I NEED A BETTER HOBBY.
I'll admit, half of this essay has been sitting in my headspace for a while. Like. Uh. The week after I apped Colette. I just never got around to writing it all down until now, after flailing at various people about Colette and how I see her. I THINK I AM DIFFERENT TO 99.999% OF FANDOM. I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS A GOOD THING OR NOT :/
When we first meet Colette, she's sweet, a little ditzy and selfless. I'll admit up front, the sweet, pure healer type is a videogame trope and that very often there's no real reason for them to be that way as that's just how they are. However, the first clues we get that Colette is a subversion of this trope is when your party of two teenagers and one pre-teen goes out to fight monsters on the way to the Temple of Martel. Colette's not a healer nor is she a magic user at all; Colette is one of your heavy hitters. As a tangential point, the primary healer is Raine whose sharp tongue and ruthless pragmatism puts her far outside the pure naive healer stereotype and the secondary healers are Zelos, Kratos and Regal -- all male.
As the game progresses, it also begins to deconstruct the pure selfless sacrifice stereotype. Traditionally this stereotype would fit into the "too good for this sinful Earth" trope, and it's considered a good and noble thing. Tales of Symphonia avoids this entirely. In fact, ToS highlights that this behaviour is fundamentally destructive: by isolating and sacrificing yourself, you hurt the ones who you left behind and never asked for help. The characters develop from being alone and afraid to make contact with others to believing in each other and, moreover, believing in their personal messiah who convinced them they had value, Lloyd. This is because Lloyd, unlike the others, isn't trapped in the cycle of self-sacrifice and destruction, and so can identify that this isn't how life should be.
Colette, in particular, is really bad at falling into the trap of self-sacrifice. In fact, Colette's self-destructive tendencies when it comes to self-sacrifice are the catalyst for Lloyd's character development. As Lloyd talks about a future that Colette at that point knows she cannot share, she doesn't tell Lloyd that she's going to die. Instead, she lets him talk, ignoring the pain that his words cause her, because they make him feel better. So, when Lloyd realises that to be the Chosen is to lose one's soul and essentially die, he realises that his talk about a life after Colette becomes an angel was not only not possible, but incredibly hurtful towards Colette. I don't think he really realised how alone Colette was until then.
To be the Chosen is to live a very isolated life, and it's an institutionalised isolation. Zelos, the Chosen for the twin world, says the following in a discussion with Lloyd:
It's true. The Chosen is respected in name only. We're imprisoned in our own homes, always eating meals that are cold from being carefully tested for poison. Even our marriage partners are decided from the moment we're born.
He later remarks bitterly after Lloyd expresses surprise at this:
Chosens are treated by everyone like some kind of strange, inhuman creatures, separated from our parents as children and attacked by thugs...When will our suffering end?!
Zelos is the most vocal of the two Chosen about their situation, but Colette experienced the same alienation and dehumanisation. There's a few off-hand remarks, about how Colette has only read books written in the Angelic language (a mostly dead language) since she was a child, or that she's never been swimming before, and in the manga, that she's never celebrated her birthday with her friends. It's also implied in that the main party think it is entirely likely that Colette is not human at all, but instead that her real father is an angel. Colette's quite aware of all of this.
During the course of the game, Colette attempts to complete her Journey of Regeneration and when she is almost successful, the party follow Lloyd's lead and decide that this isn't such a crash-hot idea. The remainder of the game for Colette is her struggling with the realisation that the one thing she was born to do, she isn't doing. Colette was born to release the seals to restore the mana flow for Sylvarant ... at the expense of the twin world of Tethe'alla. The longer that she spends not doing this, the world begins to die and her people are put in what are, essentially, concentration camps to be experimented on in a truly horrific process. She wonders if the misfortunes that she suffers are a form of punishment for not completing her task and that because she has not completed her Journey, she has failed her world and has no real purpose.
In the final dungeon, the party member with the highest affection towards Lloyd is possessed by Mithos while the others go through a series of trials facing their weaknesses and overcome them with Lloyd's help. Normally the possessed character is Colette; in fact, this is the default setting. However, if Colette is not possessed, then she goes through the same trials as everyone else, and it's through these trials that we learn just what went into making Colette who she is.
There are three separate trials: The Cowards, The Despised and the Judged. Each character will only appear in one trial, but I'm including all three because the three of them give a lot of insight into Colette.
