NEMESIS
THE TIES TO SEYMOUR
Ah, Seymour. In many respects, his story has as much of the fairytale to it as Yuna’s. Picture it: Yuna, the bridge between Yevon and the Al Bhed…and Seymour, child of Jyscal Guado and his human wife. What a lovely match! Surely such a marriage would result in world peace? And then if their children could pair off with some Ronsos or one of those charming musicians in Macalania Forest, Spira would never find itself at war again!

My sarcasm aside, I view Seymour as Yuna’s nemesis because they have so many parallels that make them nearly equal in strength as well as social standing. In Maester Seymour we come upon a perfect, and ruthless, opportunist. His ascent through the ranks of Yevon is fueled by the darkness of his childhood, the horrors he was forced to confront. There’s nothing like hatred to spark ambition. Seymour’s encounters with death, with the true terror of Sin and the destruction that it brings, all came about on a smaller scale. However, this didn’t serve to lessen their impact; rather, it magnified the pain. Exiled from society for their own safety, Seymour and his mother lived their days locked in the ruins of Baaj temple. Seymour knew only silence and despair, from which his mother’s love could not wholly protect him. And while both Yuna and Seymour became well acquainted with the concept of sacrifice…they saw it from completely different angles. For Seymour, sacrifice meant his mother’s choice to die, in order to become an aeon powerful enough to propel her son to great heights. It was oriented around his own well-being, a hope for his own success. This nurtured the idea that the sacrifice of others is necessary for your own personal gain. For Yuna, the great sacrifice Braska made was not only for herself, for the future of the little daughter left at home, but for an entire world. The monumental difference between these two facets of sacrifice is what distinguishes Yuna’s idea of a liberated Spira from Seymour’s visions of the same goal.

Circumstances turned one child into a destroyer, the other into a savior. One grew to be compassionate to others, and one grew to use compassion as a tool against others. The slightest domino fall can have unbelievable results.