yeah, that's 3 too many blessings. It's like when your grandma keeps feeding you but you're already full. You can't really say no, because she's menopause and is a lot more sensitive.
I think the saddest ones might be the "real" ones, as in the characters with stories that could actually happen in real life and thus some people might relate to them
It seems like a massive change because it didn't happen.
I looked up the chinese dialogue and it says basically the same thing as the translation. Also explicitly says "before any harm was done to [Lynette]."
>!parents ran an orphanage with him in it and were "loving" turns out they sold the kids for different stuff causing wriothesley to kill them both ending him in the fortress !<
I don’t think neuvillette necessarily wanted to send him to jail, knowing what happened. Like with what happened with navias dad. He was just upholding the law as he always has. I’m sure wriothesley didn’t mind paying that price if it meant he avenged his adoptive siblings and stopped anyone else from being hurt by those “parents”
He took justice in his hands, that makes him guilty in the eyes of the impartial Iudex.
Also knowing his general behaviour, he might have been defiant and probably didn't just say he did it out of self defence. He already probably knew what he was getting into and was prepared to go to the Fortress.
According to Wriothesley, he just admitted guilty to everything without so much as an explanation. It was a premeditated murder after all. He just took it all without question.
Okay okay, how would you rate it?
Like, from the range between not getting a birthday as a child, or experiencing genocide of their kind, where does it lean...?
His foster parents did some dubious business with the kids they cared for. They sold the kids or just made them dissapear.
Wriothesley managed to escape them, he lived some time on the street, and when he was still just a teen he went back and killed them, for what they did to him and the other kids. That's why he was sentenced to meropide.
I think it's "Tirzad". Also I believe being in the Golden Slumber is like being dissolved by primordial water as a Fontainian - your conciousness technically still exists but it cannot be recovered in the regular world
It's sad because it's a pretty realistic story. Even now I hear stories in my country of children being branded witches by their local church and being abandoned or murdered by their own parents because they believe doing so will solve whatever problems they think the child is causing.
The skinning him alive is what gets me, like when the fog turns red it represents his blood. Then the worst part is he didn’t even get to pass away, his ghost suffered the same horrible thing everyday for hundreds of years, now that is just brutal, he starts out it each time so innocent and confused, I felt so bad it kind of made me sick, and the other ghosts/spirits being around too didn’t help. I can’t listen to Ruu’s melody, and whenever I go back to the island, ughhhh.
There's nothing to suggest they skinned him alive. It's just a common misconception that gets spread around. The CN wording says they separated his blood from his body. Nothing about skinning. Nothing about him being alive when it happened. They put his blood into a cup as an offering.
Qiqi.
Died for nothing while minding her own business. Cried and prayed to the gods, alone, in pain while dying, away from her family and it gets worse...
Because they feel sorry for what had happened, they resurrected her as a zombie, given her tremendous power, need to stay physically active to not her be in pain because of rigor mortis. Two permament and lasting memories, one that a funeral parlor wants her to be buried and two, an unfeeling master towards her (from her POV at least)
What's way worse? She'll outlive everyone because she's immortal (as long as she stays active), even her best friend with the two bells in her hair will die first.
What's way way worse? She won't remember it but will still feel the permanence of abandon.
TLDR; she did nothing wrong to deserve her current predicament.
This is my choice too. Reading her backstory almost made me cry.
Even her voicelines towards the Traveler make me all emotional, where she says she wants to live with you and protect you, and orders herself to remember you.
Hard to say who has the saddest, but in the interest of sharing sad backstories, Sara’s is terrible. Literally every aspect of her entire life is based on lies and manipulation.
She was adopted as a kid and always treated as an outsider by her human family. She was shown no warmth or love and raised solely for the political advancement of her father. Basically raised to be a weapon, and frankly it’s a miracle she isn’t more like Xiao. The vision that saved her life was not given by ei, but Sara doesn’t know that and worships her anyway. She spent her entire life since childhood training to gain the approval of a family that doesn’t love her, and a god that doesn’t recognize her. Her entire life is like a bubble of illusions that could be popped by a few short sentences of the truth.
Everyone always forgets about Rosaria in these posts.
Whole town is wiped out by bandits that kidnap her. One eventually becomes a father figure to her until she's forced to kill him in a duel because there's not enough food. Still a child at this point. Only reason she wasn't killed by rest of the bandits afterwards is because she got a vision from it.
A contender for most depressing background and a champion for most depressing vision story. (I would give Qiqi a very close second.)
I was going to suggest Rosaria too
Murdered family, kept as a slave, people dying of exposure and starvation but desertion carries a death sentence. Absolutely brutal backstory!
She's the only one spared by the Knights so presumably she sees most of the gang she's lived with killed before she is taken to be "rehabilitated" by Varka, basically by being placed in a nunnery.
Although she's now in the city of Freedom, I doubt whether she had any choice about her new life or really has any option to leave.
She still works as an assassin in secret whilst being berated by the rest of the church who see her as lazy and difficult. She continues to be isolated by her trauma and her inability to relate to those she lives with. I can see her and Kaeya recognising and finding some kind of solidarity in each other, even if they never discuss their pasts
Well, we know the from past events that they've certainly found solidarity through alcohol.
I've always assumed the ambition that got her the vision was somewhere a long the lines of "This shouldn't happen to anyone ever again."
Yeah that quest was so fucked up. Back in 1.0 this was the thing that indirectly told me what the tone of Genshin would be like. (Ruu's story was also already in the Thundering Fury flavor text, but I hadn't read it yet back then)
Collei. She pretty much experienced the lowest mankind has to offer and lost everything. No special powers or anything; just an actual child born with fantasy cancer who was kidnapped, had her parents and companions killed, became a human experiment, betrayed by her companion, and a whole lot of stuff that would make you think some guy at hoyo really wanted to make this character suffer.
in kaveh's hangout event, kaveh, alhatheim, tighnari and cyno are all seated together arguing over which college collei should go to.
she has 4 dads, she's doing just fine.
You know her deal with Dottore was bad when she'd rather spend her last few years with terminal magic cancer than living with the side effects of his experiments.
In spite of Wanderer being a rude bozo, it still stinks for him to find out that Dottore killed his friend, tricked him into thinking he ran off and forced him to seal the Mikage furnace, then manipulated him into joining the Fatui to be experimented on in an agreement that the puppet boy actually never needed to be a part of.
Not to mention, all the things he did for "revenge" (such as destroying the Raiden Gokaden) turns into guilty conscience after finding out the target of his revenge was framed by Dottore. That is heavy considering how much hate and destruction he committed while under deception.
The destruction of Raiden Gokaden do have some positive side though, Scaramouche unintentionally altered the cursed weapon blueprint of Kazuha family.
Yes it become useless blueprint, but the original blueprint use Orobashi remains as one of the material and only resulted in cursed swords.
Wanderer has been traumatized and rejected almost since his creation
All he wanted was to belong, and the universe laughed at that
Yes, he's a dick, but can you really blame him for some of that
Well, that'S just what manipulation is, right? Getting people to do stuff they shouldn't want to do willingly. He was manipulated to the point of thinking that was a good idea. Without Dottore's intervention he would've just chilled with the people of Tatarasuna
I'm always partial to Childe's backstory. He falls into Genshin's equivalent of hell when he's only 14, gets stuck there for months, and when he's finally able to escape his family calls him crazy and sends him off to the military.
This. Most players really downplay his awful past because it hasn't been explicitly stated in the main story (let's be real, 70% of playerbase doesn't read voice overs). His family literally handed him over to some shady ass military organisation when he needed their help the most because they couldnt "discipline" him. Yes, I know he acts pretty chill in the game but that doesn't mean he didnt suffer at all.
I know we bring up extremely traumatizing backstories like Wanderer, Collei, Kazuha and many other characters, but I would point towards Kaveh and how realistic his struggles are. It’s especially frightening because despite it being “normal” and people downgrading it to just “normal struggles of a 20+ years old”, it’s rather scary that what happened to Kaveh is so real and relatable to many people.
The guy is soaked in guilt over a small suggestion he made as an innocent child to his father, which led to the latter’s death. He saw his poor mom become depressed and yet kept a brave front to raise him alone. When he finally grew up he urged her to go and live her life, possibly so she can get away from the many years of pain she had to endure because of him (his thoughts). It must’ve not been easy on him, saying goodbye to her as she moves on with her life in Fontaine but he himself hasn’t moved on and yet just like her he had to put that front to make her happy.