The Cowards
Essentially, this trial involves the two characters trapped inside a circle that they're told leads to a horrible fate and they start running to escape it. During this, the characters are confronted with the things that they're most afraid of and told that their actions to date have been cowardly and weak. However, they can redeem themselves by renouncing their allegiance with Lloyd and helping Mithos. To succeed in the task, the characters have to stop running away from their problems and join Lloyd, who has been yelling encouragement from the "horrible fate".
For Colette, what gets thrown in her face is that she's a pathetic failure of a Chosen. She's told that she should never have been born, that her very existence brings misfortune and that she's abandoned her world for selfish reasons. This is devastating to Colette, who has dedicated her life to being selfless and who feels immense guilt when she thinks of herself at all. Of interest to me is the following interaction:
Remiel: If you choose to become the Goddess Martel, Lord Yggdrasill shall reunite the worlds.
Colette: ...Reunite the worlds?
Remiel: Are you not glad? Your duty shall be fulfilled. And you shall be cleansed of your sin of running away. Your life will finally have meaning.
It's affirmed by Colette later on, wondering whether her life does have meaning, even if she's failed in her role as the sacrificial lamb of Sylvarant, but Colette for the vast majority of the game didn't consider that her life had any meaning. Her death did, it would save a world. But her life? That's just counting down the years until she's old enough to die for everyone. It's time bought dearly with the pain, suffering and deaths of humans in human ranches, tormented by half-elf oppressors as they were tormented by humans. Colette spent sixteen years in isolation, to the point where she's afraid to live because it's selfish. She believed that her life had no value if she wasn't able to fulfil her duty. However, she resolves at the end of the trial "there is meaning in my existence, I'm not going to run away from living anymore. I'm going to live as the Chosen and save the world."
The Despised
This particular trial has the characters facing illusions of people they know, who tell them that they are despicable and should die for it. Life would be better off if they were dead, the characters are told. This is particularly interesting for Colette, because it's in this trial that Colette explains what it was like for the Chosen of Sylvarant.
Mithos: You, failed Chosen. What will you do? If you obey your blood as a Chosen and lend me your power, the world will be saved.
Mayor: Yes. Give up your life and fulfill your duty as the Chosen. You were born to be a sacrifice!
Colette: I... have the blood of the Chosen flowing in me. I was born... to save the world.
Lloyd: Colette!
Colette: Because I was the Chosen, I was always alone in the village. Until Lloyd came to school, no one would be my friend. Because I was the creature known as the Chosen... I wasn't even a human being.
Mayor: Of course! The Chosen exists to save the world! A Chosen who can't do that is nothing more than a monster!
Colette: I used to think that way. That it's okay because I'm not human. But that was because I was weak. Just as humans are unable to accept half-elves, I wasn't able to accept that there was another way of life other than to wait for death. My heart was weak, too.
She also remarks in another version of the trial:
Remiel: A futile effort. Just what would a failed Chosen do upon returning? You lived in solitude because you were the Chosen. None would approach you.
Colette: Lloyd... became my friend. He saved me countless times.
Remiel: That was because you were supposed to save the world... which you failed.
Colette: ... No, you're wrong! Lloyd tried to find another way! It's true I lived a lonely life, but it wasn't because I was the Chosen. I didn't have the strength to approach anyone because I believed I would die as the Chosen. I'm going to cast away that weakness. It's because I was the Chosen and treated differently by everyone, that I was able to meet Lloyd and my precious friends. I'm glad I'm the Chosen. And I want to live as the Chosen and save the world.
After this trial, Colette seems to be aware now that there is a greater strength in resolving to live and to better things for people then to wait for death in silence. She's resolved now to live on, to make something of her life and to improve people's lives by her actions, rather than by her death. Essentially, Colette's decided that her life does have value outside of her role as the Chosen, that Colette has value. This is important, and is a total reversal of the thought processes she had earlier.
The Judged
In this trial, an illusion of Presea's dead little sister appears and begs for justice to be done. Depending on whether Presea or Regal is the other character in the trial, either Colette is in the role of the person attacking the other person or the attacked. Regardless of what role Colette falls in, she says the following afterwards:
Colette: I'm sorry, Lloyd. Somewhere in my heart, I felt that if I had died and became Martel, the world would not have suffered...Even though I know that countless people would be sacrificed to bring about the Age of Lifeless Beings.
She then resolves not to be tied to the past now, and to live for today.
