Characters / Final Fantasy XVI - The Grand Duchy of Rosaria

Main Index | Protagonists (Clive Rosfield) | The Hideaway | The Grand Duchy of Rosaria | The Dhalmekian Republic | The Holy Empire of Sanbreque | The Kingdom of Waloed | Eikons and Notable Creatures/Beings | Other Characters

Grand Duchy of Rosaria

General Tropes

"The Grand Duchy of Rosaria, bastion of tradition."

Capital: Rosalith

Formed from the union of a group of small independent provinces in western Valisthea, the Grand Duchy^note simply "duchy/principality" in Japanese (公国, kōkoku) of Rosaria, after years of relative prosperity, now finds itself in danger from the spread of the Blight. The aether utilised by the people of Rosaria is drawn from Drake's Breath, a Mothercrystal located on a volcanic island off the coast of the duchy. Rosaria is home to the Dominant of the Phoenix, the Eikon of Fire, whose hosts are trained to inherit the ducal throne when they come of age.

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• Animal Motifs: Rosaria's emblem depicts a phoenix, symbolising the Eikon Phoenix, whose Dominant serves as the central protector and ruler of the duchy.
• Color-Coded Characters: Red is the recurring colour of the Duchy of Rosaria: the Archduke and his son Joshua wear red garments, Clive has red highlights on his clothes, and even their soldiers wear leather chest armor with red stripes on the front.
• Condescending Compassion: One thing that Clive and the Cursebreakers tacitly acknowledge after the fall of Rosaria is that while their treatment of Bearers was much better than the Valisthean norm, it wasn't nearly good enough. They were still branded and treated as second-class citizens, just not actively abused. It's indicated to be a reason why Clive isn't all that interested in resurrecting the Grand Duchy - it would be a step backwards from the truly free, equal world he seeks.
• Doomed Hometown: Rosaria is put through the ringer over the course of the game. It is conquered by Sanbreque by the end of the game's opening act, with Anabella becoming a particularly cruel viceregent to the region; Rosalith is reduced to rubble by Hugo Kupka's invasion; and Ultima's Primogenesis hits Rosaria particularly hard compared to the rest Storm, with roughly half the region subjected to aetherfloods and turned Akashic.
• Everyone Has Standards: The people of Rosaria, while still adhering to the Fantastic Racism toward the Branded, treat the Branded as more of a work force than mere tools on legs. In the event a Bearer loses their master for whatever reason, they're put to work someplace else. As such, Rosalithians are utterly horrified by just how badly Sanbreque treats them, with some now realizing the full severity of just how badly Bearers are treated by the rest of the world.
• Innocently Insensitive: Their treatment of Bearers is a case of this. Rosarians do treat their Bearers better than the rest of Valisthea, but they still accept the status quo that Bearers ought to be enslaved and forced to serve the Duchy. Looking back, Clive and Jill both note that they knew Bearers were assigned to their 'duties' from birth, assumed that was for the best for all concerned, and never thought much about it. Which, after their respective stints of being enslaved themselves, they find horrifyingly callous.
• National Anthem: "On the Wind Borne" is the duchy's anthem, which is proudly sung by the Shields and the Archduke during the feast at Phoenix Gate. Various arrangements of the anthem are used as background music for Rosaria.
• Outcast Refuge: Rosaria is the pretty much the only country in the Twins that respects any sort of human rights for Bearers. While they're still treated as tools, they are at least given a modicrum of respect as a work force. It's telling that, once Rosaria is annexed and made an imperial province by Sanbreque, even people who thought little of Bearers are utterly horrified. It's eventually revealed that Elwin had planned for the Duchy to begin reforms to make Bearers free men with all the same rights as everyone else, but died before he had the chance to put his plans to work.
• Power Crystal: The people of Rosaria draw their aether from Drake's Breath, a Mothercrystal located on a volcanic island off the coast of the grand duchy that is also utilised by the people of the Iron Kingdom.
• Red Is Heroic: The realm of the Eikon of Fire is as enthusiastic about the colour red as one might expect, and they're also the nicest country on Valisthea. Even after their fall, Rosarian red is an iconic symbol of hope across the continent.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: The standard Rosarian military uniform only gives their soldiers a sleeveless armoured vest on their upper bodies. It serves a practical purpose beyond simply showing off their well-trained musculature - they're the kingdom of the Eikon of Fire, and their battlefields tend to get a wee bit toasty.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: The most benevolent and egalitarian nation on Valisthea by a fairly wide margin. Naturally, they don't survive past the prologue.
• War Comes Home: After the disaster at the Phoenix Gate that leaves Elwin, Joshua, and the majority of Rosaria's army dead, the country subsequently gets raided and sacked by the Iron Kingdom before being occupied by the Empire of Sanbreque and annexed as an Imperial province.

The Ducal Family

Clive Rosfield

Tropes for Clive Rosfield can be found at the Protagonists page.

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Joshua Rosfield

Voiced by: Logan Hannan (English), Natsumi Fujiwara (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Mathilde Carmes (French), Arturo Sorino (Italian), Gianluca Calafato (German), Angelica Villa (LA Spanish, credited as "Angie Villa")

Dominant of Phoenix and hereditary prince of Rosaria, and Clive's younger brother. He is a frail and bookish boy who treats all of his subjects with kindness and warmth.

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• And Now for Someone Completely Different: During the attack on Phoenix Gate in the prologue, Joshua becomes temporarily playable with only a Phoenix Blade skill and the Curaga spell. He gets tired out easily, though, and he is accompanied by Sir Wade who does much of the fighting. He is also playable during the first Eikon vs Eikon battle in the game, between Phoenix and the second Eikon of fire.
• Back from the Dead: Thanks to the Phoenix's powers, Joshua can revive himself via Flames of Rebirth. It's implied he used this to survive his near-fatal encounter with Ifrit when the latter incinerated him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As kind-hearted as they come, but as the Phoenix Dominant, he's capable of fire magic that will burn your ass to a crisp if you attack his family and retainers. Upon transforming fully into the Phoenix, he is both a figurative and literal beast and nigh-unstoppable. Keyword: Nigh. He puts up one hell of a fight against the vicious Ifrit, but is ultimately beaten. After his revival as Margrace, he shows he's an adept political operator as well, not to mention quite the fire mage.
  Joshua: [while dragging Ifrit along the bedrock] Stay away from me! Stay away from me or I'll kill you!
• Big Brother Worship: Towards his older brother, Clive. Joshua practically worships the ground his older brother walks upon.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: He gets sprayed with blood when first his Chocobo and then his father are slain right in front of him.
• Break the Cutie: Witnessing his father get beheaded by a traitorous Rosarian soldier quickly breaks his composure at the ambush at Phoenix Gate. Getting splattered with his father's blood didn't help either.
• Death of a Child: At the end of the prologue, his Eikon form is stabbed in the chest and blown up by Ifrit. He was ten years old. He doesn't actually die; he was found and nursed back to health by the secretive Undying faction.
• Defiant to the End: Even when being torn apart by the rampaging Ifrit, the brutalized Phoenix spits in his attacker's face — which in this case is a gout of flames.
• Delicate and Sickly: Has great magical powers, but poor physical health.
• Does Not Like Spam: His official bio notes that he "quails at the sight of carrots." This can be seen during the feast at Phoenix Gate, as he surgically parts the carrots on his plate.
• Glass Cannon: During his brief playable segment in the prologue, he can hit rather hard with his magic, taking most enemies out in only two or three fireballs, but he has no stamina and needs to take a breather after each cast.
• Healing Hands: In addition to healing with Phoenix's flames, Joshua is capable of using the Curaga spell, but it tires him out.
• Heal It With Fire: With the power of the Phoenix's rejuvenating flames, he can heal wounds.
• Heroic Second Wind: As Phoenix, he can use "Flames of Rebirth" to recover after his HP is depleted. He uses this to survive Ifrit's Hellfire attack, which otherwise would be a One-Hit Kill.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Views himself as this, believing that his cooler, stronger, and braver big brother Clive would have been a much better candidate to inherit the powers of the Phoenix. It becomes quite ironic when, after his "resurrection," he's turned into a politically-savvy and tactical version of his older brother.
• Kids Hate Vegetables: He does not like carrots.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Despite being described as "frail and bookish", Joshua upon realizing the Phoenix Gate is under attack, goes to do what he can, even arming himself with a sword.
• Nice Guy: Incredibly sweet and friendly to just about everyone, on account of his young age.
• Playing with Fire: Part and parcel with being Phoenix's Dominant. He's briefly playable in the Phoenix Gate prologue, able to lob fireballs, conjure small explosions or slash with a whip of flames to strike nearby enemies. He also immolates every nearby soldier when he turns into Phoenix.
• Plot-Triggering Death: It is his untimely demise that serves as Clive's Cynicism Catalyst and sparks his declaration of vengeance against Ifrit.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: He's the Phoenix and, as a result, is the most powerful member of Rosaria's forces.
• Red Is Heroic: Wears a red outfit and is one of the good guys.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Meets a bloody and violent end as Phoenix by the hands of Ifrit, witnessed only by a powerless Clive screaming in horror and anguish. Subverted, however, in that he survives.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: The official website describes Joshua as frail and bookish while his older brother Clive is a brave man who gladly throws himself into danger.
• Skyward Scream: After witnessing his father's murder and slowly being surrounding by his killers, his composure is shattered and Phoenix manifests after he screams into the sky.
• Squishy Wizard: When he is playable in the Phoenix Gate portion of the game, he is shown easily tiring himself out after attacks due to only having a child's stamina and his poor physical health.
• Tragic Hero: His destiny as the Phoenix leads to his downfall.
• Uncertain Doom: Despite being mauled to death by Ifrit, there are no remains of Joshua found after the event, which coupled with Phoenix's resurrective capabilities leaves his ultimate fate vague. He turns out to have been revived by Phoenix - for his adult identity, see Margrace's folder.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Joshua's powers can only be matched by another Eikon once he's transformed. But as a ten-year-old who has never seen combat, he struggles to control the Phoenix and accidentally incinerates his own countrymen in the process of priming.

Elwin Rosfield

Voiced by: John Hopkins (English), Hiroyuki Kinoshita (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Antoine Tomé (French), Lorenzo Scattorin (Italian), Torsten Michaelis (German), Octavio Rojas (LA Spanish)

"Every day we delay brings us closer to disaster. We must move now."

The archduke of the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, and Clive and Joshua's father. A respected ruler excelling in both literary and military arts, who is said to have made great achievements in pacifying the Northern Territories.

