zelos wilder, chosen of tethe'alla.

watchtower

it's worth noting, since one of the few major deviations in the tales of symphonia storyline centers around zelos, that he's from the alternate path accessed by developing an extremely high relationship with the protagonist's dad, kratos. in this version, zelos betrays the team and allows the villains to make off with colette (main female character) in what's likely an attempt at suicide-by-police, so to speak. he proceeds to battle them in place of what would normally be two moderately strong but nameless angels, and he's killed there. as he bleeds out, he tells them where colette's been taken and insists they save her, then mentions that once he's dead, his sister seles can be chosen instead of trapped in the abbey. that's not why he's dying - 'just a bonus'. then he asks them to destroy his cruxis crystal and dies on the floor like a true sadsack.

this is an alternative to what's considered the 'main path', in which he still supposedly betrays them but leaves with the baddies instead, then is revealed to have been fake-betraying them in order to get a crucial material called aionis so that lloyd could wield the eternal sword.

As hard as he often tries to play the bad-guy role, Zelos Wilder is pretty much a textbook anti-hero archetype. He's jaded and cynical and full to the brim with self-destruction, and as far as most of the people he meets would argue he's also extremely narcissistic, lecherous, and just plain dislikeable. Much of that is a well-built mask, but how much of it is Zelos and how much of it is the Zelos he wants you to see is often harder to discern than you might expect.

From the very first moment you see Zelos, he's surrounded in a swarm of (by remastered GCN graphics standards) highly attractive women. Despite that, he proceeds to hit on every single girl in the group, even after soulless!Colette practically suplexes him right there in the nobles' courtyard. That, I'd say, is a pretty accurate depiction of the behavior you can expect from him on an average day. This is a guy who has made it clear that he would hit on absolutely anyone with female anatomy, regardless of their age, race (which is actually a Thing, in a decently racist world like Tethe'alla), or receptiveness. There's legit a game dynamic where if you make him your active character and talk to women, literally every single woman in the combined worlds will find him charming enough to give him an item or some money.

This includes the elderly, people in the slums who legit can't afford food, and actual little girls. It's ridiculous and disconcerting. An interesting thing to note there is that this also works in Sylvarant, so no matter what he may say about people ~only liking him because he's the Chosen~, he can apparently charm the pants off the ladies in a world in which he's basically a nobody. But true to the Chivalrous Pervert trope, he's not all bad. His relationship with Sheena is a good example: Though he harasses and hits on her into forever, when Shit Gets Real he actually seriously has her back, even going so far as to be the only one who really knows how to.

Meanwhile, there's one more thing that's blatant and in-your-face from the moment you meet him: Broheim's decked out in pink. Coming from the ladies' man of Tethe'alla, that's a pretty bold move, and it actually is a pretty good example of his self-confidence in general. Because that's a big thing, with Zelos. He hates himself on a fundamental level, but at the same time, he's basically the polar opposite of insecure. He knows he's hot, he knows he's smooth, he knows he has a very particular set of skills - you get the point. Zelos has a pretty solid black-and-white viewpoint on his good points and his bad points, and his confidence in those good points never really wavers.

Meanwhile, he's also a pretty good example of the 'Have I Mentioned That I'm Heterosexual Today?' trope. The absolute first thing he says to the main dude protags is that he's ~not interested in talking to guys~, and a lot of his lines throughout the story smell a lot like denial and overcompensation.

Despite being so completely popular and charming and whatnot according to the general populace, Zelos is absolutely the butt of most of the cast's jokes. If someone's going to get slapstick-punched, tripped, or hit with a runaway weapon, it's Zelos. If the group is discussing how the enemy wants Colette, someone's bound to make a 'Can't they just take Zelos instead?' joke. It's actually pretty endless, and he usually shrugs it off pretty well but sometimes it manages to get under his skin. One example coming to mind is an after-battle exchange where Zelos, in celebration, says, "No one can stand against the great Zelos!" and Lloyd says, "You mean no one can stand you." And, sounding hella deflated, Zelos is like, "That was seriously harsh."

In a sense, he partially brings it on himself by how frequently he makes a point to be overdramatic or flamboyant, but even so, it's objectively not fair how incredibly often they target him. If there's a Zelos joke to be made, even by some stretch, it happens. Good thing he's not insecure, right?

