History Characters / TheOrderOfTheStickAzureCity

* HeelFaceDoorSlam: She does ''try'' to become a paladin again after falling, but her incomplete realization of what it would mean to do so means that she gets nowhere with it, only continuing her current trajectory rather than trying to course-correct and reconsider herself. When she hears Soon's deathbed lecture, she does accept his reasoning without protest, but by that point, she's bleeding out and can only manage a few IronicLastWords. Soon muses that she might have managed it if she'd had more time, but he doesn't know for sure.

* CharacterDevelopment: [[spoiler:While she fails at her redemption in her dying moment of becoming a paladin again (and having it explained to her in crystal-clear terms by the spirit of the founder of her order ''why'' she failed... that she couldn't admit she was in the wrong)... she ''does'' compromise for the first and last time in her life that at least she'll be reunited with her paladin steed in the spirit world.]]

* HeelFaceDoorSlam: She does ''try'' to become a paladin again after falling, but her incomplete realization of what it would mean to do so means that she gets nowhere with it, only continuing her current trajectory rather than trying to course-correct and reconsider herself. When she hears Soon's deathbed lecture, she does accept his reasoning without protest, but by that point, she's bleeding out and can only manage a few IronicLastWords.

* ForcedSleep: Another of her powers, and the one she finds to be most useful when serving the Azurites.

* UnfitForGreatness: Halfway through ''War and [=XPs=]'', he ends up in the unenviable position of having to replace Shojo in the role of Lord of Azure City and Miko in the role of Sapphire Guard ace. Though he's generally a better person than either of them, he struggles to fill their roles. As a leader, he fails to keep Azure City's nobility under control, to the point that they were sending assassins after him within minutes of him getting the job, and his honorable attitude means that he has to be talked out of doing something stupid multiple times. As a warrior, the gap between him and Miko is shown to be significant enough that he couldn't beat her while she was fallen, badly injured, missing one sword, and in the midst of a psychotic break, and this record has carried into multiple other fights (most notably, being nearly killed in one shot by Redcloak, who Miko soundly trounced). Commentary points out that while Hinjo is well-meaning and far from stupid or talentless, he's way out of his depth, which was necessary for the Order to take the central role in the arc that they do.

* HatedByAll: At the time of her death, it's hard to name a person she interacted with who ''didn't'' dislike her at bare minimum. The forces of evil considered her a loathsome enemy, the Sapphire Guard and Order of the Stick considered her a deranged traitor (and before that, they considered her an unpleasant {{Jerkass}}), various lesser villains actively cheered on her Fall... even O-Chul, whenever he recalls her, cites NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead and then doesn't elaborate further. In fact, the full list seems to consist of Soon (who considered her a failure as a paladin, but only pitied her for it rather than hating her), the Monster in the Darkness (who doesn't really have it in him to hate anyone), Xykon (who HatesEveryoneEqually and gives her the same nothing-personal treatment as all his erstwhile nemeses), and Windstriker (who is a horse).

* CombatPragmatist: One of the first indications of her stretching of the code is that Miko is ''very'' willing to play dirty in a fight. In both her battles with the Order, she goes for an ambush and a surprise round, her "honorable challenge" to the ogres turns out to be a ploy to wipe out as many as possible with area-of-effect spells, and when in the midst of fighting, she tends to throw as many assets as possible at her opponents, including using her horse as a secondary combatant.

* HeelFaceDoorSlam: She does ''try'' to become a paladin again after falling, but her idea of doing so is basically just to keep doing what she was already doing. When she hears Soon's deathbed lecture, she does accept his reasoning without protest, but by that point, she's bleeding out and can only manage a few IronicLastWords.

* MoralSociopathy: Her morality drives her to behave in very, ''very'' destructive ways and then act indignant that people regard them as wrong.

* UnfitForGreatness: Halfway through ''War and [=XPs=]'', he ends up in the unenviable position of having to replace Shojo in the role of Lord of Azure City and Miko in the role of Sapphire Guard ace. Though he's generally a better person than either of them, he struggles to fill their roles. As a leader, he fails to keep Azure City's nobility under control, to the point that they were sending assassins after him within minutes of him getting the job, and his honorable attitude means that he has to be talked out of doing something stupid multiple times. As a warrior, the gap between Miko is shown to be significant enough that he couldn't beat her while she was fallen, badly injured, missing one sword, and in the midst of a psychotic break, and this record has carried into multiple other fights (most notably, being nearly killed in one shot by Redcloak, who Miko soundly trounced). Commentary points out that while Hinjo is well-meaning and far from stupid or talentless, he's way out of his depth, which was necessary for the Order to take the central role in the arc that they do.

* AmbiguousSituation: [[spoiler:Her ultimate position in the afterlife is left deliberately unclear. She undeniably lost the favor of the Twelve Gods, she isn't seen among the other Azure City residents in Heaven, and Soon's last words for her suggest that she isn't going to the same place as her fellow paladins or her mount. Nonetheless, whether this means she stopped being Lawful Good, and if so, where she ended up on the spectrum afterward, is never fully elaborated on, and Burlew has remained mum on the subject. The closest thing being [[https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?309805-The-Order-of-the-Stick-Kickstarter-Reward-Collection&p=16248931#post16248931 a piece of Kickstarter backer art]] that showed her judgment, with the Bureaucratic Devas carting over whole filing cabinets of paperwork from just the past week]].

