LIGHT
HER ROLE AS ICON & MESSIAH
Admit it. Yuna is something of a rock star in Spira. The summoners are the closest thing to celebrities, after the hierarchy of maesters and the statues of past saviors that stand in rows within the temples. Yuna is widely believed to be her father’s successor, the next to bring about a decade of peace. She is both their icon and their messiah. The people look to her as a heroine and yet also, she is a means by which they can achieve an end to their suffering. In other words, Yuna plays many roles. She is a source of light, of hope, but also hope itself. Many eyes are watching her, tracking failures and successes. Many are depending on her, and through it all, Yuna must smile and wave as though she had just been crowned the Harvest Queen and the hardest thing she had to face was riding in a float for a small-town procession down Main Street.

Being a summoner means grinning and bearing it. Death is what awaits you, always there behind the prospect of glory and eternal fame. Whatever your motivation was to become a summoner, you always know what will become of you. You will make your journey before an audience of thousands. In the end, you will die for those thousands, give your life for that audience. You must play your part. You are their distraction from the misery of daily life, the ray of sunshine that they look for even as the shadow of Sin darkens their lives. Yuna knows all of this. She is their light. When she wants nothing more but to sit down and weep, she must instead straighten her spine and blink those tears away. She maintains her performance with skill, with an amazing degree of control.

Yuna hears the whispers and knows the thoughts of the crowd. She knows what is expected of her, what the people are praying for. Part of her role as a summoner, and a very well-known summoner, is to have a mega-watt smile prepared in the face of her own death.