and solidifying their power, but has also endangered the bloodline.

Some last miscellaneous headcanons for the road if you like my nonsense:

-The family has the capacity to live longer than the average human's 70-80, with their 'natural' average lifespan around 90-100... but many instead die shockingly young if they draw a bad stick and get smacked with familial diseases or something, on top of the standard risks of being royal.

-The Syndicate is very interested in acquiring dragonblood, ideally with a captive family member. The Doctor's actions in the first Syndicate event would actually have drawn a ton of ire from other higher-ups had he lived, because he was immediately endangering Euden to use as an experiment and discarding his dragonblood as a resource even if it worked. Most of the others would place more value in using the fam as an eternal blood bank for dragonblood. Either because they want to see if they could give it to others through means besides reproduction or simply as a magical reagent. I'm sure they'd also be interested in spreading dragonblood via reproduction to then use descendants as experiment fodder to see if that works better, too.

-People with wyrmscale tend to register as 'dragons' to the mana-sensitive. We know that those afflicted have mana 'nearly identical' to dragons, so this is just saying that a lot of people/dragons have to do a double take when meeting the likes of Phares. Even other dragons have to pause a bit and wonder if this is a fellow dragon for a little bit.

-The family is instinctively a bit inclined to more draconic/'animalistic' expressions (ex: hissing at pain, baring their nonexistent fangs in anger), but they quash it because they are humans and it's considered weird. They kinda let themselves go if they transform because now it's 'acceptable', hence their canonical proclivity to roar in dragonform despite being fully human in mind.

-The royal family doesn't tend to fall ill often but they tend to fall harder when they do. Pros: few embarrassing/un-noblelike sniffles. Cons: More likely to die. A big chunk of this is just the environment - I think that while magic makes Dragalia a much 'cleaner' world than a historical one, they still were born and raised in a castle to harden their immunity systems against the common local threats.

-They're a bit more sensitive to temperature changes and tend to run a lower average temperature. You know how alcohol increases the risk of hypothermia because it makes your blood vessels expand closer to the skin, letting them be cooled quicker? For them it's just the fact that they have more blood vessels, some closer to the skin, which makes it easier for external heat or cold to start influencing their temperature.

-They share similar but generally more mild reactions to things that affect dragons. Bellathorna, a thing that's poisonous to humans but not dragons in Xainfried's story, wouldn't affect them much. Conversely, I find it funny to say that this makes a very common plant used almost constantly in Alberian cuisine very poisonous to them because it is to dragons.

-Beren actually has worse eyes than the average person because of their pink color and his, uh, developmental circumstances. Also, his turning red was his 'natural' ability, him turning to pink was that then getting hyped on black mana (also why his eyes were pink to begin with)

-Phares' eyes instead would flip to the purple color he has in his eyes instead of red if he got furious enough

Okay, first things first, character bloat.

The solution is simple, if probably unfortunate: get rid of many from the 'main party'. Now, I don't mean delete them. No. These characters often have moments or are useful supports/additions to the main crew in certain moments, and I am trying to broadly 'stick' whenever possible to the original plot.

As such, my idea more boils down to letting them tag along for a few chapters and then leave, where they can maybe take up an 'important B party' role. Let Alex start to be more involved with Halidom intelligence operations, let Laxi be there to help defend the Halidom.

Since it'd take a while to go down the whole list for every party member, here's a quick tierlist for my general thoughts about each party member as it was:

While these generally correlate to my overall liking of these characters, it's not absolute. Mym would be bottom tier otherwise.

So what are my standards here? My look is their overall impact on the plot, how they change it, etc.

What I consider a good addition (and a good model for what I'd change for the others), are characters like Chelle. She joins the party, is an active participant for several chapters, gives a different angle to help the party (as in ch.17, where she tames Euden's band of 'we will immediately fight anyone doing wrong' for a spell), and then leaves.

Beautiful. Gatov and Nedrick, while not as good, still are more active in the plot (or sometimes are the plot for a little while with Nedrick, as the antagonist). Gatov is a strong presence in 17, also giving perspective and is an active force in the chapter's plot. He continues to help guide the group, and chimes in at relevant intervals as when he and Chelle recognize Audric as Aurelius.

Nedrick admittedly fades a bit once he joins Team Euden, but he still sneaks in to being a more active voice than some other older additions.