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• Arranged Marriage: With Anabella, who comes from a prominent Rosarian family known for a bloodline of birthing Dominants. Her bio mentions their families have intermarried quite often, making them relatives many times over.
• Awful Wedded Life: He barely tolerates Anabella behind closed doors due to her treatment of Clive and other Bearers. Though even he didn't think she'd sink as low as to personally sell out Rosaria just to earn herself a higher position with the Empire of Sanbreque.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: In the prologue, some of his own men sell him out while camped at Phoenix Gate, causing their garrison to be ransacked, and these traitors manage to cut off his escape and eventually kill him.
• The Chains of Commanding: He outright states that he only stepped up to become the Archduke out of necessity, due to his father being the Phoenix's Dominant and the inability to inherit the Fire Eikon before the previous holder's death. Meanwhile, he faces several hardships with his rule, namely the growth of the Blight and tensions with other nations.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: He's a very warm-hearted and loving father, who happens to die in the prologue.
• Establishing Character Moment: He returns to Rosaria with his subjects excitedly welcoming him back, showing how beloved he is by them, and greeting both of his sons with genuine love, showing him to be the polar opposite from Anabella. Shortly afterwards, when he and Lord Murdoch meet privately with Clive, he tells Clive to stop acting so formal now that his mother wasn't here, which reinforces that he's as much of a good parent in private as he is in public.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After he is betrayed by his bodyguards, he angrily calls them honorless snakes.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Elwin is an overall Nice Guy, a great parent, and treats all of his subjects well regardless of social class. He hates his wife Anabella, who's a nasty, arrogant social climber he was stuck with in an Arranged Marriage.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's one of the few people in the world, especially at the leader scale, that does his damnedest to have no animosity nor forceful control over his country's Bearers if he can help it. Considering the world forces them into their wars at best, and enslaves and persecutes them at worst, this singlehandedly puts him above even some of the more respectable individuals in the story, and is something of an ideal that people like Cid or Joshua aspire towards. The fact that his will to Clive and Joshua espouses that he was going to grant true, honest freedom to all Rosarian Bearers only drives the point home.
• A Father to His Men: Elwin mingles with the soldiers under his rule and refers to them as his friends, even joining in the soldiers singing during the feast at the Phoenix Gate.
• Friend to All Living Things: When returning from an expedition in the north, he came across a young Torgal wailing for help and with no sign of his family, Elwin promptly took him in.
• The Good King: It's telling that all of Rosaria bow before his presence. The subjects are happy, respect him, and he respects them back.
• Good Parents: One of the best fathers in Final Fantasy. He loves his sons Joshua and Clive very much, and he would do anything to save their lives. He also treats Jill, effectively his hostage, warmly and she later thinks back fondly on him.
• Humble Hero: In contrast to his wife, who's thoroughly elitist thanks to Joshua inheriting Phoenix's power, and looks down on Clive for not inheriting that gift, Elwin genuinely loves both his children because of his humility. Part of this is because he only inherited his title thanks to his father's untimely death and not because of being a Dominant and considers Joshua to be the true "chosen" ruler. This also makes him more personable around his soldiers and even his servants. This turns out to be why his wife betrayed him. She believed that his personable relationship with the common people made her look bad to the other nobility.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Views himself as this, noting that he only got the throne because his father died before his time, and that he's basically just "keeping the seat warm" until Joshua comes of age and takes his rightful place as ruler.
• Kissing Cousins: Elwin's wife, Anabella, is also one of his kinswomen, like real-world royalty.
• Like Father, Like Son: As noted by his brother, Clive turns out to be every bit as noble and kindhearted as his father is.
• Lost Will and Testament: Late in the game, Goditha of the Undying reveals Elwin's lost will to Clive and Joshua, giving them a pair of matching armbands that he intended them to have and revealing that he planned for Rosarian Bearers to one day live free.
• Nice Guy: One of the friendliest and most easygoing characters in the game. He truly cares about maintaining the kingdom and speaks to Clive about the important matters with a casual, but still formal, air.
• Nice to the Waiter: Under Elwin's leadership, Bearers were treated remarkably well in Rosaria compared to the other nations. Clive even meets a Bearer who worked the castle kitchens that Elwin would strike up casual conversations with, something other characters note is virtually unheard of. Elwin's true plans went even further, and he intended to make all Bearers free citizens of Rosaria.
• Off with His Head!: He gets decapitated by a treacherous underling right in front of Joshua.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Of the emotional variety to Clive; understanding that Clive can defend himself physically, Elwin defends Clive behind closed doors to his own wife and Clive's mother when she badmouths him to Elwin. It's telling that this attitude ends up being reflected in his subjects as well, since most of them also criticize Anabella's treatment of Clive behind her back.
  • Of the physical variety to Joshua, making every effort to ensure that his youngest son escapes the disaster at the Phoenix Gate with his life.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Fed up with hearing Anabella badmouthing Clive, Elwin pushes her off of him while she tries to reiterate the importance of their noble blood.
  Elwin: If not for men like Clive, your precious noble blood would have long since graced the gutter.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Everything shown about him makes him look like the ideal ruler and a kind father to boot. It shouldn't be surprising that he's the first on-screen ruler to bite it.
• Universally Beloved Leader: In comparison with his wife, Elwin is beloved by the rest of his subjects and by both of his sons. Years after his death, his former subjects still remember him and his deeds to the point of still remaining loyal to him after his death, while Clive fights to spread his father's idealism throughout all of Valisthea in addition to Cid's dream.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He doesn't make it out of the prologue alive. He gets decapitated during the battle at the Phoenix Gate, and with his blood covering Joshua, at that.

Anabella Rosfield

Voiced by: Christina Cole (English), Yurika Hino (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Rafaèle Moutier (French), Stefania De Peppe (Italian), Sabine Arnhold (German), Gisela Casillas (LA Spanish)

"Our household has no place for such a failure. [Clive] is worthless. A man like any other."

The duchess of Rosaria, Elwin's wife and the mother of both Clive and Joshua. Born into a noble family responsible for producing a number of offspring that inherited the power of the Phoenix, Anabella was taught from a young age that her purpose in life was to preserve the bloodline of the Phoenix. While she heavily dotes on her youngest son, Joshua, she shows little in the way of affection for her eldest son, Clive, or her and her’s husband’s ward, Jill.

