[Antagonists]
[Keystone Timeline]
- [Daere/Cain Cray/Arbiter Animus/The Assassin of Time]
And Then What? - Defied. Daere knows the cycle of life is eternal, and thus he will never stop destroying timelines, wether it be out of purpose, out of boredom, or out of spite.
Became Their Own Antithesis
Big Bad
Bodyguard Betrayal - Inverted. Schala more or less killed him for saving her life from her own mother. He eventually pays her back in kind.
Body Horror - His face is framed by Tainted Veins and a good portion of his body is covered in what looks like a malleable black ooze, especially his entire right arm. Then there's the empty socket where his heart should be. It gets worse after he goes One-Winged-Angel during the penultimate battles of the First and Second Paths.
Dead All Along - In a sense. He was technically killed by Schala, but was kept alive due to his connection to Lavos and the Frozen Flame.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life - Once upon a time, he believed protecting Schala to be that purpose, but no longer. His hatred and misanthropy eventually led him to believe that destroying all of creation was to be his purpose instead.
Determinator - Nothing save for losing complete control of the Frozen Flame will stop him from his ambitions.
Driven to Suicide - After his Villainous Breakdown after being completely and utterly defeated at the end of the Second Path, he falls backwards into the abyss to his death. Unfortunately, as Lavos is all too willing to demonstrate moments later, an Arbiter doesn't need to be alive to continue being a threat.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good - After Schala defeats him at the end of the First Path, as he lays dying, he asks why she's shedding tears for him.
*Goes doubly so in the Second Path after Cain's No Holds Barred Beatdown. No matter how much he tries, he can't understand just how in the hell everyone is working together instead of finding reasons to kill each other. Cue Villanous Breakdown.
Freak Out - Suffers an epic one in his backstory when his memories, especially what Schala had done to him, come back to him when the stasis pod holding the Frozen Flame conveniently shatters...
Humans Are Bastards - Ultimately why he wants to destroy all of existence.
Misanthrope Supreme
Motive Rant
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - In a world without Crono and gang's interference, Cain was the only one capable of rescuing Melchior from Mt. Woe, using the Ruby Knife on the Manmon Machine, and bringing an end to the mad Queen Zeal's reign to rescue Schala. His reward was for his 'princess' to stab him repeatedly in a fit of rage and grief for killing her mother.
Omnicidal Maniac
Person of Mass Destruction - He has succeeded in destroying at least two different timelines. Possibly more if the 'trophies' in his citadel are any indication.
The Power of Hate - Spite (and the power of the Frozen Flame) are the only things keeping him going
Then Let Me Be Evil
Trauma-Induced Amnesia - Unconciously discarded his memories after Schala stabbed him, becoming little more than a blank slate when Belthasar finds him in Chronopolis. Things would have been settled right then and there had Lavos not had other plans...
White Hair, Black Heart - His hair became white due to the trauma of regaining his memories upon contact with the Frozen Flame.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds - He is an unrepentant villain through and through, but when one looks at the life Cain Cray had lived (all the crap Cain had gone through in Children of Zeal, with the added caveat of finding out in the worst way possible that the woman he loved hated him all along), his speech at the end of the First Path sounds less like a Motive Rant and more of a desperate cry for acknowledgement towards something, anything that will listen.
- [Schala Zeal/Arbiter Anima] : "The original Schala Zeal that existed before Crono's interference with the timeline. Driven by a delusional belief that her mother would see sense and a judgemental hatred towards those who partake in the pursuit of power, she would wind up mortally wounding her bodyguard Cain after the latter kills the queen to save her during the Ocean Palace incident. She would then be absorbed into the parasitic lifeform known as Lavos soon afterwards, eventually evolving into a creature known as the Time Devourer.
During this time, she would create two clones; one that was a literal copy of her original self that she discarded that would eventually be known as Zero, and one an infant clone that would go on to help Serge free her from Lavos. Freed from her bonds, she would search the timestream for Serge. Unfortunately, her search was cut short upon the reappearance of a vengeful Cain, who would murder her in cold blood.."