Next tier is 'characters that have their moments but generally don't do much'. Unfortunately, Zena falls into this category. She has a few moments, and is most active in ch.1-5, but then fades so far into the background you forget she's there until ch.25 comes and it's time for a brief little gut punch. Aside from 1-5, 14, and 25, she is a very quiet presence for someone who is in reality another Zethia might generally imply on the plot and character reactions. What, Chelle has nothing special to think about being able to meet another version of her sister?

Laxi and Mascula have a moment or two in 11 and 14, but that's about it aside from the 'let's throw Gala Mascula in for a second' moment.

Same for Mym, as she's mostly regulated to useless fawning over Euden. Her moments come in 3, 8, and, if I'm feeling exceptionally generous, when they're fighting Jinlorda and he steals her form.

Sheila for a while can hardly be considered a character, and what she has afterwards doesn't really impact the plot (or is an impact in a way that ties to the major problems the lowest tiers bring).

Oh boy, but when it comes to Ilia and Origa... these characters actively wreck the plot and even the other characters. These again aren't 'delete the character from existence', but they need to be removed from the main party prompto.

So what do we do, if we model characters more around Chelle's presence?

Alex (oh Ilia I forgot to add Alex to the tierlist, she goes in minimal impact) joins chapter 8, sticks around to the start of 13, when she already left with Leonidas. Easy to make that 'leaving' more permanent, as it's a natural place already. Exceptionally natural, I dare say.

Heck, let her have a talk or two to help start nudging Leonidas in a new direction/perspective to help bridge his changes from 12 to 16. To quote one Notte, BOOM.

Laxi/Mascula joins 11, sticks to 14, perhaps leaving to organize the retreat from the capital or defend the Halidom.

Brunhilda... 3-8. In a broader rewrite, I'd like to rotate the Greatwyrms between chapters like they vaguely seemed like they wanted to do (as Mids technically is in ch.2, the dragons popping up in 6-10, etc), but again if we're sticking closer to canon, that's her range of additions to the plot. And even that is really just '3. maybe 4. 8.' You can maybe have it to where absorbing Mars' power makes her need to separate for the others' safety or something, chill out in a lava bath for a while, anything.

Gatov/Sheila, the most natural place for them to leave is at the end of 23/24. Perhaps Sheila needs time to recover after getting her soul back or something, and Gatov wants to check up/meet the rest of the family after he promised Aurelius to look after his kids.

Nedrick is exceedingly tough to quantify, since he's not really a 'party member' in the same way as most of these are for the bulk of his time in the plot. He can stick around though, as I do think there could've been room for him as a longer-term member as a foil to Euden.

Zena is also exceedingly tough. I think the best and quickest thing is just to use some of the space freed from the removal of the other party members as more space for her to talk about things and interact.

Time to address the elephant in the room: Ilia, Origa, and the entire late chapter plots need to go. At least be heavily changed.

I've already ranted a bit about Ilia here for why her character is frustrating and often nonsensical from a lore standpoint, but this is a problem that extends to Origa too.

Let me take a small exert from soumarhea, who has cultivated something of a vendetta against the blue-haired lady...

Take all of Euden and Beren's pain, tenfold it, and pass it to Origa. I'm promoting her from the 'I couldn't care less if you exist or not' tier to the 'I'm acknowledging your existence just to hate on you' tier. Kudos to the writers for sloppily writing a character so ass, I am actually experiencing feelings. For the wrong reasons! Just thinking about how she was written made my blood boil!

What has soumarhea so frustrated? Well... Origa is a fine case of a character that has no business being with the heroes, and one that the writers attempted to do a 180 on but royally failed to stick a landing.

Let's summarize Origa before the 180:

-She's planning (and carries out) a mass sacrifice of 666 presumably mostly innocent individuals, all for an uncertain gain of control of a massively powerful demon lord, whom she is also freeing, so good luck if that 666 gamble didn't work (it didn't)

-Is the undisputed boss of the authoritarian caste state of Grams, where we're regularly reminded is so stratified on class ("The Canon") that commoners can't even worship in its churches, which you'd think would be a priority for a religious theocracy.

She, despite moping and groaning in her lines about how hard everything was for her, how cutthroat and brutal this is, shows 0.00 interest in fixing dink about this, making her come across as the epitome of 'screw you I got mine'. See her comments in ch.17, where she pointedly notes that 'her church has no place for ineptitude'. This is not a woman invested in fixing anything wrong with the society she now controls.

