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She who teaches. She who nurtures. She brings us up when we are down, teaches us right from wrong, puts us back on track when our path goes astray. She was our first teacher, our first councilor, our first protector. When we all came into this world, it is our mother's voice that we first hear. It is often said that a newborn baby, even if immediately separated from its mother, will always remember its mother's voice. At times calming and soothing, at other times stern and disciplining, it is the voice that brings us to this world.
Even then, there are also other mother figures in our lives. Able and venerable women who have sought to teach us many things about this world, such as how to live and how to love. It could be an aunt, a friend's mother, an authority figure and perhaps even a total stranger. They are comforting figures in times where we are confused and lost, unable to find truth, and seek wisdom in a world that feels so alienating and even maddening. In return, she doesn't ask for and recompense. Only the promise that you will one day become a fine human being.
The wisdom of the Empress cannot be understated. She is the first mature and counseling figure we meet in our lives, offering to guide us through the best and worst of times. The Empress nourishes us with her wisdom and intelligence, at times a light when all one sees is darkness. The truth is, at times she goes unnoticed and unappreciated, yet it is in the darkest of times that we remember her counsel, and this is the very same counsel that helps us through the trials of life.
The hero would at times not take notice of this mature, womanly figure. She would seem frail and weak to him, he who is full of life, willing to take the bull by the horns at any given chance. Even then, she is present and her words are made clear. Sometimes, the truth of her words come too late or just in the nick of time. It is here that the hero finally learns the meaning of her words, and how it will shape the future of his journey.
He has failed in his mission to protect her. Taken by the Shinra Corporation as countless lives are lost to a man-made disaster, he returns to her home to speak with her mother, so as to learn about them the truth about her and what Shinra wants with her. Here he learns of her past: an orphan girl crying as her biological mother slowly dies by a train station. Only days before had her adoptive mother learned that her husband had died in a war on a distant land. Feeling alone and sad, she admits that this may be the reason she took the orphan in. During their lives together she would learn that this young girl was the last of her race, destined to speak with the planet. It is for this reason the the Corporation wishes to capture her, but this mother would never allow that. She teaches her to be careful and be wary of strangers. She swears to protect her daughter. Her real daughter.
The young mayor of the last remaining bastion of defiance against a rampaging empire, it is when she meets the adopted children of the one they once hailed as a hero that she remembers the sins of her fathers. Because of his relations and his pacifist views, Genkaku was thrown out and branded a traitor, only to die in obscurity. In the middle of this war she sees both son and daughter and wishes to tell them the noble story of their adoptive father, hoping to teach them the life of nobility and, perhaps, to find atonement for the sins the city has done to them. And yet, before she is able, she is assaulted and left for dead. As she lies dying she gives them one important piece of wisdom: "live".
More often than not, the Empress is only a minor character. The hero only meets with her once or twice, but these short meetings have a profound effect on his life that shapes the journey he undertakes. She is the first beacon in the darkness of his travels, the first master and the first teacher to impart upon him wisdom that will become the cornerstones of his personal growth. As he leaves her behind in that town or city, he takes with him the some of the most important lessons he will ever learn. Lessons that prove to be critical in the most daunting of situations.
Most important of all, he takes with him a mother’s love.
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