Spoilers for Shadowbringers and Dawntrail
Critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV (with a free trial up to level 70 including award winning expansion Heavensward and the Stormblood expansion with no restrictions on playtime) released its latest expansion Dawntrail in summer 2024, marking a new start for the game’s story after the previous arc wrapped up in 2021. Dawntrail (written by Hiroi Daichi after the lead writer of the previous two expansions, Ishikawa Natsuko, stepped down) received somewhat mixed reactions. If you ask me, though, Dawntrail delivers some of the game’s best character writing yet, especially regarding its antagonist Sphene.
Dawntrail is about a lot of things—family and wanting to make them proud, the pressure and responsibility of power and authority, cultural heritage, the dead living on in memory—and Sphene plays into these as a queen desperately trying to keep her kingdom from falling apart at the seams. She thematically calls back to many elements and characters from previous expansions, but provides a fresh—and dare I say innovative—take on these concepts through the way her storyline incorporates themes of gender roles; the intersectionality of gender, class, and race; and the bonds between female characters.
![Closeup of Sphene with figures in glowing, high tech armor in the backdrop. Text box reads: If it were you, could you find another way?](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
The looming shadow of the past
While FFXIV has been going long enough that there’s a long, long list of characters to compare Sphene with, two men spring to mind in particular: Emet-Selch and Elidibus. Emet-Selch is the primary antagonist of the base Shadowbringers expansion and Elidibus takes up the mantle for the corresponding post-expansion quests, and both return as allies when the player visits the distant past in Endwalker. They are both Ascians, immortal sorcerers and the last survivors of a people that lived at the dawn of history. Unprecedented calamity struck their idyllic society, which eventually led to the world being split into fourteen pieces. The Ascians have laboured for nigh eternity to fuse these pieces back together to get their lost home and people back, at the cost of destroying each parallel world and the countless lives within. Sphene’s kingdom of Alexandria is located in one such parallel world, one which narrowly escaped destruction at Ascian hands, and she is now likewise pushed to destroy other worlds for the sake of her own.
Emet-Selch’s plan to stave off the apocalypse involved sacrificing half the world’s population to create the god Zodiark. The guilt and responsibility he feels towards those sacrificed under his leadership, combined with his desperate, stubborn longing for a home that no longer exists, leave him unable to change course even long after he realized his actions are indefensible and probably won’t even bear fruit. He claims that the people of the split worlds are so diminished he barely considers them alive, and boasts of being the founder of basically every evil empire in the history of the player character’s home world, granting him the dubious honor of being the inventor of fascism in this setting.
Elidibus, meanwhile, was the person sacrificed to become the core of Zodiark, and thus became the embodiment and representative of his people’s wish for salvation. Elidibus has sublimated his identity to the concept he’s come to represent, such that he’s forgotten everything about the people he intended to save—yet he continues to cling to his promise and duty to them. He takes on the appearance of heroic figures from history, and the form he takes in the final confrontation is that of the first Warrior of Light, mythologized into a symbol more than anything resembling a person. Elidibus was so thoroughly dehumanized that his genuine pure intentions were warped into desperate fanaticism, and because he embodies a genuine wish for salvation, he is able to turn many others with the same wish against the protagonists.
Sphene thematically reflects both of these previous antagonists, but the additional context of the setting’s gender roles (and the player’s own presumed awareness of gendered roles in real history) reframe her character and refresh the villain formula. Sphene’s femininity influences her every action; her gender is crucial to her character and elevates her beyond simply a rehash of a proven formula.
![Closeup of Sphene looking determined. Text box reads: If bloodshed is what will save my subjects, I will become history's most brutal queen.](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
God Forbid Women Do Anything
Like Emet-Selch, Sphene was tasked with guiding her people through unprecedented calamity, here in the form of severe climate change pushing nations to fight over increasingly smaller habitable areas. As part of the war effort, the nation of Alexandria developed technology to recycle the souls of the deceased and use them to revive people from unnatural deaths, a technology now integrated in nearly every aspect of their daily lives. The memories within these souls are filtered out and stored in a massive database literally called “the cloud,” and whereas Emet-Selch refuses to see the living as alive, Sphene considers these memories of the dead just as alive and important as her physically still-living citizens. Although Sphene is characterized as kind and empathetic, she intends to invade other worlds and harvest their peoples’ souls to sustain the ever-increasing resource demands of this database, knowing full well she is not in the right for this but nonetheless devoted to her people.
Halfway through Sphene’s arc, it’s revealed that she is actually one of these recreated memories herself, and the original Sphene died several centuries ago, making both her and Emet-Selch ghosts of the past aiming to destroy the present. The connection is most blatant when both Shadowbringers and Dawntrail make their final areas a physical recreation of the respective memories they want to preserve: Emet-Selch had transformed his lair into a snapshot of his home shortly before calamity struck, populated by shades of the people he lost, and Sphene’s cloud database perpetually simulates the dead enjoying themselves in Living Memory, an eternal theme park free from pain or partings.
