Genshin Impact: Furina / Characters

With the revelations about her true nature, there will be unmarked spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Lady Furina de Fontaine / Regina of All Waters, Kindreds, Peoples and Laws / Focalors, the God of Justice

Introdued: November 8, 2023 (v4.2 "Masquerade of the Guilty" [first half])
Voiced By: Qian Chen (Chinese), Inori Minase (Japanese), Kim Ha-yeong (Korean), Amber Lee Connors (English), Cécilia Cara (French, singing [all languages])

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/furina_pneuma_transparent.png

Endless Solo of Solitude

^{Click to see her Ousia form}

"The scales of justice should not weigh heavy in the hands of its god. On one side, it must carry fairness and justice, and on the other, praise and applause. May law be the prayer on our lips. May judgment be our worship. Let us light the fires, and drink to the future of Fontaine!"

Rarity: 5★
Element: Hydro
Arkhe Alignment: Ousia/Pneuma
Weapon: Sword
Constellation: Animula Choragi, the Little Soul of Choregos

The Hydro Archon, nominal ruler of Fontaine, and God of Justice. Imprudent, bratty, immature, flamboyant, and with a love for the spotlight and the grandiose, she oversees the trials held at the Opera Epiclese in hopes of entertainment. Unfortunately, her people don't seem to have much reverence for their Archon, seeing her as more of a mascot for their nation rather than their de facto ruler. She personally greets the Traveler upon their arrival to Fontaine and challenges them, only to show her words speak louder than her actions. Though nearing the end of the Traveler's odyssey in Fontaine, their patience exhausted, they discover a series of dark, murky truths about the Archon herself, ones that could turn her own people on her...

Furina merrily changes Arkhe alignment at will through her charged attacks, periodically augmenting her combos with Ousia-aligned Surging Blade or Pneuma-aligned Spiritbreath Thorn strikes, as well as invites Hydro-elemental creatures to join in on the fun through her Elemental Skill, Salon Solitaire, which has various effects depending on her alignment—in Ousia form, she summons the Salon Members, a triad of a phantasmal octopus, seahorse, and crab that attack the active character's target, their power increasing at the cost of consuming the party's HP; in Pneuma form, the Oceanid-like Singer of Many Waters that periodically heals the active character; in addition to the Skill allowing her to walk on water, she can switch guests just by changing alignment. Her Elemental Burst, Let the People Rejoice, invites the creatures to blast away at surrounding enemies and bestow the party with the Universal Revelry state, allowing them to gather stacks of Fanfare whenever their HP fluctuates, increasing their damage output and Incoming Healing Bonus.^note

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General tropes

The Ace: While Furina receives a relative lack of respect as a god, there is one thing she is genuinely excellent at and is widely respected for, and that is her skill in the performing arts. Her performances as an actress are widely popular throughout Fontaine, and the plays and movies she directs come out practically perfect.
Ambiguously Human: Inverted. By the end of fourth act of the Fontaine Archon Quest, Arlecchino suspects that Furina may not be the Hydro Archon after all due to her panicked reaction when Arlecchino ambushed her. That said, she also states that Furina might be under some curse, and if Furina isn't the Hydro Archon, it begs the question regarding the identity of the real Archon. The end of said Archon Quest reveals that Furina is but the human vessel split off from the real Archon, Focalors, as part of her plan to save Fontaine and circumvent Celestia's punishment.
Animal Motif: Furina's hair resembles a jellyfish, whose beauty and ethereal appearance conceals a side that makes underestimating them dangerous—just as jellyfish stings are poisonous, both Furina and Focalors managed to outsmart the Heavenly Principles by allowing the prophecy to pass while simultaneously saving their people.
Assist Character: Her Skill summons phantasmal creatures depending on her current Arkhe alignment. In Ousia, she summons the Salon Members—the octopus-like Gentilhomme Usher, the seahorse-like Surintendante Chevalmarin, and the crab-like Mademoiselle Crabaletta—to pepper the active character's foes with Hydro attacks at the expense of eating away at the party's HP in exchange for heightened power; in Pneuma, the Oceanid-like Singer of Many Waters that heals the active character.
Blue Is Calm:
- As Furina, she's the shining inverted example of this trope among the Genshin Impact cast, with her dramatic and easily flustered behavior despite her prominently dark blue scheme.
- As Focalors, this is played completely straight. She's calm and demure, remaining so even as she is about to sacrifice herself for her people's good.
Breaking Old Trends:
- Furina/Focalors is the first Archon since Venti/Barbatos, all the way back at game launch in 2020, to appear as early as the first act of their related Archon Quest, as well as the very first to openly identify as Archon at that point (Venti having not been identified as such until the end of the second act of his Archon Quest). Though it's later subverted with The Reveal that Furina is not an actual Archon, but rather a human vessel made by Focalors.
- Downplayed when it comes to her Wish artwork. Furina is the third playable character since Rosaria whose Wish artwork pose, much like the Wanderer and Wriothesley before her, does not completely match that of her Character Introduction; her hair length and outfit are the Ousia variant instead of the Pneuma variant seen in her Introduction artwork, and her left arm is raised higher.
- Furina is the first Archon to explicitly not be one. Unlike Ei's Raiden Shogun puppet who acted in her stead, and for all intents and purposes, is her, Furina is simply a normal human and had no powers whatsoever until she awakened her Hydro Vision at the end of her Story Quest.
Cast from Hit Points: The Ousia form of her Skill drains the party's HP (so long as they have over half their HP) to boost its damage. With a full Constellation (see "Super Mode" below), a Pneuma-aligned Furina can also drain health from all nearby allies whenever she attacks enemies while the Salon Members are active.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Depending on her current Arkhe alignment, Furina will don a different outfit and hairstyle to make it easier for the player to distinguish her Skill's effects—namely, her undershirt and shorts are white in her Pneuma form, then dark navy blue in Ousia, in addition to a shorter hair for the latter.
Combat Medic:
- Her Skill alternates between damage-dealing and healing depending on her Arkhe alignment—at Ousia, the Salon Members deal damage at the expense of eating away at the HP of nearby allies; at Pneuma, the Singer of All Many Waters will periodically heal the active character. Her fourth-ascension passive, Unheard Confession, adds a 0.7% damage boost to the former and a 0.4% reduction to intervals of the latter's healing bursts for every 1,000 points of her Max HP (to a maximum of 28% and 16%, meaning they will max out if she has at least 40,000 Max HP).
- With a full Cosntellation (see "Super Mode" below), a Pneuma-aligned Furina can periodically heal her allies whenever she uses normal attacks after using her Skill.
Company Cross References: Furina bears a passing resemblance to Sin Mal, a recurring character from Honkai Impact 3rd as well as its predecessor Gun GirlZ. They share physical characteristics such as being teenaged-looking girls with heterochromia and a prominent Idiot Hair, and dress in a similarly tomboyish manner with frilled, long-sleeved tops and short shorts that give them Leg Focus. Personality-wise, they are also quite difficult to get along with.
Cooldown Manipulation: Her utility passive, The Sea Is My Stage, shaves 30% off of the cooldown time of Xenochromatic Fontemer Aberrant abilities.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: If you use Furina's ability to Walk on Water for exploration outside Fontaine, remember that you can't switch party members while swimming outside Fontaine, meaning you can't switch back to her if you accidentally switched. If your Stamina is low and no shore is nearby, good luck...
Dance Battler: Furina's normal attack combo animations have her perform graceful dance animations with her blade work, and can even perform a bow at the end.
Duality Motif: Furina's blue scheme is accentuated with light/white-dark/black elements, with her heterochromia, gloves, and a gameplay kit with a Stance System she can switch between at will and have completely opposed purposes. Unsurprisingly, this is major foreshadowing that the Hydro Archon has a Literal Split Personality—Furina, the human girl, and Focalors, the goddess.
Expository Theme Tune: Her demo ends with lyrics in French that reflect her renewed commitment to a happy life and the stage following her Story Quest.
Demo: Le monde n'est qu'une scène. Il vaut mieux rire que pleurer, car le rire est le propre de l'homme. Riez de tout cela, ne vous inquiétez pas. Profitons d'aujourd'hui.^Translation
Gathering Steam: Her Burst endows the party with the Universal Revelry state, which for eighteen seconds allows Furina to gather up to 300 stacks of Fanfare whenever the party's HP fluctuates, at a rate of one stack per 1% of each character's Max HP gained or lost, to enhance the party's damage output and Incoming Healing Bonus. In addition, her first Constellation upgrade, "Love Is a Rebellious Bird That None Can Tame", automatically allows her to gain 150 stacks, as well as increases the cap to 400, while her second, "A Woman Adapts Like Duckweed in Water", gives a 250% boost to her Fanfare-gathering ability and allows the state to boost her Max HP by 0.35% for every stack gathered beyond the cap (to a maximum of 140%, meaning it will max out if Furina manages to collect at least 800 stacks).
God-Emperor: The Archon of Fontaine, ruling over the nation and taking part in its famous trials.
God of Order: She's the God of Justice, with her nation being known for its court system.
Gold and White Are Divine: To reflect her Lord of the Ocean status, Furina's color scheme is Heavenly Blue and white, accentuated by gold accessories.
- Deliberately invoked by Furina her as part of her godly persona. When Furina gives up her divinity, she defaults to a dark navy color scheme with little white or gold.
- Played straight as Focalors, however, with her outfit being a much subdued shade of blue in addition to a gold ornament that holds it together.
Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Gender-inverted; Furina wields a sword, while her subordinate, Neuvillette, casts Hydro spells to fight at range, though Furina has some ranged capabilities by proxy of the Salon Solitaire.
Heavenly Blue: The majority of her outfit is made of various shades of royal blue fabric, and she also has streaks of blue hair befitting the Hydro Archon.
Holy Water: As the Hydro Archon, this is to be expected. Though it's subverted for Furina in that she is not the real Hydro Archon and she doesn't possess any Hydro powers, until she gains a Hydro Vision in her Story Quest.
I Just Want to Be Normal: According to Focalors, all she wanted was to be human but once Egeria died, she was forced to take on the role of the Hydro Archon, and The Prophecy kept her from realizing her dream. Later on, Furina acknowledges that she prefers being an average person to being an Archon.
Killer Rabbit: The Salon Solitaire are a trio of adorable, aquatic creatures made of Hydro, with the fact that they're dressed like members of high society only adding to their cuteness, as one of Furina's idles can attest to. They also hit extremely hard, especially after Furina activates her Elemental Burst, and they're also hyper aggressive, attacking any enemies and even random objects whenever they're on the field. At lot of the overworld fights you're gonna get into with Furina will likely be because of these guys attacking the nearest enemy camp while you aren't looking.
Last of Her Kind: Thanks to Focalors' divine curse that made Furina immortal so long as the Hydro Archon also lived, she is the last of the first-generation Oceanids granted pseudo-humanity by Egeria; everyone else having lived out mortal lives and died centuries ago.
Leg Focus: Furina wears nothing but short shorts held down by garter belts and shoes on her lower half, which leaves much of her legs exposed. The dress that Focalors wears also specifically only covers the side of her legs while the skirt length at the front and back are as short as a mini skirt.
Literal Split Personality: Act V reveals that Focalors and Furina are in fact, two different people. Focalors split herself into human and divine halves; Focalors is the true Hydro Archon who let her human side pretend to be the Archon while sealing her divine self in the Oratrice in preparation for her plan, and Furina is the embodiment of the humanity Focalors wished to have, to be able to live as a human, which she does at the end of the Archon Quest.
Lord of the Ocean: As the Hydro Archon, she's this by default.
Making a Splash:
- Has power over Hydro as natural of the Hydro Archon. Conspicuously, her Wish artwork and second Character Introduction Artwork depicts her wearing a Hydro Vision on her hip, replacing the regular blue gem worn there, despite publicly being known as an Archon, whereas Venti and Zhongli only wore a fake one to conceal their identities as Archons (whereas Ei and Nahida do not); additional promotional material also list her powers as "???: Hydro", just like Neuvillette, which hides the latter's identity as the reborn Hydro Sovereign. Turns out that yes, her Hydro powers, which she never had initially due to being Focalors' body double, are coming from that Vision.
- As Focalors, she wasn't just in full control over Hydro, her constitution was literally water; justified, since she used to be an Oceanid.
Meaningful Name: Part of her Constellation's name, "Choragi," is the plural latinized form of the term "Choregos," (χορηγός, "choir master" in Greek), a title given to a wealthy citizen of ancient Athens appointed by its archon, or ruler, to help train and finance choruses, or mob performers. Gameplay-wise, this alludes to Furina conducting, so to speak, Hydro-elemental creatures to fight alongside her, while story-wise this befits her association with the performing arts, as well as a major revelation towards the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest that she is but a mortal girl appointed by the actual Hydro Archon, Focalors, to stage a performance to distract both the people of Fontaine and Celestia long enough until the Archon can gather enough power to save her people.
Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Amongst the playable Fontaine cast, who are already unique for their ability to deal additional Pneuma or Ousia attacks, Furina stands out for being the first (and, as of v4.3, only one) able to change Arkhe alignment at will through her charged attacks (though she starts out as Ousia-aligned whenever she is switched in).
Messianic Archetype:
- While Furina's skill is active, she can Walk on Water.
- Furina is the "human half" of a divine being, Focalors. Focalors' ploy to save her people from the prophesized flood is to kill herself so Neuvillette can regain his power to absolve Fontainians of their sins. In other words, she died for their sins. Not to mention Furina's lengthy suffering when she had to pretend to be Focalors until the prophecy is over.
- The teaser trailer for Fontaine, "The Final Feast", is a reference to Jesus' famous "last supper".
Mirror Character: Perhaps as Foreshadowing, Callas' story mirrors the Hydro Archon's. Both were community leaders who valued the higher justice of ensuring the continuation of others' existence over their own, such that when forced to stand trial over the death of those under their care, they would rather die than reveal their secret in order to counterattack against an unseen threat.
Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Depending on her Arkhe alignment, Furina can only summon either the Salon Members or the Singer of Many Waters; both cannot coexist on the field, and changing alignments also change which creatures are active, though they share a thirty-second-long duration.
Mystical White Hair: Her hair is white with blue streaks, as befitting for the divine Hydro Archon.
Occult Blue Eyes: Her deep-blue-and-light-blue eyes with teardrop-shaped pupils emphasize her divine nature as the Hydro Archon.
Palette Swap: She swaps between a light (Pneuma) and dark (Ousia) version of her outfit when swapping between the two Arkhe forms.
Plot-Driving Secret: The entire plot of the Fontaine chapter builds up to the mystery behind Furina's contradictory claims to not know anything while mounting evidence shows otherwise, with Act V being the climax of the story where she is forcefully exposed by the Fontaine cast and the resulting consequences.
Power Makes Your Hair Grow: By default, Furina starts in the Ousia state, where she has short hair. When switching to the Pneuma state, she regains the long mane of hair she typically has.
Powers Do the Fighting: In her Gameplay trailer, Furina summons Salon Solitaire to attack a Sternshield Crab while she sits on a nearby create and watches.
Promoted to Playable: Downplayed. Though a different character than the game's various Oceanid world and event bosses, her abilities heavily mirror the game's Oceanid boss fights, such as also having the ability to summon hydro mimics in the form of various animals to attack enemies, or walk on water. And in fact, Focalors was born an Oceanid before Egeria transformed her into a pseudo-human, and Furina is the result of Focalors splitting her divinity from her humanity and telling the resulting being to play the Hydro Archon.
Really 700 Years Old: Furina looks quite young and behaves childishly, but her status as the Hydro Archon says she is much older, as the youngest Archon, Buer/Kusanali/Nahida, is only 500 years old.
The Red Mage: Furina's ability to swap her Arkhe alignment lets her change up her kit to either deal damage or heal the party.
Regenerating Mana: Her fourth Constellation upgrade, "They Know Not Life, Who Dwelt in the Netherworld Not!", restores 4 Energy (with at least 5-second intervals) whenever the Salon Members hit enemies or the Singer of Many Waters heal allies.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Hydro Archon's mortal name, Furina, is derived from the Roman goddess of springs, while her divine name, Focalors, is taken from the forty-first demon of the Ars Goetia, who is also a Lord of the Ocean (with additional wind powers) that kills humans by drowning them.
The Reveal: Furina constantly claims and shows that she doesn't know what's happening when things turn out unexpectedly, but it becomes increasingly clear that she’s hiding ‘’something’’, so she is forcefully dragged to court to spill as the threat of The Prophecy grows more and more. Furina was posing as an Archon all along, put into power by her divine self Focalors to deceive both Celestia and Teyvat so that Fontaine can be saved against the will of the Heavenly Principles.
Rightly Self-Righteous: The Varunada gemstone flavor text says that Focalors' ideal has no stains, how they can judge even her, and to praise her magnificence and purity. Focalors deceived Fontaine for centuries and put Furina under unimaginable torment, but she sees it as the only way to save Fontaine, and while the death sentence is done to return the Hydro authority to Neuvillette, she also sees it as her own punishment for causing Furina to suffer.
Secretly Wealthy: Unlike the other Archons, she mentions how she has a sizeable saving from performing over the centuries, which is being managed and invested by Surintentande Chevalmarin. Might also count as foreshadowing how she is not the real Archon, as the real Focalors is cooped up in the Oratrice and would have no need for commerce, much like Ei in her plane of Euthymia.
Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Tying into the Hydro Archon's role as the Messianic Archetype of Fontaine, she successfully saved all her people from dissolution by sacrificing her divinity and her mental well-being.
Situational Damage Attack: Played with. Her first-ascension passive, Endless Waltz, allows Furina to thrice heal a nearby ally for 2% of their Max HP per burst in two-second intervals whenever the active character receives healing from other sources than Furina which surpasses their Max HP.
Sketchy Successor: To the previous Hydro Archon, Egeria. Egeria was seen as The High Queen and was worshipped as the Queen of All Waters. Furina barely gets the respect from her people to be called "Lady", and Fontaine actually has a law that forbids naming pets after Furina.
Spell Blade: With a full Constellation, Furina's Skill can now bestow her the Center of Attention effect for ten seconds, during which her sword attacks are converted into Hydro, which can additionally have further effects depending on her Arkhe alignment (see "Super Mode" below).
Spoofing in the Rain: She does the classic lamp post spin during her demo. Especially appropriate considering her element.
Spin Attack: In her normal attack combo, Furina can sit on a bubble and spin her sword around, not unlike how Dori does so with her Jinni for her charged attack.
Staff of Authority: Her Character Introduction artwork has her wield Splendor of Tranquil Waters, a scepter that is wielded like a sword, and she is the Hydro Archon ruling over Fontaine.
Stance System: By default, Furina starts in the Ousia state. However, her charged attack lets her change her Arkhe alignment into Pneuma and vice versa.
Super Mode: Her sixth Constellation upgrade, "Hear Me — Let Us Raise the Chalice of Love!", allows the Skill to bestow Furina the Center of Attention state, all her attacks become infused with a Hydro effect that cannot be overridden by reactions or infusions, boosts her damage output equivalent to 18% of her Max HP, and gives her attacks special effects depending on her Arkhe alignment—in Ousia mode, she can heal the party equivalent to 4% of her Max HP every second for 2.9 seconds; in Pneuma mode, all her attacks get a further boost equivalent to a quarter of her Max HP, albeit at the expense of draining 1% of the party's HP per hit. This state lasts until either ten seconds have passed or she has landed six enhanced hits.
Symbol Motif Clothing: Not only are her pupils teardrop-shaped, but she also wears several teardrop-shaped gems in her outfit. This matches not only the prophecy regarding Fontaine, but also the Oceanids leaving because of the sadness and pain tainting the nation's water.
Sword of Damocles: Just like king Dionysius Soter of Greek yore, Furina is the Hydro Archon who has everything one can possibly ask for: an army of servants, the envy of the people, a glistening palace, endless supply of fancy pastries — you name it! Yet with this great fortune comes a sword over her head: she is a normal girl forced to pretend to be the Hydro Archon to save Fontaine, cursed to live until the day the Fontaine Prophecy is solved. She has to live another life for 500 years, putting on a show every single second of her existence for her subjects below and the heavenly principles above, knowing very well a single slip up will tear down the facade she has built and usher in the great disaster. And not only does she have a great flood to worry about, she also has to deal with scheming elites (who, in Neuvillette's Story Quest, tried to use the Melusine issue to gain power, for example), powerful mob bosses (Vacher, the serial killer/drug lord, amongst them), and perhaps plenty of assassination attempts (with one being Arlecchino nearly taking away her life). Furina isn't just sitting under a sword: she is surrounded by swords. The worst part about all of this: Just like Dionysius never knows when the sword will drop on his head, Furina never knows when a sword will drop on her... which actually doesn't drop on her, but rather on the throne of the Hydro Archon itself; Focalors had crafted a huge one using Indemnitium, and it was meant to execute her in a literal example of this trope to both fulfill and prevent the prophecy.
True Blue Femininity:
- Inverted as Furina. She may dress in various shades of deep blue, but she acts more boyish, not to mention that the male Chief Justice Neuvillette also wears similar shades of deep blue.
- Played straight as Focalors. She dresses much more femininely than Furina and has a blue, gold, and white color motif.
Upgrade Artifact: A variant—her third and fifth Constellation upgrades, "My Secret Is Hidden Within Me, No One Will Know My Name" and "His Name I Now Know, It Is...!", add three levels to, respectively, her Burst and Skill.
Walk on Water: While her summons are active on the field, she gains the ability to walk on water. Due to her skill cooldown being shorter than the summons duration by a whopping 10 seconds, she can walk on water indefinitely.
Water Is Womanly:
- Inverted for Furina. She is female and the Hydro Archon, but she's much more tomboyish than the other female Archons encountered thus far.
- Played straight for Focalors. She is the true Hydro Archon and dresses far more femininely than Furina, her decoy.
Weapon Specialization: Furina's Wish banner runs concurrently with that for the Splendor of Tranquil Waters (5★), whose Ascension substat is Critical Damage (19.2–88.2%), and whose "Dawn and Dusk by the Lake" passive provides up to three stacks an 8–16% boost to its wielder's Skills for six seconds (hence a maximum of 24–48%) whenever their HP fluctuates, as well as up to two stacks of a 14–28% Max HP boost for six seconds (hence a maximum of 28–56%) whenever those of their allies fluctuate. Given the nature of her Skill draining HP from the active character, which can include herself, and gravitating towards HP scaling with her Talents, this greatly strengthens the power of both forms of Furina's Skill.
Yin-Yang Bomb: Unlike other Fontainian playable characters, she can wield both Pneuma and Ousia Arkhe alignments, using her charged attack to switch between the two.

