YMMV / First Sword Chronicles

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Divine Empire a bastion of peace and prosperity that must be preserved or is it a war-mongering menace that needs to be put down for the good of the world?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Amy's courage and loyalty make her more popular than the leads with some.
• Jerkass Woobie: Michael before his Character Development, and to a lesser extent Miranda as well
  • Princess Cati behaves harshly her two younger sisters, but she reveals to Michael that she's just doing her best to hold the family and the kingdom together after her mother's death.
• Magnificent Bastard: Quirian comes witin a gnat's whisker of bringing down the Empire without actually lifting a finger (the only thing he does himself, retrieving the sword Semper Fidelis, is almost irrelevant to the plot); but by simply whispering in the right ears and planting the right suggestions he gets almost everything he wants.
• The Scrappy: Miranda in Faith and Virtue due to her arrogance and attempt to send Octavia away for her own good.
• Wangst: Michael indulges in this from time to time. Amy usually manages to snap him out of it.
• The Woobie:
  • Octavia was born to a mother who hated her (because of the manner in which she was conceived), was ostracised by everyone in her village because of her half-Aestival nature, then brought to Eternal Pantheia by Quirian where she was ostracised by the Lost for her unwarlike nature. Miranda is the first person to really show her kindness.
  • Amy as well. She saw one of her best friends kidnapped in front of her and thought that her other best friend blamed her for it; so she went down to the ocean kingdom where she was treated like a pariah for being half-human and straight up told that she would neither achieve her dreams of knighthood nor inherit her rightful lands and title. Then she goes back on land to find that her mother went mad from loneliness in her absence before being murdered. Michael gives her a hug when they meet again and she badly needs it.