It's time to talk about the hinted details of
the overwhelmingly adorable Midadol Telamon, who also has the best expletive line in the entire game while aboard the
Enterprise (another fun reference) when uttering the goddess-focused profanity,
"Great Greagor's gash!"
While we know that she's Cid's child and takes his last name, that's all we're ever directly told. With Cid dead, it's possible that Mid might not even know who her mother is. Insofar as I'm aware there's no direct confirmation in any side quests, notes, or riddles left behind from Cid to Mid, so I went about dissecting all of the subtext information that I could find, and here's what I can lay out in detail:
On Midadol Telamon:
In both her physical appearance and also in her accent it also seems to be implied that she's Cid's & Benedikta's child from
back when the two of them were together. Whereas Mid's accent is always pretty strong, you only get clearer glimpses of how much Benedikta has the same accent when she is
especially distraught and screaming at Clive after their fight. Even moreso than that is the way that
Cid still VERY clearly loves her when he leaves the bloodied necklace with her body after she's killed by Ifrit, which is very tender that belies the complicated mix of feelings that's going on, and is why it's important to look at the history that we know about them.
When
Cidolfus & Benedikta first came to Waloed when they were already together with her pale hand pressed into his as if she would never let go. They came there because Odin's Dominant, King Barnabas Tharmr was seeking to bring the other Dominants together and unite them all. Benedikta listened to what King Tharmr said and became the loyal
Commander of Waloed's elite intelligencers – hence Cid's comments to her when he finds her dead being,
"Why...? Why'd you have to listen to him? Benna... This can't be what you wanted... can it?" Despite them both having key positions, Cid disagreed with King Tharmr's objective to unite the Dominants as a means to restore the world, and left to follow his own objective
which Benedikta felt as a betrayal of "Us" in both herself and of King Tharmr, earning him the title
"Cid the Vicious" (
likely another fun reference to Sid Vicious). So, what was it that was so significant that split those two lovers apart?
The depth of that betrayal is emphasized when Cid & Benedikta meet and
Cid intervenes to save Clive, so she brings up the parallel to how he rescued her (which she later flashes back to before going berserk) and asks him by his Waloed title of Lord Commander why he betrayed his kingdom, and he plays coy about the nature of his disagreement. However, that position explains
why Cid instantly, reactively Primed to impale Typhon when it emerged as well as when Ultima revealed itself and attempted to take Clive, despite being wounded Cid said,
"I know who you are. And if you think I'm going to let you have him... Think again." and died to stab him in the throat –
because uniting the Dominants with Ultima through Mythos was King Tharmr's entire plan, which is why Cid left when Benedikta stayed in Waloed and why he started to try to destroy the Mother Crystals.
When Benedikta vanishes after their standoff, Cid sends Gav to track her rather than trying to follow himself or allow Clive to pursue, and they're clearly BOTH staying out of conflict with each other... despite the fact that
King Tharmr values loyalty above all else and Benedikta ruthlessly enforces that by murdering anyone else who betrays someone. On top of that, the mission she's on has
Benedikta explicitly attempting to capture other Dominants to unite them for King Tharmr – by kidnapping their companions to draw them out. She's overtly leaving Cid alone despite KNOWING he's Ramuh's Dominant, and the depth of Waloed's Lord Commander and Ramuh's Dominant betraying them. Benedikta's prior relationship to Cid isn't leverage enough to be able to bring him back in, she's the Commander of King Tharmr's intelligencers who value loyalty above everything else... except that while
Benedikta remained together with King Tharmr when Cid deserted which is why
she arrives in the room at the game's opening, she leaves her king's side to openly flirt with Hugo –
why is she risking flirting with Hugo and being unloyal in her relationship to the king she stayed with rather than follow Cid who she already trusted prior to meeting?
This gets more clear when we learn specific details when Clive takes the blame for killing her when facing against Hugo after Cid's death. While Clive did murder Benedikta, we know for a
fact that her body was left tenderly when Cid found
the sigil from the necklace he wore when they first met that she had ALWAYS kept the whole time they were apart, but never visibly wore. He placed that on her chest where it likely hung when they were together, and then departed to drag the unconscious Clive back to the hideout... but
after this, she was decapitated and her head was put in a box and sent to Hugo Kupka AND the person who delivered it reported that Cid was the one who paid to have it done... which clearly doesn't add up at all. It's here that we learn that the relationship between Benedikta & Hugo was catalyzed because both og them shared a dream which was that
Hugo would be king of the world, her lion, and Benedikta would be his queen... which points to another very familiar shift, as being the lover of a King looking to restore and rule the world with the power of the Dominants is what transpired when Cid's & Benna's relationship ended... but why is she willing to do the number one most dangerous thing in betraying Odin's Dominant for Titan's Dominant?
