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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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Omicron said:
I think it's that you made a comment to the effect of Delita becoming "King" in your post. You're not the first one; a couple of other people have made the same remark before. I didn't comment on it at the time because I think it was an honest mistake of either 1) misremembering the opening cutscene as telling us Delita will become King (it doesn't; Arazlam only describes him as a "hero" who ended the war), 2) remembering "Delita becomes king" as a plot point from the Ivalice Raids of FFXIV and getting it mixed up with the intro of this game that doesn't say as such, or 3) making a logical leap from "hero who ends the war" to "becomes King of Ivalice" without previous knowledge and not realizing that it's not explicit in the text. The problem is that drawing direct attention to it would almost definitely lead to confirming whether it's a spoiler or just a guess expressed a little too confidently - it wouldn't be the first time that someone in my thread makes a prediction about the plot of a game and people mistake it for revealing spoiler knowledge.

It's ultimately not that big a deal, when I see someone look like they 'slipped up' and gave out spoilers without realizing and no one else has picked up on it I just compartmentalize it in a little box labeled 'they were probably just saying that as a guess to the plot of the game rather than revealing prior knowledge' and don't let it impact my own theorizing. It's one reason why I try not to keep close track of who in my thread has or hasn't played a given game before even though it's usually pretty obvious. I'm only saying all this because it's the third time 'Delita becomes king' has come up in a casual comment so I figured I'd lay it out.
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What a crazy thing to happen, tho, if it does
Like, how do you just... become King
 
Marla said:
There is more than likely some manner of convoluted politics behind that decision, but Dycedarg doesn't need to tell Alma any of that. Heck, Barbaneth probably even approved the decision because he probably didn't know how to raise daughters when he only had sons before, especially with his entire life is filled with the Fifty Year War. Sending off daughters to monasteries while the men are trained for war is probably the norm for him.
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I'd be all for this explanation but for the part where the game did seem to be pretty dedicated to having an equal amount of female and male knights in the opening — even if mechanically they're not quite treated the same. I don't think Omicron ever mentions anyone ever bringing up the gender of Agrias or Milleuda in relation to them fighting, so Ivalice does seem to be very gender-equal on this topic.
 
Marla said:
I point at him because Dycedarg is the one in charge of the Beoulve estate when Barbaneth got sick, being his eldest son. Which means even his half-siblings' education is under his control.

Dycedarg sent Alma to Orbonne like a parent sent their children to boarding schools, expecting her to write home like any other children in boarding schools do. If his sister wrote about the Princess in her letters, well, that is an update for him. The Princess is not a warrior in disguise, she's as much a kid as Alma is. If he told her anything, it would be that the Princess Ovelia Atkascha studies there as well, and she should befriend her or something. Alma did exactly that.

There is more than likely some manner of convoluted politics behind that decision, but Dycedarg doesn't need to tell Alma any of that. Heck, Barbaneth probably even approved the decision because he probably didn't know how to raise daughters when he only had sons before, especially with his entire life is filled with the Fifty Year War. Sending off daughters to monasteries while the men are trained for war is probably the norm for him.
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Ah, and your favored hypothesis is that Alma said she'd spent her whole life in monasteries because it was just pretty much the truth, with the occasional vacation left out?

Melchiorgk said:
The Church is at least one side with the Cardinal. The big question is if the brewing War of the Lions might be causing internal splits (since its drawing members from across the entire country), if the Church will stand united on its own, or if they might throw their power behind a faction.
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Also a point, though I suspect the War of the Lions will be over before it's relevant. Still, then or now, the Church might well not be unified.

Er, we do know about the in-universe storyteller (he's in the character glossary). He's the descendant of that one lecturer that the Orator's Sleep skill is based off of. The big question is who wrote the Durai papers, which is what the guy is basing his stuff on.
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...But, I mean, what does knowing that Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was the grandson of Edward Gibbon of Putney, and little else, tell you what biases, agendas, period misunderstandings and omissions, lack thereof, etc. might be in the work?

What do we know about Arazlam's political views, or his political environment in general? His economic status? His personal and family rivalries and friendships?
 
Reese said:
Ah, and your favored hypothesis is that Alma said she'd spent her whole life in monasteries because it was just pretty much the truth, with the occasional vacation left out?
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My hypothesis is that Alma doesn't have much of a choice in picking her vocation at all. Just because the Ivalice society seems to favor gender equality in jobs doesn't mean the Beoulves, or at least, Dycedarg seek to follow that same societal expectation. He certainly saw sending the girl to Orbonne, and then to a local prep school a better choice than sending her off to Gariland like Ramza.

