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#27 - Garland
(Final Fantasy IX)
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Garland is a creation of the inhabitants of Terra, a dying planet that assimilates other worlds to keep its crystal (read: life force) from dying out. When it attempts to assimilate the young planet of Gaia, the process fails when Gaia’s crystal rejects Terra’s, resulting in Terra being trapped inside the younger world.
His plan was to prevent the souls of Gaia’s dead from returning to the planet by way of the Iifa Tree, which would transform those souls into the corrupting Mist to incite war and force more souls through the tree, eventually allowing the dormant souls of Terra to claim Gaia as their own by inhabiting soulless puppets Garland created, called Genomes. However, when the Mist fails due to being harnessed as an energy source, he has a backup plan- create an “angel of death” to incite conflict and cause death and destruction for the end of conquering the planet.
Above all else, Garland is devoted to his mission. He has no other thoughts and desires besides his goal of replacing Gaia’s souls with Terra’s souls. His only regrets are his failures at carrying this out, his only fears are of powers that could prevent his plan from coming to fruition. In fact, it could be argued that as a creation of the people of Terra, he doesn’t have much in the way of free will. He is single-minded, paranoid, and does not tolerate failure.
We get a good sense of these character traits when he explains all this to Zidane, the protagonist. His worldview- that in order to live you must take the lives of others- ties in brilliantly to the main themes of life and death present in Final Fantasy IX, and go a long way towards explaining his motivations. Like all great villains, it doesn’t excuse or justify his actions, but you do kind of see his point.
Like Rufus, his time on screen is limited, but also like Rufus, he has a terrifying presence that follows him around wherever he goes. He is effortlessly able to destroy Zidane’s mind, when he refuses to take part in his plans as said angel of death, and he is easily able to take control of the most powerful airship in the game, the Invincible,and these are just two shows of his immense power.
His design- a withered old man clad in black armor- is somewhat decent, but not particularly original. And he also shares similarities with an earlier villain of the series: Zemus from Final Fantasy IV, who also wanted to clear out the world to make room for his own people by way of manipulating his servants on the planet, but I would argue Garland does it better.
Of course, he is eventually backstabbed and killed by his creation, Kuja, but he still manages to get the last laugh before he expires. Interestingly enough, after his death his disembodied voice guides the heroes through the final stages of the game, adding credence to my theory that when he was alive he wasn’t fully in control of his own actions.
All in all, much like Rufus, he may not be the biggest bad of this game, but if he had been, he would have filled the role quite nicely.
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