"It fills you even now, doesn't it? The hunger. To bite down on my jugular, to feel the warmth fill your mouth and run over even as you drink deep. Good, good! This is the beast I have longed to face!"
SENSITIVE CONTENT & SPOILER WARNING
This page contains mentions of suicide, abuse, child neglect, and imperialist violence. It also contains spoilers for the video game Final Fantasy XIV. Read at your own discretion.
These days I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy XIV. Normally I don't go for MMOs, or really any video game that I have no choice but to pay full price for, but this one has an unusually generous trial period and a lot of people who vouch for its single-player story. One such person was and is a close online-friend of mine.
I dragged my feet for a while before finally getting into the game. As soon as I got the hang of it, I thought it was pretty fun! The story didn't blow my mind at first, but I was enjoying myself, exploring Eorzea, getting a feel for everything. Early on, as soon as there were any real stakes, I got to know a bit about the enemy faction.
That being Garlemald, an Ancient Rome-inspired fantasy empire, with a bit of a Star Wars sith aesthetic. Its tech is old and salvaged, but far more advanced than the ambiguously Medieval-going-on-Victorian feel of Eorzea. Garlemald's civilian tech and culture is approximately on par with late-mid-century America, while its military is all the way up to flying cars and deadly robots.
Garleans regard people of all other nations as savages. Almost from the start, its common to encounter people who have been made refugees, young adults who were children or not yet born when the Garlean Empire conquered their ancestral homes.
In ARR (A Realm Reborn), the pre-expansion storyline, the player cuts down nameless soldiers, brutal war machines, and finally some higher-ranking officials, including a Legatus. We save our friends and protect Eorzea by driving the Garleans back, giving us room to turn our attention elsewhere in the Heavensward expansion. Then in Stormblood, we go on the offensive.
The plot of Stormblood has us liberate the nations of Ala Mhigo and Doma, both controlled by a cold-blooded viceroy. The Crowned Prince of Garlemald, Heir Apparent, Legatus of the XIIth Imperial Legion: Zenos yae Galvus.
I wasn't just fighting him because he's the bad guy and that's what a video game hero does, I was by this point invested in the fictional lives of my character's friends. Ala Mhigans like Lyse Hext and Domans like Yugiri Mistwalker. I wanted to see them take back their homelands, as they'd dreamed of doing their entire lives.
Homme Fatal
When I first saw Zenos, I began to feel nervous, because even at a glance I knew he was the type of character I love. Vamp-y blonds with overpowering charisma like Dio Brando or Lestat de Lioncourt. I didn't want to love him. Villains are fun, but he was more than cackling bad guy, Zenos represented an empire which was, in some ways, a little too real.
I dreaded scenes with him... But I enjoyed them immensely.
Now, Zenos yae Galvus is a beautiful man. But he isn't just an attractively designed character, his design is directly tied to his characterization. The push and pull of masculine and feminine, passive and forceful, beautiful and unnerving.
When first we see him, he is a huge mass of clanking metal. All raw meat and unbending steel. Jagged horns jutt out of soft shapes and warm hues, the curves of his armor evoking a peeled and muscular body. He's an absurd and dangerous thing. At well over seven-feet-tall, perhaps closer to eight, he dwarfs nigh on every person in his vicinity.
This early in the story, the player mostly sees him lazing about on his throne. He's like a lion sleeping in the open savanna, sprawled out and unafraid of the lesser creatures around it.
His ruthless and over-the-top masculinity is emphasized by the phallic imagery that surrounds him; swords stolen from conquered lands, serpentine dragons, towers of rust and twisting flesh. Yet at the same time, there's a certain femininity and softness to his design.
Zenos's hair is long and golden, and it looks silky to the touch (But who would dare touch it?). That is, apart from the split ends tumbling down his breastplate, brittle and exposed. He has a strong nose, but a soft jaw, a small chin, and his lips, though a bit thin, are defined and pouty.
His eyes are cold and striking. Not just the pearl-like eye in his forehead, iconic as it is, but his pale blue eyes, deep-set, droopy, and hedged in by mascara. Those are not merely long eyelashes, this man is obviously and undeniably wearing makeup.
And always those eyes are calm. He seems almost dead to the world around him, until, at a moment's notice, his hand goes to the hilt of his sword.
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
At times, particularly as the story progresses, we find that he lacks or rejects the politics of his homeland, but he has deeply internalized its abusive machismo. In his actions we see something bigger than one man, or one story. The mistreatment of women at the hands of men, soldiers at the hands of their commanders, occupied peoples at the hands of their oppressors.
In a side story that is considered canonical, but not included in the video game, we're shown that Zenos had a physically abusive upbringing. Know that I am mostly ignoring that story when I talk about him here. Not just because not every fan has read it, but because- Although some will disagree with me- I don't think you have to read it to understand his character.