-A very uncool lady who wants to kidnap Euden and maybe Zethia as a bonus for unknown, nefarious reasons for personal gain and satisfaction, risking war with not just 1 but up to 3 regional superpowers and incensing more (Alberia and New Alberia under Leonidas, and even Dyrenell if Emile is incensed by someone taking away his ability to harass Euden).

-Does this sound like a good person, trying her best in a dog-eat-dog world that she's been forced into?

When Graht is expressing more restraint in his evildoing, something is wrong. Also note the nationalistic fervor.

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Intermission fun fact:

Ch.17's plot has this under-running thread that the Apostles might be getting fed up with how things are in Grams and, being decent human beings who want to better things for others, are scheming with the Archbishop Basel and the royal family of Grams to wrest power back to the King (implied as a good person who actually is trying to use his limited power to do good in the world/change things) and institute a better order.

Cool side plot that would've been, huh? One that actually might've made sense, too!

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All of this is to say: Origa is a very clear villain, and one that would absolutely work well in the main campaign as another force hounding the party. Euden chases Nedrick and Zethia, and is hounded in turn by the Northern Church authorities pressing him deeper into the north.

This makes her baffling reversal into a party member almost disgraceful.

Are we seriously thinking that Zethia, morally considerate, justice-motivated Zethia, would like to run carefree in the flowers with a mass murderer? Would Euden watch, knowing well just how much human suffering has been wrought by this lady? A more reasonable, in-character reaction for the both of them, were Origa forced to join up with them, is for them to be at least somewhat wary, distant, and serious.

Are we seriously trying to use this character to lecture Beren (and in another instance Euden) by shoving in a half-thought connection between them, but doing so so poorly that some of her lines almost make more sense in reverse?

"Why did you surrender all hope?! Why did you not keep looking?! For hope will never come to one who does not bother to seek his own salvation!"

Beren's entire argument he literally just made was that he, trapped for like two decades, has searched every line of possibility and still found nothing better for him. "Why did you not keep looking?!" Is a farcical question when he just explained he had. He did. He kept looking, and still came up short. He was expressing that hope for something better, but was never rewarded.

It makes more sense for her to question his reasons and him respond with his tale, because as it was, Origa sounds dangerously stupid.

To further quote soumarhea:

Origa keeps dying because of situations killing her, but Beren keeps dying JUST BECAUSE HE EXISTS. Possibility made it possible that he was born, but Possibility also doesn't want his continued existence.

Also, it was literally Satan showing Origa those worlds where she ends up dead because he wants to break her spirit so he can take over, but Beren went out of his way looking for a world where he survived.

In short: Origa damages the integrity of characters around her, is card-carrying villain that they awkwardly shoved into a heroic role in their quest to seek out every important pretty magical girl in the game, and even in this forced role still doesn't add any good interactions with other characters.

The biggest to-do for fixing these problems is just to get rid of the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE! plot line, and letting Ilia and Origa fade into roles they can actually succeed in, the ones they were intended for. It's awkwardly shoved in from the start, with some mumbo-jumbo being spewed about how 'actually, Auspexes are imperfect copies of the Progenitor and are able to contact him(????)' then trying to usurp Euden and the Greatwyrms' bonds, all in service of the nonsensical 'creating worlds' thing that goes on between them, Beren, and Xenos.

They don't even really chew on any of the implications of that. Like, for instance, are we supposed to take this revelation of Auspexes just being able to contact the Progenitor as proof that Phares would be considered an 'Auspex' (Where's my Auspex Phares alt/AU?!?)

(Another sidenote, if we are supposed to consider Phares an Auspex, what made them select Zethia over him as Auspex? We already knew that Phares' mana would likely come off as a mini dragon to others, which with dragons being so holy and all, might be a draw to the Church. Now, it's beyond easy to say 'because he was sick with terminal illness', and I agree that would probably disqualify him, but then I would want a throw-in line that he or other siblings were considered for the role for it to propely tie this canon lore implication together)

What about Beren, is he an Auspex too? What do they even mean, 'contact the Progenitor'? When? How? Why???

I'm not even going to try to understand the whole nonsense about 'creating worlds'. That should be a simple concept, but when it's bogged down with exchanges like these, well... AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE plot lines have a way of making even simple things like that obtuse.

Are we saying that the Auspexes (+Beren) are just... creating world-ception and somehow making a location be marked as 'another world' when it wholly exists on another? How does that work with things like chains of causality?