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• 0% Approval Rating: Suffice to say, very few in Rosaria enjoy her rule since it's blatantly clear to everyone she sold out her country in exchange for more political power. By the time Clive's survival is public knowledge, pretty much everyone says Elwin was a far better ruler. It does not help that Anabella rules Rosaria with a iron fist through the tyranny of her Black Shields.
• Abusive Parents: Of the emotional variety. She is very mean and strict about Joshua's well-being, and Clive gets nothing more than a Death Glare. Anabella later says to Elwin that she wants Joshua to be safe (albeit more as a bargaining chip than anything else), and calls Clive "worthless" because he was rejected by Phoenix as the Dominant.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite living her entire life as a murderous, narcissistic parasite who went out of her way to earn her 0% Approval Rating, her Trauma Conga Line during the Twinside incident breaks her mind so hard that it's clear to everyone nearby that there's nobody left in there to hate. Joshua tries to rescue her from the crumbling ruins of the capital, and when she commits suicide out of deluded panic, Clive and Jill (who had fewer reasons to like her than almost anyone else) are visibly taken aback.
• All for Nothing: Her plan to gain the highest position possible and install her child as the Emperor of Sanbreque falls apart when it's revealed Olivier has been serving as Ultima's disposable vessel while both her sons with Elwin turned out to be Dominants, sending her into a spiral of madness and denial.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: She's essentially this game's version of Cersei Lannister, being an ambitious woman who wants to climb the geopolitical ladder who adores her children (except Clive) while seeing them as extensions of herself but absolutely despises her husband and even gets him killed for the sake of her ambitions. Just like Cersei, Annabella even concocts a plan that will put her youngest child on the throne while labeling her stepson Dion an inadequate if not rebellious heir unworthy of Sylvestre's throne, though her actions also make her so loathed and despised by almost everyone she sets herself up for failure because she underestimates those with "lowborn" blood.
• Always Second Best: She feels that she is this to Elwin and utterly hates being compared to him along with Clive, Joshua, and Jill favoring him over her.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Played with in her relationship with her firstborn son Clive. Functionally, most of the things that go wrong for him in the first half of the game can be traced back to Anabella in some way, from the fall of Phoenix Gate and his branding as a Bearer, to the atrocities of the Black Shields, to her authorizing Hugo Kupka to invade Rosalith. However, as much as they hate each other, it's underplayed after the prologue — Clive doesn't think much about his mother and when he does he's more concerned with what she's doing to Rosaria than to him, and Anabella eventually becomes aware Clive is alive and has escaped the Empire but never recognizes him as a threat and the fact he's her son is a truth few know and no one could prove, so she never directly plots against him and concerns herself with more immediate affairs. Their antagonism towards each other is purely incidental.
  • She becomes her stepson Dion's mortal foe due to her manipulation and corruption of Sylvestre and her efforts to get her third son Olivier on the throne. The main backdrop of Clive's trip to the Crystalline Dominion is Dion's efforts to remove Anabella from power by force.
• Awful Wedded Life: With Elwin. It's made clear that the two can hardly tolerate each other behind closed doors, especially when it comes to Anabella's treatment of Clive and other Bearers. She thinks nothing of betraying him just to cozy up to a ruler she believes to be of higher standing.
• Bad Boss: She doesn't even pretend to be a benevolent ruler after getting Rosaria annexed by Sanbreque, as her soldiers run roughshod over the people and sink to spectacular new lows with every atrocity they commit.
• The Baroness: Domineering, cold, evil, and icy, she could be considered of the Sexpot variation since she is physically beautiful.
• Beauty Is Bad: As both the Archduchess and Empress. She is the fairest woman in Sanbreque and Rosaria, and rotten to the core.
• Berserk Button: Nothing gets under Anabella's skin more than her precious pedigree being questioned. Her Motive Rant implies that betraying Rosfield in exchange for a higher station was a desperate ploy to prove malicious rumors that her blood wasn't as noble as she said false.
• Big Bad Wannabe: She'd have a genuine shot at being the Big Bad if the game really was the medieval fantasy political story it appears to be on the surface, as both her actions and character are set up to be perfect for the role. Ultima taking Olivier as a puppet is all it takes to ruin her, and she spirals into suicidal insanity when her plans come crashing down as a result, with her uncomprehending in a state of pure panic when nothing is "in its right place" as she loved to say.
• Bitch Alert: Her introduction has her thank the commoners and soldiers for their work with a barely contained, arrogant contempt in her voice. This is followed by her being nasty to Clive and Joshua, essentially ignoring the former to the point that onlookers comment on her coldness toward her own blood. She gets worse from there.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: She's very talented at using cunning and manipulation to get what she wants, but she doesn't even try to be responsible once she married Sylvestre, leaving her knights to work to threaten and bully the peasants of the land.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed and averted regarding Joshua and Clive respectively. Despite all she's done, Joshua still loves her and even tries to save her in the aftermath of Bahamut's rampage despite knowing full well she helped orchestrate Elwin's death and the fall of Phoenix Gate. Clive initially wished to prove himself to Anabella in spite of her dislike toward him, but lost all respect for her after the Night of Flames.
• Bullying a Dragon: Chooses to cruelly taunt Dion as well as manipulate his father into naming her son Emperor in his place. This proves to be an enormous mistake. Dion is the Dominant of Bahamut, one of the most powerful of the Eikons, and is also the beloved leader of the Imperial Dragoons and a Wise Prince adored by the entire citizenry. Predictably, a very angry Dion leads a rebellion against her and Olivier, which she may have anticipated but had not expected to be so successful or escalate so drastically, as she continues to look self-assured up until Sylvestre is accidentally killed and Ultima manipulates Dion through Olivier into going berserk as a result. She remains entirely unaware of Ultima's involvement or existence vastly over-encompassing her own, whose influence was the beginning of the end for her long before she even existed with her bloodline only being considered important because he kept choosing it for dominants in the first place and her entire world crumbles when he discards her once she has played her part in his own plans.
• The Caligula: She is an absolutely toxic ruler who threatens or intimidates her subjects with harsh rules. She imposes a cold-iron rule over Rosaria through her Black Shields, mercilessly executes Bearers with little thought or reason, and poisons Sylvestre with her elitist views.
• Classic Villain: Pride, Vanity, Greed, with a dash of Wrath, seeing as she essentially forces her eldest son into the army.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: She helped orchestrate the death of her husband and was willing to turn Joshua into a political hostage to help secure her future position in Sanbreque, all but leaving Rosaria open to be conquered by the empire after the Iron Kingdom sacked it. She's not much better with Dion, whom she claims is trying to instigate a rebellion against his father in favor of putting Olivier on the throne, simply because his mother was a commoner.
• Color Motifs: Purple, as per the usual color of royalty.
• The Corruptor: To the Emperor of Sanbreque. Granted, Sylvestre already had a serious ruthless streak, but he did formerly have his citizens' best interests in mind. His marriage to Anabella ruins his good qualities as Anabella's elitist views wind up poisoning him to the point he wants to take over the entirety of Valisthea, no matter how big a mountain of corpses he has to make to succeed even if said mountain consists of his own citizens.
• The Coup: Assists the imperial soldiers of the Empire of Sanbreque in a coup against her own husband in order to boost her status in the world the Emperor of Sanbreque desires to create. Then starts doing this in a more subtle manner with the Empire of Sanbreque itself.
• Cruel Mercy: When some Sanbreque soldiers apprehend Clive in the aftermath of the sacking of Phoenix Gate, they leave his fate up to her. Anabella demonstrates her utter contempt for Clive by ordering his death, but relents... so that she can spite her late husband's noble values one last time by conscripting Clive as a Slave Mook, as he always had praised Clive as an admirable soldier. Ironically, this act of "kindness" is one of the many reasons why her plans come back to bite her in the ass.
• Damned by Faint Praise: When she sees Clive again as a grown man in his thirties, she remains the same terrible mother who absolutely despises him but acknowledges him as an accomplished man. However, she points out this was always the problem she had with him. His being strong and capable insulted her on two fronts, one being as a capable person of his calibre who had not been blessed by the Phoenix and the second being that her sickly second son who did inherit it was being constantly compared in an unfavorable manner to him. She despises his strength all the more just because he didn't perfectly fit her vision and needs, and refuses to accept any compromise.
• Death Glare: Her signature expression towards Clive, demonstrating how he's The Unfavorite to her.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Caligula. As viceriene of Rosaria, she's in charge of running the place, yet employs absolutely brutal methods in doing so, regularly purging villages that want to protect Bearers in any capacity. She even poisons Sylvestre's mind with her elitist views and claiming his eldest son Dion is plotting a rebellion. However, she does absolutely nothing to stamp out any sort of resistance against her. She does nothing to go after Clive after Hugo is killed and is content to leave him alone in favor of her immediate affairs with Olivier, and she never considered Dion a threat. In both cases, she allows both to amass power; in the latter case, she never expected, much less realized, that Dion was far more beloved by the people and his soldiers than Sylvestre or Olivier were.
• Despair Event Horizon: Loses all hope and will to live after Dion lays waste to Twinside and then kills Olivier. She has a screaming breakdown and begins mindlessly swinging a dagger at her son before finally cutting her own throat.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Quite happy to let Valisthea go to hell in a hand basket if that means she can be an empress. She's also pretty upfront that she wants the job for the power and refuses to even acknowledge that she's supposed to have duties to go with them. She truly believes that as a noble any citizens, lands and even family members are just means to secure the status of her bloodline and all can be replaced in the pursuit of this if they do not perfectly contribute to it in the exact manner she wants. Downplayed in that she does have at least a few loved ones to look after, including her third son Olivier but even that is on the condition that they perfectly fit in with the former statement.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Elwin never realizes how utterly abhorrent Anabella is or how far her "sovereign's blood" mindset drives her.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • She treats Clive as The Unfavorite because he didn't inherit the Phoenix where Joshua did, and gives him off to Sanbreque as a Cruel Mercy thinking he'll be a disposable pawn. No one, much less even Clive himself, could've foreseen that he'd somehow become the Dominant for Ifrit in an unheard-of circumstance, which means sparing Clive helped set off a long-term series of vengeful consequences he had now the power to enact.
  • She also had no idea that Ultima, an eldritch being, existed or just how much influence he had over her life and all of Valisthea. Being entirely unaware of him even after he discards the disintegrating meat puppet he made out of her third son.
• Dirty Coward: Played with. For most of the game, she's a straight example, launching schemes that tear apart Valisthea and cost thousands of lives and cowering in panic when they come back to her doorstep, having not even looked out the window at the protracted battle between Phoenix and Bahamut, being unaware her reportedly long dead son is saving the remains of the kingdom. It's very telling that it's her husband Sylvestre who ends up Taking the Bullet for their son Olivier while she freezes up. Despite this, when she commits suicide out of terror at the end of her Villainous Breakdown, it's played for pity, mainly because she's been through a Trauma Conga Line of apocalyptic proportions with every aspect of her life in ruins and is clearly no longer sufficiently capable of rational thought for moral acts like 'cowardice' to apply.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She verbally abuses Clive constantly just because he wasn't born Phoenix's Dominant, especially so because he ended up being an otherwise perfect candidate. And she gets Elwin beheaded just because she didn't like how his humble and noble nature made her look to the other nobility.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • She attempted to pawn off Joshua as the Dominant of Phoenix to Sanbreque for a bargaining chip, only for Ifrit (actually a berserk Clive, who awakened as Ifrit's Dominant) to kill him. Neither Anabella nor Clive has any idea about the latter, and she pawns him off as a mere disposable slave; only the audience at this point realizes she just made a Spanner in the Works and lost a valuable individual she grossly undervalued.
  • She ignored Clive all of his life because of his lack of Eikon power, in this case, the Phoenix. By the time they meet again, Clive commands Ifrit and 4 elements, whereas other Dominants only command one.
• Driven to Suicide: After losing Olivier and freaking out at seeing Joshua alive, she deludes herself into thinking she's seeing a ghost (attacking him) and that she's trapped in a nightmare, then slits her throat to make it stop.
• Empty Shell: Ends up this way due to Ultima's greater overarching plans, something she is never even aware of. Olivier's "death" when Ultima, who was possessing him, discards his shell compounds with the rest of her Trauma Conga Line at Twinside to snap her mind like a twig, divorcing her entirely from reality and leaving her with nothing left but grief and terror. When Joshua tries to rescue her, she commits suicide because she no longer has a brain functional enough to process his existence. Her line "All in its right place" reveals her base need for control and to be assured of everything being as it should be, such that once she's thrown into an incomprehensible world with nothing in its right place and all her plans in tatters with every core pillar of her identity and security lost, she mentally and literally self-destructs.