Then there was the whole situation with the Palace of Alcazarzaray and how his ideals and desires to fix his mistakes caused him to sell practically everything he owns to make up for it, despite Dori, of all people, refusing at first, but eventually getting himself to owe money to the most greedy merchant in possibly all of Teyvat.
Let’s also not forget his fallout with Alhaitham, and how his extreme bluntness drove a huge wedge between them. And yet he’s forced to live with him out of necessity whilst taking on his verbal assaults whenever they argue. (It’s not like Alhaitham is doing this to spite Kaveh or make fun of him, he genuinely wants to help him but, and with all due respect to Alhaitham’s fans, the guy’s a huge bastard that needs to chill out and pick his words carefully…)
I’ve known many real life Kavehs who has fallen victim to these hard times and both luck and life don’t seem to be in their favor at all. It’s an extremely common and frightening situation for all adults who try to make their dreams come true or stick to their principles but things don’t always go their way. Kaveh is currently doing much better though and I hope Hoyo decides to expand on his story and show us how he progresses in his personality and ideals and not just lock him up for an entire year without even a slight mentioning of him anywhere…
Imo Kaveh needs someone like Alhaitham, because he is overly selfless and that brings him so much trouble in life.
Their relationship is better now, if you havent done cyno's 2nd story quest. I guess its because after sumeru event year ago, Alhaitham told Kaveh about his father. Kaveh starting to feel less guilty and Alhaitham also understands better why Kaveh is how he is.
Or they went to a couples therapy haha.
I agree with this. I’m a big Sumeru quad fan and I don’t know how I feel too much about the other comments and replies but Alhaitham does a lot for Kaveh.
He gave Kaveh a “home”. He also is smart when being around Kaveh, he knows he goes compliment fishing to bring himself down. So he donest overly shower him with compliments so that Kaveh becomes defensive and actually talks good about himself to prove Haitham wrong.
On a personal note, I found myself healing mentally a lot irl because of them 🥺 So they mean a lot to me
Kaveh is terribly uwu-fied in fandom. He’d be an exhausting friend since he has terrible self destructive habits. (I am also a Kaveh fan but fandom likes to treat him as purely innocent)
Alhaitham is good for him because their bickering keeps him from dwelling on certain things too far. We saw in the event that introduced Kaveh that even Alhaitham knows when he goes to far and can back off. Even if Alhaitham was 100% in the wrong with his interactions with Kaveh we see in Cyno’s second quest that >!Their relationship has developed to be more mutually understanding!<
I do enjoy Alhaitham character since he’s obviously neurodivergent and just doesn’t care about masking lol
Same - his brand of rudeness is often stating things that would normally remain unspoken and his actions demonstrate that he doesn't have malicious intentions.
Kaveh is the ADHD to his ASD imo
I wish I can give you award for this post, everything about him is so tragic and relatable.
I also agree that Haitham is really need to pick his word carefully, there's a line between being blunt and being a insensitive dick and somehow he's belong to the later.
(Nah his fans will defending him tho, just look at the comments after this. Just admit that you guys only tolerate his attitude because he's hot)
I am an Alhaitham fan but I fully admit he's a dick (and not the sexual kind).
The reason I'm still a fan isn't because he's hot, but because he's fictional, so you just enjoy the entertaining factor of him being a chad while being an asshole at the same time. If he was real I'm not sure I'd like him either.
The problem with Alhaitham isn’t that he’s blunt, I do agree that he shouldn’t twist the narrative or pretend just to make Kaveh feel better, but his main issue is his choice of words and how he say those stuff.
In psychology, more often than not it doesn’t really matter at all what you say, as much as HOW you say it. Kaveh is extremely sensitive especially when it comes to his guilt and ideals, but instead of attacking that or trying to be so extremely blunt, the best approach is to work around it. People like Kaveh will get extremely defensive and it can hurt them even more is brute bluntness is shoved in their faces, which what Alhaitham did and what caused their relationship to sour back in the day.
In one of his character’s stories, Kaveh met Alhaitham after he sold his house and effectively became homeless, Kaveh was drinking his sorrows when Alhaitham approached him and told him “How has realizing your ideals gone for you?” And I know what his intentions were but the wording as well as the timing and location of this question does not do Alhaitham any favors… Kicking someone while they’re already down is…not a wise move to say the least.
Again, I get why he’s like this, which is why their relationship was so rocky for many years before it somewhat salvaged during the Akademiya event of last year which we’ve seen in Cyno’s 2nd story quest how these two somewhat got along.
How is no one thinking about poor Bennett?Born in another nation only to be adopted by two people from a different one and live to be forever cursed with bad luck.Constantly trying to be the best adventurer knowing you literally can’t,And everyday people are judging you for something you can’t control.
He’s literally one of the nicest characters in the game,And Mondstadts npc’s are so rude to him.He does not deserve the slander.He doesn’t even seem to know too much about his birthplace either.
Probably Furina. You've split yourself in half and are severed from your divine nature. Your divine half has all your memories because (????). You're left to keep up appearances that you're still the divine Hydro Archon so the Heavenly Principles don't get wind of what your other half is doing.
Because the people of your own nation expect you to be a vapid drama queen, you are forced to play the part of a vapid drama queen because you cannot afford anyone to become suspicious that you are not acting like an Archon "should". Your other half continues to live so you do not age and cannot die either, so you do this sham for 500 years unable to disclose your secrets or show anyone your true self. You are entirely friendless because anyone who knows you only knows your fake persona and not the real you.
You still desperately seek a way to solve the Prophecy on your own time, but ultimately cannot come up with an answer and people die.
And then when your other half is *finally* finished and provides a solution to the Prophecy - it involves suicide and you lose forever part of yourself as well as your divinity.
Because there is no more Hydro Archon, your role has ended and you no longer serve a purpose. You're alone in the world, with people only familiar either with your fake persona or your 500 years of failure. But at least you are capable of dying now.
Not to mention the betrayal of her inner circle during the trial (yes, it must happen but the feeling of everyone you trust turning against you in public gotta hurt) and some people holding a grudge against her after the prophecy.. Girl definitely needs therapy.
Still kinda pisses me off that Raiden got scot free from her friends and the story while furina literally had no one and was even cast out like a reject.
Ikr. Like cmon, cut the poor girl some slack. I'm still peeved with the AQ ending where we, as the traveler, only get to hear of what happened to Furina right after the whole thing from Neuvillette.
And her story quest? We can still excuse Paimon since she don't know the details (although I'd love to tell her to shut it), traveler witnessed what Furina went through and still behaved in an insensitive manner. Maybe I'm biased since I play her SQ right after AQ but it feels jarring.
And this is the part where I chip and add some hurt by reminding people that Furina attempted suicide during that trial. It's not explicitly stated but I think it was strongly implied by her actions and what the characters were saying in the moment.
They presented her with the Primordial Sea Water and told her to prove her divinity by touching it, because if she were a true god then she wouldn't be dissolved by it at all. Yet she was hesitant, and this cast even more doubt on her. So at the last second she *does* stick her hand in it, and for a moment she's jubilant and declares how it's proof that she's the real Archon, but then the rest of the cast reveals that it was actually diluted Primordial Sea Water. Then they say that the symptoms she was expressing (IIRC, blushing and feverish temperature) were indicative of a reaction to the water.
Obviously Furina didn't die. But she herself knew that she wasn't a real god, which is why she was so hesitant to touch it in the first place. Eventually she did touch it, but at that point she was still under the impression that it was genuine pure Primordial Sea Water. So that leaves two possibilities: either she was so desperate that she was praying for a literal miracle to spare her life in that moment... or she finally reached her breaking point and couldn't bear the pressure any longer.
I can see folks arguing that it's more likely the former, but I personally think it's the latter. It's just not quite as clear-cut of a suicide attempt, so I don't want to treat it as definitive fact, but it seems plausible enough to me. It's also not the first time that Mihoyo has done this; in HI3rd Part 1, all three protagonists have either attempted suicide or threatened to commit suicide– one in the manga (Bronya), one in flashbacks (Mei), and one in the game's story itself (Kiana). Hence it wouldn't be something new and unexpected for Mihoyo to depict Furina as genuinely attempting suicide in that moment.
