The Darkest JRPG of the 90s - Suikoden The Children of Hurin of Japanese Literature/Video-Games: Introducing Empress Windy

There are few games more gut-wrenching, more heart-wrenching and bleaker than Suikoden. In some ways the greatest of all the 90s J-RPGs it was a game that dared take a lot of risks that no other games would or could. It conveyed a great deal with very little, and was in a lot of ways as inspired it seems by a classic Chinese novel as it was by Children of Hurin.

The complexity one can find in this game is one that few games even of that era could equal in terms of the story-telling. The game never tried to hide its darker side though for some reason some came to think it cheerful or playful for some reason likely because they never played it.

The game though opens up with the lead Tir McDohl the son of the greatest general in the history of the game location; the Scarlet Moon Empire, in a waiting room. First before we get anywhere, a little backstory; the Scarlet Moon Empire was once part of a larger Empire that of the Holy Empire of Harmonia, a kind of theocratic Empire that has a cult of personality akin to that of the Soviet Union with Stalin or Lenin.

The difference is that where Stalin or Lenin’s cult had to acknowledge when they died the Harmonian one refused to do this. Though it is evident that Hikusaak the founder died several centuries ago (more on that in another article as the story makes no reference to him right now). The Scarlet Moon Empire is a country with an interesting culture which is a strange mix of France, China, Germany and even to an extent Rome, it is an Empire with a great deal of world-building to rival the likes of Tolkien & Howard in some ways.

For one thing throughout its 200 plus year history it has rarely lost a war, it has however just come out of a bloody civil war for the throne that saw Barbarossa the current sitting Emperor nearly lose a number of times if it were not for his 5 Great Generals.

The tragedy of the man’s life is that on his way to the throne he lost the love of his life Claudia, and though he ruled well for a time he has since sunk into a kind of depression. Barbarossa has since found himself a new wife though, the court-magician Windy, a lady who is as mysterious as she is terrifying.

There is no other villain like her in the 90s in all of film, literature or video-games. Period. Windy is akin to Morgoth in power and wickedness throughout this game. Her influence over the course of history is a frightful thing and before the game is over one cannot help but hate her and yet respect her power in a way that one doesn’t most other Mythic villains.

General Teo McDohl the lead’s father is a hard-bitten, bitter man who lost his wife not long after Barbarossa lost his, and is the Emperor’s sworn-brother. A peasant-born man who has climbed the ranks of the nobility through merit and skill he has won their respect. And their jealousy.

Teo has since his wife’s death taken on a lover of his own, the legendary, noble-born general Sonya whom he’s just waiting for the right time to introduce to his family. Not realizing that in-universe they are very likely already aware and already approving of her.

Tir is thus in a strange position; half-peasant, with a war-hero for a dad, another for a stepmother and a godfather who is an Emperor. However, just as all Greek tragedies follow someone with supernatural extraordinary gifts, so too does Suikoden.

Tir is a silent protagonist but throughout the game we get clues to his personality; he is kind, charismatic, masculine and extremely tough. Carved in his father’s image (the two look quite a bit like one another), he can be no less hardened than his father and no less stubborn, and yet there is a tenderness to the both of them. McDohl men for all their Russian hardness, have a tender centre that is very reminiscent of the tender nature of the Japanese themselves.

In all he is a very special youth, one who has already endured a great deal of loss, having lost his mother, his aunt and having been kidnapped at 3 years old by brigands set on killing him (then he was rescued by his later bodyguard Gremio, who was a bandit who turned on the rest).

Waiting in that waiting-room leaves McDohl tense and uneasy, what fate awaits him? As a son of the warrior-aristocracy he must receive the Emperor’s blessing, before he is assigned to a special unit within the military. Pacing the floor he worries his lip and seems on the cusp of working himself into a frenzy, with his father a little amused by this unusual anxiety that has overtaken his son.

McDohl men don’t do anxiety or apprehension, so that Teo laughs a little and asks him ‘what’s wrong? nervous?’ for one thing this dialogue shows that Teo does care even as he’s not accustomed to seeing his son like this. On some level he should not approve.

In the culture of the Toran that is to say the Scarlet Moon Empire men do not feel nervous, they must be warriors. Expectations are very high, with all sons’ expected to surpass their father in every way, no exceptions, so that Tir’s uncertainty is natural. The two are soon called by a maid, and they make their way into the Imperial Throne room where they step past innumerable bodyguards to stand before the Emperor.

