The Calling

[Draginhikari]

Lyse to me suffers from what I like to call Minfilia-syndrome. Both Minfilia and Lyse were intended to be important characters in their respective part of the stories, however due to the way the story was being written at the time resulted in a less than stellar presentation in the story though I will say Lyse fared better then Minfilia in general at the end.

In Realm Reborn, Minfilia was intended to be the leader of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Someone with the Echo who wasn't fighter but dealt with a lot of the backend negotiations and communications between different groups the Scions worked with but due to Realm Reborn giant plot bloat resulted in really giving no time to actually demonstrate any of her strengths (Something most of the Scions suffered in 2.0 frankly). This resulted in only showing the worse parts of Minfilia's personality: Her overly trusting nature, her emotional baggage and general combat weakness.

Lyse on the other hand was intended to be the narrative of pretender to identity type of character. Someone who did not know who she was and needed to find her place in the world as herself rather than pretending to be her sister. Stormblood's biggest weakness was actually very similar to Realm Reborn: The need to get through a lot of plot elements related to Ala Mhigo and Doma very quickly. So even though Lyse did do things, did act, and did grow which would normally be a good way to proceed, the plot a few times basically handed her victories because there was not enough time to actually establish everything in a natural way making certain things feel forced. Which basically created this weird idea that Lyse intentionaly stole the Warrior of Light's Thunder in Stormblood (Even though Lyse says nothing in the game to suggest that she dismisses the Warrior of Light's accomplishments as she tends to praise the WoL the same as most of the characters in the game do).

It kind of shows why the Characters in Heavenward and Shadowbringers are held in high regards. Neither Minfilia or Lyse are bad character concepts in and of themselves but when the story does not have time to do something with those characters it can lead to unintended interpretations of who those characters are to the audience. Heavensward and Shadowbringers were focused and spent time informing the characters while Realm Reborn and Stormblood simply was doing too much to do so.