Other plot points/events that I'm not quite sure I like include:

-Trying to force a link between the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE members and the Greatwyrms. Let Euden have his dragons, mmkay? His whole special thing was an abnormally high ability to use draconic power.

-Mordecai, somehow wandering away from Ilia and in that timeframe somehow becoming Super Sage, Knower of All Truths. While his is at least a little bit more targeted/'reasonable' knowledge about Xenos than Ilia's I Know Absolutely Everything, I find the sudden flip bad. Mordecai as a character was defined by his innocence and trying to learn about life as it is, so having him suddenly in the campaign as this enigmatic cool rescuer feels like a jump.

-Theoretically, one could have had a cool/nice little moment where the gang rallies around the Halidom. It survived, why not just have at least one little thing of everyone being relieved that their current allies are ok, and are cheering them on/defending things?

-Relatedly, as I have discussed before, I feel that the royal family's deaths in that timespan went... completely unnoticed. I mean, really, by the text, almost every single member of the family died right there in that ch.25-26 bridge. You know, the family that the entire plot's drama revolved around for the first half of the game? Even when it outright doesn't make sense for them to be gone, as textually at least Phares was at the Halidom from his trajectory after parting in ch.23, but is strangely absent with everyone else at the Halidom.

Even if you want to keep this exactly how it is, at least have Euden and Zethia, maybe even Nedrick for a bit of flavor, feel a bit rattled that their entire family is just... gone. Like, yes, so is everyone else they knew, but that one is a bit more personal.

-Again harkening back to my first post regarding some of the nonsense of late Dragalia, the whole idea of the Gran Fiore needs to be changed. Both for how it gets brought up by Ilia, and its mere existence. The Gran Fiore was never a part of the Halidom, and has no reason to be either spared the destruction or be parked right beside it for the group to use (and if it was in the canon world when it was protected, add Chelle and other siblings as likely people that ought have survived the rest of the world going boom)

Sigh.

I'll start lazy and use the first fill-in-the-blank up there: Phares' fields of study and expertise.

Phares is generally shown or implied to be skilled in:

-Archaeology

-Alchemy (it was his job before canon world started going nuts, Court Alchemist)

-Ancient Languages (also seen in main campaign by him being able to use all those ancient machinery)

And last but certainly not the least complicated,

-Medicine

This one... is more evidenced by a collection very small things, so between that and the fact that I've come to treat this as a 'given' when writing adult Phares, am going to be a little more thorough on.

First, he seems well-read enough and studied in it to allow him to estimate how he's deteriorating. This overall is a minor thing, since who knows if he was given guidance for markers to watch out and estimate on his own.

However, his meeting with Uranus as a child led to him creating the antidote to a poison and then 'nursing' Uranus, which is a bit of a more... involved process than just a one-time, 'take the cure and everything is instantly fine again' sort of thing. Mind you, he was fairly young while doing all this, as he was young enough that they couldn't use his adult portrait for it and didn't want to create a child/teen one just for his story we were robbed.

But let's assume he just did standard good kid stuff that anyone could figure out, bring the dragon a drink, food, etc every so often. What else do we have?

Phares claims he files medicinal treatment as an 'experiment', which, with his above interest in actively conducting experiments instead of just leaving that work to others and reading about it, suggests a bit more direct involvement/interest.

The real silver bullet to me is this line:

Phares is capable of producing medicine to cure previously-incurable illnesses that whatever sum of physicians, apothecaries, etc, were not able to. If one wanted to be as uncharitable to him as possible, one could say that he just got exceedingly lucky in his alchemical process somehow or that the answer was stupidly simple that even someone outside the field could find it... but, like... which is more likely? Phares having actual competence enough to make educated progress in search of a cure, finds something promising, and it ends up working, or Phares stumbling on a plant no one has tried or his cauldron blew up in a new and interesting way that he somehow jumped to wanting to use it to solve this illness?

Even more so, he's willfully trying to create more medicine for himself. Once might be an accident. But if he treats it as just another task he can do... I would think he is educated enough in the field to be making logical progress on what the creation of medicine involves.

Back to the more vague elements for one last point, I suppose one could even lean into things like him being the one left behind to guard Euden in ch.23, after he was majorly hurt. Zethia and Zena are purportedly occupied with the general infirmaries, so they're out of the picture, but why would the family designate who they were just trying to kill and who was just possessed as the watcher over their injured?

I dunno about you, but I still might be a bit wary to ensure that the sibling that has been possessed for like a decade plus is not susceptible to repossession before leaving him in charge of the person most incapable of fighting back right now, unless they felt like there was no other option.