In his rage when he receives the box Hugo shouts,
"I let you <Cid> run amok with the rest of your rats, and this is how you repay me!?" which makes it clear that Benedikta was already convincing Hugo to turn a blind eye to what Cid was doing... but why? Why would she POSSIBLY be motivated to protect someone who represents everything that she opposes with absolute conviction? –
Because Cid had sent Mid to go study engineering in Kanver, which is a city in the Dhalmekian Republic, and Hugo Khupka is the special advisor of that realm. Benedikta is romancing Hugo to make sure that MID says safe when she's no longer still directly with her dad, Ramuh's Dominant. Otherwise, there's a possibility that Odin's Dominant, King Tharmr would use her daughter like every other Dominant's companion to force Cid to come back – which she knows better than anyone as one of his most high-ranking and loyal assassins.
Without being able to safely see Mid herself, Garuda was the only thing Benedikta had left AND her power as Garuda's Dominant was the only way she could have the leverage with the other Dominants in order to keep Mid safe from being used to take Cid. So, when Clive takes Garuda she starts losing her mind as she's losing her personal safety, Mid's safety, AND Garuda. Her grief is mourning all three while, as always, never overtly acknowledging the other detail,
"She– She's gone... Give her back... Give her back! Give her back! Where is she!? Where is Garuda!?" Benedikta is inconsolable and barely able to stay present and when thinking of Barnabas she says,
"He'll know. He'll cast me out like all the others. What am I going to do?" just before Gerulf and all of her unit helping her get murdered, leaving her defenseless. When that happens and she panicks she has the flashback to meeting Cid for the first time where he tells her,
"It's alright. They can't hurt you any more. Come on. Let's go home." followed by the memory of his safe hand letting go of hers, and her saying "Is this it, Cidolfus? My punishment for not listening to you?"
While at a surface level it seems like all the other Dominants that Benedikta was attaching herself to in Ramuh, Odin, or Titan is just whoever seemed to be the strongest, Benedikta is
TERRIFIED of being powerless against someone stronger than her and not being able to control that situation. That fear of Odin as the uncontested king of Waloed who has ruled far beyond the lifespan of a normal human, let alone that of a regular Dominant who burns out their own body with that power is why she didn't follow Cid when he defected. That's also why she sees losing Garuda as her punishment and why
she just wants the whole world to die and goes utterly berserk, and
Cid & Clive both instantly sense, and Cid knows she can't control it. Clive goes to stop her and fails, instead he becomes Ifrit, and loses control EXACTLY like Benedikta did, and
Cid knew how boundless and unstoppable Benedikta's rage was better than anyone.
There are only TWO times that Cid fully Primes into Ramuh, and while killing Ultima was the second – the first is triggered by the instant that Clive can't control himself as Ifrit and starts pummelling Garuda's helpless body. When Cid drags Clive back to the hideout, Clive is stripped of his clothing and restrained like a prisoner, because those emotions are still intense for Cid at losing Benedikta because Clive went berserk – especially since
Cid was trying to capture her safely, so his own personal feelings towards Benedikta are clear.
It's Clive's admission of being a monster and killing the person he loved, of knowing the same pain Cid feels, suffering the same struggles that Benedikta did in being a danger to those she loved most in the world and wanting to die that makes Cid punch him in the face and let him go. That's why Benedikta couldn't ever be around Mid herself, and HAD to trust that Cid would always make sure she was kept safe in looking over her. Benedikta still did what she could to keep their daughter safe from a distance, and both of them knew that either of them fighting one another would only make Mid less safe.
This fear is why she chose to listen to the more powerful King Tharmr rather than her lover Cid – but both Odin & Titan know that her feelings still wander to
something about Cid but they can never tell what. Benedikta's pain and feeling of betrayal is still genuine as even
while expressing disappointment in Titan's performance against Shiva, when Cid's lightning appears and they're going to lose Shiva's Dominant, even when her closes Waloed intelligence officer Gerulf calls out the lightning she turns attention elsewhere and says of Cid, "You always were a fucking snake." Later on when he and Clive run into her again, when
Cid & Benedikta have their VERY detailed argument that leads into a direct fight against one another with their powers Self-Primed. The dialogue shared between both of them are still just each of them projecting hurt bits & pieces of what happened in their falling out based upon how they understand one another at a distance from pained assumptions about the other side – because neither of them really knows the truth about the other,
nor can they trust the other to speak openly about it. Even then, Benedikta
STILL doesn't finish Cid off, nor does she capture him despite him being Ramuh's Dominant. Her anger and fear is why she's conflicted on her feelings, but especially about Cid specifically. Their shared yet disconnected love towards one another are still an unspoken and only an indirectly mutually understood plausible deniability that allow them both to keep protecting Mid in their own way and reinforcing why they need each other. So long as it's never openly stated – Benedikta can remain exclusively aware of that information and keep it to herself the Commander of Waloed's elite intelligencers, while directing focus elsewhere as a part of protecting herself & Cid.
