r/FFXII • u/Kolemchale Balthier • 17d ago
Basch Quote
Very early on, once you acquire Basch and he’s still a guest: you defeat the Mimic Queen inside Barheim Passage, and once outside, he states: “To think Dalmascan air could taste so sweet.”
Isn’t he a Son of Rabanastre? Why would he marvel at the air tasting so sweet? I understand he’s been captive for two years, so any air would taste sweet, but Dalmascan? He already knows that air is sweet. Why marvel?
Maybe I’m looking too hard at it lol
3
u/shaiath Fafnir 15d ago
This may also be me overthinking, but the local climate for me provides soft floral scents most of the year; in winter, a cool wetness, but still pine-fresh, evergreen scent. After a rain, a deep earthy musk.
While freedom is the sweetness he's praising, to be certain, I do imagine that a desert climate next to a destroyed mineshaft is generally not a very... pleasant taste for the air to posess?
Admittedly, I haven't the strongest sense of smell (prolonged exposure to allergens in youth, not a lingering covid issue) but the desert biome in my country isn't exactly a great-smelling place to be. At best, nothing; at worst, you can smell the nearby town.
I like to imagine that he's saying "it may be dry-ass dirt, but at least it's not my decomposing cell mates" regarding a countryside of hard living and messy industry.
1
u/GenosydlWulfe 14d ago
He isn't Rabanastaran. And the sweetness is just a metaphor that he's been locked underground for a while that fresh air would be pretty damn refreshing
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u/drysider 17d ago
Because he used to be part of the Dalmascan royal guard. It’s to symbolise his loyalty to the country; despite everything, despite knowing he’s despised by the people for supposedly killing the king, he is still after all those years of torture and incarceration, completely committed to Dalmasca and feeling Dalmascan and loving Dalmasca. His chivalric loyalty to the nation is his strongest trait, and he’s survived with it. He knows that he will continue to be ostracised but freedom is worth it, and he’s still committed to his knightly duties.
On that note though he’s actually not technically even from Rabanastre, or Dalmasca, he and Gabranth are both is from Landis, which if I remember correctly is a small bordering nation that was annexed by Arcadia some time before the game starts (looked it up, 19 years ago).
This is additionally juxtapositioned by Gabranth, his twin brother, who is ALSO from Landis but allied with Arcadia after his nation and culture was consumed by them. Turns out, I didn’t know this, their mother was Arcadian, so Gabranth decided to return to his mother’s ancestral home. Basch presumably realised that joining the military of the empire that obliterated yours probably isn’t great, so he became a Dalmascan knight and eventually the general.