Tropes applying to Lady Furina de Fontaine (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

"And so, while fate may seem like it's playing cruel jokes on you, only fate will not deceive you... unless... you can first deceive... fate itself."

As the Traveler later discovered, Furina is but a mortal vessel split off from the actual Hydro Archon, Focalors, cursed with immortality and tasked with playing the role of Archon in order to distract both the people of Fontaine and the Heavenly Principles whilst the latter gathered power to save her people from the prophecy of their watery doom, even as the centuries-long charade caused her immense anguish. After Focalors sacrificed herself to permanently destroy the throne of the Hydro Archon and restore the authority of the Hydro Sovereign to Neuvillette, giving him the power to circumvent the prophecy by turning the people of Fontaine into true humans, Furina, now freed from both her curse and her duty, abdicated her position and settled down for a humbler life in the Court of Fontaine. After struggling to find a new place for herself, she resolved to enjoy her newfound freedom, in the process earning a Hydro Vision.

Accidental Truth: During her trial, Furina claims that she doesn't have powers because she put her entire power into the Oratrice so it could stockpile Indemnitium for the people. It's clear that she came up with that on the spot, and because it's been acting independently of her will nobody really believes her. However, that's actually exactly what happened: Focalors created the Oratrice and transferred every ounce of her divinity into it, leaving behind the human girl who became Furina, and spent centuries stockpiling power for the sake of freeing her people from the prophecy. The reason this isn't a Cassandra Truth is because Furina doesn't actually know this part of the plan, and is just grasping at straws to maintain her masquerade.
Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
- One night while playing with a cat, she was ambushed by Arlecchino which caused her to plead for her life without attempting to fight back. This, coupled with the fact that Furina didn't have her Gnosis on her, led to Arlecchino to theorize that Furina isn't actually an Archon.
  Furina: Who are you? What are you trying to do? Please don't kill me, I'm begging you...
- In a more comedic example, when Hu Tao frightens Furina so she'll go back to Fontaine before it gets dark, the latter begs for Clorinde and Navia to escort her.
The Alleged Boss: Furina adopts a position in her government similar to a constitutional monarch, letting mortals handle the majority of trials while still overseeing them, with the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale (allegedly built by her) deciding the final verdict of a trial in lieu of herself. When we see her in the game proper and her people's general reception of her, she's not particularly revered among the people of Fontaine, being desperate for her people's approval, rather than earning approval by leading by example. This means most of the time she's busier lying and bluffing to pretend she's on top of a situation than actually leading. By the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest, Furina loses her position of power to Neuvillette after the real Focalors executes herself to restore his full powers.
Allergic to Routine: Furina hates being bored and is usually delighted whenever someone can actually give her a good surprise. Deconstructed, however, as shown when the Traveler witnesses her memories, where she is constantly playing the role that was given to her by Focalors, which meant doing nearly the same thing day in and day out for centuries. By the time the Traveler arrived in Fontaine, Furina was almost despairing over how she had to keep on going along with the role she was given, but to stop doing it or to confide in anyone about it would doom Fontaine.
All for Nothing: Mercifully subverted. Furina played the part of the Hydro Archon for five-hundred long years, enduring a huge amount of stress and loneliness as she deceived everyone around her into believing she's a god when she's only a normal human being. She carried out this performance despite the hardship because she believed it essential to preventing the flooding of Fontaine as in the prophecy. Unfortunately, the very people she trusted most end up putting her on trial and proving to all Fontaine that she's not the Hydro Archon. After she realizes her secret is out and by extension the prophecy will be coming true, Furina completely shuts down and simply sits in the chair of the defendant's stand while tears stream down her otherwise expressionless face. Fortunately, it's revealed she held out long enough for Focalors' plan to come to fruition and Fontaine is saved after all.
All-Loving Hero: Up there with Buer as one of the foremost examples of this trope in Teyvat. For five-hundred years, she sat on her throne, a mere Oceanid in the form of a human trying to play the role of an Archon, all while the Sword of Damocles hangs over her head. Not only that, she has to play her part perfectly every single second of those five centuries because a single slip-up can usher in the prophecy. Such is the stress that she goes to bed crying, and even break down in tears in front of her subjects but has to play it off as her power takes shape. And she endures it all, always putting herself last, because she loves her people and views her suffering as worth it for the greater good. Even when she is booed and jeered by her own subjects in Chapter IV Act V, she endures without uttering a word about her secret even if it can help clear her name. She goes as far as to put her hand in Primordial Water, knowing very well she can be disintegrated into the water, but she would rather die than leak the secret and cause the prophecy to happen. It doesn't matter if the people of Fontaine city view her as a mascot or the people of Poisson hate her guts, she will go to hell and back to save them.
Furina: If there were scales, with all the people in Fontaine on one side and my pain on the other...Is it not obvious where the scales should tilt?
All Part of the Show: In her character quest she has to take the lead actress’ place when she ends up getting sick. During her singing, Paimon was supposed to get into position to drop a prop Vision towards her when a real Vision^noteImplied to be Neuvillette’s doing appeared out of thin air and slowly descended towards her. Neither the audience nor the troupe make a fuss about it, until Paimon points it out to the troupe after the play.
Ambiguous Situation: Despite for all intents and purposes being a human who was only posing as an Archon and whose current abilities are drawn from her Vision which she only got recently, Furina in gameplay is just as Purposely Overpowered as the playable Archons before her, possessing both extremely mechanically powerful buffs and damage output, as well as visually and thematically reinforcing that power. For example, she has the ability to summon three Familiars to assist her in combat when most characters can only summon one, the ability to use both Arkhe alignments when even Neuvillette, who following his ascension as a fully-powered Sovereign can now use both himself, can still only use Pneuma in gameplay, and even powerful exploration utilities such as being able to Walk on Water while her Skill is active^note. Whether this is merely a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation meant to prevent spoiling players to the events of Act V, some latent power from her being a part of Focalors, an interesting oddity of her Vision receiving its power from Neuvillette, or her just being that good of a Vision holder, is hard to determine as of yet.
And I Must Scream: A variant, and a self-inflicted one to boot. Sure, she's alive, surrounded by luxuries and can get all the fancy pastries she ever wants, but underneath all that is a girl who's absolutely exhausted from her 500-year role, questioning when it will ever end. The crux of it all, and what makes it fit this trope, is that she can never, ever confide this to anyone, on the off chance the Heavenly Principles take notice and undo all her hard work, ensuring her solitude for centuries. Even when pushed to the brink with the potential of death by dissolution, or visited in her own mental world, she still chooses to remain in-character rather than break the facade.
Furina: So interminable... so lonely... Just how much longer...? Hundreds of years must have passed by now. Perhaps this show must go on for hundreds more... I never imagined that it would hurt so much...
Apocalyptic Log: Her Character Trailer depicts her recording a last log after the Prophecy has seemingly happened, with the room she's in fully submerged in water. The end of the trailer reveals that it was actually All Just a Dream.
Artificial Human: Somewhat more than other Fontainians, as she is the last of the first generation Oceanids granted a pseudo-human form by Egeria, that the god Focalors turned into a Literal Split Personality by separating her mortal body from her divine spirit. Following Act V however, the Hydro Sovereign has turned her into a full human like all other Fontainians, and she is no longer cursed with immortality either.
Attention Whore: She appears to enjoy having attention directed at her, so long as it's positive. Early in the Fontaine Archon Quest, she sits silently in the judge's seat in the Opera Epiclese, waiting for the Traveler and Paimon to notice her posing, and Neuvillette comments that she will become flustered if they don't acknowledge her.
Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: If Neuvillette's character quest is done before Act V, he pens a note to Furina explaining he'll be away for a day. While up to that point we'd seen Furina either at odds with Neuvillette due to her theatrics or begging him to remain with her in fear, Furina's response to it is warm, with her happily remarking that it's rare that Neuvillette goes out and that she hopes he meets lots of interesting people while he's away from his desk. Neuvillette, for his part, is fondly exasperated by this note, wondering what she thought he was getting up to.
Badass Adorable: Furina is the Hydro Archon who has expertise with swordplay and Hydro manipulation in battle. She is also a cute girl who, despite her haughty exterior, has positive Hidden Depths and even has little Hydro beings known as the "Salon Solitaire" as her companions. In one of her idle animations, she even plays with one of the "Members of the Salon Solitaire" by having them shoot bubbles all around, then proceeds to cuddle it afterward.
Beautiful Singing Voice: As revealed in her voice lines and her performance as Clio in the "The Little Oceanid", Furina possesses a talent for singing.
Be Careful What You Wish For: The trailer for Fontaine depicts how she's looking for an exciting trial. Focalors promised that a day will come where her great task will end in 'a magnificent and spectacular trial'. And indeed it is fulfilled... by the Trial of the Hydro Archon, i.e., her own trial.
Become a Real Girl: By the end of the Archon Quest, Focalors executes herself and severs her connection to Furina, freeing her from her centuries-long facade and letting her live as a normal human out of immense gratitude for having put up with her plan.
Becoming the Mask: Downplayed. While she generally is much more humble than she was when she was pretending to be Focalors, she's still prone to dipping into the loud and flamboyant behavior of her old self. She herself notes it would be next to impossible to wear a mask constantly for 500 years and not be influenced by it.
Belated Happy Ending: By the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest, Focalors sacrificed her life to destroy the throne of the Hydro Archon, restore Neuvillette's full strength as Hydro Sovereign so he can save the people from the flood of Primordial Seawater, and free Furina from both her curse of immortality and her centuries-long duty. All good... except there were still many deaths; untold destruction has been wrought; many survivors, especially in Poisson, grow to resent her both for the calamity and her (necessary) deceit; and she is reduced to a humbler existence at Vasari Passage without a lot of friends (save the more intimate ones like the Traveler, Paimon, Neuvillette, Clorinde, and Navia), job, life skills, or purpose in life. By the end of her Story Quest, however, Furina, with the aid of those aforementioned close friends, comes to accept her new life, and returns to the stage to much fanfare, in the process receiving a Hydro Vision, meaning it's only a matter of time before she wins back the people's goodwill.
Beneath the Mask: While she has a boisterous and grandiose personality on the surface, she is quite insecure beneath it, and is easily embarrassed when she makes mistakes that her followers perceive. This side of her, as well as her internalized confidence when things do go her way, is represented by a monochrome "Inner Furina" who appears beside her during her internal monologues.
Berserk Button: Furina takes umbrage at Arlecchino accusing her of doing nothing to stop the prophecy threatening Fontaine, clear fury present in her tone for once. As Act V reveals, she's been trying for over 500 years to try and stop it, she's not wrong to be so angry about it.
Bifauxnen: Furina is perhaps a more bratty version of this trope, as an androgynous young woman who speaks in a boyish manner and wears a style of clothing best summarized as "princely".
Big Ego, Hidden Depths: With the depths being as deep as the Great Fontaine Lake, if not more. Her grandiose way of presenting herself to the masses hides a highly insecure personality who desperately wants others to see her as the great Hydro Archon because Focalors gave her no powers whatsoever, apart from her immortality, in order to act as the Body Double for her. Even the "big ego" part came to be when she first acted more modest and her people weren't convinced, leading her to develop a high and mighty persona.
Black-and-White Insanity: Her quotes in the description of the Varunada Lazurite Gemstone espouse this mindset. Subverted however, as Furina herself can be more reasonable — provided she's thinking clearly, that is. The main problem is when she realizes she is about to embarrass herself in public, particularly when she makes mistakes. In these situations, Furina attempts to hide her slip-ups with bravado and dramatic acting that often delves into this territory.
Blessed with Suck: Hilariously, if you forget that her Elemental Skill is active and jump off a ledge into a water body, her Walk on Water ability will kick in and she will get Fall Damage and splattered on the water surface, unless she can save herself with a well-timed plunge attack or glide to soften the landing.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Averted. Unlike her fellow Archons, Furina doesn't have a "weird" quirk other than her dramatic self, nor does she operate with some kind of "alien" morality, instead acting more humanly in regards to her approach towards the prophecy that would doom Fontaine. This makes sense, considering she's not actually the Hydro Archon, but the human vessel of the real one, Focalors, who instead downplays this.
Boisterous Weakling: Rather strongly suggested by the way she bombastically challenges the Traveler to a duel, only to immediately get rattled and change the contest to a duel in court when they aren't cowed by her divine nature and are willing to face her. This is because she has no more power than a normal human and has been relying on her godly reputation to scare away threats.
Break the Cutie: On the outside, Furina may act haughty and flamboyant, but underneath, she's a scared and insecure girl who has the altruistic intentions of wanting to save her people from annihilation at the hands of the prophecy. So when Arlecchino rips into her on what Furina's plans are and how exactly will said plans save Fontaine, the latter struggles to give a straight answer apart from claiming she'll find a way when the time comes. If spoken to at the end of the conversation, she remains very shaken up over the ordeal, sounding on the verge of crying, but immediately covers it up with her usual theatrics upon noticing the Traveler nearby. Later on, when she is put on trial, she is despairing when the Traveler exposes to the public that she is just a human and not a god, so much so that when the Oratrice sentences the Hydro Archon to the death penalty, Furina just sits crying in her chair, too distraught to do anything but wait for her execution.