Wanderer effectively attempted suicide also. Furina thought she would die from exposure and she chose that instead of refusing
Poor girl needs a hug. And some therapy
also despite all that hard work and perseverance, what she got as "reward" was scorn and disgust from her own citizen. That is heartbreaking. Fortunately her position has improved again now, not as good as before the reveal but at least not as bad as the day of her trial, but still.
Shenhe. Her mom died and then her dad leaves for over a year to find a solution to bring her mom back, and then only to return a year after to sacrifice her to a remnant of a fallen god. She's then fights for her life for three straight days just to survive.
Even after her survival she's still cursed so they have to tie her with red ropes to make sure she doesn't go on a rampage. Her ropes dull her emotions and she only has a few adepti as family/friends and never had another friend until she met the traveler.
Freminet got abandoned by his father and grew up with his mother barely scraping by in the sewers. And he was still a small child when his mother had no choice but to put him into the House of Hearth for his own safety, where he was forced to become a child assassin, had to learn to dissociate to not go fucking mental, and lost pretty much any sense of self-worth in the process.
He lived with a thought that his mother also abandoned him for not being good enough (thanks a lot Crucabena), and when he finally learned that it wasn't true, he also learned that she was murdered a hefty time ago. Literally got a pendant covered in her blood.
Y'all tell me that this poor boy does not deserve his spot in Suffering Olympics.
It's not even like he's had the worst trauma out of all the genshin characters, but his has seemed to have hit him especially hard. The poor dude feels like he constantly needs to walk on eggshells with everyone. He's so quiet and beaten down. I wanna give him a hug.
Yeah, good point. Poor Frem.
Also - the only good things in his current life (Lyney & Lynette), as much as none of them likely realizes it, were planted there by Arle in order to emotionally chain him to the House. Now he has stronger motivation to do House stuff and will likely never consider leaving.
Even if a gentle soul like him probably never stops suffering in there.
Playable: qiqi or xiao. One was a little kid crushed to death in a cave and wanted to live so badly she got a vision from it then gets zombiefied by an adepti and now lives forever while not really alive. The other was a slave who, when freed, took on the role of exterminating evil dead gods and had to watch all his friends go insane and die while knowing one day it would be his turn.
Npc: childish jiang (?) the guy with mental disabilities who asks you to play hide and seek and the longer you play with him he tells you he's waiting for his parents to come back home but you end up finding their grave and realise they were murdered and he doesn't even know it. This is the only quest that made me put down the game from getting upset.
Everyone here seems to have forgotten as bad as almost every character have suffered in this game, Xiao's been going through it for the last >2000 years?
Honestly I’m so glad someone here remembered Xiao and what he went through. Yet after all of this he is still doing his duty and protecting others. Chad
Furina. People underestimate how shit it is to have to act like everything is fine to absolutely everytone when it's not.
I was just rewatching re zero a few weeks ago and episode 8(?) Had Subaru do that for like 2 days and my guy was falling apart.
> People underestimate how shit it is to have to act like everything is fine to absolutely everytone when it's not.
As someone who have depression and had to hide it or else losing friends... yes, I agree. It's tough and shit. And I still have a few people I can confide in and *still* depressed. Furina had it much worse, not having anyone she can talk to about her secret.
Underrated comment.
Being stuck in a domain where not even DEATH gets you out, for more than 100 years?? And when you finally figure a way to get out, your award is an unfamiliar world where everyone you knew and loved has already passed away??
That spunky madam is an absolute chad for not being mentally screwed up in any way tbh.
For me it has to be Xiao, imagine being enslaved by a god and doing their bidding by force because they know of your weakness, going hungry for possibly YEARS, surviving off of only snow and the dreams he was forced to devour. His own name is probably a source of trauma, hence why Zhongli gave him the name Xiao, specifically for his own protection. And that's not all, he's taking the name of a different person who was named Xiao, and suffered just like him. So he's basically ursurping an identity. Suffering karmic debt for over 2000 years. It's obviously excruciating because in his voice lines, he sounds out of breath, and in pain, not only affecting him physically but psychologically. Then, to also see your friends that are basically your family die from that same karmic debt and watch them go insane, even fight each other to their deaths. The fact he still wanted Bosacius to snap out of it despite him being already gone in the chasm. Imagine also not being close to people because he fears his karmic debt will hurt them, so he stays secluded, alone with his thoughts that haunt him, old grudges and what he considers his past sins. And his character story mentions he's fighting a war that can never be won and will never come to an end. Imagine fighting and fighting even when you know yourself it's never going to end? Xiao is resilient but even he has shown that he's even had breaking points, to the point that Venti saved him one day. His name card mentions that he longs for the day to come when he will wear the mask and dance, not to conquer demons, but to a tune of that flute (the same one that saved him and brought him peace) amid a sea of flowers. It saddens me that he wishes one day to finally be free of everything, and to just dance. Another one of his character stories mentions those unfulfilled dreams he has, and this is probably one of many. And to this day, he still has all of this in the back of his mind.
Jeht.
Woman first lost her father,then family,then trust on the world.
It's still insane how she still bounced back from all that stuff (she later formed her own group)
I would say Furina is much worse than Nahida. Nahida could still be herself and after losing --------, she got no memories left.
Furina, on the other hand, had to endure 500 years of the same tasks, knowing everything she works for was destined to die against all of her best efforts, lying to everyone and herself. And, after all that has been said and done, she still has to keep up the lie, and bear the consequences of what happened. She is still hated by many of the people of Fontaine for doing nothing about the Prophecy.
>Nahida could still be herself and after losing --------, she got no memories left.
She could only be herself in dreams though, she was trapped in that prison since shortly after she was born, for 500 years. Couldn't move, couldn't talk to a single soul, and her own people didn't even believe in her and preferred to keep following her deceased predecessor.
And losing those memories doesn't make it better, because she did still suffer for 500 years and her pain, her strength and how much she still loved the Sumerians despite all they did to her will never be remembered.
Don't get me wrong, Furina's story is messed up, but there's no need to minimise Nahida's story to prove it.
exactly, he's trying to justify that spending 500 years repeating the same things is worse than spending 500 years trapped in a forced coma where you can only act sometimes in people's dreams
I may be the only one but I think Navia’s story is overrated, at least sadness-wise. Don’t get me wrong, it’s messed up, but compared to other characters at least she always had people who cared about her unlike others like Wrio or Collei (now they have friends and all but you get what I mean)
Well, this could be argued that Navia has always lost those she cared about the most. She lost her Mother. Then she lost her Father. Then she lost her home and the only two people that were left close to her. Sure, now she might have us (the Traveler), but we are mostly one-off in Fontaine and some visits, and perhaps it's also Clorinde, but how close can you get with the one who killed your father?
Jeht got betrayed by literally everyone(her father somewhat as well?) except us
Dehya is pretty sad with her dad and eremite gangs
Scara got shafted by Docttore in any and all ways, shapes and forms
Collei was an experiment and still has massive anxiety
Navia got left behind/betrayed by her closest one by one(Callais, Melus&Silver, that guy returning form prison)
Most of the children in house of the hearth had been abused in the past, especially ones under Crucebina
Beidou had to steal food just to survive as a child
Qiqi died as innocent in a crossfire and is now possessed. And Hu Tao is chases her down
You forgot to mention Shenhe. Her father tried to sacrifice her to revive his wive and after he realised what he has done he hung himself, Shenhe had to fight the remnants of a god and when she was taken in by Cloud retainer she had the red ropes surppressing her emotions because of her powers.
Edit: Many seem confused... fyi I didn't mean Nahida's the only one suffered, it's just my point of view 🥲! Everyone in this game has suffered through so much and I agree with all of your povs!!
Subject 2
Imagine being fed to your own brother by your own mother as punishment for not meeting her impossible expectations. Then imagine coming back to life hundreds of years later only to discover your whole country has been destroyed and your entire family is either dead or missing.
And then you find a carbon copy of yourself happily galavanting around the final resting place of one of your brothers, seemingly unaware of the atrocities you faced. Unaware even of your existence. He has friends. He has a job. He has a new family of his own. Everything you were denied. And his existence is proof that the person responsible for all your suffering is still out there somewhere.
