History Characters / FinalFantasyXVITheGrandDuchyOfRosaria

->''"The Grand Duchy of Rosaria, bastion of tradition."''\\
Capital: Rosalith

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* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler:Despite living her entire life as a murderous, narcissistic parasite who went out of her way to earn her ZeroPercentApprovalRating, her TraumaCongaLine during the Twinside incident breaks her mind so hard that it's clear to everyone nearby that there's [[EmptyShell 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 saddened and taken aback.]]

* BullyingADragon: Chooses to cruelly taunt Dion [[spoiler: 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 [[TheWisePrince Wise Prince]] 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.]]

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: PlayedWith. 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 she does seem to genuinely love her child with the Emperor, Olivier, [[spoiler: and is genuinely distraught when he's killed in front of her.]]

[[center: [-[[Characters/FinalFantasyXVI Main Index]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVIProtagonists Protagonists]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVITheHideaway The Hideaway]] | '''The Grand Duchy of Rosaria''' | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVITheDhalmekianRepublic The Dhalmekian Republic]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVITheHolyEmpireOfSanbreque The Holy Empire of Sanbreque]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVITheKingdomOfWaloed The Kingdom of Waloed]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVIEikonsAndNotableBeings Eikons and Notable Creatures/Beings]] | [[Characters/FinalFantasyXVIOtherCharacters Other Characters]]]]-]

* WrongGenreSavvy: She's utterly blind to the story being anything more than medieval politics. [[spoiler:All her planning is destroyed as mere collateral damage by Ultima, and it mentally breaks her as a result.]]

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Despite not sharing the same names, he and Wade are essentially the ''XVI'' incarnation of Biggs and Wedge. They're more loyal to their ''Franchise/StarWars'' origins than most in that [[spoiler:Tyler dies at the end of the prologue, much like how Biggs died at the end of the original movie, while the similarly named Wade and Wedge survive to the end.]]

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Despite not sharing the same names, he and Tyler are essentially the ''XVI'' incarnation of Biggs and Wedge. They're more loyal to their ''Franchise/StarWars'' origins than most in that [[spoiler:Tyler dies at the end of the prologue, much like how Biggs died at the end of the original movie, while the similarly named Wade and Wedge survive to the end.]]

* ParentalFavoritism: 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 famliy, openly doting on her trueborn son Olivier while showing sneering contempt towards her stepson Dion.
* ThePerfectionist: She seeks near impossible levels of perfectionism, which is one of the reasons why she favored Joshua over Clive.

* VillainHasaPoint: Ulterior motives aside, she protests that Joshua is a chronically ill child who shouldn’t have to deal with affairs of state.

** An in-game explanation from Anabella herself says that [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer the other nobles made fun of her because Clive was not chosen to be the Phoenix]] along with something among the lines of them believing him to be the son of a concubine.

* DeathOfAChild: At the end of the prologue, his Eikon form is ''stabbed in the chest and blown up'' by Ifrit. He was ''ten''. [[spoiler:He doesn't actually die; he was found and nursed back to health by the secretive Undying faction.]]

** [[spoiler: 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.]]
** [[spoiler: Sparing Clive and forcing him to be a SlaveMook 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]].
** [[spoiler: 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]].
** [[spoiler: 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]].

* AlternatCompanyEquivalent: She's essentially this game's version of [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire 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, [[spoiler: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.

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler:Despite living her entire life as a murderous, narcissistic parasite who went out of her way to earn her ZeroPercentApprovalRating, her TraumaCongaLine during the Twinside incident breaks her mind so hard that it's clear to everyone nearby that there's [[EmptyShell 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 saddened and taken aback.]]

** 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.[[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse 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 DelicateAndSickly, 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 [[EntitledBastard was owed to her]].

* FreudianExcuse: 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 bulding on it as a core part of her identity, esteem and inherent value as a person.[[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse 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 DelicateAndSickly, 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 [[EntitledBastard was owed to her]].

* EvilCounterpart: 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 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.

* IRejectYourReality: [[spoiler: 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.]]

* ParentsAsPeople: 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.

* {{Expy}}: Of Cersei Lannister of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', from which ''Final Fantasy XVI'' takes many cues. She is a constantly ambitious SocialClimber with designs to rule over all she can, while being extremely contemptuous of not only her husband, but any non-noble of person if less than pure blood. She loves her young children, but primarily as extensions of herself and her own power. She [[spoiler:plotted the death of said husband]] to further her rise, only to be loathed by most if not all of the common populace, never really considering their own power. Furthermore, she is very much WrongGenreSavvy, believing she is in a low dark fantasy instead of one with intense magical powers, even fully aware of said powers' existence, [[spoiler:with her overestimation of her own importance leading to her death]].

** 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 BerserkButton (his [[HeroicBastard parentage]]). It doesn't even ''remotely'' occur to her that she's pissing off the ''[[WorldsStrongestMan 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 TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, she is simply too stupid to take the hint. [[spoiler: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 LaughingMad at that instant (and not in his right mind), there was doubtless real joy in him for finally being rid of this vile woman.]]

* FisherQueen: She turns Elwin's lush and green Rosaria into a barren hellhole. Creating the Black Shields to have free reign over said lands, with them terrorizing and persecuting Bearers with anyone who fails to follow the rules or actively contribute is dealt with severely. At that point, the Blight pretty much assists with the levels destruction and death already occurring at her hand.