How old are each of the main characters in lore?

[MoofiaBossVal]

I feel G'raha's behavior is inappropriate. The 5.4 scene in the cave where he wants to spend more time with you instead of focusing on the mission is inappropriate and creepy. The community can claim he is just a fan boy but he has to learn personal boundaries.

Eh, I've mixed feelings on him.


Current story spoilers 5.5 MSQ

First: G'raha trying to cut into the WoL's life.

By the time of Shadowbringers, the WoL is famous and lots of people want to know him, and he's being called by everyone in the realm to help them out. The WoL just doesn't have enough time to help out and hang out with everybody. The WoL already has a circle of friends that he's spent a lot of time, are his preferred crew to tackle problems with, and the people he prefers to spend his time with.

The WoL worked with him during the Crystal Tower questline for all of 1 or 2 hours. This was before the WoL had really formed a circle of friends with the Scions. So in Shadowbringers, you have G'raha - a stranger to the WoL - trying to cut into the WoL's life. "Take me on an adventure with you". I mean, yeah, by the time he says that in 5.3, I've known him long enough that it'd feel nature, but it feels really weird that he was harboring this desire during 5.0, and says it to you in Kholusia. It's like a fanboy seeing a celebrity idol at the mall and saying "please let me be your best friend!".


Second: G'raha Tia is NOT an old man.

I think the other problem with G'raha Tia is that... he's supposed to have come from a time period in which he woke up and everyone he knew was dead, and there was immense bloodshed and the new people he made friends with were dying left and right, and then he goes to the First and lives there for a hundred years... and he's known generations of people from their birth, watched them grow up, get married, grow old, and die. He should be a really old man, but he never ACTS like it. He acts like a fresh faced teenager. He TALKS about being an old man, but I never feel it. ​This is in the same expansion that had Emet-Selch, who felt like a really old man who had lost his civilization and his friends and his family. This is the same expansion that had Ardbert, who really felt like he had lost his civilization and his family and his friends.

It's also extremely bizzare that G'raha Tia just so casually leaves the Crystarium behind. He lived 20 years in Eorzea. He lived 100 years at the Crystarium. The people of the Crystarium should be family to him. This should be his home, more so than Eorzea ever was. I cannot believe a grandpa or an elder or an old man like that would just up and leave his community just like that to go adventuring with some celebrity he had met for 2 hours over 100 years ago in some far off land that was just a vague memory. Now, obviously once his body was crystalizing, stashing his consciousness into his body on the Source was the obvious thing to do, but he was clearly planning to go back to Eorzea long before then, otherwise he wouldn't have made the extra crystal.


Third: G'raha Tia is just the same character as Alphinaud.
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G'raha Tia fulfills the same role as Alphinaud in the narrative: the bright eyed dorky little brother to the WoL/deuteragonist of the story who is a magus and the man with the plan. Literally the same character, just a different design and voice actor. It's especially telling that G'raha Tia and Alphinaud hardly ever talk in the same scene, let alone talk to each other... because that'd draw attention to the fact that they are literally the same. When one character is in focus in the narrative, the other has virtually no lines at all. I would've been content with Alphinaud being sidelined and G'raha Tia hogging the spotlight for 5.0 through 5.3... but then he survives 5.3, and continues hogging Alphinaud's place in 5.4. It isn't until 5.5 that Alphinaud gets back his role again... and it's rather telling that G'raha Tia has pretty much no lines in 5.5 and it's jarring. You have two characters both competing to fulfill the same role in the narrative and it's very jarring.

Stormblood had a similar problem with Lyse and Alisae. They were the same character both competing for attention: the spunky bash bro sister who flips out at the drop of a hat. Fortunately Lyse was written out of the story by having her leave the Scions, so Alisae is able to fulfill her role uncontested. I don't know why the writers forgot to do that with Alphinaud and G'raha Tia. More than one character per role is redundant. Get rid of one. I prefer Alphinaud to G'raha, but G'raha Tia is clearly preferred by the current writer and no way he's going to die after surviving 5.3, and if killing off Alphinaud means we don't have this content anymore and scenes can be written naturally, then so be it. I just don't want this conflict anymore.

[Fenral]

Trying not to take your stuff too far out of context, but there are a couple points I have to object to:

The WoL worked with him during the Crystal Tower questline for all of 1 or 2 hours.

The Crystal Tower storyline ran from 2.1 to 2.5. In real-world time, he was in Mor Dhona for about a year-and-a-half. His role was ambiguous, but his design was distinct enough, and certain rules like "raids are tangential to canon" had yet to be firmly established (thanks to the Binding Coil being hard canon), so plenty of people had plenty of time to draw their own conclusions before he was unceremoniously stuffed in a box for five years. We now know that all of this was intentional, and that he was being saved for a potential second reboot, but at the time it was a lot to process.

G'raha Tia is just the same character as Alphinaud.

He's not, though. It's possible he was originally meant to replace Alphi in the event of the aforementioned second reboot, but for now he's actually around to reinforce Alphinaud as a character. He's still distinguished by his fatalistic streak, but if you talk to him between quest objectives, you'll realize he's mostly hanging around to shill Alphi as the true protagonist. If I'm reading the cards right, though, that probably won't be for much longer, and we already know which of them is in the Endwalker teaser.

Oh, oops, I double posted.