* AmbiguousSituation: [[spoiler:Her ultimate position in the afterlife is left deliberately unclear. She undeniably lost the favor of the Twelve Gods, she isn't seen among the other Azure City residents in Heaven, and Soon's last words for her suggest that she isn't going to the same place as her fellow paladins or her mount. Nonetheless, whether this means she stopped being Lawful Good, and if so, where she ended up on the spectrum afterward, is never fully elaborated on, and Burlew has remained mum on the subject--the closest thing being [[https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?309805-The-Order-of-the-Stick-Kickstarter-Reward-Collection&p=16248931#post16248931 a piece of Kickstarter backer art]] that showed her judgment, with the Bureaucratic Devas carting over whole filing cabinets of paperwork from just the past week]].

* AmbiguousSituation: [[spoiler:Her ultimate judgment in the afterlife is left deliberately unclear. She undeniably lost the favor of the Twelve Gods, she isn't seen among the other Azure City residents in Heaven, and Soon's last words for her suggest that she isn't going to the same place as her fellow paladins or her mount. Nonetheless, whether this means she stopped being Lawful Good, and if so, where she ended up on the spectrum afterward, is never fully elaborated on, and Burlew has remained mum on the subject]].

** In the O-Chul backstory, [[spoiler:she beats O-Chul in a hand-to-hand fight and casually snaps the neck of her recently impeached commander when he breaks the rules of an honorable duel by attacking a third party. Keep in mind that at that time, she was ''sixteen''--and at that point, she wasn't even trained as a paladin yet.]]

* TheChosenOne: A recurring claim of hers. She thinks that the gods have set aside a special destiny for her, and every step on that path, however circuitous, is in some way a fulfillment of it. This isn't the case--it's more of a coping mechanism for her troubled upbringing, lack of a support structure, and increasingly miserable straits, bolstered by an albeit well-founded arrogance.

** ''How the Paladin Got His Scar'' furthers this interpretation by revealing that at the time she was training as a paladin, the Sapphire Guard was a much nastier organization that considered KnightTemplar practices to be a matter of course, and that her commander and master, Gin-Jun, was, if anything, even worse than her. Given that the Guard decided to send her away so frequently, she would also have missed much of Hinjo and O-Chul's InternalReformist efforts. [[spoiler:Additionally, Miko killed Gin-Jun when he went mad and was excommunicated from the order, which saved the lives of O-Chul and Zhou, something O-Chul tentatively approved of.]] The narrative all but states that this was the exact same logic under which she acted with regards to Lord Shojo.

* EarlyBirdCameo: First shows up in "Start of Darkness" as one of the young paladins wiping out Redcloak and Right-Eye's home village. "How the Paladin Got His Scar" casts a glimpse of the battle from his perspective.

** In the O-Chul backstory, [[spoiler:she beats O-Chul in a hand-to-hand fight and casually snaps the neck of her recently impeached commander when he breaks the rules of an honorable duel by attacking a third party. Keep in mind that at that time, she was ''sixteen''.]]

** ''How the Paladin Got His Scar'' furthers this interpretation by revealing that at the time she was training as a paladin, the Sapphire Guard was a much nastier organization that considered KnightTemplar practices to be a matter of course, and that her commander and master, Gin-Jun, was, if anything, even worse than her. Given that the Guard decided to send her away so frequently, she would also have missed much of Hinjo and O-Chul's InternalReformer efforts. [[spoiler:Additionally, Miko killed Gin-Jun when he went mad and was excommunicated from the order, which saved the lives of O-Chul and Zhou, something O-Chul tentatively approved of.]] The narrative all but states that this was the exact same logic under which she acted with regards to Lord Shojo.

** ''How the Paladin Got His Scar'' furthers this interpretation by revealing that at the time she was training as a paladin, the Sapphire Guard was a much nastier organization that considered KnightTemplar practices to be a matter of course, and that her commander and master, Gin-Jun, was, if anything, even worse than her. [[spoiler:Miko killed Gin-Jun when he went mad and was excommunicated from the order, which saved the lives of O-Chul and Zhou, something O-Chul tentatively approved of.]] The narrative all but states that this was the exact same logic under which she acted with regards to Lord Shojo.

* HeroAntagonist: In the commentary, Rich wanted to know if he could pull off a[[invoked]] LawfulGood character who is an antagonist. Miko opposes the Order and hampers their progress, but she also helps the dirt farmers without hesitation, helps to organize an evacuation of the inn when the danger appears, goes back into the inn to make sure there were no stragglers, attacked the Order as harshly as she did because her information gathering had yielded information on their evil counterparts, their genuine bad behavior (the flumphs, Belkar's actions in the barbarian guild, the weasel thrown down the troll/ogre's gullet), and certain extenuating circumstances (the crown causing its wearer to register as strongly evil). Later on, she makes life difficult for the Order again by killing Shojo -- but again, she did it because she genuinely believed she was in the right to do so.