• Entitled Bitch: Believes that by dint of her superior bloodline she deserves first class treatment at all times. This leads to her downfall, as even as she frames Dion for considering rebellion, she never stops to consider he might actually rebel against her and Olivier and even after he's seized the city and is marching unopposed on her throne she doesn't feel in the least bit threatened until he attempts to kill Olivier and does kill Sylvestre. She doesn't learn from this either, as a short while later Jill threatening her with a sword only prompts her to snap that Jill ought to speak to her with respect.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Her treachery towards Elwin, her husband, by ordering the knights to kill him.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Played With. She claims she loved Joshua and he was "her world", but she also laments that he wasn't as strong as Clive, whom she's openly contemptuous of because he wasn't chosen by the Phoenix. Considering how much she values noble bloodlines for bearing Dominants, she maybe only cared about Joshua because he was chosen by Phoenix. However, her Inner Voice shows she continues to mourn him long after any theoretical material value he held has been snuffed out, and she does seem to genuinely love her child with the Emperor, Olivier, and is genuinely distraught when he's killed in front of her.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Downplayed, but despite all that she's done, Joshua at the very least seems to still care for her just enough that he is willing to take her to safety and is saddened when she commits suicide. Even Clive closes his eyes at the sight, although whether it's out of residual familial affection or some sympathy at seeing the utterly miserable and pitiful way with which she died is unclear.
• Evil Counterpart: While Elwin is a selfless, open-minded and responsible archduke who genuinely cares for his subjects and family, including the Bearers, Anabella is a narrow-minded racist/royal supremacist who only wants the power and glory of being Empress as well as climbing her way to higher stations, not the duties that come with it. She also dismisses Clive just because he was not blessed by the Phoenix for some reason and is super-strict on Joshua's health. The way they rule Valisthea also shows the difference between the two, with the kingdom turning into a hellhole under Anabella's disastrous reign.
• Evil Eyebrows: She has distinctly long and wicked-looking eyebrows.
• Evil Genius: At least in the first part of the game on how she plotted to get rid of Clive and Elwin.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Having Elwin get killed in his Bodyguard Betrayal seems to have been one of the conditions of Anabella's Face–Heel Turn. Which mostly boils down to his being too much of a Humble Hero to the people that undermined her authority as a co-ruler of the entire Rosarian Duchy having her straight up write his life off as disposable so she could get all the power she insists should've been hers.
  • The only reason she spares Clive is to deliver one last insult to her late husband, as he had always pushed back against her contempt for Clive by insisting that he was a great soldier. Therefore, Clive can be a great soldier once more, by being enslaved to the very Empire that destroyed everything he loved.
• Evil Is Sterile: While she proved to be competent in overthrowing Elwin, she wasn't cut out for the job. She only cared about the dominion bloodline and under her reign, Valisthea became a land of corruption and terror.
• Evil Matriarch: A cruel, ruthless noblewoman whose high blood serves the plot-central purpose of spawning Dominants. Her eldest's failure to inherit the proper power makes him the target of her ire, and Anabella's dark designs go far beyond the scope of parental abuse.
• Evil Overlord: Her reign as Empress of Sanbreque was quite disastrous, as Valisthea quickly turned into a medieval cross between Mordor and Nazi Germany.
• Evil Will Fail: Her plan turns out this way. She succeeds in becoming Empress of Sanbreque, but the once-bountiful Valisthea quickly goes downhill under her disastrous and self-serving, if not tyrannical leadership.
• Exact Words: She says early on to her handmaidens that if anything were to ever happen to Joshua, she'd have their heads for it. After her betrayal and Joshua's unintended demise in the aftermath, her handmaidens continue working with her as if expecting to survive — only for a subtle hand gesture to signal two Sanbreque knights to rush up and dig their blades into the women's necks for messy and immediate deaths the moment they turn their backs, as Anabella walks off without a care.
• Failed a Spot Check: Possibly justified as she's hiding with Olivier, but when she encounters Clive in the Dominion she continues to bemoan Joshua's "death". Clive asks her if she's looked out the window, where she would see the Phoenix (Joshua) battling Bahamut in the skies above.
• Fantastic Racism: She absolutely hates Bearers because of the threat they pose with their magic. Her only goal as ruler of Rosaria appears to be slaughtering them and anyone who would aid them. This stands out even in Valisthea as, regardless of whether one sees Bearers as human or not, it's undeniable that they are economically valuable at the very least. Killing them for no reason is a waste of a useful resource if nothing else, making Anabella's purges her cutting off her nose to spite her face.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Mother: Implied to be the "no fun allowed" type, depending on how much she tries to keep Joshua indoors at all times. Granted, Joshua was ill at the time the prologue starts, but her attitude towards everyone else implies such behavior isn't out of the ordinary for her and seems to be a means to hold control over him and keep him emotionally dependant on her.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: She's an effective schemer right up until she actually gains power, at which point her disregard for anyone but herself runs the entire empire into the ground. Both citizens and the nobility consider Elwin a better ruler than Anabella could ever be.
• Fisher Queen: She turns Elwin's lush and green Rosaria into a barren hellhole. Creating the Black Shields to have free rein over said lands, with them terrorizing and persecuting Bearers and anyone who fails to follow the rules or actively contribute is dealt with severely. At that point, the Blight pretty much assists with levels of destruction and death already occurring at her hand.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • While it's never brought up in-game, her first Active Time Lore entry reveals that she belongs to a family of nobles that were responsible for the birth of a great number of children that would inherit the power of the Phoenix, and that Anabella was taught from a young age that her purpose in life was to preserve the great bloodline of the Phoenix, with her taking in the wrong idea from this and building on it as a core part of her identity, esteem and inherent value as a person. While it doesn't excuse anything she does, this bit of info does make it easier to understand how her firstborn seemingly being rejected by the Phoenix, and her favoured second child - who inherited the Phoenix's powers - growing up Delicate and Sickly, along with the rumours surrounding her that these events allegedly produced among people Anabella saw as "inferior" to her, served to make her so bitter that she would willingly betray her own family and kingdom in pursuit of greater power that she felt was owed to her.
  • An in-game explanation from Anabella herself says that the other nobles made fun of her because neither of her sons showed promise as a powerful Dominant. Clive was a great warrior but not chosen to be the Phoenix, while Joshua was chosen but born sickly. Some even believed Clive must have been the son of a concubine to turn out so unremarkable by comparison.
• Glory Seeker: She really wants a higher place in life with the Emperor of Sanbreque due to the frustrations in her life that she has no control over and even when she gets that, she starts aiming higher by establishing her child as his hier with the intention to turn Senbreque into an empire after the Emperor dies (one way or another), one stretching over all of Valisthea with her bloodline in power for perpetuity.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Without a doubt, Anabella is not in the running for Mother of the Year. Not only does she treat Clive like an afterthought, but it's because of her that he's Made a Slave after the prologue. And her betrayal to the Empire of Sanbreque seems to be because she wants a higher position in life, even willing to sell out her family and her kingdom to get it. It doesn't get any better when she marries Sylvestre; in fact, she gets worse and orchestrates purges across imperial lands against villages who harbor "free Branded", like Eastpool. Clive is outraged when he sees this. The purges only grow worse during his time as "Cid".
• Green-Eyed Monster: Several scenes show how she resents Elwin's style of leadership and success as king despite not behaving as a proper "noble" focused solely on ones own sovereign bloodline, as well as the "injustice" that she's believed to have received from the gossiping nobles after Clive's birth.
• Hated by All: Downplayed. Though her handmaidens seem fairly loyal, even the common citizens have no issue criticizing Anabella's treatment of her eldest son behind her back and the nobility admit that for all their scorn of Elwin being a king for the people, he was a far superior leader who knew how to manage the kingdom.
• Hate Sink: Anabella provides a primary target for the audience's scorn, entirely on purpose. She is thoroughly contemptuous towards Clive, even calling him "worthless" and "a man like any other" to Elwin because Clive was rejected as Phoenix's Dominant. She's extremely strict on Joshua's well-being, and continues to go on elitist ramblings even when talking to her husband, even though Elwin clearly does not agree with them. To make matters worse, she betrays her own family to Sanbreque, orders Clive to be enslaved, sheds no tears for her dead husband, and has the knights kill her handmaidens since she promised she would have their heads if anything happened to Joshua, something they had no control over. The only thing Anabella appears genuinely upset about is Joshua's death, and even that's ambiguous as to whether she was upset that her favorite son died or she lost a bargaining chip. While Elwin rejected her elitist philosophy, her second husband was poisoned by it, causing his We Have Reserves mentality and allowing her to install her new son to the throne. And the reason Anabella has for all of this is because she felt she was owed a better position, despite being the duchess of Rosaria. Anabella is thus written as detestable, and her fall from grace as the story goes on is intended for the audience to find cathartic.
• The Hedonist: She simply became empress for the prestige and gorges herself at the expense of others.
• Hero Killer: Has Elwin killed to become Empress of Sanbreque.
• Hey, You!: To drive the point home of how much she sees Clive, her firstborn, as a complete nuisance Anabella never addresses him as her son in any shape or form, she consistently addresses him as “you” and other completely unpersonal pronouns.
• Humiliation Conga: Has one in rapid succession midway through the game, all within a day's span.
  • When she decides to smugly gloat to Dion about her plans succeeding upon putting Olivier into the throne, Dion coolly informs her that if he wanted, he could perform a coup and oust her very easily with the support of the people, who adore him. While she may have intended for this to happen so she could drive him out of the court, she then watches as Dion accidentally kills Emperor Sylvestre in an attempt to murder Olivier, who was just a meat puppet for Ultima.
  • After this happens, Ultima brainwashes Dion into flying into a rage and destroying Twinside, ruining the kingdom Anabella was trying so hard to rule with Olivier as her Puppet King. She's left quivering in fear as destruction rains around her and Olivier. She tries to mouth off to Clive and Jill when they find her, preying on old insecurities they have long since grown out of, with the latter unshaken and drawing her sword as a warning to shut her up.
  • Once Clive and Joshua quell Dion, the latter kills the possessed Olivier who disintegrates like an akashec once Ultima discards the shell. A hysterical Anabella then sees that both Clive and Joshua are both alive and active Dominants, which makes her utterly lose whatever sanity she had left. With nothing making sense, every aspect of her life and her plans ruined, the kingdom in tatters and its ruling bloodline gone, she has nowhere to return except the very people she'd backstabbed for her own gain, at which point she ends up killing herself out of madness.
• Hypocrite:
  • Refers to Clive as a "failure" and "just another man" because he didn't become Phoenix's Dominant. Her husband notes that those exact same descriptors could apply to him as a member of the Ducal Family who also failed to become Phoenix's Dominant, and only became Archduke because his father died early. She disagrees with him, saying that he's in his "rightful place". Furthermore, her third and last son Olivier is decidedly not a Dominant, and ends up scorning his half-brother Dion despite him being the Dominant of Bahamut.
  • She claims that noble blood—hers, specifically—is the only important thing in the world, but refuses to acknowledge any positive qualities of Clive, her eldest son, until the very end. She largely treats him as a low-born rat despite obviously being well aware of his high birth, just because he didnt perfectly fit into place in her plans.
  • She mocks Dion's mother for supposedly "weighing her child's worth in gil." This despite the fact that she bought her position with her children (Joshua on one hand, Olivier on the other), and literally handed her eldest into slavery.
  • She tells Clive that Rosarian nobles gossiped that Clive wasn't truly her son after he didn't awaken as the Phoenix and that he has no idea what it was like to be demeaned by her inferiors. She's saying this to the son she handed over into slavery, causing him to be treated as a subhuman living weapon despite having been born a prince.
• I Have No Son!: She despises Clive with a burning passion on two fronts: 1) For not being chosen by The Phoenix which in turn sparked rumors about Elwin actually having Clive with some concubine other than his rightful wife, thus tarnishing Anabella with gossip from people she consider as inferiors; 2) For Clive actually being a successful warrior in his own right despite not being Phoenix’s Dominant, which inadvertently made him look more promising than the sickly Joshua, the one who Phoenix had chosen. Anabella hates the fact her unwanted child can look better than her precious second one in any way.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Well, Anabella already believes she's special. What she wants is for every other human being to think as highly of her as she does.
• I Shall Taunt You: Openly ridicules Dion just because his mother was a commoner.
• I Thought You Were Dead: The initial reaction of shock when Anabella sees Joshua alive and bleeding from the mouth, thinking him to be a ghost.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: She wishes for nothing but the highest social status, and is infuriated by perceived "slights" against her; Elwin and his kind attitude toward the commonfolk and even Bearers, Clive being an outstanding warrior but not Phoenix's Dominant, and Joshua being sickly and frail despite being Phoenix's Dominant. By her own admission, she thinks she was slandered by her fellow nobles, all of whom she considered "inferior" because of Elwin and his sons. Which is the equivalent of burning down a company building with everyone inside because a few people posted a couple mean comments on its Facebook page.
• I Reject Your Reality:
  • Elwin, Dion and Clive do call her out at certain points over her actions and views, but their words have fallen on her deaf ears.
  • After Dion destroys the husk of Olivier and all her ambitions have come crashing down around her she shrieks that this is a bad dream, uncomprehending in the face of a world completely alien to her, and slits her own throat in an apparent attempt to wake up. She's so pathetic here that even Clive and Jill seem feel some pity for her.
• Irrational Hatred: Towards the Bearers, so much that she wants to eradicate them despite their slavery being a crucial foundation of Sanbreque's, or really all of Valisthea's, economy.
• Irony: Every child she gives birth to involves this. Clive inherits the strength and nobility to wield the power of the Phoenix like she wanted, but not the Phoenix itself (he ends up being the dominant of Ifrit). Joshua inherits Phoenix but is physically weak and sickly; when she attempts to use him as a bargaining chip, she also writes him off when he ends up dying only for him to appear alive years later. Her third son secures her bloodline with the most powerful kingdom in the land, with plans to expand it into an empire ruling over all of Valisthea, but he turns out to be an incarnation of Ultima, and he disintegrates into dust once Ultima is done with Sanbreque.