Post-Game
It is impossible to get all three scenes in one playthrough of Tales of Symphonia. In fact, you're probably not going to get any of them, as the default is that Colette is the person who gets possessed. However, in my playing of Colette I assume the following:
It also informs a lot of her reactions with Mithos. Mithos is, both directly and indirectly, the engineer of everything that went on to shape Colette into who she is. He captured her, he removed her soul twice with one time forcing his sister's soul into her body, he possessed her while she was conscious and aware of everything he was doing with her body and he was the one who created the entire system that created the Chosen in the first place. Mithos set the system up to make the Chosen suffer, as he thought his sister suffered, and honestly it says a lot about Mithos that his view on his sister was that during her life she suffered and lost her agency as a person. Colette feels sorry for Mithos, that he was alone and that he didn't have someone to tell him that he had value. She understands that Mithos is essentially Lloyd's shadow-self; the one who couldn't wholeheartedly believe that people can change and that his idealism was twisted over time. While Colette can't understand why he did what he did entirely, she believes that if Mithos ever wanted to, he could answer to his own conscience and begin to redeem himself. Mithos calls her a failure, worthless, a pathetic Chosen. Before, those words would have hurt her, because she believed them to be true. Now, she doesn't. She believes that Colette has value, and so this is her shield against the prejudice and hatred of the world.
Colette is now a lot more willing to ask for help from people. She's always wanted to be the pillar of strength for others, to the point where she repressed all of her fears and insecurities in favour of someone else's problems. Colette always came second for her, everyone else came first. Now, she realises that she can't take on all of these problems alone. During Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Colette is the focus of hatred for what she's done. She takes on responsibility for the deaths of people who were caught up in the main party's desperate dash to save both worlds, and she accepts this with a sad smile. But she's not alone anymore; the main party is here, and they will help her. She is not afraid to ask for help.
Basically, instead of being self-sacrificing to the point of self-annihilation, Colette is aware of her limitations, will ask for help as she needs it and is truly the strong pillar that she wanted to be for everyone. Through the friendship of the main party, she's overcome her belief that she was inhuman and deserved to live alone and die alone.
And I talk too much. sob. :( Next time I should just look for Colette custom My Little Ponies.
When we first meet Colette, she's sweet, a little ditzy and selfless. I'll admit up front, the sweet, pure healer type is a videogame trope and that very often there's no real reason for them to be that way as that's just how they are. However, the first clues we get that Colette is a subversion of this trope is when your party of two teenagers and one pre-teen goes out to fight monsters on the way to the Temple of Martel. Colette's not a healer nor is she a magic user at all; Colette is one of your heavy hitters. As a tangential point, the primary healer is Raine whose sharp tongue and ruthless pragmatism puts her far outside the pure naive healer stereotype and the secondary healers are Zelos, Kratos and Regal -- all male.
As the game progresses, it also begins to deconstruct the pure selfless sacrifice stereotype. Traditionally this stereotype would fit into the "too good for this sinful Earth" trope, and it's considered a good and noble thing. Tales of Symphonia avoids this entirely. In fact, ToS highlights that this behaviour is fundamentally destructive: by isolating and sacrificing yourself, you hurt the ones who you left behind and never asked for help. The characters develop from being alone and afraid to make contact with others to believing in each other and, moreover, believing in their personal messiah who convinced them they had value, Lloyd. This is because Lloyd, unlike the others, isn't trapped in the cycle of self-sacrifice and destruction, and so can identify that this isn't how life should be.
Colette, in particular, is really bad at falling into the trap of self-sacrifice. In fact, Colette's self-destructive tendencies when it comes to self-sacrifice are the catalyst for Lloyd's character development. As Lloyd talks about a future that Colette at that point knows she cannot share, she doesn't tell Lloyd that she's going to die. Instead, she lets him talk, ignoring the pain that his words cause her, because they make him feel better. So, when Lloyd realises that to be the Chosen is to lose one's soul and essentially die, he realises that his talk about a life after Colette becomes an angel was not only not possible, but incredibly hurtful towards Colette. I don't think he really realised how alone Colette was until then.
To be the Chosen is to live a very isolated life, and it's an institutionalised isolation. Zelos, the Chosen for the twin world, says the following in a discussion with Lloyd:
It's true. The Chosen is respected in name only. We're imprisoned in our own homes, always eating meals that are cold from being carefully tested for poison. Even our marriage partners are decided from the moment we're born.
