So I've had a theory for a while, and the monster compendium honestly gives me a bit of gigabrained garnish for the idea. One thing I find really interesting is that in a way Ultimecia is a foil for Squall's fears. He is terrified by the idea that he might lose control over his identity and perception and other people could define him, and that leads him to try to never be emotionally vulnerable. Ultimecia is the pinnacle of being defined by others.
There's a lot of stuff about how sorceresses and their knights are already pop cultural things, and also remember Edea's disk 1 speech. She is obsessed with the cultural idea of the sorceress as villain to suppress out of fear, and obviously relishes telling Galbadia to their face that she is that sorceress and being greeted with joy and supplication.
I swear there's some dialog you can get with Cid talking about how he is Edea's knight and how that doesn't mean he's a combatant, it means he's an emotional anchor and confidant, whereas Seifer is little but Ultimecia's weapon. I think there's an interesting dynamic there. Edea and Ultimecia both want someone who make them feel safe, but whereas Edea's fear is her power, Ultimecia's fear is things outside of her control. Ultimecia is fascinating to me because she is very poorly characterized inasmuch as what they say about her but also very well characterized by what she does and how she serves as a twisted mirror of so many of the main cast. I think Adel is a fascinating antagonist, but I also think that it's a brilliant choice to have the main opposition be a foil, because it gives so much to work with. Adel would probably make FFVIII's core narrative stronger, but the Ultimecia/Seifer pair gives a huge amount of material to work with in contrast to the Edea/Cid and the forming Rinoa/Squall pair. FFVIII is at its heart a romantic and emotional game, and I think that's the right choice for what it's going for.
The thought occurs to me that, just like Seifer is willing to ruin everything to be The Knight Of The Sorceress, is this Ultimecia being willing to ruin everything just to be The Sorceress? And a sorceress should have a giant castle and powerful magic servants, etc etc etc.
Why does she want all these things? Maybe, just like Seifer, it's because that's what the stories say she should have.
I think this is dead on. Ultimecia is Assigned Sorceress At Birth but I have a suspicion Ultimecia is an adopted name, and seems to figure that if her only option in life is the persecuted villain, then what's really so
wrong about fighting back and oppressing those petty, small-minded and cruel little people right back? They talk about how they need to suppress the sorceress regardless of who she is so she doesn't declare herself the feared god-queen of time, but why shouldn't she? This world has shown her no love, there's nothing in it for her, so why not style herself as the fearsome witch of legend?
In this essay I will discuss how the mantle of Ultimecia entered myth and called out to persecuted sorceresses like the Green Goblin mask...
Even so, five reskin in total, one of which can easily be argued to be intentional for artistic reasons, does feel like an oddly low number; I don't know too much about programming, but it seems strange that the developers couldn't find the design space to include five more monster models in the game. Do you think there might be some particular artistic or creative reason, AKA something not the result of programming constraint, why they went with this particular selection? Or do you really think that they just couldn't find five random encounters models to cut from the game to make space for these bosses, and thus settled on lowering the level of originality in what is otherwise the best designed dungeon in their game (and one of the best in the series) instead?
The idea that Ultimecia is a mantle that one sorceress in the future decided to adopt leads to the conclusion that Ultimecia the person is self-consciously styling herself into an offputting image, rather like a certain young SeeD. She seeks the safety of having The Ultimate Monsters. I think it is very on brand for her to have her largest servants be fearsome monsters that are twisted and made even more fearsome. She is the feared sorceress of legend, and surrounds herself with the feared monsters of legend. I think there's a lot there. Especially now that I think of how at one point Seifer talks about how he sees the main cast as nothing but monsters, there's a strong thought of Ultimecia deciding that the 'monsters' are actually her people.
Regarding Elvoret and Elnoyle, I think that is intended to drive home the threat of the Lunar Cry. The Lunar Cry made beasts that were once exceedingly rare commonplace. This is a world that has to battle for its existence and there's an implication that there's a lot of effort that goes into managing the population of monsters that comes from a Lunar Cry.
It's notable how there is nothing futuristic about this castle. Ultimecia's aesthetic leans entirely towards the gothic, towards stone walls and firelight, chandeliers and portcullis. Like as much this is a purely aesthetic preference, the sorceress's own aesthetic tastes enabled by magic so powerful it does not need the convenience of modern technology. At the same time… It could just as well imply a broken future, in which the perpetual fighting against the sorceresses and Ultimecia's own reign of terror have dragged mankind back down to premodern levels of technology, a slow post-apocalypse in which a Renaissance castle pulled out into the sky is an overwhelming fortress that you don't have artillery to reach.
I don't think Ultimecia likes the timeframe of FFVIII or any times after it. I think it's a painful thought to her, the stylings of Esthar, which toppled their sorceress after a war which brought the idea of the sorceress back into consciousness as a symbol of fear in a period that ends with the hated SeeD being established. So I think she's making a conscious choice to spit in the face of modernity, and we can't know whether that's a reflection of her world or not.