Break the Haughty:
- Downplayed, but still present. Suffering a public loss to the Traveler when they successfully prove Lyney's innocence seems to have humbled her a bit by the time of Tartaglia's and Marcel's trials, as it's noted that she's taking it more seriously this time around, though it's speculated that this has more to do with trying to earn back some respect following her faux-pas. After the trials are over, however, she's back to her usual theatrics.
- Later on, it's revealed that a disguised Arlecchino attacked Furina while she was playing with a cat, prompting Furina to beg for her life. She remains traumatized by the experience to the point that she's terrified of being alone with The Knave, utterly begging Neuvillette to come with her to a meeting with the Harbinger.
- During the final part of Fontaine's Archon Quest, Furina is forced to be put on trial to confess her secrets after Poisson is flooded by the Primordial Sea. During the trial when the Traveler presses the charge of her being a fraud, she continuously tries to convince the audience that she is their archon and eventually dips her hand in Primordial Seawater in an attempt to prove her point. After Siegwienne reveals that she was still affected and she attempts to convince her people one last time, everyone refuses to believe her by that point as she is officially declared guilty and breaking her haughty demeanor in reality while she begins to cry. Later, the traveler enters her "inner world" by touching her tear and sees how she continues to put up the act of being an archon on stage which forces them to turn off the spotlights and force her to accept the reality of the situation while showing how Furina has been forced to put on an act for 500 years.
Broken Bird: Beneath all that bravado and sass, Furina is a horribly depressed girl who is just tired of having to play god for centuries, but has to carry on out of fear that even the slightest of slip-ups can cause the prophecy to pass.
Broken Pedestal: When the Traveler first arrives in Fontaine, the people of the country adore Furina as it's biggest celebrity but don't revere her as their god yet trust her to deal with the prophecy. As the Archon Quest goes on however and Furina appears less and less confident, the people start to doubt her ability to deal with it. When Furina is put on trial by the traveler and the rest of the main cast of Fontaine for being a fraud, the people finally realize that Furina isn't actually the real Hydro Archon when all the evidence presented is shown clearly and Furina isn't able to defend herself even when she puts her hand in Primordial Seawater. Right before she is declared guilty, she attempts one last time to convince everyone that she is their archon with everyone in the audience disgusted at her. After the Archon Quest is completed and Furina Abdicates The Throne to Neuvillette, Furina loses her old residence and can't even get a proper job anywhere because of her status and is forced to live off of what Neuvillette provides her with. During her Story Quest when she returns to Poisson, many of its residents are shown to still be angry at her despite Navia telling them that she was just an actress playing the role of Furina with none of them buying it.
Broken Tears: After the Oratrice produces a death penalty for her (or rather, the seat of the Hydro Archon), Furina mentally shuts down and quietly cries in despair. Furthermore, the Traveler's flashback to her history reveals that centuries of playing god has made her spontaneously shed tears in the middle of engaging with the people (without even knowing why), and often took to bed crying, wondering how long does she have to keep up the act.
Brought Down to Badass: A retroactive example. Though Focalors ultimately restores Neuvillette's powers before her death, leaving Furina a normal human, by the end of her Story Quest she receives powers of her own that she had lacked through a Vision... and a Hydro one at that!
Bullying a Dragon: Her very first act in the Fontaine Archon Quest is to try and challenge the Traveler (who at that point has fought multiple god-like entities) to a duel for no reason other than to flex on them. When they don't back down, she tries to backpedal by challenging them to a duel in the courtroom and when Lyney manages to give them an out through a sleight-of-hand trick she quickly takes it and backs off.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Because Wriothesley's trial for the murder of his adoptive parents was short and undramatic due to him confessing to everything immediately, Furina was extremely disinterested in the trial and left early. Due to this, Wriothesley keeps sending high-quality tea to Furina as an apology. But according to Furina's voiceline about him, she doesn't even remember the trial, and all she knows about him is that according to Neuvillette he's a trustworthy person.
Cassandra Truth: Furina insistently claims to have a plan to stop the prophecy of Fontaine’s destruction from coming true whenever someone asks her what she’s doing to prevent it. Nobody believes her, especially Arlecchino who keeps antagonizing her to reveal said plans. As we later find out, Furina, or rather her other self and true Hydro Archon Focalors, really does have a plan to stop the prophecy. Furina herself only knows part of the plan but was told that so long as she keeps up her act as the Hydro Archon until a grand trial to end all trials happens, Fontaine will be saved from the prophecy.
Chuunibyou: Invoked. Furina's personality is reminiscent of Fischl, complete with delusions of grandeur and hidden insecurities that show through whenever things don't go her way, which is ironic given that as an Archon she is supposed to act mature. She does this because that's her impression of how a god should behave towards mortals.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Could be seen as this to Raiden Shogun/Ei for a given value of Antagonist, thus far being the only Archons who opposed the Traveler in some capacity before becoming allies. While the Shogun's antagonism amounts to being an Orcus On Her Throne, spending her time in Tenshukaku while leaving the Traveler's capture to her soldiers, Furina goes about it more directly and personally, with her challenging them to a duel (with she expected them to back down from), trying to get them arrested for breaking an obscure law, and eventually serving as the prosecution when they find themselves defending Lyney on murder charges. The Shogun opposed them for their attempts at threatening the order and eternity she's trying to enforce upon Inazuma, whereas Furina simply did so in an effort to look good in front of her subjects. The Shogun is a No-Nonsense Nemesis and Knight of Cerebus who is the biggest threat the Traveler has faced up to that point, requiring them to be empowered by the collective will of Inazuma's resident's to best her, while Furina is rather inept, all her attempts at besting the Traveler being easily bested and ending in her humiliation. Plus, while the Traveler's opposition of Ei, besting her in a duel and explaining to her the turmoil her negligence left Inazuma in, is ultimately what starts Inazuma's road to recovery, their opposition of Furina, putting her on trial and exposing her as a fraud, only serves to escalate the disaster they were trying to prevent, as Furina's secret was the only thing holding off the prophecy.
Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
- To Buer as both 500-years old Archons^*judging from the words 'scene 182375' during her cutscene, we can get an accurate estimate of Furina's age who were looked down upon by their people, imprisoned and finally released at the end of their respective quests.
  - Buer was locked away by corrupt officials and desperately sought to aid her people from her imprisonment, while Furina has freely ruled over Fontaine and is seemingly uncaring of her people's wellbeing, though she was effectively imprisoned in the role of the Hydro Archon.
  - Concerning supernatural Familiars of the previous Archons, while the Aranara readily accepted Buer as their "queen," most Oceanids refused to accept Focalors and became Self Imposed Exiles.
  - Buer and Furina are inexperienced and childlike though eventually revealed to be iron-willed and wise, but Buer is demure and comes to be universally praised as a wise and caring leader; in contrast, Furina's "difficult" bombastic facade and Immortal Immaturity has resulted in her people having little reverence for her. Subverted in the case of Focalors, who is revealed to be similarly demure as Buer.
  - Both are insecure about their roles as succeeding Archons, but whereas Buer retained her innocence tempered only by severe self-esteem issues, Furina has developed an Inferiority Superiority Complex and put up a boisterous and confident façade.
  - At the conclusion of their respective Chapters, Buer was installed into her rightful position through The Coup organised by the Sumeru crew, while the mounting political pressure and resulting trial organised by the Fontaine citizens not only led Furina to Abdicate the Throne, her divine self Focalors also destroyed her Archonhood and returned elemental authority to the Hydro Sovereign.
- To Barbatos as well. Both are Archons or pretending to be one in Furina's case with connections to the performing arts, with Barbatos being a bard and Furina a fangirl of stage performances. Additionally, Barbatos is a Loser Deity who is at least honest about how he is weak in comparison to the other Archons while Furina is a Miles Gloriosus who oftentimes can't back up her boasts and is a subverted Loser Deity who isn't a deity to begin with. Their appearances contrast each other as well, with Barbatos being a feminine-looking boy in contrast to Furina's Bifauxnen status. Finally, while Barbatos would prefer if his status as an Archon remains a secret, Furina would oftentimes boast about her false status as the Hydro Archon to others.
Courtroom Antics: The end of the Overture Teaser: The Final Feast has her loudly complain about the lack of exciting twists in the trial she's attending, with Neuvillette attempting to make her refrain from levity.
Cowardly Lion: Despite her frivolous demeanor, Furina is capable of being quite brave when she needs to be. This nearly becomes a huge problem in her trial as, given her normal demeanor, Navia assumed that Furina would give up her ruse rather than touch Primordial Seawater and is stunned to see Furina plunge her hand in. Furina's life was only saved thanks to a final bit of caution where they used a highly diluted source of Primordial Seawater just in case. We later see this is all part of a much greater showing of bravery, Furina accepting Focalors’ agreement and willingly taking on the torturous burden of being the only one who knew the truth for centuries, for the chance at saving Fontaine’s people.
Crossdresser: Furina dresses in ouji fashion, the masculine counterpart to lolita fashion.
Curse: Arlecchino theorizes that Furina might be under a curse, revealed towards the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest to be immortality so long as Focalors, the real Hydro Archon, also lives. Once the latter sacrificed herself to restore Neuvillette's power so he can save the people of Fontaine, Furina is freed of the curse.
Dead Hat Shot: Her hat dropping onto the stage after the BFS of Indemnitium plunges towards Focalors like a guillotine signifies the death of her divinity. The play that Furina participates during her Story Quest also ends with a shot of her hat as the Oceanid she was playing sacrifices herself for the townspeople, paralleling the acting troupe director Aurelie's fate.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: One towards the Miles Gloriosus trope. For much of the Fontaine Archon Quest, Furina often talked big, but tends to have cold feet whenever she had to walk her talk. Come the final act, it is revealed that she wasn't perpetuating the act out of egotism or a desire for attention, but because of the expectations of the people of Fontaine. If she had looked weak enough for people to question her godhood, then everything would have fallen apart as the prophecy of Fontaine's doom came to pass.
Determinator: Focalors tasked her with playing the role of Hydro Archon whilst she sought a way to save the people of Fontaine from the prophecy of their watery doom. Keep in mind that she wasn't given a timetable as to how long she has to keep up the act, let alone all other specifics of the plan apart from an order never to tell a soul that she is but a human. Meticulously she played the role for five hundred years despite the obvious mental toll, to the point that, even when given the choice to confide to the Traveler, a known outside variable to Teyvat's laws, she still chose to keep everything to herself on the off-chance even the slightest slip of her façade could cause the prophecy to come true. Accordingly, in their voiceovers Zhongli, Ei, and Nahida have nothing but praise for her sheer determination akin to a true god.
Didn't Think This Through: Furina has a nasty habit of doing this, such as when she challenged the Traveler to a duel and didn't expect them to accept.
Disproportionate Retribution: Her introduction in the game has her confront the Traveler and Paimon right away to order their arrest for releasing a flying object in the first three days of the month (said flying object being Paimon).
Don't Call Me "Sir": In contrast to the lofty titles used by the other Archons, the Hydro Archon is merely "Lady Furina" to her people. While the people of the other nations use most formal titles to refer to their gods, in Fontaine the Archon is regarded as someone people feel comfortable calling a "mascot" in conversation. She has the title of "Regina of All Waters, Kindreds, Peoples and Laws", though that's less frequently used. After she steps down, she takes this even further, asking to be called "Miss Furina" rather than "Lady Furina" like before.
Dumbass Has a Point: Furina is a Miles Gloriosus whose leadership is hindered by her tendency to be a Slave to PR, but there are times when, intentionally or not, she does make good points or has good ideas:
- When she introduces herself to the Traveler, one bit of grandstanding she performs is claiming that she can judge anyone, including the gods of other lands. While a boast that she probably wouldn't act on, she's not wrong that many of her fellow Archons could, under normal circumstances, be put on trial for something.^note
- At the end of Neuvillette's Story Quest, the Traveler can read Furina's reply to the latter's earlier request for a leave while he investigates a threat against a Melusine, wherein Furina cheekily told him that he ought to get out more and interact with the people. The fact that said Quest revolved around Neuvillette discovering that the Fantastic Racism that plagued the Melusines when he first guided them to Fontaine has long since subsided, which he never realized due to his decision to remain out of touch with the populace, it's hard not to see where Furina's coming from here.
Elegant Gothic Lolita: With her waistcoat, shorts, and small top hat, Furina is dressed in ouji fashion, the masculine counterpart to gothic lolita.
Establishing Character Moment: Within minutes of the Traveler stepping foot on Romaritime Harbor, Furina demonstrates her histrionic personality by staging an impromptu grand public welcome ceremony for the Traveler (while still playing as the main focus and trying to intimidate them). Encouraged by an audience member's excitement, she invites them to duel with her, but when she sees that the Traveler isn't intimidated by her, she immediately drops out and attempts to get them arrested to save face in front of the watching crowd.
Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Compared to other Archons, significantly more gemstones can be found on Furina's outfit such as on her hat, High-Class Gloves, brooches, as well as a big circular gem pinned to the ribbon on her sash with a smaller teardrop-shaped one attached to it.
Everyone Has Standards: She isn't fond of the idea of knowingly, falsely accusing someone. She also isn't thrilled when false evidence is planted to frame someone in the trial against Lyney.
Exotic Eye Designs: Her right eye has a light blue iris with a dark blue teardrop-shaped pupil, while her left eye retains the same pupil shape but flips the colors.
Expository Pronoun: In contrast to her bombastic personality, she uses the more humble boku in the Japanese dub. While it is fitting as she has a Tomboyish Voice in the dub, this is actually a common pronoun used by female performers in theaters in Japan, fitting for her role.