We haven't met the girl yet post-time skip though, so maybe we will find that out later.
 
somewhatLazy said:
I don't think Omicron ever mentions anyone ever bringing up the gender of Agrias or Milleuda in relation to them fighting, so Ivalice does seem to be very gender-equal on this topic.
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Yeah, the closest was during the prologue, when one of the enemy group addressed Agrias as simply "woman". Which the WotL translation rendered as "wench", which fits the implied disrespect in the direct use of "そこの女" to address someone.

If anything, the far more common insult is for the characters' age, with Ramza's age cohort being belittled in both combat ability and wisdom due to being "just children".
 
Marla said:
My hypothesis is that Alma doesn't have much of a choice in picking her vocation at all. Just because the Ivalice society seems to favor gender equality in jobs doesn't mean the Beoulves, or at least, Dycedarg seek to follow that same societal expectation. He certainly saw sending the girl to Orbonne, and then to a local prep school a better choice than sending her off to Gariland like Ramza.

We haven't met the girl yet post-time skip though, so maybe we will find that out later.
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When it comes to the question of gender equality, setting aside the rake-to-the-face of boys apparently punching better and girls magic(k)ing better, one thing does stand out to me so far.

Omicron said:
Duke Goltanna is the Black Lion. He commands the Order of the Southern Sky. He is the Council's favorite for regent.

Duke Larg is the White Lion. He commands the Order of the Northern Sky. He is the Queen's favorite for regent, as well as her brother.
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I think it's worth noting though that despite there apparently being a living Queen with an heir, there's apparently a whole regency thing involving Larg and the other Duke. So on top of the princess being sidelined and also the assassination and kidnapping stuff in favor of a really young prince. The Queen is also kind of... well. Why are they getting one of the Dukes for this regent thing?

It's not like the Queen is an Ordallian princess married to secure the peace or something, I could see that being a rough sell right now. No, the Queen is literally the sister of one of the plausible choices for this regency! If we're talking gender equality in jobs, why isn't the Queen running for regent. Why is Ivalice (probably, based on the War of the Roses references) careening towards pitting these Dukes and their Orders against each other when the Queen is presumably like, right there.

I am of course aware that "the spouse of a ruler" isn't necessarily a job that entails a default degree of rulership, historically speaking. And there might well be an explanation somewhere in-game, though it isn't immediately obvious to me based on the LP so far. But. That's still definitely a choice, right? Things COULD have been set up differently.

So it's great that Agrias is powerful and the generics aren't gender-locked, but I'm not exactly getting a sense that sexism is dead and buried in Ivalice. I'm instead picking up kind of a "we're going to do a gender equality" "in what context" "in conscripting/recruiting people for the 50 years war (and not paying them afterwards)" sort of vibe? But maybe I'm getting the wrong idea from the story so far.
 
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Tirfarthuan said:
So it's great that Agrias is powerful and the generics aren't gender-locked, but I'm not exactly getting a sense that sexism is dead and buried in Ivalice. I'm instead picking up kind of a "we're going to do a gender equality" "in what context" "in conscripting/recruiting people for the 50 years war (and not paying them afterwards)" sort of vibe? But maybe I'm getting the wrong idea from the story so far.
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Now that you mention it, all the named female warriors are really young.

Agrias is what, 22? Milleuda can't be that much older than her, because Wiegraf doesn't look that old.

The oldest knights we know of are all men. Barbaneth, Gaffgarion. Larg and Goltanna. So the female knight recruitment starts fairly recently, Agrias is probably one of the their first or second female batch of troops deployed to the Fifty Year War. She's just luckier than Milleuda in the post-deployment job opportunities, since she got assigned to the Lionsguard afterwards.
 
Wars do tend to break down traditional social barriers, including class and gender.

And magic is itself one hell of a leveler, let alone the shenanigans eg holy knights and monks get up to.
 
Also, it's entirely possible to have more progressive attitudes toward the working class and less progressive attitudes toward leadership. While modern western society does allows for women to rise into positions of power, and has for a while, they're still in overwhelming minority in those roles, and it's not the "expected" thing for women to do - instead, women are "expected" to marry the powerful people, and any woman who is powerful in her own right is always notable to some extent, indicating that the sentiment is not normalized.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that "when the heir is a minor, a prominent male figure among the high nobility ought to be made regent" could well be a tradition with a lot of inertia in Ivalice, so that the kingdom is following it even if, theoretically, the idea of a woman taking the role isn't inconceivable anymore to them - they might still consider it "weird", and therefore shy away from it.
 
From a in-universe perspective, the Queen might also lack the social/political capital that the Dukes accumulated from their victories in war and so on, but OOC there's no specific reason she had to be written that way.
 