• It's All About Me: Taking Social Climber to phenomenal extremes, her ultimate goal is to be mother of a powerful emperor— not for any specific son's sake, but because it's the highest possible position for a woman in Valisthea and will secure her sovereign blood as she was raised to do so (albeit not with this intention by her teachers). To this end she sold out Rosaria to the Holy Empire, getting enough into the Emperor's graces to marry him and produce an heir to both kingdoms who could eventually rule the rest of Valisthea. During her Motive Rant she admits she hated that Clive failed to awaken as the Phoenix and that Joshua was sickly because it reflected on her social standing, that she felt she had "nothing" in Rosaria because both of her sons disappointed her and the nobles mocked her, and that she sold out Elwin because she believed it was his duty to protect his sovereignty (and in turn, their position of power) rather than his people; in her view, having "sovereign blood" meant the people and kingdom were entirely disposable so they could have just started a new kingdom elsewhere. The Empire gave her an opportunity to start over with a new son who could inherit far more than a duchy, at which point she became a War Hawk in an attempt to make her new son an emperor over all known lands.
• Jerkass: Her interactions throughout the prologue very quickly establish her as a cruel, power-hungry, selfish, vindictive, petty and just plain unpleasant human being. This only escalates to new heights through the game. After becoming empress, she's even worse, being ready to let Valisthea go to hell, let all her subjects suffer and die for helping bearers, and even have Dion abdicated from the throne in favor of Olivier.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: She finally pays for her mariticide and years of tyranny when Clive and Jill confront her. Ironically, it's not Clive who kills her, but Anabella herself who goes through one hell of a Humiliation Cogna and Villainous Breakdown.
• Kick the Dog: So many times. But one of her nastiest moments is the murder of her handmaidens, who were still loyal to her even after her betrayal, because she promised to kill them if something bad happened to Joshua, which they had no control over.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: She crosses the line by issuing the assassination of her own husband in order to seize power. She even considers to have Clive killed off as well.
• Lack of Empathy: You're looking at someone who's willing to murder her husband and firstborn son, as well as gorge herself at the expense of others without even a shred of remorse. She'll do anything and everything to maintain that all ways go her ways.
• Lady Macbeth: Played this role to her second husband, Sylvestre Lesage, pushing him towards conquest all so that Olivier would have an all-encompassing empire to rule over. Even to the point she suffers the same fate as her, though not because of any guilt.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Literally everything that leads to her downfall was all her own doing, and boy, does she deserve every bit of the irony that befalls her and completely spits on her beliefs:
  • Betrayal: Her betrayal of Rosaria for a higher station as empress, and attempt to do the same to Sanbreque to secure her "Sovereign blood's" rule over all the lands under one empire blows up in her face completely. Her lack of care for her people consistantly sabotages the stability of vital human resources, be they "citizens" or the branded slaves. Her ordering imperial soldiers to massacre entire villages who harbor "free branded" and then creating an entire order of knights to purge ALL branded, while encouraging the commonfolk to betray each other, pushes this instability further as they are still a vital resource that all kingdoms (cruelly) lean on as the foundation of every facet of their society. Additionally these acts only drive Clive further at every point of his heroic career at. Even her plans against Dion result in him attempting a coup which destabilizes the capital at a key point which allows Clive and Joshua to step and interfere, not to mention her plans enable Ultima's machinations without her knowledge and leaves her own in tatters when he departs.
  • Sparing a target: Sparing Clive and forcing him to be a Slave Mook to Sanbreque proves disastrous as he is not only the Dominant of Ifrit, but also happens to have the potential to become the most powerful being in the world. As a result, she ends up setting the son she utterly despised on the road that would turn him into the hero that would save the world, and that path also includes destroying the better life she tried to built up. Although Clive doesn't actually get the chance to truly exact any kind of personal vengeance on his mother, Anabella's several acts of cruelty on the people and branded including creating a corrupt knighthood using a twist version of his beloved Rosarian Shield's values and oaths, all end up driving her son to truly wish for her to be stopped and he does play a huge role in everything crumbling down around her, taking down the forces she built up and ultimately leaving her with no one else that would defend her. Even early on, her ordering imperial knights to cull any villages and towns which harbor free branded ends up massacring a town containing branded previously employed by Clive's father and Lady Hanner, the wife of his late mentor which ends up driving Clive to resolutely join Cid when he was about to leave with Jill to lead their own lives alone. One can even argue that if only she had realized that Clive simply has grown too powerful to be contained and pragmatically decide to screw trying to piss him off any further, she may have had a better chance of surviving.
  • A lack of a confirmed kill: Believing that Joshua is dead and trying to move on by having Olivier without bothering to try and find if her second son truly is dead allows Joshua to preserve Rosaria in secret, slowly but surely reorganizing its forces and eventually regaining enough influence to not only oppose her attempts to have the whole world in her grasp, but also successfully get through Dion. In the most ironic and carthatically satisfying sense, the one son she actually does love and favor from Elwin ends up being the orchestrator of the ruin of everything she had accomplished in her new life, all while he doesn't even have to directly oppose her.
  • Mistreatment of her new station: Although not as pronounced as her treatment of her sons leading to her downfall, her callous and condescending treatment towards Dion and even straight-up gloating about her success in making Olivier the heir of the throne ends up being the last straw for Dion. The man who she mocked as the "son of a whore" proves to be a much more well-liked leader than she and her new husband is and easily turns more than enough of Sanbreque against her, which eventually culminates in Dion being the one who delivers the finishing blow that crushes any and all of her hopes and dreams, first (albeit accidentally) killing the Emperor, which would have already deprived her of most of the support she had on the Imperial Court (though she was planning to dispose of him eventually), before he then kills Olivier straight in front of her (who was a shell of Ultima, discarded once it had fulfilled its goals), having the last laugh while all she could do is scream and sob in despair, utterly defeated by someone she never saw truly as a threat.
  • Finally, Anabella pretty much lost a lot of benefits that could been been hers if she had been a kind and patient mother to Clive and Jill, such as having two more Dominants who almost certainly would have unconditionally loved her.
• Last Villain Stand: By the end of her character arc, she has lost everything.
• Lazy Bum: Subverted. When she becomes empress, she slacks off and willingly lets Valisthea go to waste, not caring if her subjects suffer. The subversion is that Anabella's callousness does not equate to passivity, as she placed extremely harsh and fundamentalist rules against the bearers and orchestrated bloodier and more horrific crackdowns against them as the story went on.
• Lean and Mean: In contrast to Elwin's Heroic Build (and to a far lesser degree, Clive's).
• Lethally Stupid: In addition to being a cruel, short-tempered narcissist with a serious Lack of Empathy, she's an extremely flawed strategist whose various bids for power tend to result in massive, unnecessary casualties for both her loved ones and valued allies because they're built on a Missing Steps Plan that doesn't ensure their safety or success. Being a narcissist, of course, she'll generally react with shock, horror and grief before deciding that it's Never My Fault and moving on to the next terrible idea that will get hundreds of people killed.
• Mask of Sanity: For the most part, she's able to cover her sociopathic nature beneath a strict and commanding air. Once things start going awry, she undergoes a severe Sanity Slippage.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Yes, Anabella had ordered the death of Elwin, enslaved Clive into becoming a branded, and took over Valisthea as empress, but what did she gain from it? Considering the fact of Valisthea's condition at the time of her reign, and the fact that Joshua turned out to be alive, not much. She also exiles Dion from the throne in favor of Olivier even though Dion is the dominant of Bahamut, and thus, Anabella won't have an Eidolion for a son. In fact, Anabella's claims of being able to do whatever she wants as empress during this period basically confirm that she wants to be empress so that she could do what her husband, whom she saw as weak, would not. Her victory doesn't even last for too long, as Clive confronts her again many years later to seek his, which he eventually would have done if it had not been for Anabella slitting her throat.
• Mirror Character: To Ultima, of all characters. Both of them believe their children are imperfect (in Anabella's case, Clive and Joshua; in Ultima's case, all of humanity). Neither of them can see the true value in their children, and both try to impose their will over those children — Ultima just on a much grander scale. This Pride is their undoing, as is their neglect of their duties to guide and support their children. Ultima, at least, becomes aware of how dangerous his foe is, but by then it is too late.
• Missing Steps Plan: She's not a naturally gifted tactician/strategist, and her plans all seem to evaporate around the execution stage. She'll ably identify allies and enemies, figure out a reasonably workable way to get them to fight each other, and then the rest of the plan will just be 'I win and everything works out fine'. Needless to say, this tends to end poorly:
  • She set up an alliance with Emperor Sylvestre of Sanbreque to combine the bloodlines of Bahamut and Phoenix, leading to the betrayal at Phoenix Gate... and forgot to implement a proper, detailed exit strategy for Joshua, who she wanted to survive as her heir, causing a tragedy that sent shockwaves across the continent.
  • As regent of Rosaria, she set up the Black Shields to stamp out any pro-ducal resistance... and forgot to implement any sort of strategy for them to do so, resulting in them mostly just engaging in random massacres of helpless-but-economically-valuable peasants and bearers until everyone else got angry and organised enough to form a real resistance that started slaughtering them back.
  • Finally, she moved to discredit and eliminate the current heir to the imperial throne, Prince Dion, in order to secure her own bloodline's supremacy and complete her life's work... and forgot to implement any sort of strategy for actually defeating the mighty Dominant of Bahamut once she'd alienated him from his family beyond simply assuming Dion's sense of duty would compel him to serve Olivier. In the end, the only thing she and her vanishingly few allies were able to do was turn an incredibly efficient and minimally bloody coup into a horrific, indiscriminate massacre by semi-accidentally sending Dion down a Trauma Conga Line and leave the door wide open for Ultima to step in and drive Dion to murder everyone.
• Mistaken for Undead: When she is finally reunited with Joshua after 18 years, Anabella, driven mad with grief over the death of Olivier, mistakes Joshua for a ghost come to claim her and takes her own life in response.
• Mundanger: What makes Anabella more terrifying and hated than Ultima himself: she is essentially a walking embodiment of narcissistic parents and despotic rulers everywhere. It's very unlikely that a regular person would be unlucky enough to cross paths with someone like Ultima. However, unless you live a very charmed life, you have met or will meet someone like Anabella, whether it's a parent, a boss or your monarchy.
• My Beloved Smother: The strict and controlling type towards Joshua. Anabella wants to keep Joshua safe at all costs, even making sure that he can't do anything without her approval. Clive, on the other hand, she couldn't give two shits about. Years later, she is even more smothering to her third son, Olivier, who spends most of his screentime draped across her lap while she strokes his hair.
• Narcissist: Her affections are conditional on how well someone boosts her social standing and how perfectly they suit what she wants in regards to this: she despises Clive for being "a man like any other", completely ignores her husband's ward, tries to flatter Elwin (a Grand Duke) until she decides she can do better by marrying the Emperor, and dotes on Joshua (the Phoenix Dominant and heir to the Duchy) as her "true" son — the latter of which is ambiguous in its authenticity, as she is crushingly over-controlling with him and treats the report of his death more as a disappointment than anything else. After the time skip, she completely dismisses her stepson Dion just like she did Clive (despite him being Loved by All before she came into the picture and literally having songs praising him around Valisthea, Dion didn't come from her so he doesn't boost her standing), and is just as doting on her third son as she was to Joshua, completely ignoring his Troubling Unchildlike Behavior since she installed him as heir to the Holy Empire over his far more beloved and powerful half-brother.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Has her own personal gestapo in the form of the Black Shields, who hunt down and kill bearers, as well as anyone who tries to shelter them or provide them some form of levity. Seeing her previous Fantastic Racism in the prologue, the fact that she became outright genocidal in the present day towards Bearers makes her look incredibly Nazi-like.
• Near-Villain Victory: She gets everything she wants in the prologue and would have gotten away with it if not for her sparing Clive.
• Never My Fault: Anabella declines to own up to anything she does, even using the "you should have died instead of Joshua" rebuttal while confronted by Clive for her wicked actions. The closest she gets to showing remorse is that she sees the living Joshua as a specter come for revenge, implying that on some level she felt to blame for his death.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: She decides to have Clive spared and Made a Slave to fight for the Empire instead of killing him, ensuring that there's a loose end out there. This ends up leading to the defeat of Sanbreque, the fall of each and every Mothercrystal in the world, and her own Villainous Breakdown.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Pretty much. She only uses her army as a means to fight to the heroes.
• Not Worth Killing: Despite everything she's done that leads to Rosaria becoming as messed up as it is, Clive forced to serve Sanbreque, and Joshua being separated from Clive for years, by the time Clive and Joshua catch up to Anabella, she's pretty much already got all the misery she forced on them paid back twice-fold: The social and political power she pettily threw Rosaria away for are now lost as Sanbreque is now in ruins, and she has zero hope of recovering it with the Emperor who supports her ideals dead due to her own machinations and her only other claim and hold on the throne of Sanbreque disappeared into vapor. As such, Clive shows no inclinations to personally get revenge on his mother, and Joshua even tries to save her without Clive doing anything to stop him, with the indication that it's less about the two of them still having sentiment for her and more that they just pity her enough that they don't see any point in killing her.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Being a matriarch who is disappointed with both of her sons' flaws and who makes no attempt to disguise her elitist attitudes makes her one by default. Thankfully, Elwin calls her out on this and puts little stock in her opinions. Unfortunately, the Emperor comes to agree with her.