** In the O-Chul backstory, [[spoiler:she beats O-Chul in a hand-to-hand fight and casually snaps the neck of her recently impeached commander when he breaks the rules of an honorable duel by attacking a third party.]]

* FreudianExcuse: Reading between the lines suggests that Miko's parents may have been murdered in Azure City's extremely nasty noble power games (she reveals she was noble-born, but orphaned in an early strip). Given that ThereAreNoTherapists, and lacking any information on whether Miko's demonstrated lack of friends is her own fault or not (did she have a swelled head to start, or was she still traumatized by her life's events and rejected by her peers due to any issues that derived from this, causing her to double down on her devotion to her gods?), and the fact that her own organization dealt with her issues by constantly sending her far away, and Miko's actions start to make a lot more sense. Even her Flanderization makes sense in this assessment, in that she encounters the Order, who are Good, but not in a way her deeply rigid idea of Good could understand, and the fallout from this encounter and the fact that life seems to support them instead of smite them unhinges her even further.

* TheChainsOfCommanding: A more subtle example, but it's clear he had to do a lot of deception and tricks to rule Azure City properly despite the DecadentCourt while keeping the Gates safe. It's implied it wore him down and presumably why he refused [[spoiler:to come back to life when Miko killed him. Belkar figures he's happy in the ChaoticGood heaven.]]

* DirtyOldMan: Tells Hinjo in a bonus comic "not forget to knock some honey up" and offers some racy scrolls if there are any problems. [[spoiler:At Shojo's funeral]] Sangwaan comments that Shojo would often look at her breasts.
* FatalFlaw: His paranoia is a two-edged sword. It serves him well in avoiding assassinations by the city's daimyos, but [[spoiler:it also gets him killed, in a roundabout way. His elaborate scheme to get the Order to Azure City relies on deceiving the paladins about his true motives and staging a fake trial. Miko finally loses it when she learns the truth, and murders him. One thinks he would have done better to just send them an invitation though given how Kubota spoke of Elan as foreigners, it's possible it would've been something too suspicious to try directly.]]

* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:A cleric uses ''Resurrection'' on him and confirms the spell is working properly, but he stays dead. Belkar theorizes this is because Shojo is at peace in Chaotic Good {{heaven}}, that he would have likely died of old age soon anyway, and that he had no reason to return to the world just to face arrest and imprisonment. He's not coming back.]]

* ThePaladin: This is her class; warrior in service to the Twelve Gods. She's also an absolutely shining example of how ''[[{{Deconstruction}} not]]'' to play a paladin - she's self-righteous to the extreme, completely incapable of self-reflection or admission of fault (to the point of outright self-delusion), and just a {{jerkass}} in general.

* HealingHands: A paladin power.

* ThePaladin: This is her class; warrior in service to the Twelve Gods. She's also an absolutely shining example of how ''[[Deconstruction not]]'' to play a paladin - she's self-righteous to the extreme, completely incapable of self-reflection or admission of fault (to the point of outright self-delusion), and just a {{jerkass}} in general.

* ThePaladin: This is her class; warrior in service to the Twelve Gods.

* GeneralRipper: Cares more about slaughtering the hobgoblins than protecting the citizens he's supposed to be defending. Tellingly, when Miko asks how to differentiate good goblins from bad, (she's quite young during the story and still concerned about such things) Gin-Jun acknowledges that not all goblins are evil, but believes that the simple act of living in a goblin society and contributing to it in any way effectively makes them evil, and gives Miko an answer that amounts to "Kill them all and let the gods sort them out."

* VillainHasAPoint: While he thinks any innocent, Good-aligned hobgoblins that die alongside the more common Evil-aligned hobgoblins should just accept they "had it coming" for daring to be born into an Evil culture and being functional citizens in it, which is obsessive, ruthless, classist in the extremes... but he's also right that the Crimson Mantle, that contains the Dark One's scheme to blackmail the gods for equal goblin rights with a force of absolute chaos, is a universe-level threat that could leave everyone on the planet DeaderThanDead and even a ''war'' might be a small price to pay for its destruction. Sadly he's also completely deaf to when one of his subordinates offers the perfectly reasonable solution of asking the angel they planar bound to divine its actual location rather than blindly attack the place Gin himself is absolutely sure (and absolutely wrong) it is.

* FamousNamedForeigner: Creator/HayaoMiyazaki

'''Class:''' Monk/Paladin [[spoiler:(Fallen)]]\\
'''Alignment:''' LawfulGood, [[spoiler:until her Fall]]

* AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: In ''How The Paladin Got His Scar'', he tells Saha Kapoor a story about a seargent who, after catching a pair of bandits, took their borderline-feral child to his sister and with her help raised him to be a good person. Saha initially assumes that O-Chul was the seargent in that story, and as astounded when he tells her that he was the ''child''.

* InformedAbility: Supposedly the Sapphire Guard is a secret organization, but there are times where it's members would run around loudly proclaiming its name and mission, particularly in the prequel comics.