For the 'why' of why he'd even pick that up, I believe that one stems from his earlier interest in alchemy. Alchemy historically has had a lot of interest in panaceas and medicine, so it stands to reason (especially as his wyrmscale developed) that he might have branched out to that area of study as well to better his odds he actually could find a way to help himself. Gotta know how the body works to actually find a cure and all that.

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Now, for something I can show a lot of pictures for to break up all that text: his handedness.

In short, Phares is seemingly left-handed, or at least ambidextrous. He almost always seems to be doing things, -and especially things that require more dexterity, -with his left hand. Examples include:

Seemingly flipping pages with his left...

Most damning, having his ink quill on his left...

Even things as silly as pulling his shirt down, he does with his left!

For another stronger piece of evidence for his handedness, the art of him as a child has his left hand over the book. Mind you, he's describing how weak he is and how difficult everything is for him anymore as he's writing. He likely doesn't move his journal too much and wants it right there for him to be able to write in.

But wait, there's his unit art! He's holding his book in his right there!

Well... note the size of that book. He's going to need another hand to do the finer task of, ya know, actually flipping the page. In other words, his left hand.

At least, if I as a rightie were given a massive book and told to flip pages, I would hold the book with my left and flip with my right. Maybe I'm just weird!

Now, this admittedly does not translate to his actual unit, but that's because literally every unit was right handed, so as to keep things easy for both devs and players not being thrown off for where they thought they were striking, all that.

Also admittedly, sometime he does seem to be using his right for other activities like drinking tea, but overall there's a startling number of times where Phares is caught left-handed in activities like writing especially that usually implicate the preferred handedness.

So, yeah, Phares seems like he might have been a leftie!

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Phares has some hidden Greek roots in his overall name/unit - his skills in Japanese are all JP spellings of Greek, so his skills were like 'desmos orkos' and all that (that the translation cut through to give us the English equivalents, like that one is 'Oath of Bonds'). His name is similarly a more complicated matter, as my various thoughts about its origin circle around:

-Literally, his name is 'headlights' or 'lighthouses' in French, or one could also use 'Pharos' as a more historical rendition of that, see "Pharos of Alexandria"

-Phanes, a progenitor light god in an earlier Greek mythos, who shares some other thematic curiosities that make me wonder if he was the name inspiration, especially since the family/Alberia seems to take some inspiration from the Greek/Roman era.

-Technically Phares is an alternative rendition of Peres, a biblical figure

-Unlikely but I find it funny there was a highly-educated historical dude in the USA with the last name Phares so it leads to funny wikipedia article reading:

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-Of all things, one of the pre-canon relationship trees decided to label that Phares and Leonidas considered each other 'worthy rivals' and leave it as the only sibling-sibling relationship chart note that wasn't Euden's with the rest of the fam.

I'll mostly defer to past-me if you want some of the quiet ways this was expressed since they definitely don't have the sort of loud, violent, dramatic rivalries we see a lot in fiction!

Another interesting tidbit to this is that in the original Japanese, Phares seemingly neglects to use any sort of honorific for Leonidas and instead just calls him by name. Most of the other siblings are pretty dogged about honorifics, even Chelle, whom I maybe could see her brand of teasing irreverence dropping it. But no, she seems dogged in referring to her elders as -sama.

Mind you, I'm not exactly any kind of cultural expert or language expert, but soumarhea, some good months ago, who seemed a bit more versed in this, -suggested it as an expression of particular closeness or familiarity, especially since Leonidas doesn't kick up any fuss about it (and we all know that Leonidas is probably going to be steadfast about being 'respected') and accepts it as-is.

It's these things that make me think that they might be especially close in age and general relationship. Sort of like the emergent 'we need an heir ASAP!' race with the subsequent 'we need a backup heir STAT!' that tends to occur in royal families, before they slowed a bit for Chelle and so on.

...This is something I might make another post about for how I view the family relationship dynamics when writing them in things like Scaling and why, but yeah. Sneak peek, I guess?

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-Speaking of sibling relationships, Phares and Euden also seemed to be fairly close. Obviously not like Euden and Zethia, but if I had to guess overall 'family friendliness familiarity' ranking for Euden at the start of the game, he'd probably be no.2. (Technically Emile would probably be more 'familiar' than Phares, but we know that Emile's relationship with Euden was already strained at the start before he left, so... I guess it depends on how much weight you want to put on 'familiarity' versus good relations with?)