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Adaptational Jerkass - To the point where where all future incarnations of her seem much kinder in comparison. May be because this Schala never had the Prophet watching over her... or perhaps Lavos toned her resentment down in future incarnations due to what she had done to its other Arbiter.
Became Their Own Antithesis - Unlike most examples of the trope, this happened to her twice.
Beneath the Mask - Needless to say, Schala Zeal is not the saint everyone thought she was. Part of the point of the Second Path is how various characters that were close to/affected by her deal with this knowledge.
Broken Pedestal - Is ultimately this to Cain... and to Magil... and to Serge... and to Kid... Yeah, she ends up this to a lot of people.
Defiant to the End - Even as she fades after Zero destroys the revenant she became, she continues to insist she had never done anything wrong and that she and Serge would be reunited one day.
Fate Worse Than Death - After Daere kills her, he preserves her corpse in what will eventually become his citidel as a trophy, where she eventually becomes a revenant. During the final battle of the First Path, her spirit ends up trapped as part of Daere's one-winged-angel gambit. It only during the Second Path that she finally finds release after being defeated by Zero.
Freak Out - What she ends up doing after Cain kills her mother. Although considering that she watches him impale said mother onto the Manmon Machine and letting the magical backlash finish the job, it's no small wonder that she completly snaps.
Happy Ending Override - She thought she would one day find Serge and finally be free of the weight of the past. Daere had other plans... though considering some of the other tropes on this list, one has to wonder if she ever deserved a happy ending.
Horrible Judge of Character - Ended up being worse about this concerning her mother than in subsequent timelines. Even after Lavos has nuked the kingdom, even after the Gurus and Janus were sucked into time gates, she still tried to plead with the queen to see reason. So what does she do when her bodyguard does his job and cuts down the queen to protect her? Stab him repeatedly with a broken shard of the Manmon Machine and hurl curses of hatred at him in a rage.
Hypocrite - For all of her judgement towards those who solve their problems through force, she gives in to violence pretty damn quickly once Cain takes out her mother. Even after coming back as a revenant, she attempts to push blame on Zero for having to defend herself.
Irony - She created Zero as a precourser to Kid only to throw her away for reminding her too much of her past self. Said clone would ultimately be the one to save the world in both endings and free her from her torment as a revenant.
*For a double-dose of irony, she tried to free herself from the past by changing herself. She succeeded, by throwing away everything that had once made her a kind and beloved person... aspects that said clone she abandoned had eventually come to embody.
Jerkass Has a Point - During their reunion near the end of The Second Path, Schala admits to Cain that her counterpart's beliefs about moving on through loss of identity weren't entirely unfounded. After all, it was only through her life as Zero that she had gained a perspective she never would have a Schala.
Never My Fault - Except when it comes to Zeal's fall, she refuses to take responsibility when events of her life backfire, even to the grave.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom - Daere's very existence and the events of Reflections as a whole is ultimately her fault.
You Should Have Died Instead - A sentiment she expresses towards not only Zero, but Kid as well.
- [Lavos/The Time Devourer]
Eldritch Abomination
Hijacked By Ganon - Downplayed. There are plenty of moments during Reflections where it is made clear that Lavos is subtly influencing events for its return, making its reveal as the True Final Boss not come straight out of left field.
True Final Boss
[Reflections Timeline]
- [Sigma]
- [Demon Panther/Lynx]
- [Yarlen Shald]
- [Valkor]
[Cross Timeline]
- [Dalton]
- [The Lady of Sirens/Reika Onin]
Fighting Your Friend - Subverted. This incarnation of Reika never met Cain, so she has no qualms about tearing him limb from limb. Played straight from Cain's perspective, though.
Start of Darkness - Having never met Glenn or Cain, she tries on her own to convince her father Bacchus to leave the Anti-Human League. It is all in vain as she is forced to watch a lynch mob from Arni kill him, forever distorting her view of humanity. She eventually joins up directly with Valkor as his right hand, then his lover, and ultimately his successor.
- [The Seeker/Glenn Zweibreicht]
Start of Darkness
(will be updated occasionally)