Familiar: Her Elemental Skill summons 3 to aid her in combat and 1 when she needs healing, for a total of 4 summons. According to her line in the Serenitea Pot, Surintendante Chevalmarin even helps her budget and invests her savings!
Fashionable Asymmetry: Her hat is worn slightly to the side of her head, her gloves have mismatched colors, and her coattails are uneven in length.
"Fawlty Towers" Plot: A one-person example. Furina isn't truly the Hydro Archon, but more of a puppet Archon employed by the real Focalors as part of her scheme to both mitigate the prophecy of Fontaine's destruction and erase the Hydro Archon from the equation entirely. Furina has since been putting on airs and piling up lies for 500 years while Focalors does her work, and if her status as a fake is discovered by anyone, even a single soul, the prophecy will begin. Even when given a free chance to confess her woes to the Traveler that might ignore the rules set by Focalors and the prophecy, Furina chooses to die on her hill of deceit — and very nearly does when the Traveler finally has enough, unwittingly starting the prophecy themselves.
Feet-First Introduction: Her grand introduction in the first Fontaine Archon Quest involves initial shots of her legs and feet walking up the stairs before settling in place (on top of a box, no less) and allowing the camera to pan up to the rest of her body as part of her dramatic reveal to the Traveler and Paimon. A similar introduction happens as she takes the stage in the cutscene at the finale of her Story Quest.
Foil:
- As co-rulers of Fontaine, Furina is the opposite of Neuvillette. Furina is an outwardly bombastic and prideful yet powerless short human woman forced to constantly put on a God Guise while Neuvillette is a tall, stoic man who struggles to fit into human society due to his immortal nature as the Hydro Sovereign. At the conclusion of Act V, Furina Abdicates The Throne and becomes an ordinary citizen while Neuvillette reclaims his full dragonhood and succeeds Furina as Fontaine's head of state. Furina is also a sword user while Neuvillette is a long-ranged catalyst user.
- Furina and Arlecchino are both white-haired Bifauxnen women spymasters from Fontaine with Exotic Eye Designs who are known to put on acts to maintain control over others, which makes their differences all the most prominent:
  - In appearance, Furina's largely blue color palette contrasts with the minor red details in Arlecchino's design. Additionally, Furina uses a Medium Female character model, while Arlecchino uses the Tall Female one.
  - In terms of elemental abilities, they have a Fire/Water Juxtaposition.
  - In personality, Arlecchino maintains a calm and eerily intimidating demeanor while Furina is dramatic but much more sociable (as long as one acknowledges her position).
  - Arlecchino is undoubtedly capable as the Fourth Harbinger, with her numerical position backing up her combat experience, and has numerous subordinates who are unwaveringly loyal to her (with at least three of them having their lives vastly improved under her care), while Furina has frequent trouble maintaining the impression of competence that she ought to have, her people treat her and protect her as a mascot rather than an authoritative figure of reverence, and is powerless and combat inept until she gets a Vision of her own.
- Furina and Lyney are both famed Fontainian performers wearing top hats, short shorts and garter belts who personally know that Keeping Secrets Sucks. However:
  - Their elemental abilities have a Fire/Water Juxtaposition.
  - Lyney dresses effeminately in red and black while Furina dresses in blue and occasionally white ouji fashion, depending on Furina's Arkhe alignment.
  - Lyney is a bow user while Furina wields swords.
  - In Act I, in a moment of recklessness, Furina falsely accuses Lyney and ends up putting him on trial with the Traveler acting as his defence attorney. Come Act V, with the twins' box-swapping trick, Furina is dragged to her trial where the Traveler prosecutes against her.
Foreshadowing:
- During Lyney’s magic show, she's visibly horrified when Lynette seemingly dissolves in the water tank. She then breathes a sigh of relief when Lynette appears unscathed. This shows that she's aware of the prophecy that the people of Fontaine will dissolve into water, which is later confirmed by Neuvillette, that she’s searching for a way to prevent it.
- In her very first appearance, Furina challenges the Traveler to a duel, which they accept, causing her to back off in hesitation, but plays it off as being impressed with their determination and calls off the duel. And when she witnessed Childe activate his Foul Legacy transformation, she simply stared with shock. In both instances, Furina's display of hesitancy to take action and needing bodyguards when traveling in public is unusual for someone who is supposedly an Archon, all of whom have the power and strength to back up their authority and protect themselves. As such, when she gets assaulted by Arlecchino in the dead of night without anyone to protect her and makes zero attempt to fight off her assailant, instead begging for her life, this strongly indicates and is later confirmed that Furina is literally incapable of actually fighting and has no powers of her own, which causes Arlecchino to deduce different reasons as to why this is so, either Furina is under a curse sealing away her powers, or she isn't an Archon to begin with. By Act V, it turns out to be a mix of both since Furina is actually just a regular human cursed with immortality that has acted as Focalors for the last 500 years as part of her plan to stop the prophecy.
- Her title of Endless Solo of Solitude and the very first Fontaine quest is titled Soloist's Prologue make a lot more sense when you consider she's been putting on a solo performance for 500 years (endless solo), all by herself and never being able to confide in anyone lest the masquerade be broken and doom her nation (of solitude).
Formally-Named Pet: Her Salon Solitaire members all have formal titles: Gentilhomme Usher, Surintendante Chevalmarin and Mademoiselle Crabaletta.
Freeze-Frame Bonus: In her Demo Trailer, as she swings across the stage in (presumably) Sumeru, Mondstadt, Inazuma and Liyue, she holds her swing like Nahida, plays a harp like Venti, sits in a pose like Ei's meditation, and showers the audience with Mora like Morax the god of wealth.
Friendless Background: Tragically enforced. Her role of playing as a high and mighty Archon made it impossible to form any close relationship with anyone over the years for fear of her secret getting out. It is only after she was released from her role that she is finally able to bond with others and call them friends.
Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In her Character Quest, after an argument breaks out when Vilmant reveals his accidental part in Aurelie's death, which enrages Pauleau due to his feelings for her, Furina, who up to that point was content with her role as an advisor, immediately snaps at them to calm down, saying that using the play to vent their issues with each other or trying to put Aurelie on a massive pedestal will only serve to ensure the play never gets done. Her words reach them and convinces them to put their differences aside for the play.
Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Stuffed animals manifested by her Hydro powers. Her idle animation has her hoist one of her Salon Solitaire dolls, which she then hugs.
God Guise: Furina has been an Oceanid psudo-human with no elemental powers of her own all along, assigned by the real Hydro Archon to act as a god as part of her plan to save Fontaine.
Gratuitous Foreign Language: Furina's English VO throws in... well, about as much French as the average Anglophone IRL into her dialogue but it's still distinctive as only Yun Jin also has dialogue possibly in another language.
Hat of Authority: Wears a blue top hat that has blue teardrop-shaped gemstones attached to a gold, crown-like structure around the crown of the hat, wrapped in a fancy blue ribbon that is tied with a bigger blue teardrop-shaped gemstone and an accompanying white ruffled cloth. Becomes a Subverted Trope after she Abdicates The Throne.
Heroic BSoD:
- She becomes increasingly frantic and desperate when her trial starts to turn against her. After it's clear no one is buying her act anymore and, by Furina's understanding, Fontaine is doomed to be wiped out in the flood, she simply sits down in her prophesied "throne" with tears streaming down her face. She's otherwise completely catatonic and doesn't even react to the Oratrice giving her the death penalty, only coming out of it once the floodwaters recede and the nation is saved.
- Furina was already pretty tired by the end of the Archon Quest, but learning about the death of her own divine half is what ultimately causes Furina to emotionally shut down in silent despair, with learning the whole thing proving to be the final nail in the coffin for the poor girl's emotional and mental stability as a distraught Furina chooses to ultimately distance herself from the whole Archon business for good and falls into a state of depression and emptiness after the whole fiasco. Her Character Quest sees Furina slowly returning back to society and finally coming to terms with her newfound freedom and past grievances from recent happenings.
Heroic Sacrifice: Narrowly averted. Part of her trial involves her being subjected to a God Test in the form of a vat of Primordial Seawater. If she is a god, she will be unaffected and if she's a human, she'll be dissolved. Despite knowing she's a human, Furina puts her hand in anyway rather than (as she believes) dooming Fontaine by giving up her long charade as the Hydro Archon. She only survives because Navia swapped the Primordial Seawater for a less concentrated dose at the last minute.
Her Own Worst Enemy: Beneath all the bravado and grandstanding, Furina does show flashes of competence as Fontaine's Archon from time to time. The problem is her overt sensitivity about her public image. Furina is all too aware of how public perception of an Archon's strength and competence is important to the stability of their rule. Her desire to impress her people leads her to make bold claims and statements, and her fear of disappointing them leads her to cover up her slip-ups and moments of weakness, sometimes to self-destructive effect. This is not helped when she runs her mouth without thinking and says something outrageous that she can't take back without humiliating herself, thus forcing her to go through with her claim. It comes back to bite her when she is put on trial by the Traveler and the rest of the main Fontaine cast for being a fraud and she is unable to prove herself otherwise even when she willingly chose to put her hand in Primordial Seawater just to keep up the act despite not knowing it was diluted.
Hidden Depths: She's actually Smarter Than They Look in contrast to her bumbling personality:
- Neuvillette reveals at the end of Act II of the Fontaine Archon Quest that, in contrast to her histrionic personality, Furina takes the prophecy about Fontaine's impending doom seriously and is using all her resources, including her wide-reaching intelligence network, to find a solution to it. She's also the only Archon besides the Tsaritsa to operate a global network of agents that function outside of their nations.
- Underneath the bombastic, attention-seeking façade, Furina is actually a very meek and considerate girl. The only reason she puts on an act is because her initial attempt at introducing herself as the Hydro Archon were too humble and modest for the Fontaine people to buy into, so she turned up the theatrics to meet their expectations.
- In one of her character stories, she was able to figure out that the director she's working for was trying to scam her by pretending to agree with her demands while changing it behind her back.
- It's revealed she figured out that the Traveler came from another world during their talk before the trial, making her one of the few ones aware of this fact.
- She also develops an aptitude for cooking following her abdication of the throne. This is best seen with her Specialty Dish "Pour la Justice," an expertly made and intricately decorated cake.
- According to her voiceovers, she's a natural at surfing.
- Her Serenitea Pot dialogue has her show genuine interest in the mechanics of the teapot itself, and even mulls over the idea of taking it apart for study, though she admits this would be a destructive and irreversible endeavour if she were to do it herself.
- Also from her teapot lines, her Salon Solitaire familiars are implied to have individual personalities, like Fischl's Oz. Why, Surintendante Chevalmarin is said to manage Furina's finances!
- Both Furina's Demo and the "Roses and Muskets" event shows that she has an interest in film directing and her cameo in the 2024 Lantern Rite story has her traveling to Liyue to hire Hu Tao as a prop consultant for her next film.
High-Class Gloves: Wears black and white hand gloves, each ornamented with a droplet-shaped gem.
How Do I Shot Web?: One of her character stories shows what happened after she gets her new power from the Hydro Vision. The first thing she thought was to get back at a certain Local Legend that she offended in the past, only to be beaten (again). Then she goes home and tries experimenting with her powers, and ended up flooding her living place.
How the Mighty Have Fallen: At the end of the Fontaine Archon Quest, Focalors sacrifices herself, leaving only the human vessel that she made. After this, she lives a lonely, boring life in the Court of Fontaine, though without the luxuries she used to enjoy, only living off what Neuvillette gives her; all of it is made worse by how few people will forgive their former Archon. Downplayed slightly by the end of her Story Quest though, as after a series of events, not only she gets her own Vision, but she decides to return in the show business as a performer, much to her former people's joy; though still far from her previous life of luxury, better than being a nobody who's ostracized by her people.
Humble Hero: After the events of the Archon Quest Furina becomes a lot more laid back and not nearly as haughty as she used to be. Her story quest along with the "Roses and Muskets" event shows that while she is still an incredible actress, she's taken an interest in behind the scenes work and doesn't really like being in the spotlight anymore.
Ideal Hero: Furina's endurance and dedication to saving Fontaine from a cataclysmic prophecy, all the while bearing the bitter pain, loneliness and guilt with nothing but theatrics for centuries is what led Focalors, the actual Hydro Archon, to acknowledge Furina as the best of humanity.
Idiot Hair: Has a prominent cowlick as befitting how bratty she can be.
Immortal Immaturity: Has a boyish, histrionic personality despite being the Hydro Archon. While much of this behavior is rooted in acting how she thinks people would expect a God to behave, it's implied that her curse of immortality did actually hinder her development as well.
Incoming Ham:
- She makes a Dramatic Entrance the moment she presents herself to the Traveler and Paimon.
- Each ult has her loom over a tiny Fontaine like some kind of giant egotistical kaiju, terrorising the unfortunate citizens within.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: Even early in the Fontaine Archon Quests, it becomes clear that Furina's boisterousness and sense of showmanship hides someone who's extremely sensitive to how her subjects view her. This causes her to try showing off, making numerous Badass Boasts about her status as the God of Justice and making promises of excitement, which only serves to create opportunities for her to get humiliated, such as accusing Lyney of Cowell's death and challenging the Traveler to serve as their attorney, which leads to the Traveler, with the help of Navia, proving Lyney innocent.
Interface Spoiler:
- Although her playable status coincided with the conclusion of Fontaine's Archon Quest and her own personal Story Quest, players who pulled Furina prior to completing either might have noticed a small detail in the updated Party Setup menu—all of the Archons have additional particle effects that reflect their elemental domain. Furina does not.