• Obliviously Evil: Anabella may think that she’s only doing what's best for the kingdom, but she really isn’t.
• Obviously Evil: At the very beginning of the game, she straight up tells Elwin to his face that Clive is a failure, that Joshua should be an indoor boy and is bitter towards Clive. And then there's Anabella's relationship with Elwin itself, where it's fairly obvious that the marriage wasn't a love match.
• Offstage Villainy: Between the prologue and the next time we see her, most of her cruelest actions are performed off screen.
• Older Than She Looks: When Clive meets her again for the last time after so many years, Anabella still looks exactly as she did eighteen years before, and not for any supernatural reasons.
• Opportunistic Bitch: Finds every opportunity to deceive and manipulate Elwin in order to have him murdered and calculated a whole coup-d'état just because she didn't have everything her heart desired.
• Parents as People: Again, downplayed. She does love Joshua, but her blue blood supremacy, maintaining class and status as well as upholding the duties of siring a dominant means she neglects Clive and Jill in favor of her desired achievement, as shown when she virtually disowns the former by making him a faux branded. And it is obvious that the only reason she has any affection for Joshua is because he's the Dominant of Phoenix, which she resents Clive for not being.
• Parental Betrayal: She sells out Rosaria to Sanbreque, getting Joshua killed and resulting in Clive losing absolutely everything after he's Made a Slave.
• Parental Favoritism: She dotes on Joshua while being nakedly emotionally abusive towards Clive, calling him a failure to her husband's face. After her betrayal, she comes this close to ordering him executed before deciding to have him enslaved instead, with nary a hint of remorse. She continues this streak with her second family, openly doting on her trueborn son Olivier while showing sneering contempt towards her stepson Dion.
• The Perfectionist: She seeks near insatiable levels of perfectionism, which is one of the reasons why she favored Joshua over Clive.
• Perfect Solution Fallacy: Her rant to Clive when they meet in Twinside shows she had a case of this towards her children. She rails against Clive that despite him being admirable in many ways he wasn't selected to be the Phoenix's Dominant. She also goes off about how Joshua was selected, yet appeared utterly unfit to be the Dominant. Neither of them fitting into their "roles" infuriated her, as she believes everyone ought to inhabit their "proper" places.
• The Peter Principle: Her strongest desire was to become empress. However, while she proved deadly and conniving about setting that goal in motion, she proved completely amateurish, if not tyrannical in actually acting as empress, only seeking the benefits and grandeur of the role rather than its important duties. She does, however, enforce strict rules that earn her the hatred of the public and she doesn't even care.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: One of her biggest character traits is her extreme classism. She will never miss an opportunity to mock someone for having heritage she considers impure, she barely considers the commonfolk human, and God help you if you're a Bearer under her rule.
• Pride: Her pridefulness prevents her from acknowledging that she's ill-suited to rule a kingdom or accepting responsibility. Even worse, she believes she deserves a higher position in life, which she gets after betraying her duchy and marrying the Emperor of Sanbreque.
• Princeling Rivalry: A mother-son variation. She resents Clive for having no Phoenix powers. To ensure he doesn't get the throne, she plots the death of her husband and then enslaves her son so the throne would belong to her other son...even though Clive had no interest at all in becoming Archduke and swore himself to be Joshua's Shield.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Best exemplified by the scene of her Villainous Breakdown, because it is essentially the attitude of a whiny little girl who thinks the world should cater to her every need.
• Putting on the Reich: Her reign as empress is very Nazi-esque, with bearers being persecuted and those who sympathize with them, along with those who disagree with her order, being liquidated.
• The Resenter: Anabella hates two of her family for varying reasons, while being bothered by the flaws of the third; she despises her husband for his "weakness" towards the commonfolk since it reflects badly on her social standing, she despises Clive because he wasn't Phoenix's Dominant but proved an excellent warrior in comparison to Joshua, which she resented because while he became Phoenix's Dominant, Joshua was frail and sickly.
• Rich Bitch: Has a rude and snobby attitude towards everyone. It seems to come from wanting a better social position, even though she's already the Duchess of one of the world's biggest superpowers.
• Royal Brat: Beneath her mature demeanor, she's a bratty bitch and too proud to realize the damage her ineffectual rule has caused despite all her bluster.
• Rule of Symbolism: When Dion confronts her for manipulating his father to name Olivier as heir, she leaves and casually (Maybe even intentionally steps on the Wyvern Tail flower (Sanbreque's national flower that Dion and his father hold with reverence) Olivier had dropped earlier. This highlights how everything she does is for herself.
• Sanity Slippage: More obvious when she sees Joshua for the last time, she nicks her throat with a knife.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Deconstructed. Being an empress who does whatever she wants sums up her critical attitude as Empress of Sanbreque. However, it also leads her to a 0% Approval Rating by all of the denizens, including some former members of her court, who even confess that Elwin was a better ruler than Anabella.
• Skewed Priorities: In her mind, a ruler's top priority is the continuation and elevation of their sovereign bloodline. Even the survival of the kingdom is secondary; in her words, one can always found another.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Deconstructed. An egomaniac, she thinks she's a better ruler than Elwin, but in truth, she stubbornly refused to acknowledge what her dysfunctional rule had caused.
• Smug Snake: Even before becoming Empress she showed signs of this. Although Anabella was a master of manipulating everybody around her to seize the power she craved, she proved to be utterly amateurish at actually using the power once she had it, though this was more due to her biased mindset than a lack of intelligence. She wasn't cut out to be an Empress, so she takes her experience the wrong way. She originally persuaded the Sanbrequians to support her by elevating her social station. Although the blight in Valisthea leads to a famine and causes the civilians to bellyache even before Clive returns to confront her for the very last time.
• Social Climber: Her main goal is to be granted a higher position in the emperor's good graces. She's even willing to sell out all of Rosaria to do that.
• The Social Darwinist: She heavily prioritizes blood purity and the Dominion bloodline over familial things like happiness and love.
• The Sociopath: She cares more about social standing than the lives of her own family, to the point that she throws in her lot with Sanbreque and doesn't have the slightest bit of compassion for Clive when he's apprehended by Sanbreque soldiers. Even her more doting treatment of Joshua is implied to be linked to his status as the Dominant of Phoenix, rather than any genuine maternal affection.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She likes to keep a low tone at times.
• Strong Family Resemblance: A closer look at her face shows where an adolescent Clive gets his looks from.
• Stupid Evil:
  • Sparing her firstborn son by handing him over to the Empire to be enslaved doesn't exactly scream brilliant, especially when Clive gets loose and now there's a very angry and very experienced and powerful warrior with a known tendency to hold grudges running around.
  • Her stewardship of Rosaria is characterized by her mindlessly and relentlessly abusing and butchering her own subjects for no gain, driving many to the ducal loyalists' cause.
  • Her utterly feeble attempts at manipulating Dion. First, she gives birth to a child solely so she may strip Dion's imperial inheritance, then continually poisons his father's mind with policies that are outright harmful to the Empire, just to feed her own ego and superiority complex. When she finally does put her plan into motion, she begins to gloat to him - even going so far as to press his one and only Berserk Button (his parentage). It doesn't even remotely occur to her that she's pissing off the single most powerful Dominant on the planet who could vaporize her in an instant. Even more than that, he's so universally beloved by his people, his troops, and even the Rosfields, that he could easily launch a coup with zero resistance. While he does deliver her one hell of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, she is simply too stupid to take the hint. In this end, it was her direct attempts at messing with Dion that lead to her death, even though he was not the one who killed her. And though he may have been Laughing Mad at that instant (and is not in his right mind at the time), there was doubtless real joy in him for finally being rid of such a vile woman, especially since he manages to give her one final middle finger by killing Olivier, stripping her of any and all chances at obtaining anything resembling power and a lasting legacy.
• Super Breeding Program: Implicitly part of her aims. Her Arranged Marriage with Elwin was meant to increase the chances of producing a Dominant of Phoenix as they both had Rosfield blood, through which the Eikon was passed. She was implied to have had designs on marrying their ward Jill to said child, which would have produced a bloodline with multiple Dominants - although it's unknown if she knew Jill carried the trait as she had not yet awakened. She explicitly wanted to produce a son with the power of multiple Eikons in her second marriage with Sylvestre. The great irony is she technically got what she wanted on the very first try - but no one knew that at the time.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Posthumously. Both Clive and Joshua do have some pity over her loss even if she ruined their lives.
• This Cannot Be!: After her plans fall apart completely, she's reduced to mindlessly swinging a knife at the nearest bystander while screaming "This is all just a dream! Just a bad dream!"
• Til Murder Do Us Part: She betrays Rosaria and causes the sacking that gets her husband beheaded.
• Too Clever by Half: Anabella is very cunning and skilled at getting power but proves to be utterly useless at actually using said power for anything productive and quickly lets the kingdom fall into ruin with her iron fist and hedonism.
• Trauma Conga Line: The fall of Twinside nails her with this. In the span of a few hours, she watches Sylvestre die protecting Olivier, the empire Olivier was to inherit razed to the ground, and finally the death Olivier, all at the hands of the stepson she detested. When her two elder sons she had betrayed turn up, they serve only to remind her of her failures, and the existence of the long-thought-dead Joshua is the final straw that drives her to suicide.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Family or lackeys, she'll betray anyone and everyone to usurp power and/or save her skin.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Once she ultimately marries Sylvestre and takes over Valisthea. Her reign proved to be disastrous due to her apathy, and she's too proud to acknowledge that she isn't "ten times the ruler" Elwin ever was. Even the citizens grumble about her under their breath.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Shows nothing but utter contempt for Clive, despite his attempts to prove himself and serve Rosaria to the best of his abilities, just because he was not given any Phoenix powers. Also doubles as Disproportionate Retribution.
• The Usurper: She concocted her whole Evil Plan in order to take over Valisthea.
• Vicariously Ambitious: In a way that circles back to straight-up ambitious; Anabella's claim to greatness is that her bloodline produces mighty royals, so her superiority is completely based on her children's superiority.
• Villain of Another Story: Ironic considering that she is personally responsible for the game's Inciting Incident, but she almost never truly registers on Clive's radar after the prologue. Clive is horrified to see the mess she's made of his homeland, but focuses all of his efforts on either killing Ifrit's Dominant or destroying the Mothercrystals. By the time they reunite 18 years after the Night of Flames, her plans have already been undone by Dion and Ultima.
• Villainous Breakdown: After losing Olivier and freaking out at seeing Joshua alive, Anabella deludes herself into thinking she's seeing a ghost. She pulls out a dagger and flails wildly at Joshua in a panic, not even coming close to hitting him. She then screams hysterically in denial and slits her own throat. It's also presented as Anabella undergoing Sanity Slippage, since she not only lost Olivier with the reveal that he was never anything but an undead puppet of Ultima, but her betrayal of Rosaria and belief that Joshua was dead had all been rendered worthless.
  Anabella: This is all just a dream! Just a bad dream! You will not take me, shadow! You will not take me!
• Villain Has a Point: Ulterior motives aside, she protests that Joshua is a chronically ill child who shouldn’t have to deal with affairs of state.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: After killing Elwin and finally becoming the Empress of Sanbreque, she ends up turning the land to chaos under the Blight. Anabella is obviously too proud to admit that she wasn't cut out for the job.
• While Rome Burns: Under her reign, Valisthea has become a deary place of war and terror and everyone under her command is facing persecution. She is fully prepared to let any noble of unworthy blood drop dead instead of allowing them to live all for the sake of being on the peak of the social ladder. And if that weren't enough, the capitol of Sanbreque actually does burn as an attack by Dion sets fire to everything surrounding her domain, and it is only then that she is extremely fazed by it while preparing to die.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Anabella would rather see her sons being perfect (Clive with Phoenix powers and Joshua not being frail and sickly).
• Wicked Stepmother: Has all the trappings of one — her cruel and haughty manner, scheming and treacherous nature, blatant Parental Favouritism, and cold contempt for the unfavourite child — but in an interesting aversion, the firstborn she tyrannises is her own issue. She later becomes this to her actual stepson, Dion, whom she calls a "mongrel" and tries to install her son with the Emperor as the heir to the throne.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: She's utterly blind to the story being anything more than medieval politics. All her planning is destroyed as mere collateral damage by Ultima, and it mentally breaks her as a result.
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • Details from the beginning of Final Fantasy XVI strongly imply that her initial plan was to have Elwin and Clive killed only, so that only Joshua could be spared and he would be beside her in Sanbreque. It wasn't until Joshua's unexpected death that she decided to enslave Clive and sire another child with Sylvestre.
  • She also secretly meets with Hugo Kupka and the Dhalmekian Parliament in a bid to make it seem like Olivier made peace with their nation and legitimize him as a more qualified ruler than the rightful heir Dion. This act has Sylvestre Abdicate the Throne in favor of Olivier, but it backfires when Dion has an issue with it.
• You Should Have Died Instead: When she's reunited with Clive, she laments that Joshua isn't standing in his place. He asks if she's looked out the window lately.

