Some people earn power through their hard work, others are born into it. Sometimes power corrupts, but some people should never be given power to begin with. The history books are filled with monsters in human skin who used power to commit the most heinous acts the world had ever seen: Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, among many many others. Today's villain is a shining example of how much damage a mad man can do with political power: Luca Blight from Suikoden 2.
Taken from http://www.rpg-players.com/t168-suikoden-ii, originally posted by user Daniel.
A little backstory. First born child of King Agares Blight of the Highland Kingdom, Luca grew up in privilege. One fateful day, when he was but a child, his father traveled to the City-States of Jowston in an act of diplomacy. The young prince and the queen accompanied the King on what should have been a trip free of incidents. Jowston and Highland, however, had always been at war with one another, with each era of peace being little more than cease fires or armistices that lasted a few years at most. As the Royals returned to Highland, they were attacked by a gang of ruffians. Agares fled in fear, leaving behind his wife and son. Luca Blight watched in horror as his mother was raped by these raiders, counting the days until Agares finally sent a rescue team for his family. From that day forth, however, Luca Blight was never the same.
Traumatized by the event, Luca became more and more insane. When his mother died giving birth to Princess Jillia, Luca finally snapped. He blamed his father for what happened. When it was learned that the Mayor of Muse, capital of Jowston, hired those mercenaries that raped the queen, Luca began to hate the entire City-States. His heart growing ever darker and poisoned with hate, he began to concoct a plan...
A war. One so terrible it would eradicate all of Jowston off the map.
Knowing his country, especially his father, would not support a genocide without just cause, Luca Blight makes a horrifying plan: a false flag operation. Disguising his own troops as combatants from Jowston, he orders his men to kill all member of the Unicorn Brigade, a Highland division consisting entirely of young boys.
They were the equivalent of Boy Scouts, or Military School students, most of them no older than 16, probably fourteen or so. And Luca Blight had them killed. Only two managed to survive this massacre: the main hero of the game and his best friend.
With the excuse his needs, Luca Blight rallies Highland towards war. Wasting no time, he attacks Jowston's most vulnerable area: eastern Muse, a land of small, countryside villages. None of them are spared. Luca's forces torch every house, every field they come across. He himself has several citizens beg for mercy, forcing them to kneel before him, acting like animals, only to callously kill them afterwards regardless. No one is spared: women, the elderly, children, all die from Luca's attacks.
With eastern Muse completely decimated, Luca sets his sights on the capital itself. Knowing the City-States alliance to be fragile, Luca deduces that if Muse falls, the rest will crumble easily. For all intents and purposes, he was right. When Luca attacks Muse, his forces are pushed back somewhat by the combined efforts of the city's soldiers, an army of mercenaries, and knights from the Knightdom of Matilda, another City-State of Jowston. Luca, however, plans a surprise attack. With an inside agent opening the city walls at night, Luca easily takes Muse.
What he does to the citizenry is nothing short of horrendous, but that's for later...
It is not until he attempts to attack South Window, the City-State south of Muse, that Luca runs into trouble. The main hero of the game begins amassing an army to stand against Highland, and Luca's general, Solon Jhee, is beaten. Angered, Luca kills Solon, and promotes his latest agent, Jowy Atreides and the main hero's best friend, to general.
Knowing that his father could hold back his forces, and that many of Highland's generals were loyal to the king and not the prince, Luca Blight plans to murder his father. During Jowy's knighting, Luca has Agares' wine poisoned. With none to stand against him, Luca becomes the King of Highland. Now, all bets are off.
Luca moves the Beast Rune, a seal of immense power, to Muse, and sacrifices the city's ENTIRE CITIZENRY to the Rune. Those who somehow escape the carnage are hunted down and slaughtered.
With no choice, the hero and his forces concoct a plan to put an end to Luca once and for all. As the king led his forces to a surprise night raid on the hero's forces, the hero and his army surprise Luca with a barrage of arrows. Thousands of arrows are launched against the mad king, but he still stands. Eighteen of the finest soldiers in the Unification Army rush to kill Luca, but he manages to beat them back. As he attempted his escape, a second volley of arrows rains down on him, piercing his armor, draining his strength. With a last gasp, he laughs at the hero, bragging about the thousands of people he killed, calling himself "the true face of evil."
There is absolutely nothing I can say about Luca Blight: the man is a monster, through and through. He started a genocide over a childhood trauma. Not once did he regret his actions. Even his dying words are of him boasting how many people he killed. Thousands of people lost their lives to this madman, over a childhood trauma.
Yes, it is horrible watching your mother get raped. It is beyond words. But nothing in this world justifies genocide. Nothing ever, EVER justifies taking the lives of innocent people. That's part of why it is impossible to paint Luca Blight in anything but a negative light.
There are three things that make Luca Blight stand out. The first thing is how the game wastes no time showing that this guy is pure evil. Ten minutes into the game, just TEN minutes, and the guy is killing children from his own country, just to start a war. Ten minutes. Even Joffrey needed more time to be established as a maniac that needed to die!
The second thing that makes Luca Blight stand out among video game villains is just how out of place he is in the Suikoden world. Although Suikoden has never had a shortage of purely evil villains, like Neclord of Suikoden 1, they were always more like bit players who often took a back seat to the more morally ambiguous villains, like Barbarossa Rugner of Suikoden 1 or Luc from Suikoden 3. Luca Blight was front and center of his game, and he did so much damage that half the game is spent trying to stop him, while the other half is spent cleaning up the mess he made. No other villain in the franchise, or in most RPG's, can boast a similar thing.
How much damage did Luca Blight do? For one, the entire area of east Muse took years to recover. The city of Muse itself lost the majority of its citizens. The Knightdom of Matilda lost a lot of its prestige, South Window was left leaderless for a good while, etc. In fact, only one city, of seven total, was left unscathed, and THAT was the one to break away and become its own nation! Highland itself lost its independence, becoming the province of Higheast for the new Dunan Republic, the federalization of Jowston and Highland. Luca's madness destroyed his home nation and made the nation he hated stronger.
But the one thing that makes Luca stand out most? Guys like him really existed. Video game villains tend to be "safe" in the fact that they are fantastical: there's yet to be a mad scientist building a robot army to destroy the world, none of us can use magic so there's no fear of evil sorcerers, etc. But madmen in power have existed, and will continue to exist. We're seeing it today: ISIS, Al Qaeda, Joseph Kony, among many others. There are evil people out there who give no heed to the innocent lives they take. Some even aim to kill deliberately. Why? Because such is their evil.
And make no mistake: there is no better fitting word to describe someone who wishes to kill innocents, to ruin lives for the sake of some triviality. Evil, that's what they are. That's what Luca Blight was. And that is what makes him the sixth best video game villain.
The summary:
Name: Luca Blight
Type of Villain: The Caligula, The Vengeance Seeker, The Conqueror
Greatest Crime: Killing his country's child soldiers in a false flag operation.
Current Status: Dead.
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