- Furina introduces herself as the Hydro Archon the moment Traveler meets her, and keeps reminding everyone that she is a god, but her playable version is seen wearing a Vision, and her power source is listed as "???". While Barbatos and Morax also wear Visions despite being Archons, and Morax similarly has his power source hidden until the end of Liyue Archon Quest, Furina's Ascension Phase 1 voice line has her mention that she isn't accustomed to using a Vision, and asks Traveler to teach her how. Before completing Fontaine Archon Quest and her personal Story Quest, these details give away that not only is Furina herself in some way not the true Hydro Archon, but that we will likely see her obtain a Vision at some point.
It's All About Me: If her quote on the Varunada Lazurite Gemstone is anything to go by, Furina has an inflated arrogant ego who always values herself with utmost priority, claiming her ideals have no stains and feels the need to "correct" her naysayers by saying that her people bear no sins from the gods, even going as far as to demand praise for her "magnificence and purity". Of course, this is later suggested to instead be a confident front she's putting up to hide her insecurities and to appear strong to her people. After The Reveal in regards to Focalors and her plan however, the item's description takes a bittersweet meaning.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's very bratty, egocentric, and boastful, with many of her threats even coming off as empty. That said, as seen at the end of the Archon Quest, Furina's intentions towards her people have been benevolent since the very beginning, even with their lack of actual reverence towards her, from attempting to put on a Tough Leader Façade to prevent a prophecy that would destroy Fontaine, to sacrificing her position of authority without regrets despite knowing a lot of people won't forgive her easily. Playable voice-overs reflect both sides of herself, sometimes being loose-tongued and still egocentric, others being genuinely appreciative and even generous.
Karmic Jackpot: Though it's mixed with a heavy dose of irony. She spends five-hundred years acting out the role of the Hydro Archon in order to save Fontaine despite being a powerless human, only finally being released from her task following the Fontaine Archon Quest. Then comes her Story Quest where she, after having accepted that she'll live a normal human life, is granted a Hydro Vision. Not only does this give her the Hydro powers she pretended to have for centuries, but it also means that that she, as a Vision holder, could someday ascend and become an actual god.
Keeping Secrets Sucks: She has to maintain the titular Masquerade of the Guilty for 500 years, and can't share it with anyone else. Best seen near the end of the titular quest, where we see her breaking down in private, virtually every day, until the Masquerade is broken and the prophecy fulfilled.
Kneel Before Frodo: Upon completion of the Fontaine Archon Quest, all of the Archons up to that point (Venti, Zhongli, Raiden Shogun and Nahida) have lines where they praise Furina for her ability to persevere through great odds and acknowledge her as worthy of the title of Archon.
Large Ham: She has a boisterous and grandiose personality, and she always appears to be putting on a show when she speaks... This, however, proves to be a façade, as she is far more insecure than she admits and fears embarrassing herself in front of her citizens. Indeed, it turns out to be invoked and both deconstructed, then reconstructed over the course of the story, when it turns out she fostered this façade in order to fit the image of what a "proper Archon" should be like, and that having to keep up this persona for centuries has left a huge toll on her mental health, as well as left her feeling isolated from everyone. After relinquishing her power, she also admits that years of putting on this attitude has made it impossible to switch back from it.
Laser-Guided Karma: At the beginning of the Fontaine Archon Quest, she hastily accuses Lyney of being the mastermind behind the recent wave of serial disappearances despite lack of sufficient evidence, with the Traveler being appointed as his lawyer. Come the finale, he more or less repays the favor by having the Traveler track her down in Poisson and lure her into a magic box to be transported to Opera Epiclese and finally force her to stand trial where she is exposed as a fraud and loses her position of power as a result.
Locked Out of the Loop: After losing her fated trial to figure out her long-held secret, The Reveal shows she doesn't have an inkling of Focalors' true plan and genuinely believes that she has failed her mission to save Fontaine in order to deceive the Heavenly Principles into thinking The Prophesy has come to pass.
Lord Country: Her full name is Furina de Fontaine, after the nation she rules.
Loser Deity: She is the Hydro Archon and the leader of her nation, but while her citizens adore her, they do not revere her, and they regard her as more of a mascot than a figure of authority in comparison to Chief Justice Neuvillette, who is more widely respected. She is also heavily implied to be on the weaker side, hesitating to jump into a fight and needing bodyguards (with one of them being Clorinde) while out in public. Arlecchino in particular finds her so pathetic that she honestly believes that Furina might not even be a god, much less an Archon, and Furina even refuses to tell anyone about Arlecchino's assault on herself to maintain her Tough Leader Façade. Hilariously (or maybe not), one of Fontaine's less-known laws from Neuvillette's profile is that "no domestic pets shall be named after Furina", indicating just how little respect she gets. However, this is actually subverted, as Arlecchino's theory turns out to be correct, and the actual Focalors is much more competent.
Made of Iron: Not physically, but definitely one mentally. We've seen the effects of living for too long on sanity, and Furina gets a triple whammy by also having to stay in-character and having to shoulder the burden alone with no one else to help her. But she manages to keep the never-ending masquerade for 500 years, though it's clear it's taken a toll on her psyche.
Master Actor: She is lauded by her people for her talent as an actress; troupes putting on performances at the Opera Epiclese will submit requests for her participation, considering themselves as having won the lottery should she deign to participate. Despite her generally bombastic behavior, Furina is praised for being able to flawlessly disappear into any role, as though she were born to act. And indeed, she was, with her bombastic personality being just another role she has been playing every waking moment of every day for 500 years.
Mental Health Recovery Arc: Furina's Story Quest focuses on the Traveler and Paimon helping Furina come to terms with her new life and rediscover her passion for the arts by helping a small-time theater troupe with their final stage play, culminating in her receiving a Hydro Vision.
Miles Gloriosus: Furina talks big, but rarely walks the walk should someone call her bluff. She's introduced bragging that as the God of Justice, she could even pass judgment upon her fellow Archons, and readily challenges the Traveler to a duel, only to be genuinely shocked when they take her up on it, and backpedals to save face in front of her people. Essentially, she makes empty boasts to impress her people and desperately counts on her godhood to prevent anyone from actually questioning it. Deconstructed, as Act V reveals that she had to take up the act when posing as Focalors in order to maintain her plan to defy the prophecy.
Mirror Character:
- Furina's relationship with Neuvillette has many similarities to that of Hu Tao and Zhongli, with Furina being the eccentric boss of Fontaine's judicial system and Neuvillette being the stoic right-hand who is long-lived and has little tolerance for her antics.
- Furina resembles Fischl extremely closely, with high theatrics covering a vulnerable emotional interior. They also both work in intelligence, but while Fischl is an intelligence agent for Mondstadt's Adventurer's Guild, Furina is The Spymaster. They also both summon animal-like creatures in battle. The big difference between the two is while it is quite obvious that Fischl is pretending somebody she actually isn't, it took 500 years for people to realize that Furina is pretending to be an Archon. Neuvillette plays a similar role to Furina that Oz does to Fischl, reining her in when she overplays her ability.
- To the Wanderer. Both were creations made by their respective gods with the idea of taking on godhood from their makers after their respective makers' ascension to godhood (both around 500 years ago). However, while the Wanderer was abandoned by Ei for shedding tears (deeply resenting her as a result) and chased after divinity, Furina fulfilled her purpose pretending to be a god despite her constant emotional turmoil and was given a normal life afterwards. By the end of their purposes, both are left trying to reconstruct their life's as common people^note, eventually gaining a Vision after the Archon Quests.
- She and Ayaka are white-haired female characters who hold high-ranking positions and are seen as figureheads in their respective governments (Ayaka as the Shirasagi Himegimi of the Kamisato Clan and Furina as the Hydro Archon), are accompanied by a male Hydro user, and have outfits incorporating several shades of blue. Their meetings with the Traveler are also both in unexpected circumstances, with Ayaka initially speaking behind a screen before later showing herself and Furina outright meeting them literally at the gates of Fontaine trying to either fight or arrest them for something minor.
- Furina also has some similarities to Beelzebul. Like her, Furina is a second-generation Archon with somewhat of an immature streak despite being centuries-old, a habit of making rash decisions and ideas that often pan out horribly for her, was initially antagonistic to the Traveler before her Archon Quest, and is associated with a long-lived and influential individual who often has to act as a minder to her whenever she steps out of line.
Modest Royalty: Defied. Furina makes a grand showing of being the Hydro Archon, enough so that her people treat her more like a celebrity rather than a ruler. She initially presented herself in a fairly humble fashion, but when people thought she wasn't acting as grandly as a god should, she played up her own ego rather than risk her secret getting out.
Mood Whiplash: Of all the Archons, she has the most cheerful teaser video. Then, came Act V where you realize she had to suffer in agony for 500 years, and every smile she puts on can very well be a façade.
Morton's Fork: When the Traveler traps her in Poisson, Furina had the option of either choosing to tell them that she was a fake Archon, or the Traveler would prove it themselves in court. Either option would result in the prophecy being fulfilled, with the latter one playing out when Furina tries to stick to her guns.
Ms. Vice Girl: Settles into this at the end of the Archon Quest. While she no longer has to put on the ineffectively boisterous mask, she still remains quite egocentric and proud, but it no longer gets in the way of showing gratitude and kindness. She's unimpedingly friendly to those that remained on her side as she fell from grace (most notably the Traveler and the allies they made in Fontaine).
Musical Theme Naming: Befitting Furina's love and active involvement in operas, her constellation names references famous French and Italian operas:
- Love Is a Rebellious Bird That None Can Tame is the opening verse^note"L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" of Habanera from Carmen.
- A Woman Adapts Like Duckweed in Water adapts the opening verse^note of La Donna è mobile from Rigoletto.
- My Secret Is Hidden Within Me, No One Will Know My Name is a verse from Nessun Dorma in Turandot.
- They Know Not Life, Who Dwelt in the Netherworld Not! is a line from Orpheus in the Underworld.
- His Name I Now Know, It Is...! references Diecimila anni al nostro Imperatore from Turandot.
- Hear Me — Let Us Raise the Chalice of Love! is adapted from the lyrics of Libiamo, ne lieti calico from La Traviata.
My Greatest Failure: Even though it was necessary to stop the prophecy from happening, Furina admits that she feels guilt about her whole acting as the Hydro Archon causing many casualties anyway.
The Napoleon: She's a bombastic attention-seeker and she's also short enough that in her first appearance, she's standing on a box to look much more intimidating than she is.
Nervous Wreck: In this official tweet by Neuvillette, Furina is compared unfavorably to Kusanali, and is said to be "prone to hysterics" whereas the latter is considered Wise Beyond Their Years. During the Fontaine Archon Quest, when not putting on a front to her people, Furina indeed displays enormous nervousness during her diplomatic meetings with Arlecchino. She also immediately begs for her life when assaulted at night by a disguised Arlecchino.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Granted, it was a morally dubious one, but Furina maintained a 500-year-long façade as Hydro Archon as part of Focalors' plan to deceive Celestia and save the people of Fontaine from the prophecy of their watery doom, a duty she fulfilled despite the massive emotional and mental toll compounded with her frustration over her inability to find a viable solution and fear over any slip-up causing the prophecy to come to pass. All her efforts went down the drain after she was put to trial by the Traveler and their companions, including Neuvillette and Clorinde, under the mistaken impression that her secret can help avert the prophecy, and is humiliated as she has her claims of godhood dismantled and refuted despite her best efforts, including dunking her hand in Primordial Seawater despite the very real risk to her life, in the process unwittingly triggering the prophecy. Furthermore, after Focalors enacts her plan by sacrificing herself, Furina is left living in a cramped apartment surviving solely on macaroni and Neuvillette's charity, several Fontainians, especially Poisson, grew to resent her both for her deceit and her perceived inaction (with some wondering why Neuvillette refuses to prosecute her), and she is left completely aimless in life, lacking any skills or motivation to support herself.
No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Furina is an obvious reference to Marie-Antoinette, queen consort to King Louis XVI of France, being a young and inexperienced ruler of a nation with a strong French cultural aesthetic, complete with a reputation for extravagance. Arlecchino accusing her of eating cake while the Fontainians suffer also alludes to a quote often misattributed to her real-life counterpart. And just like Marie Antoniette, she was put on a trial and later, in her case had her divine half executed for the sake of her nation, all while calmly accepting her fate.
Not So Above It All: Despite her haughty attitude, she gets just as enraptured by Lyney and Lynette's magic show as the rest of the crowd.
Not Worth Killing: At some point Arlecchino saw Furina alone, and attacked her for her Gnosis, assuming at worst she was falling for an obvious trap. Instead, Furina begs for her life, an act so pathetic and unbecoming it makes Arlecchino not only decide Furina doesn't have the Gnosis but even believe she's not even an Archon. Either way, it makes Arlecchino leave, seeing there was nothing to gain from killing her.
Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Furina has a nasty habit of biting more than she can chew.
- Her opening scene has her loudly introduce herself to the Traveler, claiming to have heard all about their exploits and boasting of her godhood in response, challenging them to a duel right off the bat. The Traveler, already a veteran of fighting gods, stares down at her and draws their sword without a hint of fear. Furina... quickly backpedals at the Traveler actually accepting the challenge, immediately proving to them that she is neither as strong nor omnipotent as she claims.
