Kennilos Corner

Flamboyant and imprudent, Furina lives for the thrill of the courtroom, often speaking in a manner peppered with bravado and drama. She is impatient and has a childlike temper, and she will occasionally make judgments that she doesn’t mean, which Neuvillette frequently has to control while conducting a trial to avoid complications. While she enjoys being in the spotlight, she only does so when it is focused at her positively, breaking down in complete shambles should something go out of plan and will try to save face at the first possible opportunity.

It is later revealed that Furina was not the true Hydro Archon. Focalors, the successor of Egeria, had separated her divinity from her body and spirit; Furina was the Archon’s body and spirit but had no powers. Focalors used Furina as a way to deceive the Heavenly Principles in order to prevent the result of the prophecy regarding Fontaine from becoming a permanent reality. Furina was tasked with maintaining the guise of an Archon and cursed by Focalors so that she could not die nor pursue her own happiness so long as Focalors lived. As a new “human,” she had difficulty taking the role but eventually mastered it. Aware of the prophecy that would doom Fontaine, Furina assumed the role of Hydro Archon for 500 years; while she was successful in this task, it wore her down mentally so that she suffered from severe self-esteem issues and paranoia, as shown when the Traveler convinced the court audience that she was a fraud in her trial.

Despite being undying due to being cursed by Focalors, Furina remained fearful of situations that seemed deadly, as she pleaded the Knave to not kill her during an attack for the Hydro Gnosis, and was hesitant in dipping her hand into Primordial Seawater to prove whether she is the Hydro Archon during a trial.

Upon being freed of her role as an acting Archon, Furina had returned to her normal self, but without the burdens associated with her role. While she is still flamboyant and dramatic at times, she now displays a softer, humbler and insecure side of herself. At first, she struggled coming to terms with her role being over, believing that her newfound freedom meant that she was no longer needed, and had trouble reaching out for the people closest to her while she was the Archon, such as Neuvillette and Clorinde.

She also planned to retire from the stage despite her love of acting, finding it difficult to take on different identities after having to sustain such a heavy burden for centuries. After being comforted by the Traveler, Neuvillette, and Navia as well as getting invited to a party by Clorinde, she realizes that her journey of self-discovery means that she no longer has to live her life in solitude. Eventually, she is able to regain the courage to move forward and go back onstage for the first time since her abdication, and learns to accept her identity not as the Hydro Archon, but simply as herself, culminating in her receiving a Hydro Vision.

Although Furina does tend to give people the impression of one prone to wandering thoughts and only tangential concern for the rules, she does have strict standards — in certain circumstances, anyway, especially before or after performances. Everything must be to her satisfaction, be it the make or color of the props, the timing of the brightening and dimming of the lighting, or the pace and rhythm of the music.

As such, sharing the stage with a god is not some shortcut to glory, but one paved with blood, sweat, and tears, to the point where even the stories of a hard-to-please superstar prima donna fond of shows and with theatrical swagger to spare has reached even the lowliest street stalls.

Indeed, there was once a famous troupe that won the chance to perform with her, and pretended to agree to her exacting demands, only to default to methods they were more accustomed to during real rehearsals and performance prep.

The troupe director was confident in this method, believing that given Furina’s personality, she would be most willing to back down on said demands if she were appropriately flattered and saw that everything was already complete and thus too late to change — a most excellent way to save effort and trouble.

But when the director began moving their props to the Opera Epiclese, he found Furina there, directing another troupe as they set up the stage rigging.

“Why, hello. You didn’t seem interested in my opinions, so I arranged to perform with a different troupe.”

The director was stunned. He had planned for Furina to discover the “flaws” in her view only after setup was complete.

But he could already tell that the stage sections that had been constructed precisely in accordance with her directions were significantly superior. Ordinary audience members couldn’t necessarily tell, of course, but to professionals, the difference was always in the details, and these were obvious at a glance. Still, this director was unwilling to simply turn back, criticizing Furina for not adhering to the spirit of contractual obligation by not informing them beforehand of her contingency arrangements.

Furina would not let this villain cast the first stone, instead scrunching her face into an expression of disbelief.

“You don’t really think I’m that much of a gullible fool, do you? Guards! Send them on their way.”

Round and round the interminable performance went, the day of the curtain call ever beyond reach, but so long as the prophecy loomed, the tale of this god must go on. Though Fontainians found no real reason to doubt Furina over the years, she knew that the collapse of trust could begin with a single crack. No matter how small, once it appeared, it would be irreversible.

And the consequences of being exposed would be to reduce all her long years of work to dust, to allow Fontaine to fall — that was unconscionable!

So she did her best to laugh loudly when she should be glad, and weep bitterly when she should grieve, and display the divine bearing of an Archon when it was time to show off, all without fail, all without rest.

She knew that this was a performance. If she could endure until the danger had passed, she could finally take off her mask and regain the freedom to express her feelings. Yet, she slowly began to realize that the godly role she was playing was eating into her.

A horrifying doubt began to creep up on her — how should she react when glad, if not to laugh loudly?

Perhaps she was once a girl who did not much enjoy laughter. Perhaps she had once been the sort to give up on herself at the first sign of difficulty, but such emotions had already slipped away, bit by bit.

Those in the performance arts often say that one must become a character to play them. From that perspective, Furina’s performance as the Hydro Archon has been flawless. Her painstaking perseverance produced the perfect product.

But no one has ever spoken of what might transpire once the last light had dimmed, for to them, the stage is fleeting. For one such as Furina, who has acted for far too long, even the path back offstage has faded into dust, buried by the sands of time.