Full Name: Arlene Nadalia Senn
Titles: Lady Senn
Nicknames: Lemon, Lemonade to her friends (because apparently lemonade was a thing in medival times)
Personality:
Austere and stalwart, Arlene personifies an immovable glacier. She is rarely surprised and will almost always be the one to follow a code to the letter, at least in the view of the higher authorities. Under scrutiny, Arlene acts the part of a model student and is nearly always called upon to discipline peers. But for those who Arlene views favourably, she is always there to offer silent help and lets them go.
Arlene puts large emphasis on family pride and the concept of inheritance, which she strangely doesn't impose on Aria. Insulting the Senn name is the easiest way to earn her wrath, even if Arlene does not act upon it. Instead, it is manifested in a cold shoulder and a conspicuously intensified monitoring on her part, which usually cumulates in getting into trouble or being forced to extra gruelling training.
Arlene is seen in every available training, especially physical training. When she is not training she is seen patrolling down the corridors and keeping close watch over trouble makers, and when she is not doing that, she is helping teachers train younger peers or away on civil missions. However, she apparently always has time for Aria, whether to help her work out personal problems or related to management, with insights in both relationships and philosophy.
Wrapped beneath layers of both self-control and anger, Arlene is a very tired person. Pushed right from her childhood all the way to the eve of her youthful years, Arlene wonders if she had not been a Successor and not thrust in such an environment, what she would have been like. But just as soon, she will regard even the thought as weak and cowardice. She acts surprisingly vunerable when complemented and even more if she is pampered, but will recover quickly to reinstate her decorum.
Arlene apparently likes the country crests and strategic maps, but strangely her gifts are instead precious flowers and plants.
Legacy:
Successor of Kay. In line with Kay's legend of bottomless stamina, Arlene's powers surround defensive abilities, shining out especially in attrition and territory control. She can create barriers and shields made out of spiritual light, cutting off enemy advance and reinforcing allied positions. Although visually similar to Aria's light-based abilities, these spiritual lights don't seem to have any connections to the element. Combining temporary terraforming and buff amplification when in the vicinity of her allies, she can secure hardpoints and act as crucial pivots in large scale battles. Her actual stat are below average out of the roster, certainly falling behind stat powerhouse characters such as Lucien or HP sponges like Bors - but given her high scaling with equipment and skills that frequently grant invincibility frames, her effective tanking ability becomes exponentially powerful if her niche and complexity is used correctly.
Interestingly, Kay's legacy seem to offer mostly raw endurance, elemental resistance and some potential magical abilities that could have instead taken form as a berserking style that cares nothing more than hitting the enemy down until one of them falls. These powers, however, have been modified and honed by Arlene's personality of restraint and discipline that focused Kay's power and bravado into the strategic focus in the game.
Mechanically, Arlene is a reliable tanking character to introduce some of the more complex mechanics of the game, signaling the strategic element of the game that reward a methodical, team-based style. Her death in the mid-game removes much of the powerful team formation and invincibility skills that previously cushioned player mistakes, marking a mid-game difficulty spike where the game becomes much more unforgiving. Due to the player base learning quickly that her death was unavoidable, Arlene was usually neglected in terms of training her up as they regarded her as a 'dead investment'. Throwing an underleveled Arlene as bait to distract powerful foes was a common strategy to those disinterested in Arlene's character, spawning community jokes like 'Suicide Arlene'. The fact that higher skill trees locked behind impossible affection levels didn't help.
Normal Route:
Arlene was one of the very first characters in design and was meant to serve as a long time companion to the player character, with a fully fleshed out backstory and quite an extensive route also built for her. However, wider media coverage deemed a gay pairing with the female lead to be 'unsavoury' and 'degenerate' and pressured the developers to remove the character from the game. Although the RE/Birth's community backed the developers in keeping Arlene as a prominent character in the final release of the game, the developers decided to avoid further controversies entirely and simply relegated Arlene to a soulless side character whose job was mostly to provide exposition and in-game tips. As a consequence, her story is cut abruptly and is killed off-screen in the mid-game, regardless of the player character's actions/routes. The manner in which she died garnered some backlash, but it was generally understood that it was mostly a pacifist solution.
The remaining story roots before the ret-con was still left intact as it was too ingrained in both the need for a beginning tutorial character and Arthur's own backstory. As one of the oldest families in the courts of Caerlon, the Senn family has an effective tenure within the royal council. Having seen several wars, battles against the corruption and disasters in their time, they are well respected among their peers - that is, they would have. Having taken the brunt of a bad famine a few generations prior along with mismanagement of their fiefdom, the Senn family has been ostracized for their fall from grace and have continuously been assaulted with calls for their expulsion.
The result was that most of the extended family of Senn had given up attempting to hold power, having no proper leadership, save for a particularily bitter blonde girl by the name of Arlene. Having grown up with tales of lost wealth and having to deal with the snobbishness of the other families that were supposedly superior to them, much of Arlene's life was a fight for her family pride driven by seething spite. When she was identified as a Successor, she did not lose any time in turning herself into a political bargaining chip to secure her family's position. Her vigilant insistence in reclaiming her House made many enemies in other bloodlines as well as her own - but it also inspired respect and a silent solidarity in many others.
Arlene initially acts outwardly indifferent to Arthur, even if Aria chooses the most friendly dialogue options and gifts her the most lavish presents. Although Arlene begrudgingly agrees to pair up in missions and train Aria, much of her attention is apparently instead directed towards training. Yet in many encounters where Aria is in trouble, Arlene will sweep in to defend her. When she hears about Aria's preferences in clothes or hair style, Arlene can be found trying to buy such clothes in the marketplace. If confronted about this, Arlene will ardently deny that any personal feelings were involved.
Regardless of the routes Arthur chooses, Arlene is seen supporting Arthur's decisions. Even when Arlene is acting cold in the earlier parts of the game, in-game dialogue and scattered lore suggests that Arlene continuously vouched for Arthur's leadership. Arlene knew that, although she finds it rather unfair that she is relegated to an auxillary to Arthur despite her efforts in keeping the Senn house alive, as a Successor to the holy ability to cleanse the corruption Arthur is the only one who could save her homeland. And for that, Arlene willingly break her famously stout pride in order to serve Arthur.
By the mid-game, if Arlene's affection is high enough, Arlene will confess that she deeply respects Arthur. She hints not-so-subtly that the mantle of responsibility should be in Arthur's hands, but is also simultaneously aware of how gruelling it can be. Depending on the route the player chooses, Arlene will die either in trying to divert the attention of a pursuing army or defending a village from a rampaging monster. Arlene will make preparations for a hand-over regardless of affection levels however, with a heartfelt letter tucked away within family documents, apparently knowing that she will most likely die in an intensifying political climate.
Previous Life:
In her previous life,