Byron Rosfield

Tropes for Byron Rosfield can be found at the Protagonists page.

Others

Jill Warrick

Tropes for Jill Warrick can be found at the Protagonists page.

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Torgal

Tropes for Torgal can be found at the Protagonists page.

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Rodney Murdoch

Voiced by: Keir Charles (English), Yoji Ueda (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Stéphane Roux (French), Diego Baldoin (Italian), Daniel Völz (German), César Garduza (LA Spanish)

Lord Commander of Rosaria's military and right-hand man to Archduke Elwin. A calm and enthusiastic man relatively well-liked by his troops, he is also responsible for training Clive in the art of swordsmanship.

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• Cool Teacher: Clive's teacher who trains him in swordsmanship, who is also the Lord Commander of Rosaria's military.
• Good Counterpart: To Tiamat in the prologue. Both trained Clive at different stages of his life, but whereas Tiamat was a Branded soldier teaching another Branded soldier for the Empire, Rodney Murdoch was a knight of Rosaria teaching a young First Shield. In fact, the introductory scenes for both characters give the player a good view of their left cheeks—Tiamat with his cheek branded, Rodney with his cheek untouched.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He accompanies Clive during the attack on Phoenix Gate, and is killed off at the end of the segment.
• Honorary Uncle: Was noted by his wife to have been like a brother to Elwin Rosfield, and he takes Clive under his wing when training him to be a Shield of Rosaria.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Clive's first teacher who suffers Death by Origin Story, and indirectly by Clive's hands, no less.
• Not Enough to Bury: When Ifrit manifests at the Phoenix Gate, he's close enough to it to get completely incinerated, with his last words expressing disbelief at the presence of a second Eikon of fire.
• Nice Guy: While he challenges Clive a lot during his training, he's nonetheless a dependable and patient man who's liked by nearly everyone in Rosaria.
• Number Two: As Lord Commander of Rosaria's armies, he's also Archduke Elwin's right hand man and trusted confidant.
• Stern Teacher: Murdoch doesn't hold back on the young Clive. The flashback prologue opens with Clive regaining consciousness from being knocked out by Murdoch during a sparring session.
• This Cannot Be!: His reaction to the appearance of a second Eikon of Fire. Said Eikon's power obliterates him not three seconds later.
• Warm-Up Boss: He's the opponent of the combat tutorial.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Is first introduced in the prologue's flashback and dies at the end from being burned when Ifrit appears at Phoenix Gate.

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Sir Tyler

Voiced by: John Heffernan (English), Tsuguo Mogami (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Marc Duquenoy (French), Matteo De Mojana (Italian), Christoph Drobig (German), Hiram Cárdenas (LA Spanish)

One of two knights sent to accompany Clive on his way into Stillwind to deal with goblins, who is later embroiled in the conspiracy at Phoenix Gate. Tyler is an experienced soldier born into a family of knights and second-in-command to Murdoch.