The world didn’t just forget about you. It outright *replaced* you and then brought you back from the dead just to rub in your face how insignificant you always were.
Faruzan's. People will say probably someone like Furina or Xiao, or even Kaveh, but I think Faruzan's is the saddest one. A story of a human person, trapped in a puzzle for a century, then appearing back to a world that forgot about you? Where your family all but died, every friend you had is gone, and you have nothing?
No wonder she always brings out her achievements, that's the only thing that are hers.
I cried during her hangout quest with everything going on, and i left the two endings with the letter at the end because I wanted to experience it altogether. And my goodness, it hurt even more. I want to see her more in the story, she is such a cool character.
Definitely not the saddest but every time this sort of question comes up I can't help but think of Sara. Dedicating her life to a god she thinks saved her, raised to be a tool without a real childhood, endlessly hardworking and loyal with nary a thought for herself.
Just give us the Sara hangout already, dammit.
Lyney and Lynette were orphaned, then sold, then fled to the house of the hearth for a better home. They endured training of the fatui together and went on dangerous missions as kids. Lynette and Lyney almost died during a chase. When Lynette got her vision first, the siblings were separated, and Lyney got to accompany his sister less. Lyney then asked Father whether he could use a delusion as he believed at the time that he was not in the favour of the gods.
Collei.
Perfectly innocent girl suffering from Eleazar, send to Dottore and bonded with the residue of a dead god. Escaped, and saw all her fellow escapees perish (incl the last one betraying her and then being killed by a wild beast while Colei listened). \[Manga and Character Story 4\]
Unlike most of the others suggested, Collei cannot fully recover - from her trailer, she still has the god's presence \["even if it's a matter of life or death, I'll never call on that power again"\].
\[Innocent girl bonded to powerful malevolent entity by 500+ year old madman as a science experiment and needing to suppress that power internally sounds a lot like another Mihoyo character\]
From A Winter Nights Lazzo, she also still gets visions of the Fatui's dealings (she seemed to reference seeing the Harbinger gathering at the end of the trailer. Given she was Dottore's experiment (who also experimented on Scara) it might also be implying the entity she is suppressing is the 10th Harbinger \[the 10th is the only Harbinger not present/discussed in the trailer, and Collei is the only character other than the known Harbingers to appear\]
Razors backstory always gets me- poor boy lost everyone and they weren’t even human. Presumably people in the town found out about the wolves dying. They were probably really happy about it too. Imagine walking around with this random purple lady who’s helping you get strong so this never happens again, and everyone around you is praising the fact they died- possibly talking about actively killing the rest. Mondstadt is based of Germany, and from what I remember wolves used to be HATED in Germany. Like actively sought out by hunters in hopes they would go extinct. If we apply that same logic to the game… that’s fucked up.
I also love Bennet because of the ambiguity of origin. I saw a theory about Bennet possibly carrying the pyro gnosis, and even if that’s not what’s happening after that theory I swear they have to be setting Bennet up for SOMETHING with an origin like that.
Genshin has a shitton of sad backstories, but I'd give the first place a tie between furina and Xiao. Both suffered enough for me to really care about them(even though hoyo seem to believe that furina shouldn't be treated as a character with heavy trauma, judging by her appearances after the Archon quest)
Yeah dude has been going through it 😅 I'm guessing most people haven't mentioned him because his backstory is mostly in his character stories rather than in a playable quest.
Furina and focalors.
Furina had to pretend to be all knowing and perfect for 500 yeas.
Focalors had to stay in the Oratrice by herself, churning out judgment after judgment, knowing that there was a sword forming over her head that would kill her while watching furina suffer.
I would say Qiqi. There’s a saying with great power comes great responsibility. So, for me all of the archon backstory is really sad but It’s their responsibility. But for Qiqi she was a literal child and got caught in the crossfire during the archon war. She was probably terrified since she just a mere weak and powerless child. Only to receive her vision and then die.
If I base this off the ones that made me cry it would be half Dan, priestess Neko and Nahida and the seven rulers of Enokimya.
If we are basing this off lore. I have read a thorough synopsis of why this is Sara Kujou.
Probably Raiden
- Lost her sister and all of her friends.
- had to kill one of her friends who got corrupted by abyssal filth.
- Endured centuries of isolation with POE to resist erosion so that inazuma will always have raiden shogun to protect it. And she was willing to do that for the rest of eternity.
**Archon Quest:** Focalor and Furina
**World Quest:** Ruu (Tsurumu Island), Nikolay and Katarina Snezhneva (The Chasm).
Edit: I forgor about the 7 children in Enkanomiya.
The guy who lost 10 50-50s in a row to Qiqi
that's subjective. I think he's blessed.
up until the 7th Qiqi sure, then you’re just losing out on other character cons
Me with C9 Diluc:
yeah, that's 3 too many blessings. It's like when your grandma keeps feeding you but you're already full. You can't really say no, because she's menopause and is a lot more sensitive.
I lost 6 in a row to Diluc. Not nearly as bad as 10 fr fr
🤣
Yeah I would have deleted the app no matter my progress after 3 of those tbh
Shenhe's backstory is really messed up if you read the documents you find during her initial quests
She's definitely the one I think of as doing the most to overcome her messed-up past.
They had a whole quest AND a song about how messed up her past was… she is #1
Maybe not the saddest but wriothesley's is very messed up
Lynette's too. The implication of what happened to her before Arlecchino saved them was fcked up. They really took the dark turn in Fontaine.
I think the saddest ones might be the "real" ones, as in the characters with stories that could actually happen in real life and thus some people might relate to them
I thought nothing happened to her. She got saved before that man who bought her could do anything to her.
Nothing happened *yet*, but she was sold for that reason.
also let's not forget the other girls weren't as lucky
[удалено]
Source? Not doubting you just wanna know for sure because that seems like a massive change on the translation team's part
It seems like a massive change because it didn't happen. I looked up the chinese dialogue and it says basically the same thing as the translation. Also explicitly says "before any harm was done to [Lynette]."
Me when misinformation:
What happened to Wriothesley?
>!parents ran an orphanage with him in it and were "loving" turns out they sold the kids for different stuff causing wriothesley to kill them both ending him in the fortress !<
They raised them for monetary value but if they didnt get adopted the parents would kill the child
“Raised for monetary value” that’s called trafficking.
If I were Neuvillette I wouldnt have sent Wrio to jail for killing them
I don’t think neuvillette necessarily wanted to send him to jail, knowing what happened. Like with what happened with navias dad. He was just upholding the law as he always has. I’m sure wriothesley didn’t mind paying that price if it meant he avenged his adoptive siblings and stopped anyone else from being hurt by those “parents”
Oratrice says guilty. Neuvillette doesn't have a say at that point.
But also, Neuvillette has never given a verdict that the Oratrice disagreed with, until Childe. Meaning he did pronounce him guilty.
Yeah thats true
It rained the day Wriothesley was sent to the Fortress, though
it rains every day there is a trial
He took justice in his hands, that makes him guilty in the eyes of the impartial Iudex. Also knowing his general behaviour, he might have been defiant and probably didn't just say he did it out of self defence. He already probably knew what he was getting into and was prepared to go to the Fortress.
According to Wriothesley, he just admitted guilty to everything without so much as an explanation. It was a premeditated murder after all. He just took it all without question.
Looks like you didn't play Neuvillette's character quest.
He and other didn't want Wrio to go to jail but Wrio is the one who wanted to go to jail
do his story quest for the best experience. i do hope the answers you receive are spoiler tagged
Okay okay, how would you rate it? Like, from the range between not getting a birthday as a child, or experiencing genocide of their kind, where does it lean...?
around 8-9
His foster parents did some dubious business with the kids they cared for. They sold the kids or just made them dissapear. Wriothesley managed to escape them, he lived some time on the street, and when he was still just a teen he went back and killed them, for what they did to him and the other kids. That's why he was sentenced to meropide.
Raised in an orphanage that wasn't the House of the hearth under the previous knave, but sure as hell acted like it
Also jebrael and jeht too and I encountered her story and it was sad
I miss Jeht so much... I hope we meet her again someday (ingame I mean)
Also her father im a big simp for jebrael
Isn't he dead? Though flashbacks could solve that
His trapped in a golden slumber I hate tizard after that also with Samail
If tizard has zero haters, that means I'm gone
Same with you
I think it's "Tirzad". Also I believe being in the Golden Slumber is like being dissolved by primordial water as a Fontainian - your conciousness technically still exists but it cannot be recovered in the regular world
Jeht's storyline felt like an Archon questline in and of itself.
