| “ | There will be no negotiations. Turan must perish. On towards the royal city. On towards Iglasia. | „ |
| ~ Luscinia |
Luscinia Hāfez is the main antagonist of the anime series, Last Exile: Fam The Silver Wing. He is the Premier of the Ades Federation and the prosecutor of the aggressive policies that it employs against its neighbors in the present tense of the series. He was voiced by Kazayuki Okitsu in the original Japanese version and by Duncan Brannan in the English dub, the latter of whom is also known for voicing Babidi in Dragon Ball Z.
Character[]
Background[]
As the Premier whose charisma and talent won him support from the army, he leads the Ades Federation in her ambitions to expand and conquer other lands to return them to their original inhabitants after countries were formed by immigrants arriving by Exiles, displacing the people who resided on Earth.
Personality[]
As a man with overwhelming charisma, Luscinia receives strong support from the army. He and Kayvān are shown to be soft-hearted and compassionate towards Sārā Augusta. However, he also appears to be using Sārā to fulfill his goals and ambitions, including the purging of nobles through a royal decree under her name, accusing them of helping Turan and commiting several crimes against the nation, which were false. In addition, he also has the authority and power to call on the Extermination or No-Quater Squad, a group of assasins and agents, to assist him in exterminating his enemies or anyone that threatens his rule and ambitions.
He also cared deeply for Empress Farahnāz as shown in Backward Pawn, where he went on an angry rage and killed the people who assassinated Farahnāz. In Triangulation, it was revealed by Sara that ever since Farahnaz died, Luscinia blamed himself for the death of Farahnaz, which further illustrates the extent that he cared about her.
Role in the series[]
Hafez was originally a junior member of The Guild who, along with his twin brother Alauda, became a bodyguard to the Ades Federation Augusta (Empress) Farahnaz. Shortly after being hired, they accompany the Augusta to The Great Race. While Presenting the trophy, the Augusta is assassinated along with the winners of the race. This sends Lusccinia into a blind rage, causing him to kill the assassins, losing his left eye in the process, and making him obsessed with ensuring peace between nations so that nothing like this will happen again.
Luscinia helps to raise the young Augusta Sara, who was a mere baby at the time of the assassination, and is able to convince her that his path to world peace is the best one, and uses his connection with her to make himself the Premier of the Ades Federation.
Believing every nation to be a potential threat, Luscinia goes on a warpath with Ades's fleets, attempting to unite the world under one rule and prevent all fighting, as well as to find the remains of the Grand Exile, an unimaginably vast and exceptionally powerful ship able to destroy muliple nations in a single strike.
After several failed attempts to capture the Kingdom of Turan, Luscinia (under the pretense of signing a peace treaty) kidnapped the oldest Turani princess, Liliana il Grazio Merlo Turan, heir to the throne, and through a magical gift passed on from generation to generation, the Key to the Turani Exile, he uses her power to utterly destroy the nation.
His mastery with words make almost all his contemporaries and the Augusta support his every move, but when he invades the nation of Glacies, he has the fleets of the associate member nations of the Federation, including the Chaos fleet (with Chaos being the nation to which his colleague General Vasant belongs), fight in the Vanguard as a distraction, while he has Liliana send her Exile crashing down onto the capital, killing almost everyone therein.
Infuriated at all of the death and destruction Luscinia and Liliana were causing, as well as by the fact that he had used her countrymen as pawns, Vasant (who is like a mother figure to the Augusta) shows the Augusta photographs of everything that Lusicina has done, causing the Augusta to turn against Luscinia.
Later, Luscinia announces his plan to invade Anatoray-Disith, then leaves with Alauda and Liliana to search for the Grand Exile. Meanwhile, his forces engage in a civil war against those of Vasant, who has the Augusta's support, though the Augusta questions her support after the death of Sorush on the opposing side.
Desperate for peace between factions, Augusta asks both Vasant and Sadri (who is leading Luscinia's forces) for a truce and negotiations, rather than senseless death and destruction. To facilitate the peace arrangement, Luscinia, Alauda and Liliana return to the Ades Capital, but just after the signing of the treaty, Glacies pilot Dyan attempts to assassinate Luscinia in vengeance for the countless millions of her countrymen he murdered in cold blood. She fires at him, but Liliana gets in the way of the bullet, and is killed. Her power to control the Turani Exile now shifts to Millia.
Greatly affected by Liliana's death and unwilling to let it be for nothing, Luscinia continues his search for the Grand Exile, and when he finds it, he realizes that he needs its Key to activate it. Knowing that Augusta Sara is the key to the exile, he kidnaps her, and in the process, he kills a guard and later kills Vasant herself by breaking her neck with a swift kick while holding her head in a bag.
He then recites the three Mysteria to Sara, causing her to unwittingly activate the Exile, and putting it under his command. He then has the power to deliver the entire word an ultimatum: surrender to him and accept world peace, or be destroyed.
Unwilling to accept subservience as peace, the rebel ships fought the Grand Exile's mighty defences and Luscinia's forces all at once, and suffered heavy casualties, but were able to break through the hull, and a small vanship piloted by Giselle Collette and Fam Fan Fan manages to find Luscinia and the Augusta.
Luscinia tells them that their mere ideals won't create peace and that his way is the only solution, then subsequently reveals that the Grand Exile was supposed to carry away the people left behind on Earth after the original Exiles left, but the ship was never completed. Fam counter by telling Lusciana that she has learned that simple ideals won't be enough, but it is still important that she can dream about peace. She tells Lusciana how the First Grand Race inspired her to make the world a more peaceful place, and how similar actions can inspire future generations to do the same. Moved by Fam's speech, Lusciana aborts the firing sequence of the Grand Exile's lasers, sets the Grand Exile to self-destruct, and returns Sara to Fam and Giselle, telling them to escape the ship before it collapses, choosing to die on board the Exile. Soon after their escape, Luscinia is killed by falling debris.
After Luscinia's death, Millia realizes that the Premier was actually in love with Liliana, and she throws a bouquet into the sky in honor of his memory, even in spite of all of the awful things he had done.