So, one of the things I love about Dawntrail is the way the four competitors are introduced and framed.
Spoilers ahead.
We meet Wuk Lamat first. She's the reason we're here. But we'll come back to her.
So then, Zoraal Ja. He doesn't speak a single word throughout his first appearance. Even when approached, the first, and only, thing he does is tell his lackey to talk for him.
Look at what Erenville says about him when he exits the palace to the cheering of the crowd:
Erenville: Zoraal Ja. The First Promise and commander of the Landsguard. Sareel Ja, the palace seer. As he was so careful to remind the crowd, Zoraal Ja is indeed the natural child of Gulool Ja Ja.
Alphinaud: And “Resilient Son”? Is that another title, like the First Promise?
Erenville: After a fashion. Common knowledge has it that two-headed Mamool Ja cannot sire children… Yet Zoraal Ja was born all the same, with the Head of Resolve's features and the Head of Reason's scales─an extraordinary example of life's unyielding resilience.
Alisaie: And a warrior's reticence. He says little, but the way he moves… I know a hardened soldier when I see one.
Erenville: He's a natural swordsman─a gift he inherited from his father. Some even say that the son has already surpassed the sire.
Should he come to power, the First Promise means to employ that martial prowess in the conquest of foreign lands. For this, he and his supporters have been labeled expansionists. This puts him in direct opposition to Wuk Lamat, who advocates for the preservation of peace. You may recall that she spoke of a claimant who “cannot be allowed to rule.” That is Zoraal Ja─the warmonger.
Zoraal Ja is clearly framed as the favorite by all of Tural to win the contest, but look at how Erenville describes him. Every compliment is instantly returned to his father. He's the Resilient Son, whose impossible birth was a miracle only Gulool Ja Ja could have managed. Look, see how much he resembles both his fathers. His sword skills are great--he inherited them from his father.
He resents his siblings because they, being adopted, are granted nothing by nature. Everything they get from their father is learned. Not innate. Koana's studies and Wuk Lamat's people skills are theirs. He doesn't see Bakool Ja Ja as a threat because they're too similar. All that makes both of them special came from their parents. But Koana, he sees as a threat or a useful tool. Koana has been recognized for what he's done on his own.
He's the perfect example of the pressures of the first-born child, even though we never get the impression that his father puts any pressure on him at all. It's the public who puts the full weight of their expectations on him, purely for a quirk of birth. Everything's expected of him, but if he succeeds it's not because of him, but because he's his father's son. Which is maybe why he refuses to engage with the people at all.
That's… going to come back to haunt us all later.
Then there's Koana. When Bakool Ja Ja insults his older brother, whom he desperately does not want to win this contest, he immediately jumps to Zoraal Ja's defense. The supporters who approach him don't have anything to say about him at all, they just want cool stuff. Bring us trains and airships and magitek doodads! He escapes from them as awkwardly as humanly possible. And note how differently Erenville describes him:
Erenville: Here we have Koana, the Second Promise, who spent time as a pupil at Sharlayan's own Studium.
Alisaie: Now that you mention it, I think I did see him in the halls once or twice. There was nothing to suggest he was Turali, much less from a royal family.
Erenville: That was by design. He forewent his usual garb and took an Eorzean name to avoid attention.
Alphinaud: So it was Koana who introduced the dirigibles. And the railway, too, given what we just heard…?
Erenville: In furtherance of his goal: to enrich Tuliyollal with every bright notion he learned of in Sharlayan. He is the hope of those who prize innovation. As aloof as he may seem, Koana and Wuk Lamat actually get along rather well. They bicker and banter as only close siblings do.
He was a student at the Studium, but we don't hear of any other achievements there. No graduating with honors. No inventions of his own. His accomplishments are mostly… being a royal, and therefore in a position to get other people's ideas implemented in Tural. And he seems to feel that. He doesn't want to be noticed, doesn't want to be lauded, won't take the encouragement of his followers, and doesn't promise them anything because he doesn't feel like he can.
He is very much caught in the middle all the time.
Between his love for his brother, who doesn't love him back, and whom he knows can't be allowed to rule, and his sense of duty to his nation. Between his feelings of inadequacy and his fear of failure. Between Tural and Sharlayan. Between his beloved baby sister and the contest that makes them rivals. Between his ideals and reality.