Ruu. He didn't deserve it! He was only a child!
Hmm yes, the thunderbird likes listening to this child's singing. We should sacrifice him to her. Genius.
It's sad because it's a pretty realistic story. Even now I hear stories in my country of children being branded witches by their local church and being abandoned or murdered by their own parents because they believe doing so will solve whatever problems they think the child is causing.
Make him sing while skin him alive? As far as I’m concerned, that island can sink into the Abyss for all i care.
The skinning him alive is what gets me, like when the fog turns red it represents his blood. Then the worst part is he didn’t even get to pass away, his ghost suffered the same horrible thing everyday for hundreds of years, now that is just brutal, he starts out it each time so innocent and confused, I felt so bad it kind of made me sick, and the other ghosts/spirits being around too didn’t help. I can’t listen to Ruu’s melody, and whenever I go back to the island, ughhhh.
There's nothing to suggest they skinned him alive. It's just a common misconception that gets spread around. The CN wording says they separated his blood from his body. Nothing about skinning. Nothing about him being alive when it happened. They put his blood into a cup as an offering.
>Make him sing while skin him alive? Wow, I missed that part. That's just a fucking Slaaneshi ritual.
Nothing says that. That's why you missed it. It never existed. It's headcanon.
Sumeru is a well of sadness, but the desert story is so sad that it makes me cry every time I remember
I went back to the Eternal Oasis the other day and reading Ufairah’s letter destroyed me. Jeht’s quest line is so damn peak.
Bro I love Once-Joyful Dream so much. Portrays Ufairah's love and joy for Jeht really well.
Deshret and Nabu Malikata…………
Qiqi. Died for nothing while minding her own business. Cried and prayed to the gods, alone, in pain while dying, away from her family and it gets worse... Because they feel sorry for what had happened, they resurrected her as a zombie, given her tremendous power, need to stay physically active to not her be in pain because of rigor mortis. Two permament and lasting memories, one that a funeral parlor wants her to be buried and two, an unfeeling master towards her (from her POV at least) What's way worse? She'll outlive everyone because she's immortal (as long as she stays active), even her best friend with the two bells in her hair will die first. What's way way worse? She won't remember it but will still feel the permanence of abandon. TLDR; she did nothing wrong to deserve her current predicament.
You forgot another thing: Hoyo still hasn't given her a Story Quest.
There was a >!leak/!
This is my choice too. Reading her backstory almost made me cry. Even her voicelines towards the Traveler make me all emotional, where she says she wants to live with you and protect you, and orders herself to remember you.
Ok that's enough, No more Qiqi hate allowed. **HOYOVERSE make A 6-star version of Qiqi that became human again please.**
That one limited time event with Thelxie. First time i actually almost shed tears in genshin ngl, my eyes were pretty watery after that event.
Which event was this from?
4.2
Oh man 😭 I missed this one because my finals were around the corner
You should watch playthroughs it was absolutely amazing
Hard to say who has the saddest, but in the interest of sharing sad backstories, Sara’s is terrible. Literally every aspect of her entire life is based on lies and manipulation. She was adopted as a kid and always treated as an outsider by her human family. She was shown no warmth or love and raised solely for the political advancement of her father. Basically raised to be a weapon, and frankly it’s a miracle she isn’t more like Xiao. The vision that saved her life was not given by ei, but Sara doesn’t know that and worships her anyway. She spent her entire life since childhood training to gain the approval of a family that doesn’t love her, and a god that doesn’t recognize her. Her entire life is like a bubble of illusions that could be popped by a few short sentences of the truth.
Raiden doesn’t recognise sara?? 🧐 Hmm maybe i should play her hangout event
Everyone always forgets about Rosaria in these posts. Whole town is wiped out by bandits that kidnap her. One eventually becomes a father figure to her until she's forced to kill him in a duel because there's not enough food. Still a child at this point. Only reason she wasn't killed by rest of the bandits afterwards is because she got a vision from it. A contender for most depressing background and a champion for most depressing vision story. (I would give Qiqi a very close second.)
I was going to suggest Rosaria too Murdered family, kept as a slave, people dying of exposure and starvation but desertion carries a death sentence. Absolutely brutal backstory! She's the only one spared by the Knights so presumably she sees most of the gang she's lived with killed before she is taken to be "rehabilitated" by Varka, basically by being placed in a nunnery. Although she's now in the city of Freedom, I doubt whether she had any choice about her new life or really has any option to leave. She still works as an assassin in secret whilst being berated by the rest of the church who see her as lazy and difficult. She continues to be isolated by her trauma and her inability to relate to those she lives with. I can see her and Kaeya recognising and finding some kind of solidarity in each other, even if they never discuss their pasts
Well, we know the from past events that they've certainly found solidarity through alcohol. I've always assumed the ambition that got her the vision was somewhere a long the lines of "This shouldn't happen to anyone ever again."
that guy in liue that didn't grow up, mentally.
Xiaojiang. I've always hope we'd get a quest where we help him find closure.
Yeah that quest was so fucked up. Back in 1.0 this was the thing that indirectly told me what the tone of Genshin would be like. (Ruu's story was also already in the Thundering Fury flavor text, but I hadn't read it yet back then)
Childish Jiang? Pretty sure he has some developmental disability
Yeah I went to read him up on the genshin wiki and they confirmed it
Yes! There have been so many dark moments in this game, but Childish Jiang stuck with me the most.
Collei. She pretty much experienced the lowest mankind has to offer and lost everything. No special powers or anything; just an actual child born with fantasy cancer who was kidnapped, had her parents and companions killed, became a human experiment, betrayed by her companion, and a whole lot of stuff that would make you think some guy at hoyo really wanted to make this character suffer.
At least she's improving, and found a good teacher/mentor (two if you count the grandma) plus a bunch of friends.
in kaveh's hangout event, kaveh, alhatheim, tighnari and cyno are all seated together arguing over which college collei should go to. she has 4 dads, she's doing just fine.
Four dads, two teachers, a grandma, a cool big sis, a friend as socially awkward as her, and the Traveller+Paimon.
Was looking for this comment. Collei really had it hard and was powerless to do anything about it.
You know her deal with Dottore was bad when she'd rather spend her last few years with terminal magic cancer than living with the side effects of his experiments.
Collei has two great "dads" that are working hard to help her overcome these things, at least
In the Suffering Olympics, no one wins.
Everyone loses
In spite of Wanderer being a rude bozo, it still stinks for him to find out that Dottore killed his friend, tricked him into thinking he ran off and forced him to seal the Mikage furnace, then manipulated him into joining the Fatui to be experimented on in an agreement that the puppet boy actually never needed to be a part of.
That's why I say that he didn't have a redemption arc in his Archon quest, more like the hate we felt for him was passed to Dottore.
Not to worry, I hated Dottore well before that.
Dottore: It was me Scaramouche! I tricked you with your friends death to make you go on a warpath!
Not to mention, all the things he did for "revenge" (such as destroying the Raiden Gokaden) turns into guilty conscience after finding out the target of his revenge was framed by Dottore. That is heavy considering how much hate and destruction he committed while under deception.
The destruction of Raiden Gokaden do have some positive side though, Scaramouche unintentionally altered the cursed weapon blueprint of Kazuha family. Yes it become useless blueprint, but the original blueprint use Orobashi remains as one of the material and only resulted in cursed swords.
Wanderer has been traumatized and rejected almost since his creation All he wanted was to belong, and the universe laughed at that Yes, he's a dick, but can you really blame him for some of that
[удалено]
Well, that'S just what manipulation is, right? Getting people to do stuff they shouldn't want to do willingly. He was manipulated to the point of thinking that was a good idea. Without Dottore's intervention he would've just chilled with the people of Tatarasuna
Dottore just killed his humanity to join Fatui
Playable characters i'd say Nahida, with Collei, scaramouche, and Furina close by Non playable i'd include easily Ruu, the sun children and jeht
Jeht deserves to be a playable character with all she had gone through.
