Iris Midgar

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**Iris Midgar** (アイリス・ミドガル, *Airisu Midogaru*?) is the first princess of the Midgar Kingdom and the leader of the Crimson Order. After her sister was kidnapped by the Cult of Diablos and subsequently rescued by Shadow Garden, she began investigating both organizations. Unfortunately, as the series progresses, she slowly shifts into an antagonist obsessed with defeating Shadow for personal reasons.

## Appearance

Iris is a beautiful woman with delicate features with fiery straight hair that reaches down to her back and red eyes. She normally wears a knight order uniform sans cape, a royal dark violet uniform with light edges and black should straps, with cuffs folded back one-third up her arm from the wrist. Part of her attire requires her to wear white gloves for her dressing, a black shirt with matching edges to her uniform, and a ruby-like gem with a single ribbon necktie that stretches down into her uniform. Iris wears white tights and knee-high heeled boots with single-tie laces at the collar which folds over, and she can normally be seen with her sword adorning her side on her waist belt.

After the Black Rose incident, Iris amended her attire to a more professional Crimson Order uniform, as well as added a braid in her hair along with small jewelry down a lock of hair. She wears a gray uniform with black trims and a crimson interior. A black detachable cape with red lining rests on her shoulders, with two crimson braided cords connecting from the left breast pocket to the shoulder's rank strap. She sports a green-colored gem with a single dark velvet ribbon necktie that stretches down into her uniform, with red buttons with black borders. The right side of her uniform lifts a little to short the bottom of the waistcoat, colored black with red lining to match the cape. She retains her white gloves and trousers, but her knee-high heeled boots are recolored to match her uniform.

## Personality

Iris is a brave, diligent, and prideful swordswoman who earnestly strives to fulfill her duty to protect her kingdom. She is revered as an exemplary warrior and princess by not only her people but the world as well. Ever since Iris was young, she was held in high regard for her abilities and accomplishments, which led to her people regarding her as the pride or icon of Midgar. She works diligently to uphold not only her father's but her people's expectations of her as a symbol of hope, protection, power, and victory. However, later in the story, these expectations would soon cause Iris's mental state to deteriorate.

Despite being a princess, Iris lacks the political and leadership skills to manage her organization, the Crimson Order. She admits that Alexia Midgar is smarter than her and implies that her own sister would do a better job with the organization. This can be inferred that Iris has a slight inferiority complex, but despite that Iris continues to improve her skills. At times, Iris's stubbornness out of pride prevents her from seeing that there are other beings in the world who are much stronger than her, such as when she overestimated her abilities to defeat Shadow, to the point that she denies believing that Shadow's power is realms beyond her own, like Alexia claims until she was easily defeated by him.

After any certain incident that occur following the emergence of Shadow Garden, Iris was left feeling inadequate and useless as she couldn't do much politically or physically. She felt the need to prove her worth and redeem herself at the Bushin Festival. However, the combination of her defeat by Mundane Mann (Shadow), the high expectations of her people, and the previous incidents crushed her mentally. Iris's loss to Shadow left her with a strong desire for revenge and an obsession with becoming stronger. Unfortunately, these desires caused her to become mentally unstable and gloomy. After the whole Cult debacle and personally realizing that Shadow Garden is strong and secretive, they do not seem to manipulate or cause mass death like the Cult (Specifically the Fenrir Branch) causing her to release her obsessive focus on beating Shadow and slip into a period of depression and self-reflection.

## Powers & Abilities

Iris is widely recognized as the strongest swordswoman within the Midgar Kingdom, having been the top student as the Royal Spellsword Academy before her graduation. However, she admits that her skills are nowhere near the level of legendary figures like Shadow and Beatrix, who are regarded as the pinnacle swordsmanship.

### Physical Abilities

**Superhuman Strength**: Iris Midgar is in excellent physical shape, and both her strength and stamina are comparable to Beatrix's. She was able to keep up with Beatrix and Shadow during their fight across the city, although she distinctly fell behind at certain points and had to catch back up. Her strength in particular is notable during this fight for being able to slam Shadow into a nearby building from the street even after he blocked the attack, though Shadow did not appear to take significant damage from this. Additionally, during this fight she was able to withstand several of Shadow's attacks and continue fighting, though the degree to which Shadow was holding back is unknown and by the end of the battle Iris was unable to even grasp her sword properly.

**Superhuman Speed:** When not actively using her magic, Iris can run at estimated speeds fast enough to catch up to, and surpass a full-speed steam train.

**Swordsmanship**: From an early age, Iris has been recognized as a prodigy with the sword. During her time at the Midgar Spellsword Academy she was the strongest student without question and is arguably the greatest swordswoman in all of Midgar. However, her skills are still far inferior compared to some of Seven Shadows of Shadow Garden, with Alpha being capable of effortlessly disarming her. In the Anime, Iris managed to match Shadow's incredible fencing speed, though he blocked or dodged nearly all of her attacks.  It should also be noted that, Shadow was holding back throughout their fight, never having any intention of killing her.

### Magic

As a member of the Midgar royal lineage, Iris possesses an incredible quantity and quality of magic even without contracting the Diabolos curse. Iris has an average handling in her magic, being able to use it aggressively when fighting seriously. She can also use it to strengthen her body to tolerate or resist heavy damage, and even heal her wounds over time, although they may still hurt.

Depending on the type of weapon she wields, Iris can release more magic for her benefit. However, despite the prestige of her magic, she focuses more on the strength of her strikes rather than the refinement of the energy. Her magic takes on the shape of a flame or wildfire, blazing and raging with force channeled to overwhelm an opponent. This fiery depiction also matches her hotheaded personality.

**Healing Magic:**

### Equipment

* **Broadsword**: In the anime, Iris wields a broadsword (a regular-sized sword in other media) with can channel 20~30% of Iris' magic power.

