Discussion VisualNovel / LongLiveTheQueen

Talarist is a very polarizing figure in the fanbase - either a Base Breaker or a borderline case of it. People can get pretty worked up over how they see him - either against him or in defense of him. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm trying to cover all the bases of how he can be seen and both his inarguable good and bad qualities to avoid an Edit War. That's literally all. If you're curious: yes, I do think he kills Adair; no, I don't think he's a particularly great person (and the Dummied Out ending where he dumps an infertile Elodie for his pregnant mistress really does not do him any favors). And all the positive interpretations of Talarist that I've listed here are ones I have seen.

Tardy to the party on the response here, but the main thing is that there's no ambiguity on his responsibility for Adair's death and his real motives in pursuing Elodie's hand in marriage. Some people may choose to ignore the facts, but in the game itself, there's no interpretation involved. He is directly responsible for those events, we know because he reacts poorly to them if they don't work out in his favor. Whether he's nice or can grow to be a better person in his good ending with Elodie is a matter of his opinion, but that's irrelevant to his actual role and actions in the plot. It's not really covering both bases equally if one side is based on facts and the other side is Draco in Leather Pants. We have an entire Alternative Character Interpretation page for that.

Yes. You can end up with your family dead without racking up Cruelty.

I've looked through the game script and there's no ending where a cruel Elodie shows regret for killing off her family. There's a specific ending where she throws herself into religion if she has high Faith and Joslyn is killed, and a couple of slides talking about the aftermath of the rebellion in Merva, but otherwise it's the standard "Elodies' rise to power made her a cruel woman" epilogue.

Are the spoilers that obtrusive?

If this is over what I think it's over, then rewriting as something along the lines of "Elodie can send assassins to kill a powerful and unruly noble so as to prevent the deaths of thousands of people in a civil war" would convey the essence of the trope well enough without the need for spoiler tagging of any sort.

That said, I don't think the example in question is a particularly egregious case of unnecessary spoilering. I wouldn't have any qualms with how it's written either way.

Compare:

• One way to appease Ixion is to execute the noble responsible for the problem with them.
• One of the ways of appeasing Ixion is executing Brin.

and (the first example needs to be properly indented, but anyway)

• Elodie can prevent a civil war at one point by having a traitor poisoned.
  • Elodie can send an assassin to take out Arisse, should she either screw things up with the nobles or unwittingly help cause the death of Adair and receive reports that Arisse is attempting to start a civil war.

In both cases, I think that the first flows a lot better, which is why I made the edits in question. I could have been clearer with my edit reasons though.

I think being specific is better in this case, since there are other spoilers in that entry.

You mean the bare fact that a civil war is possible/there are problems with Ixion? Or the whole Shoot the Dog entry?

The first is not much of a spoiler. The second, I think, is irrelevant; we spoiler-tag Lucille-related stuff because Lucille's role in everything is a huge secret, but we don't have to be specific about "problems with Ixion" or "a possible civil war."

There's a debug console in the game which can be used to input cheat codes. official instructions here: http://hanakoforum.nfshost.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1691

for the steam save files, probably better to ask in the steam forums?

Probably the latter. (I must ask how, though, since even winning the duel with magic somehow turned everyone against her.)

How people react to Julianna (and Lumens in general) seems to depend on people's public opinion of Elodie in general as well as whether or not she defeats Togami with magic.

I think you have to avoid the problem with the guy on trial for murder, because if it goes wrong it starts a rumor about an evil Lumen conspiracy.

Looking back on my first win, I think that's indeed the case. Elodie in that one was high enough in Lumen skills that she could both sense his crystal and force his magic to rebound on him.