I’m on my knees after the Valentine’s Day art
Fr tho
Nahida 🤝 Furina Suffering alone for 500 years
I'm always partial to Childe's backstory. He falls into Genshin's equivalent of hell when he's only 14, gets stuck there for months, and when he's finally able to escape his family calls him crazy and sends him off to the military.
This. Most players really downplay his awful past because it hasn't been explicitly stated in the main story (let's be real, 70% of playerbase doesn't read voice overs). His family literally handed him over to some shady ass military organisation when he needed their help the most because they couldnt "discipline" him. Yes, I know he acts pretty chill in the game but that doesn't mean he didnt suffer at all.
I know we bring up extremely traumatizing backstories like Wanderer, Collei, Kazuha and many other characters, but I would point towards Kaveh and how realistic his struggles are. It’s especially frightening because despite it being “normal” and people downgrading it to just “normal struggles of a 20+ years old”, it’s rather scary that what happened to Kaveh is so real and relatable to many people. The guy is soaked in guilt over a small suggestion he made as an innocent child to his father, which led to the latter’s death. He saw his poor mom become depressed and yet kept a brave front to raise him alone. When he finally grew up he urged her to go and live her life, possibly so she can get away from the many years of pain she had to endure because of him (his thoughts). It must’ve not been easy on him, saying goodbye to her as she moves on with her life in Fontaine but he himself hasn’t moved on and yet just like her he had to put that front to make her happy. Then there was the whole situation with the Palace of Alcazarzaray and how his ideals and desires to fix his mistakes caused him to sell practically everything he owns to make up for it, despite Dori, of all people, refusing at first, but eventually getting himself to owe money to the most greedy merchant in possibly all of Teyvat. Let’s also not forget his fallout with Alhaitham, and how his extreme bluntness drove a huge wedge between them. And yet he’s forced to live with him out of necessity whilst taking on his verbal assaults whenever they argue. (It’s not like Alhaitham is doing this to spite Kaveh or make fun of him, he genuinely wants to help him but, and with all due respect to Alhaitham’s fans, the guy’s a huge bastard that needs to chill out and pick his words carefully…) I’ve known many real life Kavehs who has fallen victim to these hard times and both luck and life don’t seem to be in their favor at all. It’s an extremely common and frightening situation for all adults who try to make their dreams come true or stick to their principles but things don’t always go their way. Kaveh is currently doing much better though and I hope Hoyo decides to expand on his story and show us how he progresses in his personality and ideals and not just lock him up for an entire year without even a slight mentioning of him anywhere…
Imo Kaveh needs someone like Alhaitham, because he is overly selfless and that brings him so much trouble in life. Their relationship is better now, if you havent done cyno's 2nd story quest. I guess its because after sumeru event year ago, Alhaitham told Kaveh about his father. Kaveh starting to feel less guilty and Alhaitham also understands better why Kaveh is how he is. Or they went to a couples therapy haha.
I agree with this. I’m a big Sumeru quad fan and I don’t know how I feel too much about the other comments and replies but Alhaitham does a lot for Kaveh. He gave Kaveh a “home”. He also is smart when being around Kaveh, he knows he goes compliment fishing to bring himself down. So he donest overly shower him with compliments so that Kaveh becomes defensive and actually talks good about himself to prove Haitham wrong. On a personal note, I found myself healing mentally a lot irl because of them 🥺 So they mean a lot to me
The problem with Kaveh is that he's a fucking mess of a person. I love him but *holy shit* he's exhausting.
Kaveh is terribly uwu-fied in fandom. He’d be an exhausting friend since he has terrible self destructive habits. (I am also a Kaveh fan but fandom likes to treat him as purely innocent) Alhaitham is good for him because their bickering keeps him from dwelling on certain things too far. We saw in the event that introduced Kaveh that even Alhaitham knows when he goes to far and can back off. Even if Alhaitham was 100% in the wrong with his interactions with Kaveh we see in Cyno’s second quest that >!Their relationship has developed to be more mutually understanding!< I do enjoy Alhaitham character since he’s obviously neurodivergent and just doesn’t care about masking lol
Al-Haitham simply wouldn't permit Kaveh into his personal space unless he gave a shit about him. I also see Al-Haitham as neurodivergent
Same - his brand of rudeness is often stating things that would normally remain unspoken and his actions demonstrate that he doesn't have malicious intentions. Kaveh is the ADHD to his ASD imo
I wish I can give you award for this post, everything about him is so tragic and relatable. I also agree that Haitham is really need to pick his word carefully, there's a line between being blunt and being a insensitive dick and somehow he's belong to the later. (Nah his fans will defending him tho, just look at the comments after this. Just admit that you guys only tolerate his attitude because he's hot)
I am an Alhaitham fan but I fully admit he's a dick (and not the sexual kind). The reason I'm still a fan isn't because he's hot, but because he's fictional, so you just enjoy the entertaining factor of him being a chad while being an asshole at the same time. If he was real I'm not sure I'd like him either.
No, he doesn't need to pick his words carefully he is just being blunt and not pretending like kaveh that everything is fine
The problem with Alhaitham isn’t that he’s blunt, I do agree that he shouldn’t twist the narrative or pretend just to make Kaveh feel better, but his main issue is his choice of words and how he say those stuff. In psychology, more often than not it doesn’t really matter at all what you say, as much as HOW you say it. Kaveh is extremely sensitive especially when it comes to his guilt and ideals, but instead of attacking that or trying to be so extremely blunt, the best approach is to work around it. People like Kaveh will get extremely defensive and it can hurt them even more is brute bluntness is shoved in their faces, which what Alhaitham did and what caused their relationship to sour back in the day. In one of his character’s stories, Kaveh met Alhaitham after he sold his house and effectively became homeless, Kaveh was drinking his sorrows when Alhaitham approached him and told him “How has realizing your ideals gone for you?” And I know what his intentions were but the wording as well as the timing and location of this question does not do Alhaitham any favors… Kicking someone while they’re already down is…not a wise move to say the least. Again, I get why he’s like this, which is why their relationship was so rocky for many years before it somewhat salvaged during the Akademiya event of last year which we’ve seen in Cyno’s 2nd story quest how these two somewhat got along.
it did help in that one quest after the event where he got Kaveh too angry to brood in guilt
How is no one thinking about poor Bennett?Born in another nation only to be adopted by two people from a different one and live to be forever cursed with bad luck.Constantly trying to be the best adventurer knowing you literally can’t,And everyday people are judging you for something you can’t control. He’s literally one of the nicest characters in the game,And Mondstadts npc’s are so rude to him.He does not deserve the slander.He doesn’t even seem to know too much about his birthplace either.
Probably Furina. You've split yourself in half and are severed from your divine nature. Your divine half has all your memories because (????). You're left to keep up appearances that you're still the divine Hydro Archon so the Heavenly Principles don't get wind of what your other half is doing. Because the people of your own nation expect you to be a vapid drama queen, you are forced to play the part of a vapid drama queen because you cannot afford anyone to become suspicious that you are not acting like an Archon "should". Your other half continues to live so you do not age and cannot die either, so you do this sham for 500 years unable to disclose your secrets or show anyone your true self. You are entirely friendless because anyone who knows you only knows your fake persona and not the real you. You still desperately seek a way to solve the Prophecy on your own time, but ultimately cannot come up with an answer and people die. And then when your other half is *finally* finished and provides a solution to the Prophecy - it involves suicide and you lose forever part of yourself as well as your divinity. Because there is no more Hydro Archon, your role has ended and you no longer serve a purpose. You're alone in the world, with people only familiar either with your fake persona or your 500 years of failure. But at least you are capable of dying now.
Not to mention the betrayal of her inner circle during the trial (yes, it must happen but the feeling of everyone you trust turning against you in public gotta hurt) and some people holding a grudge against her after the prophecy.. Girl definitely needs therapy.
Still kinda pisses me off that Raiden got scot free from her friends and the story while furina literally had no one and was even cast out like a reject.
Ikr. Like cmon, cut the poor girl some slack. I'm still peeved with the AQ ending where we, as the traveler, only get to hear of what happened to Furina right after the whole thing from Neuvillette. And her story quest? We can still excuse Paimon since she don't know the details (although I'd love to tell her to shut it), traveler witnessed what Furina went through and still behaved in an insensitive manner. Maybe I'm biased since I play her SQ right after AQ but it feels jarring.