* **Holy Sword:** An ancient artifact that was once wielded by the "Human Hero", Freya, against Diablos. It is made of a special metal called Mithril that is very hard to break according to those who have used this metal. The sword is also capable of conducting 35-50% of its user magical power. The magical inscriptions on the blade prevents anyone except Freya's descendants, like Iris, from wielding it.

### Techniques

* **Quick Slash**: Iris can deliver fast and powerful cuts with her sword through the use of her magic, something that is usually very difficult for an elite magic swordsman to achieve. When fighting with the mutation of the Diabolos cult in Midgar, she used this technique.

* **Burst of Power**: When she gets too angry, either by finding herself powerless against something or someone or hating them a lot, Iris can unleash tremendous magical power that surrounds her, enveloping her and allowing her to partially remove any trick or ability that tries to intimidate her in part. At the same time, this further enhance her burst attacks in exchange for losing her ability to reason and becoming reckless, throwing themselves at their opponent. According to Shadow, he considers this as a pure waste of magic and thus sees disappointment in Iris like her younger sister, Alexia Midgar, comparing them to wild animals.

* **Exploding Sword**: Iris has the ability to channel her magic into her sword and launch a powerful attack in the form of a flaming blast. Iris can only launch this attack with a normal sword, since it will shatters after usage. However, while wielding the highly-durable Holy Sword, she is able to use it multiple times. The Artifact also greatly increases the power of the technique, allowing it to destroy several buildings.

* **Focused Explosive Sword:** By focusing her destructive magical power, in a focused and burst manner, Iris can launch a powerful flaming magical attack, with the artifact, achieving greater range distance, with equally destructive power, but more controlled. During her fight with Beatrix, against Shadow, in the capital of Midgar, upon reaching the highest part of the Clock Tower, Iris focused her magical power in a focused manner, against Shadow, reaching a very long length, in her attempt. of murdering him.

* **Quick Flash**: Iris possesses the ability through the use of her magic, to quickly move through any land that she can like any other elite magical swordsman.

* **Semi-Supersonic Flash:** Although "Quick Flash" is a skill that is normally learned for a magic knight, when Iris decided to fight seriously and vengefully alongside Beatrix against Shadow, in her fury, Iris unleashed all her magic to channel it to be able to follow him, although with great difficulty, the supersonic, fast and subtle speed of Beatrix and Shadow to continue fighting, but since it was something she had never done, this quickly consumed her energy, so she could not be able to do much like that in that rhythmic state of fighting.

* **Walking on the Water**: Iris has the ability to walk and run through the water for aquatic combat. It is speculated that this ability is of the standard type, that is, it can be learned in the normal way. But so far, only Shadow, Beatrix and she have been able to use this ability in a very effective, aggressive and evolved way.

### Weaknesses

**Naivety**: For all of her strengths in martial prowess, Iris has one fatal weakness: her intelligence. While far from foolish, she is short-tempered and prone to letting her emotions cloud her judgment, leading her to make bad decisions. She is also a poor judge of character, being easily manipulated.

## Trivia

* The name Iris refers to the Greek mythology as both the personification of the rainbow and 'the messenger of the gods among themselves’.
	+ In ancient times, Iris symbolizes faith, hope, wisdom and valor to which considered as a symbol of power and majesty, and was dedicated to the God Juno.
* Despite her mature and dignified image, she sleeps hugging a teddy bear and has bunny-print underwear.
* Iris bears resemblance to Rias Gremory from the Light Novel, *Highschool DxD*. Fittingly enough, both characters were voiced by Yoko Hikasa.
	+ Even Iris' mana color is bright red, which is also the same color as her eyes and hair, and resembles fire.
* Iris disliked modern underwear created by the Mitsugoshi Company because she considers it obscene, unlike Alexia who does like it. However, in *Master of Garden*, a drunk Iris shows some interest in wearing red thongs on the advice of her sister.
* Unlike Alexia, she doesn't have a good tolerance for bitter things like coffee, though this changed following Cid's advice to mix it with milk and sugar.
* Although everyone in the academy knows it, Iris remains unaware that Alexia and Cid were in a relationship.
* According to the **Quotes from the Game**, if Cid Kagenou and Iris Midgar had met, ahead of schedule, Cid on his side, would have tried to carry out his "Confession Rejection" plan, with her, instead of Alexia, and Iris instead. By his side, he would have become more fond of him, having a better relationship, than with Alexia.
* When she "fought" Mundane Mann, Iris realized that he was using a phenomenon that her master once told her about called "Realistic Feint Sensation", to make her see hallucinations of her own death.
* Iris mental state at end of the Bushing tournament arc differs greatly from the Light Novel and Manga to the Anime.
	+ In the Anime, she is left frustrated Iris at not being able to do anything against Shadow.
	+ In the Light Novel and Manga, she is just puzzled from Shadow's parting words of not forgetting the "true enemy".
* According to the light novel, Alexia reveals that Iris sleeps with a teddy bear and wears knickers with kittens on them,
* Interestingly, Iris and Alexia are quite similar when it comes to wanting others to recognize them. It's just that, in Iris' case, the praise she had received since childhood led her to always attempt to fulfill people's expectation but her, whereas Alexia had always been compared to her sister and thus developed an inferiority complex.
	+ Iris' loss to Shadow was similar to Alexia's in a previous Bushin Festival, the difference being that this didn't blind Alexia to her surroundings whereas Iris became so focussed on defeating Shadow that she became easily to manipulate.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Episode 20
2. ↑ Episode 5
3. ↑ Web Novel: Chpater 158
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Episode 5
5. ↑ Episode 19
6. ↑ *Manga Volume 2 Episode 7*