To me, it's right there in the subtext. Zenos was shaped by abuse, neglect, and emotional repression. He grew up with something inside him, a little tyrant gnawing at his heart, same as a lot of us white queer guys who grew up in the seat of our respective empires.
Again, that innate tension that I find so compelling. He is ruthless, larger-than-life, and untouchable now. As one character points out at the end of Stormblood, even Zenos was once a baby in the cradle, innocent and pure.
However it was he came to be this way, there is something terribly wrong with him. He isn't truly a sadist. He's starving and unfulfilled. Violating human dignity and discarding human lives doesn't bring him any pleasure. Nothing does, nothing and no one.
His Mirror
By the time I got to Stormblood, I had a pretty strong idea of who my Warrior of Light was.
I began the game with a different character altogether, a funny little lalafell with a cute backstory. I didn't yet know the setting that well, so I wanted something that fit into the world with very little lore-homework. At the end of ARR, the game gives you the option to change your character's appearance, including their race, which is something that you normally have to pay for in the cash shop.
I held onto that option for a little while, then a little before starting Heavensward, the first expansion, I bit the bullet and re-worked an older roleplay character of mine in a way that fit into this world. Now the character I controlled was Pangir, a warrior from one of the nomadic Xaela tribes, a man who left home with hopes of returning as the most powerful man in the steppe.
Before long, I couldn't imagine playing as any other character.
Much of how I interpret Zenos and his relationship to the protagonist is based on how I see my character. This is the sort of role-playing game with no real branching paths and very few dialogue options, but it expects the player to read between the lines. Many relationships are left ambiguous so that the player is allowed to interpret them on their own.
But to be clear, my character is just the type of character that the game expects you to play; a broody-yet-kindhearted action hero, stoic on the outside and passionate on the inside. As I soon found, he was the perfect foil for this particular villain.
In the first encounter between the Warrior of Light and Zenos yae Galvus, no matter how skilled the player is, Zenos will always win that fight. He will always humiliate the hero, cast them aside, and then inexplicably spare them after their clash leaves his sword broken.
Why does he do that? My character wasn't sure. Zenos had more swords sheathed at his hip. At most he might've thought "This man thinks so little of me that I don't seem like a threat."
At the time, that was probably true, but what he didn't know was that Zenos craved "worthy prey". Victims that were so full of resentment that they'd find it in them to fight harder, so that maybe, just maybe, Zenos could finally feel something when he crushed them.
Keeping in mind the character I was playing, a man who feared humiliation as much as he feared death itself, this was perfect. Suddenly this wasn't just a story about a man helping out his friends, as noble a goal as that was. This was a matter of personal vengeance and pride.
Their next duel also ends in a forced failure, but with an important difference. When the hero chips his armor, it gives him pause. He sheathes his sword, then slowly, deliberately, he takes off his helmet. His voice that once echoed coldly inside a steel shell is suddenly crisp and clear.
"Oh, how right I was to spare your life."
His eyes were so unfeeling and so severe, but then they squint, they brighten when he smiles. Although I had seen his face by this point, my character had not.
That mountain of steel, faceless and cruel, was suddenly a man.
"Hear me, hero." He says, impassioned. "For the rush of blood, for the time between the seconds, live. For the sole pleasure left to me in this empty, ephemeral world, live."
Zenos is captivated, he’s obsessed. From then on his actions are increasingly motivated by his feelings for the hero. He bides his time and sharpens his claws, thrilled by the certainty that his "prey" is doing the same.
An End to Mark a New Beginning
The following sections spoil the endings of both Stormblood and Endwalker
The two don't see each other again until Stormblood's climax. Doma has been liberated, but Ala Mhigo remains under Imperial occupation. The Warrior of Light storms the palace, knowing that Zenos awaits him in his throne room. They would have their final, inevitable stand-off, and good would triumph over evil.
What the hero finds in that throne room is more than just a villain to be slain and a battle to be won. One simple sword-fight was not nearly enough.
Zenos gushes with excitement. As he speaks he's breathless, growling, almost groaning with the sheer pleasure of this confrontation. With blind, unwavering confidence, he claims that the two of them were one in the same. Warriors that lived only for the thrill of battle.
Outside in the palace garden, surrounded by flowers red and pink, and a rich orange sky, Zenos reveals the trapped and sleeping body of the dragon Shinryu. His plan was to slip inside, conquer its very spirit, and pilot it as if its body was his own.
This wasn't to be a standoff between two men, but between a God-slayer and a God of Pure Violence.
The empire meant nothing to him. Dominion meant nothing to him. His obligations as viceroy and heir-apparent meant nothing to him. All was equal, equally dull and meaningless, all except the spark he felt between the two of them.