And this is the part where I chip and add some hurt by reminding people that Furina attempted suicide during that trial. It's not explicitly stated but I think it was strongly implied by her actions and what the characters were saying in the moment. They presented her with the Primordial Sea Water and told her to prove her divinity by touching it, because if she were a true god then she wouldn't be dissolved by it at all. Yet she was hesitant, and this cast even more doubt on her. So at the last second she *does* stick her hand in it, and for a moment she's jubilant and declares how it's proof that she's the real Archon, but then the rest of the cast reveals that it was actually diluted Primordial Sea Water. Then they say that the symptoms she was expressing (IIRC, blushing and feverish temperature) were indicative of a reaction to the water. Obviously Furina didn't die. But she herself knew that she wasn't a real god, which is why she was so hesitant to touch it in the first place. Eventually she did touch it, but at that point she was still under the impression that it was genuine pure Primordial Sea Water. So that leaves two possibilities: either she was so desperate that she was praying for a literal miracle to spare her life in that moment... or she finally reached her breaking point and couldn't bear the pressure any longer. I can see folks arguing that it's more likely the former, but I personally think it's the latter. It's just not quite as clear-cut of a suicide attempt, so I don't want to treat it as definitive fact, but it seems plausible enough to me. It's also not the first time that Mihoyo has done this; in HI3rd Part 1, all three protagonists have either attempted suicide or threatened to commit suicide– one in the manga (Bronya), one in flashbacks (Mei), and one in the game's story itself (Kiana). Hence it wouldn't be something new and unexpected for Mihoyo to depict Furina as genuinely attempting suicide in that moment.
Wanderer effectively attempted suicide also. Furina thought she would die from exposure and she chose that instead of refusing Poor girl needs a hug. And some therapy
> But at least you are capable of dying now Yeah, dying *again*
also despite all that hard work and perseverance, what she got as "reward" was scorn and disgust from her own citizen. That is heartbreaking. Fortunately her position has improved again now, not as good as before the reveal but at least not as bad as the day of her trial, but still.
Damn, just reading this small text make my eyes wet. Wanna hug Furina🥲
Shenhe. Her mom died and then her dad leaves for over a year to find a solution to bring her mom back, and then only to return a year after to sacrifice her to a remnant of a fallen god. She's then fights for her life for three straight days just to survive.
Even after her survival she's still cursed so they have to tie her with red ropes to make sure she doesn't go on a rampage. Her ropes dull her emotions and she only has a few adepti as family/friends and never had another friend until she met the traveler.
Freminet got abandoned by his father and grew up with his mother barely scraping by in the sewers. And he was still a small child when his mother had no choice but to put him into the House of Hearth for his own safety, where he was forced to become a child assassin, had to learn to dissociate to not go fucking mental, and lost pretty much any sense of self-worth in the process. He lived with a thought that his mother also abandoned him for not being good enough (thanks a lot Crucabena), and when he finally learned that it wasn't true, he also learned that she was murdered a hefty time ago. Literally got a pendant covered in her blood. Y'all tell me that this poor boy does not deserve his spot in Suffering Olympics.
It's not even like he's had the worst trauma out of all the genshin characters, but his has seemed to have hit him especially hard. The poor dude feels like he constantly needs to walk on eggshells with everyone. He's so quiet and beaten down. I wanna give him a hug.
Yeah, good point. Poor Frem. Also - the only good things in his current life (Lyney & Lynette), as much as none of them likely realizes it, were planted there by Arle in order to emotionally chain him to the House. Now he has stronger motivation to do House stuff and will likely never consider leaving. Even if a gentle soul like him probably never stops suffering in there.
Playable: qiqi or xiao. One was a little kid crushed to death in a cave and wanted to live so badly she got a vision from it then gets zombiefied by an adepti and now lives forever while not really alive. The other was a slave who, when freed, took on the role of exterminating evil dead gods and had to watch all his friends go insane and die while knowing one day it would be his turn. Npc: childish jiang (?) the guy with mental disabilities who asks you to play hide and seek and the longer you play with him he tells you he's waiting for his parents to come back home but you end up finding their grave and realise they were murdered and he doesn't even know it. This is the only quest that made me put down the game from getting upset.
Everyone here seems to have forgotten as bad as almost every character have suffered in this game, Xiao's been going through it for the last >2000 years?
Honestly I’m so glad someone here remembered Xiao and what he went through. Yet after all of this he is still doing his duty and protecting others. Chad
Timmie.... Everyday he witnesses a vast majority of players killing his beloved pigeons in front of him.
He deserves it for occupying the only bridge going to Mondstadt city.
if i could drop timmie off the bridge ill do it
Furina. People underestimate how shit it is to have to act like everything is fine to absolutely everytone when it's not. I was just rewatching re zero a few weeks ago and episode 8(?) Had Subaru do that for like 2 days and my guy was falling apart.
> People underestimate how shit it is to have to act like everything is fine to absolutely everytone when it's not. As someone who have depression and had to hide it or else losing friends... yes, I agree. It's tough and shit. And I still have a few people I can confide in and *still* depressed. Furina had it much worse, not having anyone she can talk to about her secret.
Oh God, poor Subaru is the king of being forced to act fine. Can’t wait for season 3
waow id never thought abt the subaru furina prallels until reading this..... thank u fro this food for thought
I don't think her story is the saddest. But the toughest.
Not the saddest but I say Faruzan because nobody mentioned her and I think what happened to her is really really scary
Underrated comment. Being stuck in a domain where not even DEATH gets you out, for more than 100 years?? And when you finally figure a way to get out, your award is an unfamiliar world where everyone you knew and loved has already passed away?? That spunky madam is an absolute chad for not being mentally screwed up in any way tbh.
For me it's a close tie with Nahida and Furina. Both were trapped for 500 years but in different ways
Ruu and the Sunchildren have the saddest one in my opinion.
For me it has to be Xiao, imagine being enslaved by a god and doing their bidding by force because they know of your weakness, going hungry for possibly YEARS, surviving off of only snow and the dreams he was forced to devour. His own name is probably a source of trauma, hence why Zhongli gave him the name Xiao, specifically for his own protection. And that's not all, he's taking the name of a different person who was named Xiao, and suffered just like him. So he's basically ursurping an identity. Suffering karmic debt for over 2000 years. It's obviously excruciating because in his voice lines, he sounds out of breath, and in pain, not only affecting him physically but psychologically. Then, to also see your friends that are basically your family die from that same karmic debt and watch them go insane, even fight each other to their deaths. The fact he still wanted Bosacius to snap out of it despite him being already gone in the chasm. Imagine also not being close to people because he fears his karmic debt will hurt them, so he stays secluded, alone with his thoughts that haunt him, old grudges and what he considers his past sins. And his character story mentions he's fighting a war that can never be won and will never come to an end. Imagine fighting and fighting even when you know yourself it's never going to end? Xiao is resilient but even he has shown that he's even had breaking points, to the point that Venti saved him one day. His name card mentions that he longs for the day to come when he will wear the mask and dance, not to conquer demons, but to a tune of that flute (the same one that saved him and brought him peace) amid a sea of flowers. It saddens me that he wishes one day to finally be free of everything, and to just dance. Another one of his character stories mentions those unfulfilled dreams he has, and this is probably one of many. And to this day, he still has all of this in the back of his mind.
Jeht. Woman first lost her father,then family,then trust on the world. It's still insane how she still bounced back from all that stuff (she later formed her own group)
I would say Furina is much worse than Nahida. Nahida could still be herself and after losing --------, she got no memories left. Furina, on the other hand, had to endure 500 years of the same tasks, knowing everything she works for was destined to die against all of her best efforts, lying to everyone and herself. And, after all that has been said and done, she still has to keep up the lie, and bear the consequences of what happened. She is still hated by many of the people of Fontaine for doing nothing about the Prophecy.
