Alethea

Forbidden lands lie beyond this marker The following article contains story spoilers!

Alethea
(アリシア, Arishia?, lit. Alicia)
Character information
Chapter	Middle Ages: The Lord of Dark
Affiliation	Kingdom of Lucrece
Occupation	Princess
Physical description
Race	Human
Gender	Female
Hair color	Violet
Other information
Designer	Kiyofumi Katō
Japanese Voice Actor	Miho Arakawa
English Voice Actor	Nicolette Chin

Princess Alethea, known as Alicia in Japan, is a major character from the The Lord of Dark chapter. She is the princess of the Kingdom of Lucrece, who is set by her father, the King of Lucrece, to marry the winner of a tournament.

Profile

Appearance

Alethea is a young woman with long violet hair wearing a golden tiara. She wears a long light violet gown with golden details and a white dress underneath.

Personality

When first encountered, she is shown to be very emotional and caring for Oersted and those around her. However, after being kidnapped and waiting so long for him to rescue her, she proved herself as rash, ignorant and gullible as the rest of her kingdom. She easily believes Streibough's lies and, like everyone else, refuses to listen to any explanation or reason, instead holding Oersted responsible for, effectively, taking too long to save her. That said, unlike the rest of her kingdom, she has some capacity of realizing her wrongs, as her spirit begs Akira to save Oersted from himself.

Background

During The Lord of Dark

Alethea is present along with her father, the King, during the tournament. The tournament is won by Oersted after defeating Streibough, winning the right to marry the princess. Alethea says that he is really strong and that she is happy to become his queen. With the marriage set, the King decides to have a feast. Oersted then encounters Alethea at the castle's balcony, where she states her love for him and how she believes in him more than anyone else. The couple is then attacked by a Dragnon, which is defeated by Oersted. However, the Lord of Dark appears and kidnaps Alethea, taking her to his lair at the Archon's Roost.

While being held captive, she is rescued by Streibough, who had faked his death after the defeat of the Lord of Dark by Oersted and the party in order to reach her first without anyone knowing. There, he convinces Alethea that Oersted never searched for her and that he was the only one who cared. This evil manipulation led Alethea to fall in love with him. After Oersted arrives at Virtue's Reward of the Archon's Roost and kills Streibough, she emerges from the statue of the Lord of Dark, where she commits suicide by stabbing herself with a dagger after discovering Streibough's corpse.

Final Chapter

She appears as a ghost in the Trial of Heart, being the last ghost encountered appearing after obtaining the Guts and Glory Glove. When her mind is read, she begs the party to stop Oersted, and transports them outside to the courtyard of Seat of the Betrayers, formerly as Lucrece Castle.

Gallery

Alethea as she appears in the Holy Dungeon mobile game

Promo art depicting The Lord of Dark for the remake

LINE sticker for remake

LINE sticker for remake

Trivia

• Odio can use an attack called Saint Alethea, which seems to summon Alethea's ghost to deal damage to one party member.
  • The attack's name seems to imply that Oersted, even when he claims the Lord of Dark, doesn't blame Alethea for anything that happened to him, as she was only a victim of Streibough's manipulative actions.
  • Alternatively, it can also imply that Oersted decided to make a mockery of Alethea's image as the ultimate payback of rejecting him after all he's done and ultimately driving him to be the Lord of Dark he is. It is shown with how in the attack, Alethea's image quickly degraded from a beautiful woman into a horrifying skull hag. This is only possible because during the battle, Oersted is too deep in his hatred towards humans and his misery that he only remembers Alethea at her worst. It's only in the shorter ending if the player decides to directly kill Oersted to reveal that his human side, when not overly clouded with hatred, still loved Alethea.
  • In Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, the Saint Alethea move is used by both S. Odio and Oersted, the former using the move in a similar way Purity of Odio does, except it damages half of the party rather than a single party member. Oersted's version of the move is notable, as rather than being a powerful attack, it is instead a healer move and Alethea's image doesn't degrade. This further supports that Oersted, when not blinded by hatred, does genuinely love Alethea.
• The item Alice Biscuit is named after her, being one of the strongest healing items in the Lord of Dark chapter.
• In the Trial of Heart, Alethea's sprite is seen covering her face as if crying. This can imply that Alethea realizes that she has unwittingly done the greatest damage to Oersted, dooming the realities and is ashamed of her actions.
• The unappealing scenes involving her resulted in her being grouped with two others from different Square-before-Enix-merger games, Yoyo from Bahamut Lagoon, and Milelle from Final Fantasy Legend/Makai Toshi SaGa, the collective name being "The Three Great She-Devils of Square(スクウェア三大悪女)" coined by frustrated Japanese male players in the 90s.
  • In SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions, the enemy team "Lady Power" has a trio of female demons, all named after these three, although two of them are spelt as Alicia and Jojo.
  • Both Alethea and Yoyo are condemned by the fans for dumping the protagonist (respectively, Oersted and Byuu) for an antagonist (respectively, Streibough and General Palpaleos), effectively being responsible for netorare. However, unlike Yoyo who never faces any consequences nor feels any guilt for dumping Byuu (aside possibly losing Palpaleos), Alethea both faces horrifying consequences for dumping Oersted (namely, him becoming Odio) and feels guilty for Oersted turning into Odio. Also, unlike the universally hated Yoyo, Alethea has some defenders, many of which rose after the release of the remake and the crossover event with Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, the former which makes her guilt for her actions turning Oersted into Odio more explicit, and the latter in which she does not dump Oersted at all, instead sticking by his side to the bitter end even after Streibough kills her and after Oersted becomes Odio, with those defenders, while still not considering Alethea innocent, putting more blame on Streibough for Alethea dumping Oersted.
• In Holy Dungeon, Alethea is depicted in her sprite and artwork carrying the dagger she commits suicide with.
• Alethea is 20 years old. Evidence to that is the minister's recounting of the queen's kidnapping and the Lord of Dark's death at Hasshe's hands, which happened 20 years ago. In the recounting, the minister states that the queen was "heavy with sole child", in other words, pregnant.
  • Oersted is only one of the known contenders for her hand to be confirmed to be in the same ballpark as Alethea. This is because Oersted's admiration of Hasshe implies he grew up with stories of Hasshe's heroics. Meanwhile, Streibough, while implied to be in the same ballpark as Alethea due to his history with Oersted, doesn't really have anything to explicity confirm it, Watt of Nabe, a father, is confirmed to be much older than her, and there's no information on Armstrong, let alone that would confirm his age.