Perfect middle child.
Then we get Bakool Ja Ja. The outsider.
We know from the Dawnservant's introduction of the rite that historically only two-headed mamool ja were allowed to rule. He is set up, then, as the symbol of the old order.
And the moment he steps outside, the crowd goes wild.
He isn't the Dawnservant's son, but he is, as far as most of those onlookers are concerned, the next Gulool Ja Ja. The person who reacts most negatively to his appearance and bravado, tellingly, is a boonewa. A member of one of the clans that actually makes blessed siblings. That's… that's going to be meaningful later. Unlike the two claimants who preceded him, nobody asks him for anything. His supporters don't support him because they think he can help them. They support him because of what he is.
Erenville's description of him is notably brief:
Erenville: The chosen of Mamook, Bakool Ja Ja. Winner of the recent martial tournament, and the only claimant not of the Dawn's Promise. His strength is undeniable, but…you see how he is. A few devoted Mamool Ja are his only supporters.
Krile: What would he do with the throne should he win it?
Erenville: His policies and so forth? I doubt he's thought much beyond winning the contest itself.
But one thing seems certain: if he does become Dawnservant, he will see the Mamool Ja exalted as the ruling class, and all others forced into subservience.
And yet… he's not the one Wuk Lamat was afraid of winning. Which is somewhat prophetic foreshadowing, really. Bakool Ja Ja is the only claimant who has no thoughts of the future. He has to win this contest because he exists. That's it. That's all there is.
He has to win because blessed siblings always win. If they don't… then why should they even exist?
That's… yeah.
And finally, Wuk Lamat emerges from the palace. With her mom.
If it wasn't clear before that she's the baby of the family, the fact that she makes her grand public appearance as a contender for the throne with her nursemaid should be a clue.
We have, at the moment that Erenville asks if we're sure we really want to be part of this, so far seen her wander off distracted in Sharlayan, get panicked by a talking bird, eat her weight in barbequed monster, and get extremely seasick. The one thing we know she wants out of this contest is to stop Zoraal Ja from starting a war the second he takes the throne. She is doing this, not because she wants power or has a vision for Tural, but because she opposes a bad vision.
She is so much the underdog in this contest that most of the crowd left before she appeared, assuming the show was over, and what's remaining is standing within earshot gossipping about how pathetic she is compared to the others.
Wuk Lamat is constantly in someone else's shadow. Her father. Her elder brothers. That random guy who got in here somehow. Sphene, when we get to Alexandria. She's invisible, and she seems to feel like that's just how things work. Even the soldiers who meet us at the docks need to take a minute before they realize who she is.
Erenville doesn't say anything about her, though he has a few words about how her supporters are mostly the elderly who remember the war. (I would imagine that includes a lot of non-elderly shetona, too.) But he doesn't really have to talk her up. The Reigning King of Dry Understatement may have insisted back in Sharlayan that they are not friends, merely long-standing acquaintances, but when she asked him for advice about finding allies for the contest, he recommended a god-slayer. Talk about fixing the fight. Not just recommended, he dropped what he was doing and went back across the ocean to recruit them. He could have pointed her at the Students of Baldesion. He was working with them already. Instead, he came back to Sharlayan and asked the Students to go get WoL. A person he knows is capable of crossing the entire universe to avert the apocalypse and also, for some reason, stopping to catch stray marmots along the way. He really wants her win. He just won't quite say that out loud.
"As you just witnessed, Wuk Lamat has no great army of supporters. Not yet, at least." Oh, Erenville.
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It pisses me off to see the way some Star Wars fans are so dismissive of Reva, Third Sister.
She's complex. She's interesting. She's clever. She's intelligent. She's strategic. She's conflicted. She's traumatized. She's scared. She's angry. She's a survivor.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series literally opens with her and her friends watching one of her Jedi mentors get gunned down by clone troopers during Order 66.
She was a FUCKING CHILD!!! They were in the middle of a lesson when the clones walked in and started shooting everyone!! These were Anakin Skywalker's troopers and they were executing every single Jedi around them.