He later remarks bitterly after Lloyd expresses surprise at this:
Chosens are treated by everyone like some kind of strange, inhuman creatures, separated from our parents as children and attacked by thugs...When will our suffering end?!
Zelos is the most vocal of the two Chosen about their situation, but Colette experienced the same alienation and dehumanisation. There's a few off-hand remarks, about how Colette has only read books written in the Angelic language (a mostly dead language) since she was a child, or that she's never been swimming before, and in the manga, that she's never celebrated her birthday with her friends. It's also implied in that the main party think it is entirely likely that Colette is not human at all, but instead that her real father is an angel. Colette's quite aware of all of this.
During the course of the game, Colette attempts to complete her Journey of Regeneration and when she is almost successful, the party follow Lloyd's lead and decide that this isn't such a crash-hot idea. The remainder of the game for Colette is her struggling with the realisation that the one thing she was born to do, she isn't doing. Colette was born to release the seals to restore the mana flow for Sylvarant ... at the expense of the twin world of Tethe'alla. The longer that she spends not doing this, the world begins to die and her people are put in what are, essentially, concentration camps to be experimented on in a truly horrific process. She wonders if the misfortunes that she suffers are a form of punishment for not completing her task and that because she has not completed her Journey, she has failed her world and has no real purpose.
In the final dungeon, the party member with the highest affection towards Lloyd is possessed by Mithos while the others go through a series of trials facing their weaknesses and overcome them with Lloyd's help. Normally the possessed character is Colette; in fact, this is the default setting. However, if Colette is not possessed, then she goes through the same trials as everyone else, and it's through these trials that we learn just what went into making Colette who she is.
There are three separate trials: The Cowards, The Despised and the Judged. Each character will only appear in one trial, but I'm including all three because the three of them give a lot of insight into Colette.
The Cowards
Essentially, this trial involves the two characters trapped inside a circle that they're told leads to a horrible fate and they start running to escape it. During this, the characters are confronted with the things that they're most afraid of and told that their actions to date have been cowardly and weak. However, they can redeem themselves by renouncing their allegiance with Lloyd and helping Mithos. To succeed in the task, the characters have to stop running away from their problems and join Lloyd, who has been yelling encouragement from the "horrible fate".
For Colette, what gets thrown in her face is that she's a pathetic failure of a Chosen. She's told that she should never have been born, that her very existence brings misfortune and that she's abandoned her world for selfish reasons. This is devastating to Colette, who has dedicated her life to being selfless and who feels immense guilt when she thinks of herself at all. Of interest to me is the following interaction:
Remiel: If you choose to become the Goddess Martel, Lord Yggdrasill shall reunite the worlds.
Colette: ...Reunite the worlds?
Remiel: Are you not glad? Your duty shall be fulfilled. And you shall be cleansed of your sin of running away. Your life will finally have meaning.
It's affirmed by Colette later on, wondering whether her life does have meaning, even if she's failed in her role as the sacrificial lamb of Sylvarant, but Colette for the vast majority of the game didn't consider that her life had any meaning. Her death did, it would save a world. But her life? That's just counting down the years until she's old enough to die for everyone. It's time bought dearly with the pain, suffering and deaths of humans in human ranches, tormented by half-elf oppressors as they were tormented by humans. Colette spent sixteen years in isolation, to the point where she's afraid to live because it's selfish. She believed that her life had no value if she wasn't able to fulfil her duty. However, she resolves at the end of the trial "there is meaning in my existence, I'm not going to run away from living anymore. I'm going to live as the Chosen and save the world."
The Despised
This particular trial has the characters facing illusions of people they know, who tell them that they are despicable and should die for it. Life would be better off if they were dead, the characters are told. This is particularly interesting for Colette, because it's in this trial that Colette explains what it was like for the Chosen of Sylvarant.
Mithos: You, failed Chosen. What will you do? If you obey your blood as a Chosen and lend me your power, the world will be saved.
Mayor: Yes. Give up your life and fulfill your duty as the Chosen. You were born to be a sacrifice!
Colette: I... have the blood of the Chosen flowing in me. I was born... to save the world.
Lloyd: Colette!
Colette: Because I was the Chosen, I was always alone in the village. Until Lloyd came to school, no one would be my friend. Because I was the creature known as the Chosen... I wasn't even a human being.
