Headscratchers / Long Live the Queen

• You'd think some or most of the skills you start without would have been taught to Elodie in boarding school. Otherwise, it couldn't really be called a school....
  • Maybe Elodie was just a really poor student before the pressure was on.
  • Keep in mind, she's only 14, and the lessons she takes in-game are from specialized tutors who are being paid to teach her things on a level suitable for a queen. At the start of the game she's only in her second or third year of middle school, everything she's been studying up until that point has been your average mundane education. The flavor text for the final weeks and the Court Manners skill lay it out: as a student, she was just another kid at school, but now that she's prepping for her coronation, her rank matters and she needs to learn how to adjust. Learning the history of the world is simple, but since she's queen, she has to be thoroughly versed in how Nova's nobility and history have worked on a level that's very different from a simple school lesson. And after all, she knows enough of the basics and how to study that she can become a master in a particular subject in a matter of weeks.
• Shouldn't Joslyn be helping Elodie, instead of letting her wing it while he's standing there? Or hire some court advisors? And maybe a food taster, so Elodie doesn't get a gift of poisoned chocolates?
  • Probably, but he's also overwhelmed, depressed over his wife's death and handling the day-to-day of running both Nova and his own estate. He's probably not in much of a better position than Elodie is.
  • Also, he's aware of how teenagers are and he has to curry favor with her. He might be able to 'pull rank' on her, but what kind of treatment can he expect from the last remnant of his beloved wife if he pushes her around in her last year before she becomes the Queen?
  • Iirc, if you have the stats for it Elodie says during the event something along the lines of "How did these get pass the food testers" which implies that there are on stand by, the person was just particularly sneaky in getting it pass them.
• I can kind of understand what drove Kevan to an affair with his sister, but what was Corisande's motivation? She seems pretty normal otherwise.
  • It's a Big, Screwed-Up Family, she probably only seems normal because we don't see a lot of her.
  • There is the occasional Poison Oak Epileptic Tree in the fanbase that Jael also sexually abused Corisande at one point. That being the case would raise some other questions, but it might shed more light on Kevan and Corisande's incestuous relationship.
• Regarding the ending: If the whole point of this is that Togami wants Lumen crystals and he killed Fidelia in a magic duel, why didn't he just take it then?
  • As far as we can tell, Togami did not kill Fidelia in a Lumen duel. Julianna has no idea of why she died and Joslyn says that she used up too much magic and her heart stopped. She doesn't appear to have fought another Lumen.
  • Even if he didn't do it in a duel, there's no reason for him to leave it after he kills her. He can't use more than one crystal even if he uses the dueling ritual to change his opponent's resonance anyway, so if he wanted Fidelia's crystal he could have just taken it from her corpse like you do with all the others in the game.
  • Getting into Wild Mass Guessing territory here but killing another Lumen in a magic duel will change the resonance of the loser's crystal to be like that of the victor - Togami's own crystal has pink in it if Elodie beats him and blue in it if Joslyn beats him. It's possible that he has a loyal someone in mind he wants to give the crystal to that would have a similar resonance to his. For example, his children are likely potential Lumens that would likely respond to a crystal with their father's resonance. This is all speculation, but if he did need the Novan crystal to have a resonance similar to his, he would need to kill its wielder in a magic duel.
  • He's still amassing a collection, though. Resonance or not, he can't use any crystal besides his own and he can't possibly have so many children that going on a Lumen-slaying world tour would be necessary to provide them with crystals. With Elodie's crystal specifically, it doesn't make sense either way: either he needed the dueling ritual for the resonance (which is pointless because he can't use it himself and he's already killed plenty of Lumens already) or he didn't, he just wanted the crystal itself (which is stupid, because he killed Fidelia and could have taken it then.)
  • Consider the ending possibility where Elodie becomes Togami's willing Lumen servant instead of being killed for her crystal. And all the comments about the powers of Lumens in conjunction, which let the old Novan empire rule the world. Just because Togami can't use another crystal personally doesn't mean he can't have a use for a crystal attuned to his goals. There's no evidence that he's killed 'plenty' of people already, this may be his first attempt.
    • The foreign intelligence and history skill notes mention that the current queen of Shanjia, Togami's wife, is running an expansion phase and has been conquering the territories around it, but that Togami is the power behind the throne, and sails without her when he goes to take Nova's crystal. His conversation with Elodie (and the fact that he goes on to Borealis to fight the Lumens that are allegedly there) strongly implies that he's good at planning, but he seems to be uneducated about how magic actually works (or he would know better than to start putting too much active magic crap in one place). Even Julianna (not that she's a stellar example of a Lumen... or a person, for that matter) doesn't know about duels changing resonance, the method she knows is from her antiquated family history and requires a long-term time investment. It's much more likely that Togami discovered that dueling can change a crystal's resonance on the fly and then set about gathering more crystals once he realized he could. Fidelia almost couldn't have been his first target, if only because he would have had to discover that duels can change crystal resonance and test it before coming up with the plan in the first place, but even if she was, that doesn't really change the problems with his plan. He's collecting multiple crystals and force-tuning them to himself, but he can't use them and doesn't seem to have anyone but his children to give them to. He's a murderer and at least a wannabe conquerer-king, it's not as if he can expect to just murder a bunch of Lumens and then hope all the potential Lumens he gives their crystals to will just willingly obey him for more power.
• Why is Togami collecting Lumen crystals? As far as we know, no one can bond with more than one.
  • See above.
    • He has plenty of subjects. He can just put it on a minion who has the same resonance as him (and therefore willing to obey him) and have them act in accordance with his demands. Pretty sure this is also confirmed by Word of God somewhere, and the creator also confirmed that when several Lumens act in concert and join their powers (like in the magic ritual endings), their powers increase exponentially. That kind of unlimited power is what Togami is looking for.