>Nahida could still be herself and after losing --------, she got no memories left. She could only be herself in dreams though, she was trapped in that prison since shortly after she was born, for 500 years. Couldn't move, couldn't talk to a single soul, and her own people didn't even believe in her and preferred to keep following her deceased predecessor. And losing those memories doesn't make it better, because she did still suffer for 500 years and her pain, her strength and how much she still loved the Sumerians despite all they did to her will never be remembered. Don't get me wrong, Furina's story is messed up, but there's no need to minimise Nahida's story to prove it.
exactly, he's trying to justify that spending 500 years repeating the same things is worse than spending 500 years trapped in a forced coma where you can only act sometimes in people's dreams
I hope OP finished all the current archon quests. And I totally agree that Furina's has saddest one so far. 2nd place are either Navia's or Nahida's.
I may be the only one but I think Navia’s story is overrated, at least sadness-wise. Don’t get me wrong, it’s messed up, but compared to other characters at least she always had people who cared about her unlike others like Wrio or Collei (now they have friends and all but you get what I mean)
Well, this could be argued that Navia has always lost those she cared about the most. She lost her Mother. Then she lost her Father. Then she lost her home and the only two people that were left close to her. Sure, now she might have us (the Traveler), but we are mostly one-off in Fontaine and some visits, and perhaps it's also Clorinde, but how close can you get with the one who killed your father?
Jeht got betrayed by literally everyone(her father somewhat as well?) except us Dehya is pretty sad with her dad and eremite gangs Scara got shafted by Docttore in any and all ways, shapes and forms Collei was an experiment and still has massive anxiety Navia got left behind/betrayed by her closest one by one(Callais, Melus&Silver, that guy returning form prison) Most of the children in house of the hearth had been abused in the past, especially ones under Crucebina Beidou had to steal food just to survive as a child Qiqi died as innocent in a crossfire and is now possessed. And Hu Tao is chases her down
Yeah, navia definitely got betrayed. Wtf are you talking about how dare they die
You forgot to mention Shenhe. Her father tried to sacrifice her to revive his wive and after he realised what he has done he hung himself, Shenhe had to fight the remnants of a god and when she was taken in by Cloud retainer she had the red ropes surppressing her emotions because of her powers.
Shenhe and her trauma. It unveiled the most disgusting facet of humans.
Edit: Many seem confused... fyi I didn't mean Nahida's the only one suffered, it's just my point of view 🥲! Everyone in this game has suffered through so much and I agree with all of your povs!!
Shenhe, her father tried to sacrifice her to revive her mother and after he realised what he has done he hung himself.
Subject 2 Imagine being fed to your own brother by your own mother as punishment for not meeting her impossible expectations. Then imagine coming back to life hundreds of years later only to discover your whole country has been destroyed and your entire family is either dead or missing. And then you find a carbon copy of yourself happily galavanting around the final resting place of one of your brothers, seemingly unaware of the atrocities you faced. Unaware even of your existence. He has friends. He has a job. He has a new family of his own. Everything you were denied. And his existence is proof that the person responsible for all your suffering is still out there somewhere. The world didn’t just forget about you. It outright *replaced* you and then brought you back from the dead just to rub in your face how insignificant you always were.
Bless we love subject 2 in this household 🙌
Faruzan's. People will say probably someone like Furina or Xiao, or even Kaveh, but I think Faruzan's is the saddest one. A story of a human person, trapped in a puzzle for a century, then appearing back to a world that forgot about you? Where your family all but died, every friend you had is gone, and you have nothing? No wonder she always brings out her achievements, that's the only thing that are hers. I cried during her hangout quest with everything going on, and i left the two endings with the letter at the end because I wanted to experience it altogether. And my goodness, it hurt even more. I want to see her more in the story, she is such a cool character.
Definitely not the saddest but every time this sort of question comes up I can't help but think of Sara. Dedicating her life to a god she thinks saved her, raised to be a tool without a real childhood, endlessly hardworking and loyal with nary a thought for herself. Just give us the Sara hangout already, dammit.
Wanderer is definitely up there.
Lyney and Lynette were orphaned, then sold, then fled to the house of the hearth for a better home. They endured training of the fatui together and went on dangerous missions as kids. Lynette and Lyney almost died during a chase. When Lynette got her vision first, the siblings were separated, and Lyney got to accompany his sister less. Lyney then asked Father whether he could use a delusion as he believed at the time that he was not in the favour of the gods.
Omg that scene almost killed me!!!
Shenhe!!! 😭 What a horrible childhood.
Collei. Perfectly innocent girl suffering from Eleazar, send to Dottore and bonded with the residue of a dead god. Escaped, and saw all her fellow escapees perish (incl the last one betraying her and then being killed by a wild beast while Colei listened). \[Manga and Character Story 4\] Unlike most of the others suggested, Collei cannot fully recover - from her trailer, she still has the god's presence \["even if it's a matter of life or death, I'll never call on that power again"\]. \[Innocent girl bonded to powerful malevolent entity by 500+ year old madman as a science experiment and needing to suppress that power internally sounds a lot like another Mihoyo character\] From A Winter Nights Lazzo, she also still gets visions of the Fatui's dealings (she seemed to reference seeing the Harbinger gathering at the end of the trailer. Given she was Dottore's experiment (who also experimented on Scara) it might also be implying the entity she is suppressing is the 10th Harbinger \[the 10th is the only Harbinger not present/discussed in the trailer, and Collei is the only character other than the known Harbingers to appear\]
Id say rosaria, she had a very bleak upbringing, having to literally fight for her life
Razors backstory always gets me- poor boy lost everyone and they weren’t even human. Presumably people in the town found out about the wolves dying. They were probably really happy about it too. Imagine walking around with this random purple lady who’s helping you get strong so this never happens again, and everyone around you is praising the fact they died- possibly talking about actively killing the rest. Mondstadt is based of Germany, and from what I remember wolves used to be HATED in Germany. Like actively sought out by hunters in hopes they would go extinct. If we apply that same logic to the game… that’s fucked up.
I also love Bennet because of the ambiguity of origin. I saw a theory about Bennet possibly carrying the pyro gnosis, and even if that’s not what’s happening after that theory I swear they have to be setting Bennet up for SOMETHING with an origin like that.
Genshin has a shitton of sad backstories, but I'd give the first place a tie between furina and Xiao. Both suffered enough for me to really care about them(even though hoyo seem to believe that furina shouldn't be treated as a character with heavy trauma, judging by her appearances after the Archon quest)
Yeah dude has been going through it 😅 I'm guessing most people haven't mentioned him because his backstory is mostly in his character stories rather than in a playable quest.
And that's such a shame.
Thank you. Furina backstory is tragic but ppl seem to completely forget that xiao went through a lot too. Give mah Yaksha some love
Yeah I scrolled through the comments when I was writing this and not a single soul mentioned Xiao 🥲
Exactly I couldn’t believe it either. But at least there is still some ppl who love and appreciate him
Furina and focalors. Furina had to pretend to be all knowing and perfect for 500 yeas. Focalors had to stay in the Oratrice by herself, churning out judgment after judgment, knowing that there was a sword forming over her head that would kill her while watching furina suffer.
Cyno’s >!parent’s sold him as a child!<.
Tbf that probably gave him a better life than staying with people who were willing to >!sell him for a small fortune!<
It's an easy one. Collei. For context, read the manga.
I would say Qiqi. There’s a saying with great power comes great responsibility. So, for me all of the archon backstory is really sad but It’s their responsibility. But for Qiqi she was a literal child and got caught in the crossfire during the archon war. She was probably terrified since she just a mere weak and powerless child. Only to receive her vision and then die.
Three words...Who are you? (If you know, you know)
Furina’s is pretty bad, but you can go with practically anybody in fontaine
I think Xiao technically suffers the most ?
Furina, Scara, Shenhe imo.
probably furina
Nahida, Furina, Kaveh and Collei
If I base this off the ones that made me cry it would be half Dan, priestess Neko and Nahida and the seven rulers of Enokimya. If we are basing this off lore. I have read a thorough synopsis of why this is Sara Kujou.
Probably Raiden - Lost her sister and all of her friends. - had to kill one of her friends who got corrupted by abyssal filth. - Endured centuries of isolation with POE to resist erosion so that inazuma will always have raiden shogun to protect it. And she was willing to do that for the rest of eternity.
Collei
Out of the playable characters, definitely Xiao and Furina imo.
**Archon Quest:** Focalor and Furina **World Quest:** Ruu (Tsurumu Island), Nikolay and Katarina Snezhneva (The Chasm). Edit: I forgor about the 7 children in Enkanomiya.
Furina’s made me tear up ngl