Yeah, I feel that there's a decent amount of reflexive OOC sexism in how it's the little sisters who always get menaced and then die tragically, setting their older brothers in a path to tragedy. Which does not herald good things ahead for Alma and spiritually-Agrias's-little-sister Ovelia.
 
somewhatLazy said:
Yeah, I feel that there's a decent amount of reflexive OOC sexism in how it's the little sisters who always get menaced and then die tragically, setting their older brothers in a path to tragedy. Which does not herald good things ahead for Alma and spiritually-Agrias's-little-sister Ovelia.
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Tough luck for them but papa/mama needs a new trauma upgrade. Did you see what it did for Delita?! Sorry kids!
 
Honestly, it kind of (but only kind of) seemed to me that the setting of FFT was intended to be Anachronistic Medieval Fantasy Gender Equality world; but because it's broad-strokes an expy of the War of the Roses, where the crown passed from Henry V to Henry VI (age: baby), not to Henry's wife Queen Catherine, who was an active participant in the war on the Tudor side... because it's scraping "England" off and writing "Ivalice" in the blanks, it imported the sexism while not even considering to ask "hey why not Queen Catherine in charge".

Well, conversely, another idea -- the one I had in my head when I played the first time through -- was that Agrias (and her two sidekick knights, also girls) were part of the Knightly Order of Lilies, the Only Girls Allowed Club in the Lionsguard who were expressly charged with protecting higher-Aristocracy women as a constrained sphere of action. Bodyguards you could trust to keep guard over the princess while she was pooping in the outhouse because they're also girls, that kind of gender propriety.

Well, on one hand, the fact that Designated Bigotry Deployer Argath relied entirely on classism to shout down Milleuda without saying "bitch get back in the kitchen" makes me think that maybe the sexism was intended to be dialed back compared to IRL.

On the other hand, all the nobles we've seen so far are in the Duke Larg faction, all the scheming was inside that; Argath, Gaffy, the B-Brothers, the Northern Sky Knights, these are all guys who are aligned under Larg, right? And Larg is aligned with the Queen, so these dudes are in the #Girlboss Faction. Argath telling Milleuda to make him a sandwich maybe wouldn't fly, and he's extremely conscious of which side his bread is buttered on.

so I don't know, I guess
 
daniel_gudman said:
On the other hand, all the nobles we've seen so far are in the Duke Larg faction, all the scheming was inside that; Argath, Gaffy, the B-Brothers, the Northern Sky Knights, these are all guys who are aligned under Larg, right? And Larg is aligned with the Queen, so these dudes are in the #Girlboss Faction. Argath telling Milleuda to make him a sandwich maybe wouldn't fly, and he's extremely conscious of which side his bread is buttered on.

so I don't know, I guess
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Dycedarg, handing out assignments: "All right, Zalbaag, you'll be #girlbossing; Gafgarion, look after my brother but if you can fit in some #gaslighting, do it; I'll be assisting in that arena when I have time between political schemes; Argath, that leaves you on #gatekeeping duty."
Argath: "I consider it an honor and a privilege, my liege."
Dycedarg: "Shut up."
 
The Queen is only important because of who she married and who her son is. She doesn't have an independent power base from which to stake her claim to the regency. Sure, Larg could have announced his support for his sister, but why would he? Even putting aside how the regent is essentially going to be the king for the better part of two decades, it's far easier to get people on board with a known administrator taking over than it is for an unknown with no qualifications, especially coming out of a brutal multi generational war.
 
Yeah, the Queen presumably married a king of royal blood rather than having it herself, thus isn't actually eligible for the throne. I assume that if the situation were reversed it'd be a widowed King looking for a regent instead.
 
Yeah, I don't find it weird the Queen doesn't take power. Your consort not being the ruler when you pass is pretty par for the course in monarchies; Now, if our Princess takes the throne and isn't in a Victoria/Elizabeth II situation where her husband is a "prince consort" and not a king that'd be a little weird, but "male royal guy = king" is pretty ingrained in the modern mind.
 
AliasiSudonomo said:
Yeah, I don't find it weird the Queen doesn't take power. Your consort not being the ruler when you pass is pretty par for the course in monarchies; Now, if our Princess takes the throne and isn't in a Victoria/Elizabeth II situation where her husband is a "prince consort" and not a king that'd be a little weird, but "male royal guy = king" is pretty ingrained in the modern mind.
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The situation would also probably be different if there weren't any living heirs, as well. As-is there's both Ovelia and the infant prince, so there's at least two heads that can wear a crown. Without them there'd probably be some kind of succession crisis.
 
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