Mayor: Of course! The Chosen exists to save the world! A Chosen who can't do that is nothing more than a monster!
Colette: I used to think that way. That it's okay because I'm not human. But that was because I was weak. Just as humans are unable to accept half-elves, I wasn't able to accept that there was another way of life other than to wait for death. My heart was weak, too.
She also remarks in another version of the trial:
Remiel: A futile effort. Just what would a failed Chosen do upon returning? You lived in solitude because you were the Chosen. None would approach you.
Colette: Lloyd... became my friend. He saved me countless times.
Remiel: That was because you were supposed to save the world... which you failed.
Colette: ... No, you're wrong! Lloyd tried to find another way! It's true I lived a lonely life, but it wasn't because I was the Chosen. I didn't have the strength to approach anyone because I believed I would die as the Chosen. I'm going to cast away that weakness. It's because I was the Chosen and treated differently by everyone, that I was able to meet Lloyd and my precious friends. I'm glad I'm the Chosen. And I want to live as the Chosen and save the world.
After this trial, Colette seems to be aware now that there is a greater strength in resolving to live and to better things for people then to wait for death in silence. She's resolved now to live on, to make something of her life and to improve people's lives by her actions, rather than by her death. Essentially, Colette's decided that her life does have value outside of her role as the Chosen, that Colette has value. This is important, and is a total reversal of the thought processes she had earlier.
The Judged
In this trial, an illusion of Presea's dead little sister appears and begs for justice to be done. Depending on whether Presea or Regal is the other character in the trial, either Colette is in the role of the person attacking the other person or the attacked. Regardless of what role Colette falls in, she says the following afterwards:
Colette: I'm sorry, Lloyd. Somewhere in my heart, I felt that if I had died and became Martel, the world would not have suffered...Even though I know that countless people would be sacrificed to bring about the Age of Lifeless Beings.
She then resolves not to be tied to the past now, and to live for today.
Post-Game
It is impossible to get all three scenes in one playthrough of Tales of Symphonia. In fact, you're probably not going to get any of them, as the default is that Colette is the person who gets possessed. However, in my playing of Colette I assume the following:
- Colette no longer believes that she should die as penance for her not completing her Journey of Regeneration according to the proper procedures.
- Colette believes that her life has value and meaning, because she was born and because she is Lloyd's friend.
- Colette wants to change people's lives for the better through her living rather than her dying.
- Colette was the one possessed by Mithos.
It also informs a lot of her reactions with Mithos. Mithos is, both directly and indirectly, the engineer of everything that went on to shape Colette into who she is. He captured her, he removed her soul twice with one time forcing his sister's soul into her body, he possessed her while she was conscious and aware of everything he was doing with her body and he was the one who created the entire system that created the Chosen in the first place. Mithos set the system up to make the Chosen suffer, as he thought his sister suffered, and honestly it says a lot about Mithos that his view on his sister was that during her life she suffered and lost her agency as a person. Colette feels sorry for Mithos, that he was alone and that he didn't have someone to tell him that he had value. She understands that Mithos is essentially Lloyd's shadow-self; the one who couldn't wholeheartedly believe that people can change and that his idealism was twisted over time. While Colette can't understand why he did what he did entirely, she believes that if Mithos ever wanted to, he could answer to his own conscience and begin to redeem himself. Mithos calls her a failure, worthless, a pathetic Chosen. Before, those words would have hurt her, because she believed them to be true. Now, she doesn't. She believes that Colette has value, and so this is her shield against the prejudice and hatred of the world.
Colette is now a lot more willing to ask for help from people. She's always wanted to be the pillar of strength for others, to the point where she repressed all of her fears and insecurities in favour of someone else's problems. Colette always came second for her, everyone else came first. Now, she realises that she can't take on all of these problems alone. During Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Colette is the focus of hatred for what she's done. She takes on responsibility for the deaths of people who were caught up in the main party's desperate dash to save both worlds, and she accepts this with a sad smile. But she's not alone anymore; the main party is here, and they will help her. She is not afraid to ask for help.
Basically, instead of being self-sacrificing to the point of self-annihilation, Colette is aware of her limitations, will ask for help as she needs it and is truly the strong pillar that she wanted to be for everyone. Through the friendship of the main party, she's overcome her belief that she was inhuman and deserved to live alone and die alone.
And I talk too much. sob. :( Next time I should just look for Colette custom My Little Ponies.