However, unlike Emet-Selch, Sphene is unable to directly make difficult political decisions herself. Sphene, specifically the memory of Sphene, is a small, dainty, kind, gentle, modest, and therefore powerless woman. Although she is queen of Alexandria and has been its sole ruler for centuries, the restrictions of her image, of the way Sphene is remembered, prevent her from actually enacting a policy as cruel and violent as invading and destroying other worlds. She strikes a political marriage deal with a foreign prince in hopes of him being able to wield military authority in her stead, but her husband ignores her wants for his own ambitions, and Sphene has to wait until he is killed before she gets the opportunity to make moves again. Like countless real women across history, Sphene has to work around restrictive gendered expectations that leave her dependent on constructs like (heterosexual) marriage to secure a future.
![Sphene standing in front of a glowing, geometric orange pattern like a circuit board. Text box reads: I will erase all memories of the living Sphene - she who has cursed me with this soft and powerless nature](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/3.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
Sphene, like Elidibus, is the embodiment and representative of her people’s sincere desire to be saved, at the cost of her personhood. Sphene was the first person Alexandria used its technology to revive, and she is the reason that technology was developed in the first place. The people had placed all their hopes on her as their beloved ruler who would surely protect them, and were so struck by grief at her death that they did everything they could to preserve her memory and that of the other war victims. As a result, the recreated memory of Sphene contains a prime directive of preserving Living Memory, and she is placed into this restrictive role of the kind-hearted queen that will always watch over Alexandria. The intentions behind her resurrection were a genuine wish not to lose anyone, but this wish leaves her as the mascot of an eternal theme park rather than a person with the agency she needs to preserve her kingdom.
Both Elidibus and Sphene are seen as the hope they embody rather than the people they were, but the restrictions this places on them are very different. Elidibus is the original hero: when he calls for allies to stand against the forces of darkness, countless souls across time and space put their lives on the line for that dream alongside him. Sphene, meanwhile, is the beloved queen of Alexandria, who is always nice to her people, always lends an ear to their troubles, and will always keep them safe—essentially, her role is to be their tradwife mother. Her people couldn’t bear to lose her, but the recreated Sphene basically doesn’t exist outside their expectations of her. Sphene is aware of who she is, more so than Elidibus, but she can tell you just as little about herself. It’s explicitly stated that the people of Alexandria don’t really care who or what Sphene is as long as she adequately performs her duty of loving them all, and when asked about her personal preferences directly she can’t even think of a favorite food.
Sphene is fundamentally trapped by the role society forced on her. This places contradictory expectations on her that are impossible to fulfil without destroying herself, in a way highly reminiscent of the expectations placed on traditional housewives and historical female monarchs. Her clothes are embroidered with the words “Service Eternal”—she has to labour ceaselessly for the good of her “family,” with no room for any expression that doesn’t match the ideal loving wife/mother. Where Emet-Selch can directly interfere in the politics of countless nations, Sphene barely holds authority in her own nation, and is dependent on an abusive husband to make decisions in her stead.
Where Elidibus’ identity disappeared under crushing expectations of glory, Sphene’s disappeared under crushing expectations of demure service. She is remembered solely as a kind and loving woman, which leaves her without the individual agency to meaningfully act on that love and actually protect her people. After her political marriage fails to bring the results she hoped, Sphene’s new plan is to delete the memories of the original Sphene and effectively lobotomize herself, so that her gentle image no longer restricts her from making necessary cruel decisions. Whether you read it as trying to live up to these expectations or trying to escape them, or even both, she cannot do it without literally destroying herself.
![Sphene and Wuk Lamat facing each other against the backdrop of a bright orange and gold cityscape](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/4.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
Intersectional layers
Sphene’s femininity and the corresponding sociopolitical expectations are given further nuance in how the game tacitly acknowledges that she is specifically a white woman, and one from a “developed” nation. Her kingdom’s abandoned historical district is styled like Western Europe, the current capital looks like a mix between a gaming PC and a shopping mall, and her introduction in the story is through invading Yyasulani, the pre-colonial North America analogue, and destroying its environment to obtain resources to perpetuate an unsustainable standard of living. The inhabitants of Yyasulani were nominally given free choice on whether to become Alexandrian citizens or continue living independently; but the severe climate change her invasion brought to the area made their traditional lifestyles nigh-impossible, and in the span of three decades (happening over mere days on the player’s end of the story due to cross-dimensional travel difficulties), nearly all the native culture had disappeared in favour of Alexandria’s cyber malls. Not all of this is necessarily relevant to the point of this particular article, but it’d be remiss not to mention when gender, race, capitalism, and climate change are all deeply entwined, and Dawntrail clearly understands this.
Sphene is the face of her nation’s status quo and is expected to maintain this status quo at any cost. Her role as darling tradwife mother pushes her towards colonial violence not as a circumstantial coincidence, but as an inevitable consequence of the overlap between race and gender as systems of oppression. As a genuinely kind woman she has no desire to hurt anyone directly or force their hand, and she believes herself to be respecting the independence of the people of Yyasulani. However, her mere presence in Yyasulani is oppressive and pushes its inhabitants to adapt to Alexandrian culture or die.