Next, we have mood whiplash. Zelos is the crown ruler of mood whiplash. He can be having a totally nonchalant conversation and whip out something like, "I guess we do have a lot in common. (...) Neither of us should've been born." All with this utterly casual face. That actually happens in at least 75% of the Z-Skits he features heavily in - anytime there's a skit which reveals his backstory. His backstory is never delivered with any kind of sadness or distress on his face, even though it's actually pretty fucked up overall. If that's not bad enough, just wait until you try to have a deep and serious chat with him. If it's about your issues, there's a chance he can make it happen, though he might spew some bullshit to lighten the mood. If it's about his issues though...

Take for example an event that... actually didn't happen for him, but it happened for our incoming Lloyd, who's from what I'll call the 'good end' with Zelos as his BFF. They're on Lloyd's balcony and Zelos actually opens up about a lot of the super shitty aspects of being the Chosen - being trapped in your own house half the time, eating cold food because it took so long to be tasted for poison, etc - and Lloyd's basically like oh shit man that sucks and Zelos is like (paraphrased) "yeah, it would... IF IT HAD ACTUALLY HAPPENED, THAT WAS ALL BULLSHIT JK JK". It wasn't, it was 100% fact, but Zelos can't handle true sympathy or god forbid pity, and he's not so hot at serious moments revolving around himself either - so he did the first kneejerk thing that came to mind in order to diffuse the moment.

As you may have picked up on by now, the Zelos most people see is a compilation of varying dramatic faces he uses to mask what's underneath. Really, there's so much more to him than most people will ever know. Especially his perceptiveness - what is often seen as flippancy is really a cleverly-crafted response in order to achieve some sort of desired result, like the casual cajoling that got him yelled at after Sheena's summon spirit died... Cajoling that actually was intended to help her move on, because what could she possibly gain from wallowing in it? Most people don't think nearly as much about his words and actions as he does - and that's how he likes it.

Zelos is pretty much always smiling. Even when he's being morbid he's smiling, aside from his moments of dramatic complaint which are more often than not played for laughs. For this reason, he's absolutely a Stepford Smiler, struggling to hide his truly fucked-up past beneath his elaborate mask of assholery and lechery. It takes a certain kind of person to crack through that - someone willing to say 'cut that shit out, I'm serious' and actually get him to listen. That person is Lloyd, in the good end. In the bad end, he has nobody. Which actually explains a whole lot about where he ends up.

So picture, for a second, knowing from age 6 that one day you'd be expected to voluntarily sacrifice yourself for rest of the world. This isn't voluntary by any means, but you don't even dare complain about it because all at once the world is looking to you for their eventual salvation. It's kind of fucked up, tbh. But unlike Colette, Zelos grew up in a world of intricate politics- his father, the previous Chosen One of his world, committed suicide, and his mother was murdered in front of his eyes when he was about eight, all because of the lives forced upon them both by the Chosen lineage. His mom's last words to him were "You should never have been born", after which he decided that being the Chosen One was the only reason his life had value at all.

There is no separation in Zelos’s mind from himself and the chosen. He says there is here and there but the words are half-hearted and spoken like the forgotten dreams of a kid. It’s the tone you get when you hear a college student smile and say, “Yeah, I wanted to be a doctor but I’m not good enough.” You could very well be a doctor, but you don’t see it in yourself. Zelos could very well be more than the chosen, but he doesn’t see it in himself.

Zelos is absolutely guilty of the OBFUSCATING STUPIDITY trope (aka playing stupid). He's highly intelligent, skilled at manipulation, and has severe self-loathing stemming from some severe Parental Abandonment, not to mention being a triple agent who's playing the party, Cruxis, and the Renegades against each other to ensure he's got a shot of joining whoever's the victors. He hides all of this under a facade of being a happy-go-lucky pervert who seems to have made it his life's mission to hit on every female in existence and antagonize the party. That's part of why it works so well, though. He's brilliant at being an idiot, and not just that, but choosing how much of an idiot to be to each of the groups he's triple-teaming so that the party suspects no foul play and Cruxis and the Renegades only expect the expected foul play but not to be double-crossed themselves. How many people could keep that shit up?? Legit.

And then part of his underlying fuckery came right on the package. His name originates from the greek god of envy/rivalry/zeal. But what does Zelos envy? Zelos envies everything. One thing he envies a lot, as little objective sense as it might make, is the love people receive and also the pain they seem to bear. Zelos grows up with a lot of material possessions. This makes material things unimportant and you’ll notice he only mentions his riches when he’s paying special mind to being a complete ass. What does he have to be jealous of? What does Zelos mention? Zelos mentions how lucky certain characters are for having friends/family that love them. Why does he do that? Because his family doesn’t love him. More on this in 'flaws'.

