#legendaryandroid

I didn't hate her last chapter, it was delightfully unnerving, I loved the creepy-factor of Lostseed, and Claude was a thoroughly hateable last-minute addition that made my skin crawl, but also I tend to call Throne's arc "fantasy MGS" not for comparisons in good writing quality, but for the campiness of the last-minute "you've been killing your siblings!" reveal reminding me of Liquid's monologue to Solid Snake at the end of MGS1.

Throne's entire arc is kind of a lot of "huh?" to me if I actually stop to think about it too hard, bc the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. I'm not sure it's a foreshadowing issue for me personally, bc when I did my deep-dive into the game text to write my Solistia Timeline, there technically is some foreshadowing outside of the Masked Boy (which is super weak foreshadowing to the "you're all siblings!" reveal, I totally agree it was weak, also like, what ever happens to him? I would really, really like to know). On Mother's side, we get the our first encounter with the "Prince and Princess of Two Warring Kingdoms" story, which I feel fairly certain is a tale about Claude's parents and also related to the Destasch-F'jall war of yore. On Father's side, we get the story of Marietta and how she "left" Father for the "true leader of the Blacksnakes".

The twist of "Claude fathered ALL the Blacksnakes"...eh, doesn't quite work for me, if only bc Marietta was a Blacksnake but is never implied to be Claude's daughter, and it's weird that Father was recruited into the Blacksnakes later if Claude had an entire Thing to make sure all his kids were raised together in an environment that encouraged them to kill each other, like, Father should have been raised in the orphanage or something, and it's just. Kinda messy overall? Not as messy as some other aspects of the worldbuilding, but I kinda feel like the writers wanted to make Throne's story feel convoluted and complex, and lost tract of their facts at some point, making it more confusing than complex.

Also like, Pirro and the rest die in Ch1, so my emotional attachment to them was minimal. Pirro turning on Throne works well for the "wow, the culture of the Blacksnakes is so fucked up", but it didn't like, tear at my heartstrings the way say, Yusufa's death did despite her also being a Ch1 casualty, if only bc everything about the Blacksnake culture made the Pirro boss fight feel like it was a tragedy, yes, but a tragedy that made sense with the story being told, and the fight felt inevitable in the same way Ritsu's betrayal in Hikari's arc felt inevitable to me.

Regardless, Throne's lack of attachment to the Blacksnakes overall, and Pirro being y'know, dead, made the "surprise, they were your siblings!" reveal lose some of its oomph (and again, what? happened?? to the Masked Boy, and even the baby after the Claude fight??? for as much emphasis as Throne's arc puts on children, only the children of the orphanage get a post-game explanation or closure).

I did like the touch of Throne and Co. stealing the Darkblood Staff in Ch1, since it's an easy-to-forget detail until you hit Ori's Journal and Arcanette in the final chapter, and I do like the emotion in Throne's battles with both Father and Mother, but her arc does kinda fall a bit flat.

That she was also supposed to be a replacement vessel for Vide is also a weird detail that never feels like it gets explained or actually touched upon in any meaningful way, to the point where, if it were up to me, I would cut it entirely and just rewrite Claude's motivations for having a thousand kids and turning them on each other (maybe some magic nonsense about how he was immortal and indestructible except by one of the D'arquest bloodline, hence his mad obsession with creating the perfect weapon-child in hopes of finding death, which would still need some polish to make work as a motive, but would cut the weirdness of "Throne was supposed to be a vessel, but isn't, we won't explain that or touch on it again, not even in Throne's unique dialogue with Oboro and Vide in the final chapter").

Like, legit the best "remaining true to canon" interpretation I can come up with for Throne being the not-vessel for Vide is that the vessel thing operates on the same logic that draconic vessels operate on in Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is that a perfect vessel has to be bred to hold the god's soul or whatever, and the offspring of that perfect vessel won't work bc the genetics/bloodline has been altered in that single generation enough that vessel-status fails. And with Throne being Aeber's "chosen" in a sense (and also carrying a strong "Sacred Flame" in her heart re: Alpates and the rekindling rite in the final chapter), she's just flat-out incapable of housing Vide at all (Oboro can bc of his absolute despair, but bc he wasn't "bred" to be a vessel, makes it so Vide's revival is imperfect, allowing an edge for the chosen travelers in the final battle). Of course, that's literally just me grasping at straws trying to make the canon work based on what I have.

So yeah, I don't hate Throne's final chapter but it's not my favorite final chapter of the game either. And I love Throne as a character, and her arc has some delightfully dark and emotional writing, but it's uh, bit messy and inconsistent too, won't deny that. There's a lot of things I'd tweak or outright rewrite in Octo2 if I wanted to iron out all the worldbuilding ??s I have, or even just chase out some things that bother me personally, but also there's also a lot of stuff I do like (and I'd argue most of the writing and worldbuilding is actually solid and hits hard).