The Warrior of Light had slayed many gods to reach this point. Since this is the sort of story where the hero wins, Shinryu falls, and with it, Zenos yae Galvus.
In the wake of the battle, Zenos is briefly ashamed, or at least sore, but pain gives way to a joyful sense of liberation.
Not the delirious, maniacal pleasure seen just before. He is relaxed. Happy and tranquil in a way that was almost unthinkable up to now. Even as more characters arrive on the scene and scorn Zenos for the madman he is, he only has eyes for the hero.
"Oh, this... this moment... let it be enshrined in eternity. My heart... beating out of time... so clear, so vivid, so real..."
Content in playing his role to completion, and certain he will never be this happy ever again, Zenos bids farewell to the Warrior of Light. He smiles peacefully even as he takes his own life.
The good guys are left confused, some of them unsatisfied and even secretly melancholic, but victory was won. The revolution was over, and the messy work of rebuilding could begin.
Zenos is buried in Ala Mhigo, and for a stretch of time he seems to be gone for good. Sadly for the people of Eorzea, but happily for people like me, this was not the case.
His passionate feelings for the Warrior of Light did not die when he did. Driven by his obsession, his craving for more, more violence, more of that blistering heat that first set his soul on fire, he single-mindedly pursues a rematch.
Although it is a fight to the death he wants, it's unclear if he even wants to win. He wants his opponent to pursue him with intent to kill, he wants to be pushed to the edge. Zenos knew how it may well end if he got what he was asking for.
Through miraculous and strange circumstances Zenos survived his suicide, and yet all he could think to do was race headlong into death – Or if not that, the death of his sole reason for living.
In pursuit of this grim reward, there was no line he wouldn't cross. Patricide, treason, mutilation. For his crimes against his people, he is named "Zenos viator Galvus" to mark his exile. A punishment he meets with predictable indifference.
Without hesitation he wastes and defiles the living and dead, gods and mortals, men and demons. Anything to break his limits, and to hold the attention of his rival.
But the Warrior of Light is a good person. No matter how much he might want to make Zenos pay, or relive that fight one last time for his own pleasure, the destruction Zenos wrought was a problem to be solved more than it was an insult to be avenged. His desire to protect the ones he loves outweighed his bloodlust.
For all Zenos's assertions that they were one in the same, this is where they fundamentally differ.
At the end of everything, when they two are alone together, the hero can't deny that he craved this rematch as much as Zenos did. Only by making amends in his own odd and outrageous way does Zenos stand before his rival on equal footing, and earn this moment of acceptance.
Whither Now...?
The final battle with Zenos is the climactic moment of the Endwalker expansion. After dogging his heels again and again, the object of his obsession grants him his wish, and then in the afterglow, both combatants lie side by side on the brink of death.
He isn't blissful or content this time. He seems to be regretful, even a little envious of our protagonist. A hero true, who had friends and loved ones, who clung to life too fiercely to be consumed by hopelessness. The man who broke through the mire of his apathy. The only one who made his heart race.
I think that while he lies there bleeding, Zenos is overcome by emotions he thought were out of his reach. Maybe he realizes life could have been worth living.
Some fans desperately want this death to be another fake-out. On some level I could see the value in it. He survives yet another suicide, and this time it was just enough to calm him down, or at least defang and domesticate him.
But Endwalker is about things coming to an end. It's about the sadness that brings, but also relief, hope, and new beginnings. Reincarnation is an incredibly prominent theme. A theme that we're meant to be reminded of in a scene very close to Zenos's death scene. We're shown that even Hydaelyn, the literal Almighty Godhead of the planet, the protagonist's divine patroness, can find peace.
So I think I prefer to imagine decades down the line, a young man completely freed from all of Zenos's baggage and all his sins. He could be anything; a cook, a fisherman, a bodyguard, a librarian. A man living a life that the Prince of Garlemald never could.
If nothing else, I hope that eventually the dev team releases little in-game goodies that reference him, without being afraid that they'll be swarmed by a bunch of obsessed fans (like me) asking "Does this mean he's coming back? Is this a hint? Is this a message to us? Is he gonna show up in the next patch?!"
Yoshi-P, if you're reading this, I'll be a good and grateful little fanboy if we ever get a wall-mounted Zenos portrait. I'd probably start bidding on in-game houses to have a dedicated room for it.
I would like to thank everyone who makes Final Fantasy XIV possible, from the devs, to the ENG localization team, to the janitors at Square Enix HQ. This game is very special to me. I'd also like to thank ClyncyeRudje, JoyeJoyu, Neanmoins-Que, Aleksi Remes, Actual-Haise, & Swagcred for giving me permission to feature their artwork here.
Lastly, thank you for reading this far.
Clawheld ♡ 2023