Why do I think this?

First, I'd like to point out an adjacent phenomenon: Euden, very early Dragalia, is utterly convinced that someone is impersonating Aurelius and that his father needs 'rescue'. He comments or narrates things like:

"I was certain my real father back at the royal city knew the answer..." and "The impostor posing as my father was at Mount Adolla..."

This is because Euden just knows that there's no way his father could suddenly turn on a dime to be acting like he is now. Technically true, since he's possessed and not 'himself', but the fact remains. Euden holds such faith that his father just would NEVER act like he is now, that he 'disbelieves' his eyes and comes up with a more magical/convoluted explanation for how someone who sounds and looks exactly like his father is doing all of this.

However, by the time the rest of the sibling chapters roll around, Euden is... overall much more accepting of their sudden slant towards villainy.

Emile, while it's a surprise he's going to the depths he did, isn't a massive shock that Euden refuses to believe he could ever do. Again, their relationship was already growing strained at the start.

He doesn't really spend any time hesitating or disbelieving what Leonidas is doing.

Similarly, he's not really all that perturbed by Chelle. Kinda like with Emile, he's more 'how could you stoop to using this?' than doubtful of, ya know, the actual stooping.

Valyx comes with no surprise at all, -because he's not really doing too much out of the ordinary to start with. He made it clear he was there to preserve order and take care of a threat that the nation is perceiving - both things Euden finds natural for Valyx even if he wishes for him to have decided something else.

This, to some degree, is natural. They're less dramatic about their entire personality swapping or anything else that might lead Euden to think they, too, were possessed.

But for Phares?

Oh boy, Euden digs in his heels again in the same vein as Aurelius when it comes to believing he could be up to no good. And he carries this much longer than one chapter.

Euden truly is just a never-ending chorus of questions whenever Phares is in the picture, far more than any other sibling. I never realized just how prevalent this pattern was until I scanned over the earlier chapters.

He's doubtful he could ever join the Empire. He's doubtful he could ever be behind the void dragons. He's keeps asking 'why' over and over again, trying to put gain inkling possible for why Phares has suddenly decided to act in a way that seems impossible to him. This speaks to a deeper familiarity than most of his family, for him to be this confident and incredulous about how Phares has been acting.

Relatedly to the questioning, Euden seems to be attempting negotiations much more than he usually did with the siblings. He worries,

And still is trying to stress that 'they have no reason to fight' despite generally, yes, having a reason to fight. All in all, Euden seems much more dogged to dodging/stopping/negotiating through fights.

And, just like with Aurelius, Euden's instincts here are on the money - Phares is indeed 'not himself' throughout most the campaign.

For the 'why' about how they were able to be closer, it's mostly just proximity, I think. Leonidas and Chelle have been distant for a little while due to the whole city-running thing, Valyx is off often leading troops... meanwhile Phares still explicitly lived in the castle as his default location. Aside from Zethia and Emile, he's the most present sibling.

So... yeah. There's a surprisingly long-lasting and prevalent pattern early Dragalia to suggest Euden knew Phares better than a good chunk of his other siblings.

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-Emile seems to similarly rely on Phares a bit more, who in turn often tries to rein Emile in, which I'll again punt to the me of several years ago to save space (thank you, me):

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Next, as for people he hates, I will again defer to myself from the recent-er past, with this post here:

...For evidence that Phares has it out for Yurius and especially Harle in particular.

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For some nice little silly meta stupidity, Phares is quite likely the most American of the cast.

How? His English VA seems like he might be American instead of the usual Canadian we got for the English dub... but his JP VA also was born in America.

Make of that what you will. I wish I had a crude little drawing of the most aggressively stereotypical American things/iconography with Phares

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-More silly minor things, Phares is one of the few family members whose portrait allowed them to blush. He actually lost the capability in his actual unit portrait. I don't think he actually used it in-game, but he does have some general 'embarrassment' sounds and noises built into his voice bank.

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Last but not least for what I can recall/know right now, bringing back the notion of child!Phares' voice lines... Well, the general noises that the JP dub used to express emotions in stories without fully dubbing the story....

Care to guess whose lines they used as the sounds for child!Phares?

Going once... going twice...

....

If you happened to guess CHRONOS, you are correct.

Chronos' little cute baby form dragon form was the originator for the little voice clips that young Phares gets! What a random choice. They had general 'child' voices, too.

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