These children had NO idea what was going on. They were scared and they tried to run to safety.
We remember this scene from Revenge of the Sith and we all immediately knew what it meant.
These are the same bodies that Obi-Wan Kenobi found when he and Yoda returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant after having to kill so many of Anakin's clone troopers just to survive.
These are children that the Jedi Council wasn't there to save.
Palpatine snuffed out the light of the Jedi in one swift act of terrorism and then blamed the Jedi for their own genocide after taking over the entire galaxy.
And in times of war, the weakest among everyone always suffer the most.
This is what Reva, Jedi youngling, remembers most about the end of the Clone Wars.
Anakin Skywalker, hero of the Clone Wars and former padawan of the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, murdered all of her friends and injured her.
She had to play dead amongst the dead bodies of her friends, and that's how she survived. She witnessed Anakin Skywalker murder all the Jedi in the temple with no one there to stop him because the other Jedi Masters were being executed in a war they had never wanted to enter into in the first place.
She blames herself for not being able to save her friends because she wasn't strong enough to fight back. No youngling was ever going to be strong enough to stand against Anakin Skywalker. She wanted revenge against Anakin Skywalker, and she was just as desperate to get to Obi-Wan Kenobi as he was. She wanted to kill Anakin Skywalker just as badly as Darth Vader wanted to kill Obi-Wan.
She was alone in a galaxy that tortured and executed surviving Jedi. She spent ten years plotting her revenge against Anakin. She was angry at Obi-Wan for not being there to stop Anakin, and rightfully so.
The Republic fell. Reva and her friends were left unprotected. She was the only person she relied on because everyone else failed her. She was only a child when she lost everyone.
And it's clear she was conflicted by her role as an Inquisitor. She doesn't have the training the other Inquisitors do because she volunteered to be an Inquisitor while all the others were tortured and terrorized into falling to the dark side. She only wanted access to Anakin so she could get justice for what he did to her and her family.
Unlike Anakin, Reva couldn't find it in herself to harm a child. She was seeking revenge solely against Anakin Skywalker. Luke and Leia are the same age she was when she watched her friends and family die in front of her.
Yes, she was prepared to torture Leia, but she consistently hesitated, and when Tala walked in, Reva turned away. She stopped. Yeah she was mad, but she didn't have to go through with it. She'd already planted a tracker on Lola. She was already planning on allowing them to escape so she could locate their secret base. She just needed to bait Obi-Wan. Her plan worked perfectly, and she didn't even have to hurt this child who was annoying the shit out of her (not realizing she was dealing with Anakin Skywalker's offspring).
She went to Tatooine to kill Luke, but she couldn't. She hunted him down without bothering to kill Owen or Beru. She only cared about one thing. Getting justice for what happened to everyone she had been unable to save at the end of the war. She was only a child, and when she realized she was about to kill a defenseless child just to get revenge, she couldn't do it. She saw her face when she looked down at Luke and cried when she realized she couldn't do it.
She was so horrified by what she had been prepared to do and returned him to Owen and Beru alive. She fell to her knees and sobbed because she thought she failed her family in the end.
Obi-Wan was there for her this time. He reminded her that by showing mercy, she was giving her friends and family peace. She was not going to become the monster that Anakin Skywalker was.
Obi-Wan helped her and reminded her that she gets to decide who she wants to be from this point forward. She refused to become Anakin Skywalker, and a weight was finally starting to be lifted from her shoulders. A weight she had been carrying for ten long years.
She did what she thought she had to just to survive. She had only been a child with no guidance because everyone she loved died. She survived by joining the ranks of the enemy so she could plot her revenge. Obi-Wan showed her mercy at the moment she needed it most. He wasn't angry with her. He was compassionate. She survived Order 66 just like he did, but she had been defenseless when they were thrust into a galaxy that tortured and killed Force sensitive individuals and those who helped them. He had failed Reva during Order 66, and he wasn't going to fail her this time.
She is getting a second chance at finding her path in life despite the bad things she did. Everyone deserves a second chance. She was robbed of her childhood and had to grow up overnight. She had to learn how to survive. And that's exactly what she did. Just not in the way she expected.
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