Summary
Who doesn’t love a good momcharacter in a video game to make themselves feel cozy?Final Fantasydoesn’t have a lot, but there are some good moms to point out. For example,Final Fantasy 7had Elmyra, who was the adoptive mother of Aerith. She raised her after Aerith’s real mom, Ifalna, died.
It’s always nice to have a good mom in aseries likeFinal Fantasy,but there are certainly a few bad eggs worth mentioning too. Some of these moms are downright evil to the core, while others are merely neglectful at the very least. There will be spoilers.
Jenovais an alien that crash-landed on the planet inFinal Fantasy 7. Her corruption is what led to the destruction of The Ancients, or so it is theorized. Eventually, Jenova is captured by the Shinra Corporation and exploited through rigorous genetic research. Sephiroth, for example, was created in a lab using Jenova’s cells, thus making him, and several others, her son.
It’s a technical inclusion, as Jenova was never really depicted as a humanoid. There has yet to be a scene in any of these games where Jenova even talks. That could change inFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirthor the sequel beyond that. It is doubtful that she will be a nice mom to Sephiroth if she does appear though, given that she is a destructive alien.
Dr. Arecia Al-Rashiais a character from the often-forgotten spinoff,Final Fantasy Type-0.She is the head of research within the academy who created the Class Zero program. All the kids involved in the class were orphans and rejects around campus. She experimented on them to make the class stronger, and helped train them to change their fates for the good of the Academy.
Every character in this unit had a special weapon trait and call Sign. For example, the main character’s name was Ace, who could throw cards out like Gambit from theX-Men. Everyone within Class Zero refers to Dr. Al-Rashia as their mom, which is sweet, but it also feels a bit like brainwashing. Do good mothers train their kids to be war machines?
Edeafalls into a similar boat as Dr. Al-Rashia because she too raised a bunch of orphans. This is a secret kept late into the game, but most of the party members inFinal Fantasy 8were raised by Edea and her husband Cid. The reason why Squall and the others forgot about this was a combination of magic from the real villain, Ultimecia, and the Guardian Forces that they equipped. Guardian Forces were the new version of Summons in this game, including mainstays like Shiva and Ifrit.
Before this revelation, Edea was the central villain of the game. She harmed a lot of people before she too was cured of her brainwashing spell. Her rampage technically wasn’t her fault, then, but it’s kind of hard to forget the atrocities she committed while under Ultimecia’s spell. Should she have been forgiven as easily as she was in the game?
Continuing the chain of brainwashed adoptive moms, let’s talk aboutQueen BrahnefromFinal Fantasy 9. She is Garnet’s mom, who raised her as a baby after her real mom died in a boating accident. How that scene really played out is never revealed, but it is assumed this was the truth. As a girl, Queen Brahne was seemingly loving to Garnet but things changed once Zorn and Thorn entered into Queen Brahne’s council, along with Kuja later on.
They started corrupting her mind, planting ideas of war, which is the state she is in whenFinal Fantasy 9begins. Her destructive tendencies almost lead to a mass genocide of the rat-like people of Burmecia, who not only lose their kingdom, but their second home of Cleyra too. Queen Brahne snaps out of her drunken power state as she lies dying in Garnet’s arms toward the middle of the game. Even after apologizing, it was one of those too little, too late situations in many regards.
Anabellais the latest mom in the series, hailing fromFinal Fantasy 16. Unlike a couple of these entries where brainwashing and neglect could be faulted for bad motherly decisions, Anabella was just a straight-up power-hungry demon of a woman. What she wanted was power, and she did everything to obtain it. She helped orchestrate the assassination of her husband along with the dismantling of their kingdom.
The deal was that she could be the queen of a more powerful kingdom in exchange for this mass destruction. She loses a son, Joshua, in this fight, but still has Clive by the end. Instead of celebrating that Clive was still alive, she instead turned her back on him and allowed Clive to be enslaved. This is just in the first hour or so of the game, and her crimes got worse from there. At the end of the day, Anabella at least got what she deserved: an absolutely brutal death.