- After Lyney's assistant Cowell dies and the volunteer from the audience vanishes, Furina gets overly excited and starts raving about how obvious it is that Lyney is the culprit, not helped by the fact that he and Lynette are Fatui. When Neuvillette asks if her words can be taken as a formal accusation, Furina quickly realizes what she just did and tries to backpedal again, only to double down on her words upon hearing the rest of the audience is taken in by her reckless words.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In her final appearance in Chapter IV Act IV, after being emotionally torn apart by Arlecchino in their meeting earlier, she is last seen overlooking Neuvillette conversing with the Traveler and Paimon, without her usual happy and flamboyant self present as she does so, while out in public. Upon Neuvillette noticing her, she takes her leave; while he doesn't say anything else, his gaze is locked onto her for a while before Paimon has to redirect his attention back strongly implies he senses that something is wrong for Furina to act this way. Chapter IV, Act V reveals that everything Arlecchino believed about Furina both being under a curse and not actually being the real Hydro Archon was actually right and Furina has been forced to keep up the act of her being an Archon for the last 500 years as part of Focalors plan to stop the prophecy. During Act V, the toll of the situation has started to finally affect Furina.
The Performer King: Furina has actively taken part in numerous stage plays and musicals over the years, and her subjects love her more as a celebrity Master Actor than as Archon. Furthermore, she's put on a God Guise since her day of ascension to draw all of Teyvat and Celestia's attention away from the machinations of the real Focalors to save Fontaine.
Poor Communication Kills: Tragically enforced. Furina's part in preventing the prophecy until Focalors can make her move comes down to maintaining the front of a confident and powerful Archon at all times and never once slipping up. When the Traveler and Neuvillette come under the wrong impression that whatever she's hiding can help avert the prophecy, she can't outright tell them or explain that this isn't the case without exposing her secret, and so is forced to continue keeping everything to herself. This leads to them putting her on trial and ruining all her efforts anyway, which ends up playing right into the prophecy.
Power Stereotype Flip: The Hydro Archon is much more bratty, grandiose, and loud (yet insecure) in personality than what should be expected of the element's usual wielders. Even after Focalors' death, Furina receives a Hydro Vision that grants her actual powers, and despite being humbled, she still has traces of her old self.
The Punishment: Furina was cursed with immortality to sell the idea that she was an Archon. She was then "sealed" for 500 years in her role as the Archon, pretending to be divine despite the immense stress this put on her.
The Queen Will Be Watching: Watching the trials and performances at the Opera Epiclese is Furina's favorite pastime.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Neuvillette's blue during trials in the Opera Epiclese, where his calm and orderly presence contrasts against her performative behavior.
Refuge in Audacity: Thanks to taking on an over-the-top, bratty persona, she managed to keep the public convinced that she was the Hydro Archon to the very end, all despite having no Hydro abilities to flaunt.
Respected by the Respected: The other Archon's voicelines about Furina that you unlock after completing Act V have them display nothing but the utmost respect towards her; Venti displays admiration towards her as a fellow performer, and sees her pivotal role is saving Fontaine as only natural; Zhongli and Ei commend the Heroic Willpower she displayed in maintaining her 500 year performance and claim that, though she may be a mortal, she has more than earned the title of "god"; and Nahida praises the wisdom she and Focalors displayed throughout the whole ordeal, and is confident that it'll serve her well going forward. And then there's Neuvillette, the Hydro Sovereign himself, who remarks that should she ever return to the stage, he will be there to give his heartfelt applause for how she endured her 500 year "performance" through to the end.
Riches to Rags: Downplayed. She isn't poor since Neuvillette made sure all her basic needs were covered after abdicating her position as the Archon, and she has a sizeable saving from performing through the centuries. But it's still a huge change from her previous wealthy lifestyle at the Palace to a modest life at a smaller house and a regular allowance. When the Traveler and Paimon visit her, Furina is still trying to adjust to her new life as a regular person, taking pride in her efforts to learn how to cook on a budget.
Right for the Wrong Reasons:
- Insists that her seemingly nonsensical actions as an Archon are because humans cannot hope to understand a god's plans. In reality, the reason for a lot of her strange behavior is that she's a human herself, as part of a god, Focalors', plan to trick the Heavenly Principles that is needed to be kept from all humans, Furina included.
- Claims that she shows so little divine power because she put it all into the Oratrice. This is just an excuse she comes up with to hide how she had no power to begin with, because Focalors kept it all when splitting them and, unbeknownst to Furina, has been residing in the Oratrice ever since.
Sad Clown: Despite all her dramatic antics, Furina's drip marketing describes her crying in loneliness in the Fountain of Lucine in the dead of night, which the player can hear after finishing Act II of the Fontaine Archon Quests. Then in Chapter IV, Act V, we get to see how much of a lonely and miserable soul she really is, as she’s forced to play the act of a goddess by her divine counterpart, Focalors, for 500 years, doing the same thing over and over again, which restricted her from developing personal bonds with other people, so she could stop the prophecy from happening.
Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: She has this dynamic with Neuvillette.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She attempts to retreat with as much dignity as she can save whenever things aren't going her way. Neuvillette pointedly calls her out on this when she tries to leave quietly once Lyney is proven innocent against her charges.
She's Back: In her Character Quest, she's largely left the public eye and has even retired from performing due to the trauma of her five hundred year role, and only agrees to help Aurelie's theatre troupe as an advisor. After Dulphy's illness flares up however, Furina, relating deeply with the story and touched by everyone's efforts to bring it to life and honor their late director, agrees to take to the stage to finish the play, performing the last song and final scene much to the joy of her old fans, earning a Vision in the process. This compels her to make a return to the stage for real, and by the time of her Demo Trailer, she's back to a bombastic performer on-stage.
- Further solidified in 4.3's event "Roses and Muskets", where we see her having fully regained her old bravado and confidence as a director. She even shows up in the 2024 Lantern Rite story, excitedly hiring Hu Tao as a prop consultant for her next film..
Significant Wardrobe Shift: The cutscenes of her Story Quest reveal that she canonically changes to her Ousia form after abdicating her Hydro Archon position and leaving the Palais Mermonia at the end of the Archon quest, changing to darker clothes and cutting her hair short. That her playable form defaults to it supports the idea this is her "current" state. It suits the quieter and more morose personality she has rather than her role of the glamorous and attention-seeking Archon, who would wear bright whites.
Slave to PR: It becomes clear early in the Fontaine Archon Quest that all of Furina's actions were to appease her people and entertain them to ensure no one found out about her weakness and insecurities. The story shows how much of a Nervous Wreck she is, with the confidence she often shows instantly dissipated whenever she feels humiliated by consequences of her own actions. Justified, as it is revealed that during the day of her ascension as Fontaine’s ruler, she tried to introduce herself in a humbling manner, only for her own people to voice their distrust, because she doesn’t look like an Archon. So, in order to prevent the prophecy from happening, she decided to play the role of a bombastic and boisterous Archon, partly because that’s what her own people were expecting from a godlike figure.
Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
- Furina as a playable character is based on herself after the events of her Story Quest, where she has now obtained a Hydro Vision. Nothing is stopping you from pulling Furina from the gacha before completing her Story Quest though, despite not getting a Vision yet until that point.
- While the exact reason for her power is still up in the air, Furina’s Purposely Overpowered status is at least partially backed by her Vision story, which states how she accidentally flooded her entire apartment while practicing with it.
Sole Survivor: The Prophecy speaks of Furina becoming the sole living Fontainian left should it come to pass. Fortunately, Focalors' plan to avert this works as intended.
The Spymaster: She has a network of intelligence-gatherers all across Teyvat, with one being shown keeping tabs on the Traveler before they make their way to Fontaine.
Stop Worshipping Me: After stepping down as Archon, Furina has tried to put that particular role firmly behind her. She may still preen over honest compliments for her hard work and accomplishments, but she starts getting uncomfortable when things go beyond the realm of respect and towards anything resembling the fawning adulation of her Archon days.
Supreme Chef: As part of getting accustomed to her new modest life, Furina has been learning how to cook for herself daily on a limited budget. This is best seen with her Specialty Dish "Pour la Justice", which is an even more refined version of the original cake "La Lettre a Focalors", in which her strongest assets are her talent in cake decoration and the interpretation of her feelings and her character journey in the cake flavors.
Stepford Smiler: Under her flamboyant and arrogant personlity is an immortal, human girl who's been fraying at the edges for over 500 years while faking her Archon role to fool Fontaine and, unbeknownst to her, a cosmic execution sentence set by the Heavenly Principles. Alone, and without any confidantes, she has to maintain the cliche image of all-powerful, all-knowing Archon at every minute of her life, acting by the seat of her pants while having no actual power.
Sweet Tooth: Furina is shown to love sweets, gladly partaking in cake when the opportunity arises. There are even laws in Fontaine concerning eating Lady Furina's cake, which can get one shipped to the Fortress of Meropide.
Tempting Fate: Her bombastic personality and lack of tact are two of her major weaknesses, and she often speaks without thinking about the implications of what she's saying. For instance, early in the Fontaine Archon Quest, she addresses all the circumstantial evidence which points to Lyney's guilt in the death of his assistant and the disappearance of an audience member...in front of the entire audience. It's only when Neuvillette asks if she wants to move ahead with a trial, with the other audience members treating her words as though they indicate Lyney's unquestioned guilt, that she realizes she's just poisoned the well in regards to the outcome.
Throw the Dog a Bone: After fulfilling her assigned role for 500 roles, her subjects losing their faith on her, and dropping down from her lofty position to a commoner with limited life path due to her poor reputation, at the conclusion of her Story Quest she gets to perform and become the star of the Opera House, as well as a Vision.
Tomboyish Voice: In the Japanese dub, Inori Minase gives Furina a deeper voice, befitting her androgynous appearance, while in English Amber Lee Connors opts for a more distinctively female tone.
Took a Level in Badass:
- Initially, Furina is reluctant to engage in combat and actively avoids it whenever possible, even begging for her life in worst-case scenarios, as she has no way of manipulating the elements. As a playable character, she is now capable of fighting and can hold her own in combat, especially with her newly acquired Vision during her Story Quest.
- This goes further when you take the events of her Character Quest into account. Along with still not knowing self-defence, requiring the Traveler to do the sole bit of fighting in the quest^note but she’s also generally more withdrawn and polite, a stark contrast to the Large Ham Paper Tiger players have gotten used to. Not only does her ascension to playability thanks to having received a Vision see her adopt a graceful, Dance Battler brand of swordsmanship, but her voice lines and body language suggests that she regained her bombastic sense of confidence, only this time she can back it up.
Tough Leader Façade: Deconstructed. Furina is very, very bad at this. It would not be inaccurate to say that many, if not most of Fontaine's problems can be traced back to how terrible she is at putting up a strong front, and how unhealthy the mechanisms she uses to cope are, in a one-woman example of Hanlon's Razor. As it turns out, Furina has to maintain this at all times in order for people to think that she is an Archon lest she risked the Prophecy coming true.
Trauma Button:
- She's terrified of Arlecchino and becomes frantic at the prospect of being alone with her. Neuvillette has to accompany her for the first meeting and when circumstances demand he miss the second he is quick to send the Traveler to Furina's side. It's heavily implied Furina knew Arlecchino was the one who nearly assassinated her and has strong reason to suspect she's not the Hydro Archon.
- Rain and waves have become this for her, due to the prophecy about raising water levels, even when said prophecy already happened after the events of “The Masquerade Of The Guilty”.
Undercover When Alone: Furina was told by Focalors that she must act like the Archon, or Fontaine will be destroyed by the prophecy. For 500 years, she's kept this role, telling absolutely no one of her true identity, and playing the part nonstop at every moment of the day. The few seconds she allows her facade to drop is before she goes to sleep at night, sobbing at the exhaustion of her task, before turning in.
Walking Spoiler: Like her fellow Archons, Furina has much more Hidden Depths that her bombastic and proud behaviour is deliberately deflecting and masking for.
Unskilled, but Strong: She can summon three Familiars at once while most characters can only summon one and they are a great support in combat, but their summoning drains the health of Furina and the other characters in her party. The Familiars also indiscriminately attack inanimate objects like cooking pots or torches, showing how little control Furina has other them. This is because she only received her Hydro Vision recently and she has yet to master her new powers.
What You Are in the Dark: Near the end of the Archon Quest, Furina and the Traveler have a moment alone. The Traveler uses this moment to politely ask about the secrets Furina is keeping, citing that they're just a spectator in Fontaine's mess, but before a clearly-conflicted Furina could give an answer, they arrived at Opera Epiclese. When the Traveler returns to that scene in a Journey to the Center of the Mind, Furina had a lengthy internal debate in that moment about whether to confide in the Traveler or not, even having a hopeful thought of the Traveler truly not mattering in the prophecy and trying to convince herself to be selfish just this once. However, Furina still ultimately believes the burden is hers alone and doesn't want to risk the prophecy coming true, choosing to play her part to the hilt.
While Rome Burns: Discussed. Arlecchino accuses her of wasting her time with tea parties while the prophecy threatens to destroy Fontaine. Furina is enraged over the accusation, but when Arlecchino presses her to give an actionable solution, Furina cannot give her an answer.
You Have to Believe Me!: Over the course of Furina's trial, she gets increasingly desperate as Traveler successfully dismantles her defence, becoming hysterical when it is proven that she had never been an Archon, unable to refute the evidence and reduced to pleading the audience to believing her in vain. Justified Trope, as in Furina's perspective, having her God Guise found out was tantamount to leading her people to definite extinction.
Furina: Listen to me, listen to me, everyone... Please don't give me such cold and disdainful looks. What happened just now didn't prove a single thing! [...] Please, everyone, anyone, just listen to me. I swear, I really am your Archon...
Young and in Charge: Downplayed. At first glance, she appears to fit this trope to a T, as she's seated above the Chief Justice of Fontaine overlooking the court, but as the Hydro Archon she must be well over 500 years old.