Barbarossa greets them informally and sensing some of the previous nervousness of the boy he has doted upon for nigh on seventeen years, he ribs him a little. What is most noteable is how after he conveys his best regards to Teo and assigns him the task of leaving for the north to reinforce the border against the City States of Jowston, the irrepressible treacherous eternal enemies of the Empire, he remarks to his new wife about McDohl the younger.

This is where we get the first hint about the sort of woman that Barbarossa has taken on as his wife.

I could not resist this image when I saw this little meme on google, kind of like how Barbarossa could not resist Windy. Bear in mind Windy is almost a millennia in age, and is married to the man’s godfather, so that her flirtatiousness here is a little out of place.

The implication in this scene is that she’s eyeing him up, and while Barbarossa gives no indication of being disturbed, we later learn that McDohl the younger was a little unnerved. Windy isn’t exactly a woman shining with goodness, to the contrary she radiates the sort of evil that Yami-Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh or Morgoth from Silmarillion possess themselves.

What makes it particularly disturbing is how little Windy cares for form or the fact that she’s in public. There she stands, a woman physically old enough to be 17 year old Tir’s mother (as her age has been frozen around the age of 35-45 by her Outer Gate Rune which is half of one of the 27 True Runes that grant immortality and eternal youth if at a price), and is eyeing him with all the hunger of a lioness with its prey.

It is something that is disturbing and shows the strange weakness of Barbarossa that he does nothing to reprimand her, instead he countenances this insult to him also. It is difficult to imagine why a woman who has the richest, most powerful man on earth might want some half-peasant boy.

Very often we hear about the hypergamy of women, and true as it might be to a point. The notion has to also be discussed that quite often a woman might turn away from a man who can offer her far, far more than what the ‘bad boy’ might or as in the case of innumerable female teachers in the teaching profession do, they go for children.

Why is this?

The answer is that women are just as capable of the same vices, the same stupidities and excesses of men. Women are human, and to err is human.

This isn’t to excuse it, but to condemn it.

Let us be honest; of the wicked men of history we need only look at Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Herod, Caligula, Nero and so many others. On the same token womenkind have given us not only the female teachers that have violated their male students in recent years but also Bathory, Messalina, Liu Gaozu’s Empress, Agrippina the Elder, Herod’s wife and daughter, Jezebel and countless others.

There’s an equal capacity for wickedness, with Windy being very reminiscent of Jezebel. It would not surprise me if not only had the narrative-designer of Suikoden read the Bible but also studied up on Bathory in particular as Windy has shades of her built into her.

Just as some women are hypergamous (too many to count), there’s a great many who do not care for wealth, but long only to satisfy their sexual hunger. In classic literature there was a lot of talk of the sexual appetites of women, as a terrifying thing, and as the sort of thing that could bring down Empires and destroy souls. I imagine the likes of

Uncouth Barbarian

could probably recount more tales and in more knowledgeable manner than I could.

That said, just as women are capable of this, we must also bear in mind the strange discipline, the ferocious loyalty and innate goodness that has stemmed from women such as St-Jehanne D’Arc, Edith Tolkien and others who have stood by their people or men respectively regardless of appetites or desires. Edith likely could have done far better than the near homeless, penniless Tolkien who in 1913 was NOT I repeat NOT a catch. And yet she happily married him, though he had nothing to offer.

Yes we know from history she was justified in her choice, and in this regard we should point our daughters and sisters to her, as an icon. Because she chose not the convenient choice, but the inconvenient one of a pauper who later against all odds pulled himself up by his bootstraps in a manner few if any men of any century have ever done.

If we could point to Edith Tolkien as a positive historical figure, or the likes of say Otsu from Musashi who chooses the pauper Musashi at every turn as her literary counterpart in a way, we can look at Windy as the opposite.

Windy is hypergamous, to a point but also an all-devouring preying mantis. This is the dark side of women-folk; the preying mantis that devours all before her, and nowhere is this better represented than Windy.

And this is what makes her so fascinating as a villainess; she has few if any virtues, is a terrifying force of nature who is as deviant as she is devious. As wicked as she is selfish and as narcissistic as she is sadistic. She has utterly emasculated her husband, has reduced her husband’s surrogate brother to a helpless bystander in the Empire the man helped to rescue, and has reduced the other great Generals of the Empire to little more than figureheads.

If ever there was a ‘Great Woman of Literary History’ Windy should definitely get a mention. She’s terrible but incredibly powerful, majestic and utterly regal, rather like a female Scar and one who like him thinks she can do whatever the hell she wants.

There’s more to this strange intro-meeting though as Tir is praised by the Emperor and afterwards father and son are dismissed with the latter of the two having to stop by Commander Kraze.

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