On top of that when besting Cid,
Benedikta leaves two Chirada to finish off Clive, just like how
she used a single Chirada to take him on the first time, showing that her most common manifestation of her power is making little copies of herself. When she loses control they appear everywhere... but now without names, and
Cid says that there's one (Wind Elemental) for every fragment of her shattered mind. When Benedikta intentionally summoned her the first time she says,
"Dance, Chirada!" showing that she gave them a name like they were a stand in for her own daughter... and that name is something that disappears once she's berserk and they're only called Wind Elementals, and even her Eikon form as Garuda can no longer speak but is so lost that everything else she had is utterly gone. This is unlike what we see in Titan who just grows ever more massive & powerful when he loses his mind as Titan Lost, Benedikta's mind is fragmented into all of the different versions of herself, but they're also projections that heavily suggest she thinks about her child who she can't ever see or even speak of.
The way that she has to
live with people who use her, and where she HAS to rely on having her Dominant powers and being unknowable is not for what she wants –
but only for what she wants to avoid. That means she must constantly shape version of herself that everyone else can see into half-truths and be copies of copies of copies herself that change for everyone all the time. That's why she clings so tightly to the power she has, because it's so deeply insecure and could all fall to pieces if she's not in control...
and it DOES the second she dies.
It's easy to just see Benedikta as a selfish seductress for being willing to make Cidolfus, Barnabas, & Hugo fall for her, but she's still ONLY thinking of Cid when she's at her lowest point and thinks she's going to die, she remembers them parting ways and thinks that her losing her power is her punishment, which means she doubts the choices she made. That would make the most sense if Cid is the one who's keeping their kid safe from everything – even the people around her. He's trying to build a better world for the Branded & Dominants that doesn't align with King Barnabas Tharmr's motives, and so she can't know who to trust or how to navigate things safely and eventually it's all too much and she loses that fight to a mirror of that damage in Clive. –
And this brings us back to the events surrounding Benedikta's post-death desecration that Cid explicitly stopped Ifrit from carrying out.
So... who had the clear motive to mutilate her corpse and frame Cid by triggering Hugo into conflict as a means of directing the war elsewhere, sending in Orcs into the Dhalmekian Republic, and bettering his chances of getting to Mythos who now held the power of the Dominants he was looking to consolidate? –
None other than King Barnabas Tharmr, the Dominant of Odin. The individual explicitly known for his blade capable of severing ANYTHING. Barnabas severing Benedikta's head from her shoulders when he saw a certain necklace sigil that Cid left with her, which he would have known from their first meeting. That is pretty heavily implied as a motive since he doesn't abide betrayal, and without being able to deny her loyalty to Cid and knowing about Titan, his suspicions will write the narrative that serves him best.
Especially after everything shown in how King Barnabas Tharmr kidnapped Jill ONLY to use her as leverage to draw out Clive, the idea that Odin was willing to decapitate Benedikta's corpse just to send the head of his own lover to someone else as a means to accomplish his goals is totally plausible. On top of that, Clive hadn't betrayed him so he had no reason to harm Jill... but that's FAR from true of his former Lord Commander who defected. It's obvious why Benedikta would NEVER even so much as think to suggest that her & Cid had a child
ESPECIALLY as it seems that she remained at Barnabas' side solely out of fear of his strength and not trust in listening to Cid. Had the depth of her & Cid's relationship ever been mentioned, Mid would ABSOLUTELY have been used as leverage to drag Cid back after he deserted and betrayed Odin... and that would also have made Benedikta vulnerable as well.
The second Benedikta wasn't around to protect Cid by influence and turning a blind eye, Barnabas used Hugo's love of her to turn fuel blind vengeance in order to commit Hugo's own spies and intelligence network to laying traps and relentlessly hunting down Cid in order to destroy the traitorous Lord Commander's base and murder everyone there who was close to him.
Critically, that attack also would have killed Mid, had she not already been sent away to Kanver, the one place where Benedikta's love she shared with Hugo was still indirectly keeping their daughter safe.
And at the end of the day, this adds weight to why
the SECOND Mid shows up and before you even see her, she's using her charm to have other people cover her transportation fees. She's also always taking off to do anything she feels like in subtle defiance of authority, while also getting everyone else working together to help her achieve the impossible goal that only she truly knows through sharp wit and charming influence even in the face of unspeakable danger –
so she really is the spitting image of BOTH of her parents.
)
nice to see people having fun, hope i will also have fun