Similarly, because she is so deeply bound by her status as white woman and the systems of oppression those words allude to, the only method Sphene can think of to avoid war with the protagonist’s country is by offering Alexandrian citizenship if they submit—assimilation at clear threat of violence. As the face of the status quo, she cannot budge on perpetuating this status quo and cannot imagine a path forward that meaningfully breaks this status quo, even as it hurts both herself and countless people whom she bears no ill will towards and desperately wants to connect with. It’s worth noting also that the leader of the resistance in Alexandria is an Yyasulani woman designed with the darkest skin of any major plot-relevant female character in this game (so far).
![Closeup of Wuk Lamat calling out. Text box reads: Then face me! Not as a machine, but as the real you!](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/5.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
Solidarity for the future
Dawntrail not only shows a nuanced understanding of women’s sociopolitical position, but also an emphasis on women supporting each other. The arcs of all three discussed antagonists lean strongly on themes of “if things had been different we could have been friends” and “if things had been different this could have been you” to invoke sympathy. For Emet-Selch and Elidibus this connection was with the player character, who can be male or female, but the default player used in the trailers is male. Dawntrail specifically has a female protagonist, and the choice to create a separate female character to have this bond with Sphene means this iteration of the theme is intentionally about women specifically.
Wuk Lamat, the protagonist of Dawntrail, is Sphene’s direct opposite as a leader and a person, in that she is loud, boisterous, physically strong, openly flawed, has the agency to make difficult decisions as a leader, and has many confidants who know her on a personal level (as well as being fantasy Latinoamerican where Sphene, again, is coded as white European). Where Sphene cannot act outside Alexandria’s cultural framework, Wuk Lamat spends the first half of the expansion developing her leadership skills by dedicating herself to mutual understanding through open and equal cultural exchange. They are similarly dedicated to the happiness of their people, and both refer to their people as their family, but the form this takes is very different due to their wildly differing support networks (or lack thereof).
As a result, Wuk Lamat is basically the first person in centuries to approach Sphene as a person rather than a symbol. Her insistence on getting to know Sphene beyond their shared role as queen of their respective countries repeatedly breaks Sphene’s composure and strains her resolve, as Sphene may be beloved by her people, but the weight of that love on her shoulders leaves her without anyone who could or even wanted to understand her. Wuk Lamat refuses to compromise on the safety of her own people, but also refuses to judge Sphene’s circumstances, and never stops trying to reach out to her and find a peaceful way forward even as it becomes clear conflict is inevitable. Sphene desperately wants to accept Wuk Lamat’s offers of friendship, but is so entrenched in her circumstances that she doesn’t believe cooperation is actually possible.
![A headshot of Sphene surrounded by a glowing frame. Her image is slightly glitched and blurry as if she is losing signal](https://i0.wp.com/www.animefeminist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/0.png?resize=810%2C456&ssl=1)
Near the end of Dawntrail, Sphene has successfully deleted her memories and reduced herself to nothing but the system. However, even in this state Wuk Lamat is eventually able to get through to Sphene as a person by insisting that if there really is no other option but to fight, then Sphene should at least face her as herself, in name of her own beliefs. Although Sphene had erased the memories of her living self, the memories she made posthumously with Wuk Lamat are able to take shape in response. The time Wuk Lamat has spent trying to connect with Sphene, and her insistence on viewing and remembering Sphene as an individual beyond her place in society, are what allows Sphene to finally separate herself from the system she was made to perpetuate and entrust her people to a better and more equal future.
Again, this has echoes of the final conflicts with Emet-Selch and Elidibus, with the protagonist promising to carry on the memory of the defeated. However, this gains an additional layer in that one female character is reaching out to another in order to break her out of the gender-role-driven prison of her social expectations. Wuk Lamat helps grant Sphene the personhood and agency that the system had robbed her of, adding a level of meaning and catharsis that wasn’t necessarily present in previous storylines. There are discussions to be had about the execution—regarding the Latin-American-coded character having to save the colonizer, for example—but the way this arc engages with systems of gendered oppression, and ultimately presents them as something to be broken free from, really lands for me.
Sphene’s character shows a nuanced and compassionate understanding of gender and culture from her writers, as well as a renewed willingness to engage with these topics, even if it means risking mixed reviews. Her arc contains an emphasis on the bonds between women that the game has not had before. In a way, Sphene’s story criticizes the game’s own past treatment of it’s female characters: where in Stormblood a cruel woman who did anything to survive was only worthy of being saved after being reduced to a sweet girl, in Dawntrail a girl was saved because she was sweet and thereby became incapable of the cruelty necessary to survive. Dawntrail shows itself capable of building on its decade-long narrative history without blindly falling back on it, a promising start for the game’s direction in the future.
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