A lot of fantasy authors bungle this, with the notable exception of Tolkien.
I was pleasantly surprised when The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (and subsequent books in that setting) made it clear from the first chapter that "thee" was the familiar, informal address, and "you" was the formal address.
To segue, the famous example in Japanese is 貴様 "kisama". Any anime fan should be familiar with it, as a derogatory way to address someone, and usually yelled in anger.
Except from the kanji comprising it, the term
should be formal and respectful; it's 貴 as in "noble" or "esteemed", and 様 as in the most respectful suffix address "-sama". And throughout most of Japanese history, "kisama"
was a respectful way to address someone superior.
As far as I can Google,
nobody knows why it changed from "immense respect" to "utter disrespect", although theories abound. Most of these theories claim something along the lines of "overuse led to sarcastic implications", with a few "the people to whom 'kisama' used to be addressed, ie samurai/the military, fell out of societal favour".
So for the most part, in any work in the modern day, use of "kisama" is understood to be derogatory and disrespectful.
I mention this to tie into FFIX: Steiner
consistently uses "kisama" to address other people who are not obviously higher in status than him. He obviously doesn't use it with Queen Brahne, Beatrix (even though he personally dislikes Beatrix), and Garnet/Dagger. He does use it with his subordinates in the Pluto Knights, and he
always uses it to address Zidane.
On the surface, this just means Steiner sees everyone else as either far beneath him or far above him, like an arrogant middle manager. However, there is another possibility: there is an optional aspect of the "old-fashioned out-of-touch super-serious buffoon" character type, where they are so stuck in the past they still use "kisama" as a
respectful term of address. It's generally not to the level of the old samurai using it as a term of high respect, but it's at least WW2-era usage as a default formal address to peers. So it's possible Steiner uses "kisama" to everyone because that's just what he's used to, rather than a value judgment.
Of course, the puffed-up abuse he sends to Zidane means that usage of "kisama" is almost certainly intended to be derogatory.
Incidental trivia: Zidane's label for Steiner in Japanese is おっさん "ossan", which is a shortened slurred "ojisan", ie "old man". The English script changed that to "Rusty", possibly because age-related insults don't hit as hard in English. It's pretty consistent how Zidane and Steiner talk to each other, with one going "ossan" and the other going "kisama" all the time.