Tropes applying to Focalors, the God of Justice (ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED)

Focalors, the God of Justice

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/focalors.png

Absolute Focus of the Stage of Judgment

"Defying the prophecy and ensuring that Fontaine's people shall live on — that should be the justice enthroned over all others."

The real Hydro Archon, Focalors, is one of the many Oceanid followers of Egeria, the previous Hydro Archon, given a pseudo-human form with a fragment of the power of Primordial Seawater. Following Egeria's death during the Khaenri'ah Cataclysm half a millennium ago, it fell to Focalors, her handpicked heir, to avert a prophecy of Fontaine sinking underneath Primordial Seawater, contact with which will fatally eject the Seawater out of the people, as Celestia's punishment for using Primordial Seawater without their consent. After giving it much thought, Focalors concocted a plan to save the people: convince the Hydro Sovereign, who unlike Egeria could use Primordial Seawater, to grant Fontainians true humanity and thus immunity to the Seawater, with the promise of giving him back his stolen authority; separate her human body from her divine self in the form of Furina, whom she tasked with drawing the eyes of Celestia while she prepared in secret; invite the Sovereign's current incarnation, Neuvillette, to serve as Chief Justice, through which he will learn to empathize and care for humanity; and collect the belief of the people in her justice into the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale to convert them into a force powerful enough to destroy not only herself, but also the throne that trapped the Hydro Sovereign's power and restore his full power.

