User blog:ThatScrewyDuck/PE Proposal Draft: Lord Mathia/Chancellor Bartlow (anime version)

What's the work: Tales of Zestiria the X is a Japanese anime television series based on both the Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria video games (primarily the former, though) that debuted in 2016, and ran for two season, and 26 episodes (including a prologue episoded titled "episode 0"). It follows the same basic storyline as the game, but with quite a number of specific differences in terms of what exactly happens, and how it happens. The story follows Princess Alisha, the princess of Ladylake, which is the capital city of Hyland, who is investigating the increased presense of Malevolence, which is a powerful contaminating force that corrupts those who are overcome with negative emotions into mindless monsters called Hellions. She is also investigating the disappearance of the Seraphim, a special spritual race who used to help a destined individual called the Shepherd counter the malevolence and purify Hellions. Early on, after a tragic incident where she loses most of her friends, she discovers Elysia, a village full of seraphim (who are invisible to her and most humans) where she meets an individual named Sorey, a human who has grown up with them and can actually see them. While the seraphim are in no mood to help her, since despite her pleas, they believe humanity is too corrupt to be saved and have, Sorey, after listening to her story regarding how bad the corruption is getting in the world, agrees to help her, and follows her back to the captial city of Ladylake alongside his best friend, the water-based seraphim Mikleo. Now, going by what someone said on the TV Tropes forum, this character doesn't count as "Pure Evil" at all in the original game, but in this adaptation, he's got quite a notable rapsheet, and no truly good qualities or honorable intentions.

Who is he: Lord Mathia Bartlow, Chancellor Bartlow, or, as he's most often addressed as, just plain Bartlow, is the scheming leader of the Ladylake City Council, Ladylake being the capital city of Hyland. He is consistently at odds with the princess of the city, Alisha Diphda, over how to best protect the city, with Alisha advocating for a more peaceful and pacifistic approach when it comes to dealing with the neighboring land of Rolance, while he wants to enlist soliders from the upcoming Sacred Blade Festival to build up their forces and and wage war (the Sacred Blade Festival is an event to find the aforemtnioned prophesized Shepherd, who is the one who can pull the Sacred Sword from the stone). He is generally a slimy and dishonest individual who has no qualms using whatever underhanded methods are necessary to get what he wants, which is primarily to launch a so-called "pre-emptive strike" against Rolance.

What does he do: Not having any respect for Alisha or her methods, Bartlow secretly enlists a group of assassins called "The Scattered Bones" to assassinate her. While they only target corrupt individuals, which she is not, Bartlow convinces them to do so by telling them that her foolish idealism would lead to them eventually being invaded and cost them numerous civilains casualties, and outright lies about that there are existing rumors of her secretly being allied with Rolance.

Initially testing her skills by attacking her in the prologue episode, they make their first real attempt on her life during the Sacred Blade Festival, which fails due to Alisha competently defending herself. Later on, while Alisha is sent away with a solid battalion of Ladylake soldiers and followers under the guise of providing medical supplies for the plagued city of Marlind, Bartlow, with much freer reign to do what he wants with the main body of Ladylake's forces (as well as Hyland's forces in general, since Ladylake is the capital city, and the City Council has a high amount of authority), starting havign the soldiers preparing for a large-scale war. It is later reported by Lady Maltran and Sirel (the former being Alisha's mentor/instructor and the latter being a member of her personal cavalry who kept an eye on Bartlow's activities while she was sent away) that he has amassed an enormous battalion of approximately 20,000 soliders and sent most of them to the border of Glaivend Basin to attack Rolance with the supposed intention of raiding them for supplies for the needs of cities like Marlind. Of course, as pointed out by Maltran, it's really just the convenient excuse he needed to finally put his intended plot into motion.

Knowing that it will not lead to anything good, Alisha resolves to bring the soliders sent out and aligned with her to try and stop them from engaging in combat with Rolance's soldiers and escalate the conflict between the neighboring nations. However, having anticipated this, Bartlow has alreayd sent out Rose and the rest of the Scattered Bones to intercept and kill her, who arrived previously under the guise of providing additional supplies for the people of Marlind. Hwever, after engaging i na tense standoff with her, Rose and the rest of of her troop see how genuine and noble her resolve really is, and that Bartlow's claims that she was really alleid with Rolance were just empty lies, and agree to ride out with her to stop the conflict.

Surely enough, by the time they arrive, Glaivend Basin has already turned into a massive battlefield with hundreds of Hyland and Rolance soldiers locked in combat. However, with a large amount of help from the aforementioned Sorey, who turns out to be the prophesized Shepherd and now wields the Sacred Sword and the ability to purify malevolence alongside his team of contracted seraphim, they are successfully able to purify most of the soliders on both sides of the malevolence corrupting them in the heat of battle, greatly reduce the number of casualties on both sides, and put a stop to the conflict/budding war.

However, the foiling of this plot only causes Bartlow to sink to lower depths. Having falsely accused Alisha and all those associated with her of treason, Bartlow sends a massive battalion of Hyland knights to ambush Alisha and her squadron, resulting in all of them aside from herself and Sirel being brutally massacred. They soon meet up with Ian, another member of Alisha's personal cavalry, along with a small number of soldiers that got away with her, and discover that a bunch of others have been falsely arrested under the same pretenses of treason, including Maltran.

Lying to the king himself (who is also Alisha's father) that he simply sent soldiers to bring her back to be punished and that they were met with violence, Bartlow is given full authority to deal with her and any who are sided with her. When he hears from soldiers that they're on the outskirts of Ladylake trying to get back in, he proceeds to have Maltran (non-fatally) crucified in the main square so that she'll be tempted to try and save her before she dies (likely of dehydration), at which point his soldiers will ambush and overwhelm her remaining forces.

Not wanting to let her to die or attempt to save her and sacrifice many to do so, Alisha and company instead sneak into Ladylake and head straight for the palace to inform the king of Bartlow's treachery. Catching onto this when they take too long to reach him, Bartlow heads there himself and confronts Alisha just after she's reached her father, and tries to paint her as being there to kill him. Refusing to take up arms against him, Bartlow attempts to kill Alisha himself with his sword... only for the king, despite being corrupted by malevolence, to take the blow instead, fatally wounding him. While shocked for a moment, Bartlow then commands Alisha to rise to her feet since "they're not finished yet". Alisha again iterates that she won't fight and kill him, but declares she will tell everyone about his murder of the king and that he will be sent to prison for regicide, but Bartlow simply retorts that no one will believe a traitor like her over a trusted chancellor like him. When she asks if he means to keep spreading falsehoods to keep himself in power, he replies "why not? It's been a good strategy so far."

Unfortunately for him, this ends up being an "engineered public confession", as her lieutenants and small troupe have been standing just outside the door with the soldiers who were guarding the king, and they've overheard everything. Outraged at his murder, as well as the lies he told to convince them to fight and kill their own fellow knights, Bartlow finds himself completely backed into a corner. In desperation, he runs out onto the balcony, and declares that if Alisha won't have him killed, but sentenced to life in prison, "there's still a way for him to win after all"... and commits suicide by leaping to his death, putting an end to him and his part in the story.