• fafnir, his devil's arm dagger
  
• the chosen's orb, aka his cruxis crystal
  
• a couple of assorted gels
  
• his clothes please and thanks
  

• ELEMENTAL MAGIC.
  He uses elemental magic all throughout the game in seamless conjunction with his swordsmanship. Though some artes are stand-alone techniques you'd expect from the token mage, others (like Lightning Blade) involve active swordplay as well.


• WHITE MAGIC.
  Or whatever you want to call healing spells. He has two primary ones - First Aid, which can heal just one individual, or /Healing Stream, which can heal multiple people in one concentrated area. This, like the elemental magic, consumes TP in-game. I was gonna translate that in an RP context to physical energy, with too much of it tiring him out.


• ANGEL BULLSHIT.
  Thanks to his lovely bit of turnabout, he now has his Cruxis Crystal unlocked to seraphim abilities. This includes a shiny set of orange energy-looking wings and a set of light-elemental artes exclusive to angels, like Angel Feathers or Judgment Ray, the former of which is localized damage and the latter of which is a bit more Rain of Angelic Death esque.


• SWORDSMANSHIP.
  He's bitchin' with a sword. Better than Lloyd at times, and Lloyd has two. He can also keep up with Lloyd in combat with just a dagger, which is what he has now.


• FUCKIN PARKOUR.
  This is mostly seen in the anime (where they actually have the graphics budget to make it happen), but he does shit like spring 10 feet into the air from a lounging position, kick people on each side of him via midair splits, and jump off a 2-story rooftop easily - all within a 15 second span.


• AMAZING AT WOMEN??
  Like I said up above, he can talk to legit any woman in canon and get some kind of gift. It's going to confuse him to no end that this doesn't seem to work in Hadriel. Still, he's charming as shit even without his RPG casanova bullshit.

• LUST. He has it, in a big way. Meaningless flings are one of the many ways he drowns any actual coherent thoughts.

BERSERK BUTTONS. He has a couple. Shitty parents, for one. He's SO MAD at Kratos for the shit he put Lloyd through, and HOW DARE he turn his blade on his son after making Lloyd shoulder the burden of his mistakes and UGH. He also gets really pissed off when people try and throw pity parties. He never throws any, so they don't have any right to either.

GUILT COMPLEX. You’ve got a guy whose father killed himself when he was very young (around 8-9 years old). Not long after that his mom dies too. Honestly it’s his fault that they both died. His dad was in love with another woman, a half-elf at that. He probably tried his hardest to be there for her and to love her despite the problems his rank and her race brought. But then there was Seles. Seles was a child of love and he still killed himself. Why? Because of Zelos’s father’s rank (and, also, Zelos’s future rank) Seles could be nothing to him. Not family, not even a child he visits on occasion. Not to mention that she had elf blood in her too. Nothing could be done for the family he wanted because of the family he was obligated as chosen to have. Zelos’s father’s suicide propels him quickly into what would later become a constant blame game with himself. Before it was probably just soft doubt. Neglectful parents are always going to have effects on the kids but a parent who commits suicide tops out the neglectful scale. A few years later you’ve got Mylene killed by the very estranged lover of his father—somebody who did this all to get Seles a rank. Zelos’s rank. Quid pro quo Zelos sees himself at fault for the death of his parents and, by extension, Seles’s future life of isolation in the abbey.

COMBO: INFERIORITY SUPERIORITY COMPLEX and SAD CLOWN tropes. The IFC trope means they mask their flaws by putting on a show of being just so much better than everyone else - which he does. When he's not outright saying he's prettier, smarter, or better with women, he's subtly tearing down others' confidence in those same subjects, like telling Lloyd he 'makes Zelos look good!'. Meanwhile, the Sad Clown trope means they mask their flaws by constantly making jokes. Really this guy just has a fuckton of coping mechanisms in order to keep every single person away from his meaty emotional bits. (Also, it's kind of fucked up to think of the fact that the Sad Clown of the group is also the Butt Monkey.)

DEATH SEEKER. His death is legit the JRPG version of suicide by cop. He thinks he's pretty much worthless, and he put himself in a position for the main team to finally see that too, even the ones who truly believed in him deep down. He wanted them to think he was scum, to push them away so nobody would miss him and he could die free of guilt. He wanted to let Seles take his position as Chosen, but even more than that, he wanted to just... be free. To give up on trying, finally. Because all the self-worth he had left was based on the fact that he at least handled his shitty life decently, and then here comes Colette who has it way worse and handles it infinitely better. Even in the good end, Zelos is scared of not being worthless. It's what he's based his entire life around, having no real worth outside of his rank as Chosen. It's a thing.