Alien Blood: The water that rises from her remains and imbues Neuvillette is very evocative of this.
Already Done for You: Neuvillette consistently expresses his wish to judge the Archons due to their association with Celestia. When he faces Focalors, the successor of the Archon who usurped his authority, she already ruled herself guilty and executed for stealing the Sovereign's authority and appropriating the Primordial Sea via association and most especially her Batman Gambit of having Furina deceiving the entire Teyvat by making her pose as the Hydro Archon to ensure that Fontaine will be off the hook from the prophecy. This admission is one of the factors that Neuvillette finally decides to save Fontaine and its people.
Authority Sounds Deep: Amber Lee Connors gives Focalors a more mature voice in the English dub, while it is Averted in the other language voice-overs.
Barefoot Suicide: Having spent most of her Archon life in the Oratrice, Focalors has no need for functional footwear and only wears an anklet on her right foot, and executes herself after explaining her full plan to Neuvillette.
Batman Gambit: Plays one against Neuvillette, as her plan operates on the assumption he would choose to forgive humanity. Given his years of being close to humanity, it actually works.
Become a Real Boy: Like her fellow Oceanids at the time, Focalors also desired to become human but her plan forced her to separate her divinity and human sides. Focalors looks at Furina, her human half separated from her, with pride and envy, stating Furina is exactly the kind of human she wished she could be.
BFS: Created one using a whole lot of Indemnitium. It was meant to execute her.
Big Good: She is The Chessmaster behind Fontaine's salvation from dissolution, and corrects the injustices done against her people, Neuvillette and her human self.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Downplayed, but Focalors is shown to be rather carefree and apathetic in her way of talking about and her approach toward her people, admitting she had no regrets in deceiving the entirety of Fontaine and displaying a subtle Lack of Empathy in admitting to cursing her human half with immortality for her plan. Yet she also willingly gave up her own life for Fontaine as a whole to free them and Furina from a sin that was not theirs to commit, and ultimately apologized to her human half for the suffering she had put her through for 500 years. As a whole, it shows how despite her kindness, Focalors is still a divinity and thus had a wholly different view of life and ideology in general, just like her fellow Archons.
The Chessmaster: Focalors spent five hundred years arranging a plan to save Fontaine by deceiving the people with a proxy in Furina, fulfilling the prophecy's conditions through technicalities, placing Neuvillette in a judiciary role where he would become sympathetic to the plight of humans, destroy the Archon's Throne to grant him his full strength and ultimately persuade him to mitigate the prophecy by transforming the Fontainains into true humans.
Cleavage Window: Played with and combined with Navel-Deep Neckline, as the neckline of her dress extends from below her collar bones nearly to her waist. However, the dress also has a decoration which not only splits up the expanse of bare skin, but hides the line of her cleavage. Aside from that, both she and Furina are quite small-breasted compared to many other female characters.
Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
- To Ei/Beelzebul. Both were second-generation Archons who created artificial humans to replace themselves while their consciousness went into an object (Ei into her sword, Focalors into the Oratrice) in order to ensure their subjects' safety from the Heavenly Principles' retribution, but Ei did so as a form of escapism from the pain and trauma of having lost her sister and friends which eventually caused her nation a great deal of suffering in the long run, Focalors hid in the Oratrice to save the people of Fontaine from a disastrous fate and took on their suffering herself by facing execution for them. Both also created Artificial Humans to take over their day-to-day responsibilities, caused them great suffering, and set them free, but Ei saw the Wanderer's ability to feel as unsuited for Archonship and abandoned him while Focalors adored Furina for the very same quality and thus entrusted the thankless task of acting as Archon to her until she completed her purpose.
- To Rukkhadevata. Both of them hid themselves away to enact a plan to kill themselves that would save their respective regions, while a copy of themselves would take their place. While Rukkhadevata ultimately passed her authority to Nahida after her death, Focalors' death outright removed any authority from her and Furina, preventing any other Hydro Archon from replacing them.
- To Morax. Both Archons' plans involved their death, but Morax's involved faking his death while Focalors' involved actually going through with it. Thus, Zhongli is still every bit an Archon (just in human form), while Furina is just an ordinary human.
Crazy Enough to Work: Where most people, Sovereigns and fellow gods included, would probably see problems or obstacles, Focalors sees opportunities. Take the prophecy itself for instance, which she decided to deal with not by running from it but by playing along on purpose so she could seize control of the outcome from an unsuspecting Celestia, saving her people instead of seeing them destroyed as intended. And with the people fully human, the Hydro Sovereign's power fully restored, and the seat meant to enthrone the Hydro Archon gone for good, the Heavenly Principles won't get another chance to try that trick again.
Cutting the Knot: Albeit a knot that requires a lot of effort to cut. Fontaine's humans are Oceanids granted partial humanity by small amounts of Primordial Seawater and are prophesized by Celestia to dissolve when it floods their country. While all other parties are focused on either avoiding or restraining the Primordial Sea, Focalors chooses to negate that vulnerability altogether by completing her people's transformation into humans. However, the only power capable of doing so besides Celestia itself is the full authority of the Hydro Sovereign, which has been split between herself and Neuvillette. Thus, she spends 500 years stockpiling Indemnitium to obliterate her own seat as Archon and return its stolen authority to Neuvillette, trusting that his centuries spent learning to coexist with Fontaine's people would convince him to help. While actually pulling this off is undoubtedly a difficult task, once it's done Neuvillette is able to do his part in a matter of minutes, completely defanging Celestia's prophecy right before the flood hits.
Deader than Dead: That BFS that executes her? It was meant to judge "the Hydro Archon" themself by word from the Oratrice. And by doing so (though perhaps with a little more force than necessary), it would be impossible for the title to be taken by anybody else, or for her to even reincarnate or reform.
Deathbed Confession: Or rather, pre-execution confession. Focalors explains her Thanatos Gambit to save Fontaine to Neuvillette when he finally meets her, then executes herself afterwards.
Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Focalors staged a five-century-long plan to defy the Heavenly Principles and save the people of Fontaine in the process, which involved gathering enough Indemnitium to create an executioner's blade powerful enough to not only destroy herself but the throne of the Hydro Archon. To add further insult to injury, this is all so she can return the Hydro Archon's authority to the Hydro Sovereign, one of Celestia's ancient enemies, and entrust him to save her people. By the end of Fontaine's Archon Quest, her plan succeeds, making her one of the very few who has managed to defy the Heavenly Principles and still managed to save her people.
Elemental Embodiment: She used to be an Oceanid, which are beings made of water. Made clear by her death; instead of releasing typical blood like a human/god, she literally dissipates into water.
Elemental Personalities: Unlike Furina's facade, the real Hydro Archon was a demure, patient chessmaster who calmly bided her time, gathering power over five hundred years until she could successfully prevent a catastrophe from happening. She even remains calm as the giant sword meant to execute her is about to fall on her.
Exact Words: Through the Oratrice, she renders a guilty verdict to Furina with a sentence of the death penalty to be carried out on the "Hydro Archon." As the crime Furina is guilty of is not being the Hydro Archon, this confuses Neuvillette until Focalors explains it's not Furina who will be executed, but she herself.
Face Death with Dignity: Before she's executed by the Oratrice, Focalors admits that facing her imminent death does scare her, but she's still willing to sacrifice herself to save all of Fontaine.
Foreshadowing: The Fontaine teaser trailer The Final Feast hints at Focalors' entire plan to prevent the prophecy. Lyney's discussion of magic mirrors Focalors directing Furina and Neuvillette to be the right people in the right place at the right time, getting everyone to believe the lie that the Furina they saw before them was the real Archon while Focalors prepared out of sight to restore the sympathetic Neuvillette back to his original position as Fontaine's god, where he would be the final judge of its people rather than Celestia. Arlecchino's monologue that mere misdirection isn't enough, but you need a good actor who can mezmerize the whole crowd, similarly hints at Furina's key role in selling the con to everyone.
Fertility God: In an unconventional manner. Due to Fontainians' original nature as Oceanid pseudo-humans that needed the Hydro Archon's permission to reproduce, Focalors single-handedly blessed Fontaine's women with Mystical Pregnancy for the 500 years she was in power. Furthermore, her "justice" was to ensure the continuation of Fontaine's existence via her Batman Gambit, and with Neuvillette's help, her people's reproductive freedom become no longer under any god's control.
Forgiveness Requires Death: Though she wasn't the one responsible for Celestia's theft of the Sovereigns' authority, nor the sin of appropriating the power of the Primordial Sea, her Heroic Sacrifice enabled all her subjects to be forgiven through Neuvillette.
Go Out with a Smile: She's smiling as she does her last dance, maintaining it up until the very end when the Indemnitium BFS executes her.
Gory Discretion Shot: The screen quickly cuts to black once the gigantic sword falls on her, with Furina's hat and her "water constitution" being the only thing we see after that.
Heroic Suicide: At the end of the story, she attempts to defy The Prophecy, "technically" fulfilling it by saving her people from great danger, at the cost of her life.
I Did What I Had to Do: Having Furina pretend to be Hydro Archon is essential to making sure no one, namely the Heavenly Principles, catches on to Focalors's plans until they're about to come to fruition. Her ordeal being necessary however doesn't mean that Focalors enjoys making her do it, and confides to Neuvillette that it only seems right then that her own part in the plan is to die when the time is right. Before passing, she thanks Furina for her hard work and frees her to live her life, hoping she can find happiness.
I Die Free: A variant. Focalors willingly dies for her people's freedom from Celestia's judgment.
It Has Been an Honor: Before she performs her Last Dance, she bids farewell to Neuvillette, expressing that she hopes he "enjoyed the part he played". And after she executes herself, the last remnants of her consciousness thanks Furina for her efforts the past 500 years, telling her to go and live happily as a human.
Judge, Jury, and Executioner: The Oratrice, created by and housing the spirit of Focalors, represents the audience's opinions, delivers a final verdict, and was designed to execute the Hydro Archon.
Justice Will Prevail: Focalors' death can be seen as a form of justice and being true to her title as a God of Justice. From returning the stolen power of the Sovereign back to Neuvillette, accepting judgement for Egeria and Fontaine’s original sin, to a self-imposed execution for deceiving everyone & Furina's suffering. Being Just not to others but even to herself.
Kansas City Shuffle: How her plot to con the Heavenly Principles essentially worked: As long as everyone was focused on Furina and how she was or wasn't trying to subvert Celestia's prophecy of Fontaine's doom, no one would pay attention to the Oratrice's centuries of gathering enough human belief to, say, kill a god.
Killed Off for Real: She is the only Archon to die in the present day by the end of her Archon Quest. And she does so by utterly obliterating the role of Hydro Archon itself, leaving no chance she could reincarnate or reform, only leaving behind her human half, Furina.
Last Dance: A literal example. She performs one last dance in front of Neuvillette before her execution weapon falls and executes her.
Long Hair Is Feminine: Unlike Furina's (initially) Boyish Short Hair, Focalors had long hair and the demure femininity to match.
Loophole Abuse: She set up the events of the past 500 years to unfold in such a way as to make the Prophecy technically occur while also saving her people and giving them full humanity.
Lord of the Ocean: As the Hydro Archon, she qualified.
The Man Behind the Man: She's the woman behind Furina, setting her up as the God of Justice while working in the background to save Fontaine.
Mirror Character:
- To Makoto. Both were Archons who plotted an elaborate plan to wrest Celestia's control over their respective nations before their deaths, with their charges (Ei and Furina, respectively) being crucial in enacting them 500 years after they initiated it. The result is Makoto's will being planted (with Istaroth's help) within time itself by Ei, becoming the Sacred Sakura Tree which forever looks after Inazuma, while 500 years' worth of justice being exacted in Furina's name creating the very execution device that kills her and destroys the Hydro Archon's throne at the same time.
- To Guizhong. Both were goddesses dressed prominently in white and Heavenly Blue who ended up passing away, leaving their male divine co-ruler with similar elemental powers and associations with dragons to succeed them as the sole ruler of their people.
Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: It's safe to say that, had Celestia simply forgiven Egeria and her people, or at least given them a sentence that they could've actually completed, Focalors would have been fine living under its thumb. Instead, it declared their very existence a crime that could only be forgiven if their creation was undone. Thus, Focalors turning completely against the Throne in the Sky, tearing down all its holds over her people, attacking its authority over Teyvat, and entrusting their protection and even salvation to one of its greatest enemies, can't be called anything but self-inflicted.
Obi-Wan Moment: As fitting with her personality, Focalors calmly faced her death, thanking Neuvillette for his work as the Iudex and wore a smile that never wavered til the end.
Off with Her Head!: Maybe not, especially since the impact moment is faded to black. But the massive sword to execute her is very evocative of the guillotine, which also ties to her parallel with Marie Antoinette. Furina's hat flying off afterward is also symbolic of decapitation.
Pre-Sacrifice Final Goodbye: Bids farewell to Neuvillette in her final words before her Last Dance and execution. Becomes subverted when the quickly dissipating bits of her consciousness find Furina after her death to thank her one last time and give her Last Request to live happily as a human for the both of them.
Rage Against the Heavens: If her willingness to judge the Heavenly Principles has any indications. That would mean that she was left unhappy when the Heavenly Principles branded the sin upon her predecessor, Egeria, along with the people of Fontaine for using the Primordial Sea to grant humanity to Oceanids and punish them with the prophecy of Fontaine being flooded. Yet they stole the Sovereign dragons' authority, to establish the throne of Archon and the power source for Gnoses, as she points out herself. Something that she would like to personally judge the Heavenly Principles if she had the right to do so.
Redemption Equals Death: Her death set Furina free from the role as Archon and the curse of immortality that she imposed on her.
Refuge in Audacity: So, Celestia hates the existence of the people of Fontaine because the Oceanids want to become humans and have issued a prophecy that foretells their certain doom by dissolving into the Primordial Sea. What does one do? Focalors decided the answer was to ask for help from the Hydro Sovereign, from whom her authority as Archon was stolen, politely inviting him to help govern her people. She then creates the Oratrice, which spends centuries stockpiling enough indemnitium to kill her so hard that the very throne of the Hydro Archon is completely destroyed, allowing her to return the authority that the "Usurper" stole from the Hydro Sovereign to Neuvillette so he has the control over the Primordial Sea necessary to save her people. To keep anyone from realizing her plans, she creates Furina and asks her to act out the part of Archon to cover for her, all to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled via technicalities while still managing to save her people. This plan is so insane that no one catches on to it, and only when everything is in place for her to fulfill her final part does she call Neuvillette into her consciousness to explain everything. Otherwise, Teyvat is none the wiser to the fact that "The Seven" have suddenly permanently become "The Six".
Royal "We": Focalors refers to herself as "we", while referring to her human half Furina as "her".
Sure, Let's Go with That: Supposedly, the Oratrice was an advanced thinking machine that used divinely inspired calculations to determine the proper verdict and sentence for trials. The revelation that Focalors actually inhabited the machine combined with the fact that the Oratrice always agreed with Neuvillette's decision with the sole exception being when she had a specific reason not to implies that Focalors simply deferred to Neuvillette's judgement and went along with whatever he decided.
Thanatos Gambit: The climax of her centuries-long plot to subvert the divine authority she inherited, taking and stockpiling that very power, and using it to execute herself. In doing so, she destroys the seat of the Hydro Archon itself, returning that divinity to Neuvillette with her death, allowing him to finish what her predecessor began, and bring salvation to the people of Fontaine.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: She accumulated 500 years' worth of Indemnitium to ensure that not only would she die, but the very throne of Hydro Archon would be completely and utterly destroyed so she couldn't be replaced. The mechanism that killed her was a massive sword, one far larger than needed to completely crush her body.
Twisting the Prophecy: Focalors' end goal for creating Furina and assigning her the role of Hydro Archon was to create a situation where most of prophecy would technically be fulfilled while still saving her people.
- "Every person in Fontaine is born with sin, and no matter how the Nation of Justice holds trial after trial, this sin cannot be absolved." This part of prophecy is a historical fact, and it's true that the sin cannot be absolved... at least not normally. Focalors chooses to do something extreme and unexpected to make it so the sin can be absolved; namely, executing herself and releasing the stolen elemental authority to its original owner, the Hydro Sovereign.
- "One day, the waters will rise and the sinful people will slowly be drowned." The twist being that the rising water is not something natural, but rather due to the appearance of the All-Devouring Narwhal.
- "In the end, the people will all be dissolved into the waters and leaving only the Hydro Archon weeping on her throne." is fulfilled when Furina becomes so distraught at being found out at her trial that she's left weeping on her throne in the exact same pose as prophesied, unmoving even when the Opera Epiclese and the entirety of Fontaine is flooded. However, Neuvillette regained his power and was able to "dissolve" the Fontainians' physiological connection to the Primordial Sea prior to the flooding, turning them into regular humans.
- "Only then will the sins of the people of Fontaine be washed away." Hence and forevermore, Fontaine no longer bears the burden of the original sin.
Vapor Wear: Focalors' dress is cut in such a way that makes it impossible for her to be wearing a bra.
Wetware CPU: When Furina claimed that she "put all of her divinity in the Oratrice", unbeknownst to her, she isn't lying - Focalors' divine consciousness had been there for 500 years, making verdicts that always followed Neuvillette's own... with the exception of Childe's case. Neuvillette speculates that perhaps this happened because she knew about Childe's connection with the All-Devouring Narwhal and thus deemed him an accomplice, or because she wants him to hold back the narwhal for longer.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Nonlethal and non-malicious, but once her gambit succeeds and Fontaine is saved, all Furina gets for her 500-years labor is a small "Thank you for your hard work Furina, now go and live freely." She does not even appear to Furina in person and her immortality is likely revoked, meaning Furina will age and die like normal human, nevermind the Time Dissonance associated with immortality. Furina's lore entry specifically mentions how she has no place in the new Fontaine, how freedom rings hollow and she feels unneeded. She gets better eventually, but that's from her and other peoples' effort, and it's still jarring how Focalors did not arrange for any boons or reward for Furina going forward.

Characters / Genshin Impact: Furina

With the revelations about her true nature, there will be unmarked spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Lady Furina de Fontaine / Regina of All Waters, Kindreds, Peoples and Laws / Focalors, the God of Justice

Introdued: November 8, 2023 (v4.2 "Masquerade of the Guilty" [first half])
Voiced By: Qian Chen (Chinese), Inori Minase (Japanese), Kim Ha-yeong (Korean), Amber Lee Connors (English), Cécilia Cara (French, singing [all languages])

Focalors, the God of Justice

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Characters / Genshin Impact: Furina

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With the revelations about her true nature, there will be unmarked spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Lady Furina de Fontaine / Regina of All Waters, Kindreds, Peoples and Laws / Focalors, the God of Justice

Introdued: November 8, 2023 (v4.2 "Masquerade of the Guilty" [first half])Voiced By: Qian Chen (Chinese), Inori Minase (Japanese), Kim Ha-yeong (Korean), Amber Lee Connors (English), Cécilia Cara (French, singing [all languages])

Focalors, the God of Justice

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Introdued: November 8, 2023 (v4.2 "Masquerade of the Guilty" [first half])
Voiced By: Qian Chen (Chinese), Inori Minase (Japanese), Kim Ha-yeong (Korean), Amber Lee Connors (English), Cécilia Cara (French, singing [all languages])