Quells are basically the equivalent of nuclear weapons, and the civilization that created them were eventually destroyed by them.
(Guess courtesy of the Something Awful Let's Play)Let's look at what Quells do:
- They are infinite use (implying that they contain unimaginable amounts of power)
- They can cause mental instability after prolonged exposure
- Side effects of handling Quells also include becoming Made of Explodium and Forced Transformation
- The most dangerous of them is eventually destroyed by a steel sword (radiation can be blocked by things like concrete and lead)
Now let's look at the Desert Megalith, where The Egg (the most dangerous Quell) was found:
- It is smack dab in the middle of nowhere—was it purposely built there, or did it drain all life surrounding the area?
- Everything about that place screams "DANGER. KEEP OUT. DO NOT DISTURB ITS CONTENTS." and the Egg itself is kept in a steel box that looks like a coffin, and tubes are connected to the box either to drain energy out of it, or to pump something into it.
Gustave XIII is Finney's version of Oda Nobunaga
Looked down upon by his family for being "different" (though in Nobunaga's case it was his mother who despised him), he fought a civil war to supplant his younger brother as ruler, made his army practically unstoppable compared to his peers by using far more advanced weaponry, and dies via an assassination attempt in which he and a faithful retainer made a last stand which ended with the building they were in burning down.
Gustave XIII is an Anti-Hero with Bad Publicity at best and a Villain Protagonist at worst, meant to give grander context to the impact of the real heroes of the story, the Knights family.
As an alternative to the above, Gustave XIII is a hero of the story, albeit in a way that is completely accidental, veering into Decoy Protagonist.
- It's a fairly common fantasy trope for the Big Bad to be especially vulnerable to a particular weapon or bit of magic that conveniently pops up at some point in the story and falls into the hands of the protagonist. The true ending of the game - where basically a secondary character just happens to have the very weapon capable of destroying the Big Bad - at best has a sizable hole and at worst completely falls apart without the Gustave scenario, showing who created that weapon and why, and the chain of events that led it into the hands of his maternal grandnephew, who holds it at the end.
The Egg had Gustave XIII assassinated.
- It's never outright stated within the game itself but heavily implied that there was some plot or at least very odd coincidence that resulted in the Southern Fort being cut off from reinforcements. The fort was overrun by monsters. This would also be in the Egg's 'character' as an agent of chaos. Not to mention Gustave had heard about the Egg in his prime and searched for it to have it destroyed. And the fact that, rather by accident, Gustave had created what turned out to be one of the few weapons capable of destroying the Egg for good.
Gustave XIII's death is a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.
- Gustave is a splendid duelist, sure, but he's also pushing 50 at the point where he finally passes on. The vast majority of characters in the game have aged out of fighting by that point, and nearly all of them were spellcasters who had a fallback option once physical strength and skill abandoned them. The Gustave that we last control is 37, at or relatively close to his peak. But it has been 12 years since then and, unlike in the Wil vs. Egg scenario where he was part of a group of adventurers, he would have been completely alone against a flood of monsters with no magic and the waning strength and stamina of a man firmly into middle age...
