Annotated 30-18
“The men at the wall will have to fight on without me… but I’ll have to leave to join them momentarily,” Ardaic says, wedging a chest of drawers in front of the only exit. “But for NOW, I have to stay and protect Syr’Nj,” he adds, before he gets any reason to believe that Syr’Nj would be in any danger here. You even consider, Ardaic, that you might now be a target worth going after and your hanging around here might endanger her more?
I didn’t pick apart these contradictions when Phil handed in this script, but now I see them more plainly. And I rather like them, because they do a better job of showing Ardaic’s growing crush than any tsundere routine we could’ve ripped off from manga romcoms. His (ahem) “assessment of Syr’Nj’s inexpendable importance” is in conflict with the soldierly loyalty that’s defined his entire life, and he doesn’t even realize it.
Not that there will be any consequences of his irrationality here: at this point, the battle would go pretty much the same no matter where Ardaic was. But it’s a nice bit of foreshadowing.
Ooof poor wounded soldiers in there got to hear how some (most?) of them are “expendable”. Definitely not a good showing for Ardaic.
I mean from a political point of view they are far more expendable then a member of government, a princess of an allied nation, or the main person responsible for maintaining a alliance, let alone all three like Syr’Nj plus her being a prominent member of the adventurer’s guild and romantic partner to its leader. Even Ardaic is more expendable from a political perspective (though granted not by too much)
I always assumed there was a back door. Ether way, it’s clear that Ardaic is reacting rather more than anything else. Clear break of his stoic character reminding us he’s human but his priorities are still tangled with the system he served as the man regains his composure. Honestly, why I liked Ardaic better without the Silver Centurion magic girl power up, the ‘she is not expendable’ bit shows that Ardaic understands a good number of them are in this scenario.
The Silver Centurion is a magical girl transformation? Checks out and sounds like something Frigg would suggest.
Every so often I can be moved to use my editor powers…
It’s not that dissimilar. In fact, it’s more like that than it is like the superhero costume change in a phonebooth.
I didn’t pick up on Ardaic’s crushing on Syrn’j on the first readthrough, but on the second I definitely took this page to be foreshadowing. All the things you mentioned, plus the fact that he carries her there himself, and the last line – “She’s to important” which just begs the question “to whom?”.
Oh, sure, to the peacekeepers, to Gastonia, to the wood elves, to any number of factions. But that’s not what Ardaic means. She’s too important to him.
Everything else he says is just self assurance that he’s not abandoning his duty for his personal interests
Brilliant piece of character writing by Phil.