User blog:BigBadSquid/PE Proposal: The Queen from Ico



Since February is seen as the month of romance, let's bring in the ladies.

What's the Work?
Ico is a 2001 Japanese game made by. Set in an unknown time or area, multiple villages near an ancient castle have been cursed with unfortunate events, signaled when children are born with horns. Soldiers have been taking the children to the castle and sealing them off in coffins as a sacrifice to protect the rest of the village. However, an earthquake happens and the most recent sacrifice, Ico, escapes his coffin and finds himself trapped in the castle, with nothing inside but a caged princess named Yorda, shadowy creatures, and the person behind it all, and elderly wicked Queen.

Who is the Queen? What has she done?
While little is given over the Queen's backstory, its mentioned that she was the one responsible for cursing the villages. She does this so that once the villagers sacrifice their horned children, the Queen can use her dark magic to transform the souls of the children to become the shadow monsters that guard her castle. Her gimmick is that she is nearing the end of her life and plans to complete a ritual using all of the shadow creatures to transfer her soul into her daughter Yorda. According to the game's dialogue, it can be assumed that the Queen only created Yorda through magic and not through the birthing process, and treats her cruelly by leaving her isolated within a cage, telling her that she'll die if she ever leaves the castle. The reason why Yorda acts passively towards Ico is not out of weakness; she's emotionally broken.

Anyways back to the game's plot. The Queen herself doesn't show up until pretty late into the game, only sending her shadow creatures to capture Yorda and send her into a portal back to her imprisonment. She only makes about three appearances; the first is through a revelation after attempting to open the gate of the bridge leading to the mainland, warning Yorda of why she can't leave the castle and telling Ico to scram. The second time when Ico manages to unlock the gate to the bridge, halfway across the Queen turns Yorda into stone and causes the bridge to retract, sending Ico falling to his presumed death.

But Ico survives the plunge and finds a powerful sword that the Queen hid away, powerful enough to kill the shadow monsters that the Queen sends after Ico. Once Ico reaches the Queen's chamber, she reveals her ritual plan and manipulates Ico into leaving the sword, saying that its what Yorda would want. But Ico isn't having her BS and uses the sword to cut through her force field and impale her. In her dying breath, the Queen taunts Ico that Yorda will never escape and explodes, flinging Ico to the side of the room and causes the castle to collapse. Fortunately, the Queen's death uplifts the stone curse on Yorda, allowing her to rescue Ico and escape.

Mitigating Factors
Meh, no. Even with her limited screen-time, the Queen sets herself as a completely uncaring parent who treats her daughter throughout her entire life like crap, sharing a bond with her similar to a bird trapped in a cage. Not as a pet, but rather a broken, paranoid prisoner. She's also behind a mass sacrifice of innocent children born with horns to become her shadow soldier slaves, caring not a single instance when any of them are slain by Ico.

Heinous Standards
Since the Team Ico games are mentioned to exist in the same universe, this will be quite easy as there are only three games so far. In Ico, the Queen easily takes the cake as she is the one responsible for all the suffering in the villages, using her daughter as a vessel for rebirth and using the shadow monsters as simple guards of her castle and nothing else. In Shadow of the Colossus, there's Dormin, an evil entity banished by Lord Emon in the Forbidden Lands, although his affability and gray zone scale is unclear since he deliberately told Wander that a consequence will come if Wander partakes in slaying the Colossi. Speaking of the Colossi, none of them count considering the player is supposed to feel sympathy for killing them, even the more feral ones like Basaran, Dirge, Cenobia, and Argus. In The Last Guardian, the Big Bad is the Master of the Valley that uses its Armored Tricos to kidnap and feed it children to retain its immortality, but its moral agency is unknown as it's given no characterizations other than "some ball of evil".

Verdict
The Queen is far behind the likes of Beldam, Ragyō Kiryūin, and Ruth Chandler as the worst mother of all time, but dang does she come close.