Lyse Was Supposed To Be Alphinaud

jan 21 2022

Today, I want to compare two characters from FFXIV. While these characters are honestly very similar, one is a fandom darling and one is almost universally hated. Let's unpack that!

Alphinaud, in ARR, was one of the most hated characters in FFXIV. He was whiny, he was snobbish, he was annoying. He was a little know it all who was constantly butting in to smugly explain things to you. He's a 16 year old with a PhD, and he knows it. At the end of post-ARR, Alphinaud watches his grand company become corrupt and all his friends get kidnapped or killed, knowing it's all his fault. His subsequent breakdown, depression, and character development is one of the best arcs in the game. Over the course of Heavensward, Alphinaud goes from an inexperienced and psychologically destroyed child fumbling at diplomacy to a mature and confident young man helping bring about peace between Ishgard and the dragons. Alphinaud's roadtrip with Ysayle and Estinien helps him gain some much needed real world experience and perspective.

Lyse, on paper, has a very similar arc. While "Yda" wasn't exactly hated, she still garnered mostly either indifference or annoyance from players. While some liked her happy-go-lucky brawns-before-brains attitude, most people either just didn't know her or didn't like her. At the end of the Heavensward patches, Lyse also experiences a tragic event that shakes her sense of self— Papalymo, her closest friend, sacrifices himself for the Scions, and Lyse is forced to stop pretending that she's her sister, Yda. She goes into Stormblood cocky, unmasked, grieving, and wanting to prove herself and save her home country that she barely knows. Lyse's character arc throughout Stormblood is also about maturing, but in a different way than Alphinaud.

Lyse didn't actually grow up in the occupied Ala Mhigo, though she feels a deep connection to it, and she just cannot understand why the civilians who live in this occupied nation have mostly given up and grown complacent. Throughout Stormblood, she learns about the daily horrors of life under imperialism and why the civilians have given up. She grows to understand that the citizens of Ala Mhigo and Doma aren't cowards or imperial sympathizers, they're just people who have been worn down and broken under the weight of Garlean colonization. When the leader of the Resistance dies, he begs Lyse with his dying breath to take over the Resistance. Lyse is hesitant and knows she's not actually equipped to be the leader, but steps up anyways, showing that she has grown from just running away from her responsibilities by pretending to be someone she's not. When they free Ala Mhigo, Lyse does the responsible thing and leaves the Scions to focus on rebuilding Ala Mhigo, having grown, matured, and connected with her homeland.

While Alphinaud's arc succeeds at endearing him to players, Lyse's fails, and she's still one of the most widely hated characters in FFXIV. I think this can mainly just be chalked up to her just not being present enough in the story both before and after her arc to really feel the differences in her character. Alphinaud is everywhere in ARR— you can't escape him, even though you might want to. He's constantly off to the side making snide remarks and helping him set up the Crystal Braves is actually a huge part of the MSQ. You see and feel both his immaturity and arrogance, as well as watch the pieces get put into place for his fall. After he's grown and matured, he continues to be present in the story and contribute to the main plot.

Lyse as Yda is mostly absent from ARR and post-ARR, usually in the background of Scion cutscenes with one or two comic relief lines. She shows up very briefly in Heavensward, if at all, and leaves the Scions at the end of Stormblood, relegating her to a side character that pops up once in a while during a big event for a token line. We just don't know Yda well enough to feel or care that Lyse is a different person from her, which isn't helped by the fact that Lyse barely changes at all. The writers did not lean hard enough into this aspect of Lyse's character— the pain and grief she must feel at her sister's death, and how pretending to be her for so long affected her and the other Scions. Yda was a Scion, and while the Scions feel mostly like awkward coworkers before Shadowbringers, there's still a sense of camaraderie and friendship. The fact that the other Scions know Lyse is pretending to be Yda and just don't care, or don't react, feels wrong.

Another issue is that the narrative seems very hesitant to actually commit to Lyse's development. Lyse leaves the Scions to help rebuild Ala Mhigo, which makes sense for her character and shows how she's grown to be more responsible. In post Stormblood, we get examples of her gaining experience and becoming a more practical and stronger leader. This is really great for her development, but the story then pivots to Raubahn, who leaves the Immortal Flames and becomes the commander of the Resistance. People majorly critiqued Lyse becoming the leader of the Resistance, since she had no experience and hadn't even been active in the Resistance for more than a couple months. It's true that this position should've gone to M'Naago, with Lyse playing a supporting role, but the game had already committed to making Lyse a leader.

After yanking that away from her, it's not clear to what extent Lyse is now involved in the Resistance and Ala Mhigo's rebuilding effort, or what her job title even is. Is she an ambassador? Is she a member of Ala Mhigo's new democratic council? Is she just hanging out in the palace and doing whatever people need her to do? Part of this can be blamed on Stormblood's weaknesses— for an expansion that was supposed to be about Ala Mhigo, it didn't really do a great job at feeling like it wrapped up Ala Mhigo's storyline. This is fine, in my opinion, as it does really take years for a nation to recover from violent imperialism. But the stagnation of Ala Mhigo, which doesn't even have its own hub city, makes it feel less developed than some of the other nations in the game, which leads to Lyse fading away as well. It would be genuinely interesting to learn about the strides Ala Mhigo has made and the developments and setbacks that have happened to it since Stormblood wrapped up. I really do hope they come back to this in the future, especially now that Garlemald has fallen apart. Not only would this give Lyse a more active role as a character, it would help bolster Ala Mhigo as a location and help it feel more like a real city instead of a glorified outpost.

Lyse is not a bad or flat character. She has a clear arc and clear growth, and at her core is a genuinely good person who wants to help and understand others. Part of people still disliking her, I think, can mostly just be blamed on people disliking Stormblood, since she is literally the "poster girl" for the expansion. But even I have to admit that the game also does a bad job at probing the inner depths that are there— her struggle to forge her own identity and not just follow in her father and sister's footsteps, her grief at Yda and Papalymo's deaths, her friendships with the other Scions, her joy at reconnecting with her homeland, her development as a leader; all these things are dropped as soon as Stormblood ends. FFXIV has always been good at callbacks and drawing out narrative threads into a satisfying conclusion, which can still happen with Lyse. However, I do worry that the devs have been scared off by the frankly overblown and overexaggerated hatred of Ala Mhigo and Lyse, and instead of trying to fix the community's perceived problems, have simply decided to abandon them for good.