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• Guest-Star Party Member: Tyler accompanies Clive and Wade into Stillwind to fight goblins and the morbol.
• Number Two: Tyler's bio describes him as the right hand to Lord Commander Murdoch.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Tyler's bio describes him as a level-headed soldier who was assigned to Clive's company to balance out the more hot-headed Wade.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Despite not sharing the same names, he and Wade are essentially the XVI incarnation of Biggs and Wedge. They're more loyal to their Star Wars origins than most in that Tyler dies at the end of the prologue, much like how Biggs died at the end of the original movie during the Death Star run, while the similarly named Wade and Wedge survive to the end.
• Those Two Guys: Tyler and Wade appear together most of the time during the prologue. Wade's solo appearance at the end of the prologue is a subtle but early sign that something has gone horribly wrong.
• Uncertain Doom: He's standing next to Joshua when he hits his Rage Breaking Point and transforms fully into Phoenix, resulting in a violent massive explosion as he morphs into the fire beast. However, they're not seen visibly burned to ashes by his fires, and it's left unclear whether they actually died until after the Time Skip. Tyler is briefly mentioned by Wade in a manner strongly implying he did indeed lose his life at the Phoenix Gate, but his character profile in the cast page is never grayed out like deceased characters are.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Tyler doesn't make it out of the prologue alive and barely gets any characterization beyond being Sir Wade's partner.

Sir Wade

Voiced by: Harry Hepple (English), Toru Sakurai (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Bruno Méyère (French), Jacopo Calatroni (Italian), Nilz Bessel (German), Tommy Rojas (LA Spanish)

One of two knights sent to accompany Clive on his way into Stillwind to deal with goblins, who is later embroiled in the conspiracy at Phoenix Gate. Wade is a novice and a rookie who joined up after Joshua saved his life.

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• Et Tu, Brute?: Wade doesn't take it well when the Archduke's bodyguards betray them and murder Elwin.
• Exact Words: His character profile post-Phoenix Gate states while he tried to protect Joshua, both ended up sharing the same fate. Eventually, Joshua turns up alive. Sure enough, Wade also survived.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Wade accompanies Clive and Tyler into Stillwind to fight goblins and the morbol. He later escorts Joshua to his father and brother at the Phoenix Gate when it is under attack by Sanbreque, and later still fights alongside Clive when the latter lends his aid to the Guardians of the Flame (this time occupying an explicit "Guest" slot).
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He starts off as a hot-headed rookie, and Tyler's bio notes that Tyler is a more level-headed soldier who balances him out.
• La Résistance: Post-Time Skip. Wade becomes the leader of the Guardians of the Flame, comprised of Shields still loyal to Rosaria who strive to protect the duchy's remaining Bearers from the Black Shields who serve Anabella.
• Supporting Leader: Post-timeskip, he's become the leader of a ducal loyalist rebel faction within Rosaria, and his Guardians of the Flame and Clive's Hideaway occasionally help each other out.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Despite not sharing the same names, he and Tyler are essentially the XVI incarnation of Biggs and Wedge. They're more loyal to their Star Wars origins than most in that Tyler dies at the end of the prologue, much like how Biggs died at the end of the original movie during the Death Star run, while the similarly named Wade and Wedge survive to the end.
• Those Two Guys: Tyler and Wade appear together most of the time in the prologue. Wade's solo appearance at the end of the prologue is a subtle but early sign that something has gone horribly wrong, and by the time Wade returns in the main story Tyler has long predeceased him and he spends the rest of the game as a solo character.
• Took a Level in Badass: It is eventually discovered that he has survived the fall of Phoenix Gate and leads a rebel group called the Guardians of the Flame against the vicereine Anabella's tyrannical reign over Rosaria.
• Uncertain Doom: He and Tyler are standing next to Joshua when he hits his Rage Breaking Point and transforms fully into Phoenix, resulting in a violent massive explosion as he morphs into the fire beast. However, they're not seen visibly burned to ashes by his fires, and it's left unclear whether they actually died until after the Time Skip. Wade survived and formed the Guardians of the Flame.
• Uniformity Exception: Wade carries a big axe, which sets him apart from the majority of the Rosarian armies, who use swords.

Martha

Voiced by: Heather Dutton (English), Rin Namino (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs}Delphine Braillon (French), Anna Charlotte Barbera (Italian), Luise Helm (German), Lupita Leal (LA Spanish)

The landlady of the Golden Stable inn and tavern at the town called Martha's Rest. A longtime ally of Cid and the hideaway, she helps keep them supplied while also spiriting away Bearers who are suffering in the last stages of their stone curse, helping them to die in peace and dignity.

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• Comfort the Dying: Martha defies the social expectations of believing Bearers as something less than human by having dying Bearers secretly brought to Glaidemond Abbey to be looked after by an abbott where they can finally rest as the stone curse takes them. She spends her time and meager funds trying to find them and have them safely looked after, out of the empire's eyes.
• Egopolis: Heroic example, and it's likely Martha herself didn't name the town, but Martha's Rest is the name for the town with her tavern as a centerpiece.
• Funny Background Event: In the midst of her Rousing Speech to Eastpool, one of the Guardians of the Flame surreptitiously hands her a frying pan, perhaps only to lend weight to her words and evoke the image of a Frying Pan of Doom.
• Good Samaritan: She's been helping Bearers and the general downtrodden long before she met Cid. She buys those who are coming to the end of their lives, usually due to the stone curse, and spirits them away to Glaidemond Abbey to live out the rest of their days in as little pain as possible, perhaps to be shown some kind of love for the first time in their lives.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Martha has blonde hair and is one of the kindest characters in the story.
• Loved by All: Martha is adored by just about everyone in the town for all that she has done to keep them safe. She even has the ear of the Bloodaxe Mercenaries, sellswords she hired to protect the town in place of their imperial masters. There are some whispers from those who think she loves Bearers too much, but they are by far in the minority.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Late in the game, Martha explains that her activism comes from the elderly Bearer that her household had when she was a child, who played with her and had a mutual affection with the girl. As the Bearer was dying, she told Martha how glad she was that she wasn't a Bearer - it turns out that this Bearer was her own grandmother, who was treated like a pet by her children and (unwittingly) her granddaughter. Martha vowed then and there to fight against Bearer prejudice so such a thing could never happen again.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Accused of this by Cid. While her acts of Comfort the Dying helped the Bearers in her care die peacefully, they were still dying as slaves rather than dying free.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Martha recounts the story of how she and Cid initially met each other. Both of them secretly worked to rescue Bearers from behind the scenes, but Martha primarily operates by buying Bearers who are nearing the end of their lives so they can live out the rest of their days peacefully. Cid, meanwhile, believed she was buying them up for her own nefarious ends. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, they became stalwart allies to each other.
• Rousing Speech: She gives one to the despondent Bearers who have been relocated to Eastpool, urging them to fight and protect their new home from the raving hordes of Akashic. It succeeds.
• Supporting Leader: She is the effective mayor of Martha's Rest, and Clive's primary point of contact for any business in Rosaria.
• The Team Benefactor: She is one of the biggest donors for Cid's cause, funneling them money and victuals even when she is already doing all she can to keep the people of Martha's Rest fed.

Hanna Murdoch

Voiced by:

Wife of the Lord Commander Rodney Murdoch, who lives at their manor in Eastpool.

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• Bearer of Bad News: Hanna is the one who informs Clive and Jill of her husband Rodney's fate at Phoenix Gate. For the past thirteen years neither of them knew what became of him.
• Character Death: Hanna dies with all the rest of the villagers of Eastpool when Anabella's Black Shields fall on them for supporting Bearers.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She is unaware of what actually happened at Phoenix Gate, assuming Elwin, Rodney, and Joshua died in a fire instead of due to an assault.
• Honorary Aunt: With Lord Murdoch being Clive's Honorary Uncle, she ends up doting on him the way an aunt would when he returns to Eastpool after so long.
• Nice Girl: A kind woman who provides hospitality to Clive and Jill in Eastpool and treats them like family even after thirteen years had passed.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Initially, it seems as if she doesn't do much outside from providing hospitality to Clive and Jill, and passing onto Clive his father's old possession. When the Empire of Sanbreque ends up massacring everyone in Eastpool, including her, it ends up being the final step in Clive's decision to be Neutral No Longer and leads to him rejoining the Hideaway for good.
• Tears of Joy: She recognizes Clive as soon as he walks into town, and is overjoyed to learn that he and Jill have survived all these long years.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: She's a kindly widow who gives hospitality to Clive and Jill, provides Clive with his father's old sword and clothes that she kept for thirteen years, and is the wife of Clive's equally-dependable old mentor. This being Valisthea, she ends up being killed in the Eastpool massacre.
• Unexpected Inheritance: Hanna gives Clive his regular outfit, which she had in her home for years as it once belonged to his father Elwin.

Oscar Murdoch

Voiced by:

A young member of the Guardians of the Flame, nephew to Rodney and Hanna Murdoch. He always wished to squire to a scion of the Rosfields like his uncle before him.

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• Minor Major Character: Clive got himself a squire! This should mean that Oscar will accompany him on his adventures, learn from him, and carry on his ideals. However, this happens in a sidequest so late in the story that it basically just amounts to Oscar standing guard outside Clive's personal chambers in the hideaway. Given what happened to his Uncle and Aunt in the main story after their meetings with Clive, this is actually probably a good thing for him.
• The Squire: Wade requests Clive to take Oscar as his squire, so he can serve a Rosfield just as his uncle once did. Clive accepts, and Oscar moves to the hideaway.
• Strong Family Resemblance: He looks just like a young Rodney, which shocks Clive because he never knew Rodney and Hanna had a child. Oscar corrects him and says he is their nephew instead.

Ambrosia

Ambrosia

Clive's trusty chocobo, gifted to him by his father. Thirteen years later, she still lives in Rosaria as a wild chocobo, leading a flock and protecting travelers from bandits and the like.

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• Eyepatch of Power: She gets one after Clive reunites with her and regains her as a mount.
• Eye Scream: During the assault at Phoenix Gate, Ambrosia protects Clive from an attack and loses her left eye from flying debris for her efforts.
• Hero of Another Story: Literally a hero, in fact. Since becoming separated from Clive, she has taken to caring for a wayward flock of chocobos near Martha's Rest, attacking various footpads and other ner-do-wells in the area. As she significantly cut down on the banditry around the Rest, she has become a local hero for the Rest's denizens.
• Undying Loyalty: Over a decade later, Ambrosia recognizes Clive immediately and is clearly overjoyed to see him and serve him again. Even before then, she blocks an attack meant for Clive and loses an eye for it.
• White Stallion: Or rather, White Chocobo. Ambrosia is rare for her white plumage, and considered a beautiful and noble steed.