Kate’s Super-Crack Final Fantasy Headcanons

Part Deux: FFIX

Ruby is the lost princess.

Be warned, this is super-cracky!

Anyone who has played FFIX will know that Princess Garnet/Dagger wasn’t born a princess, but was a Summoner who was taken in as a small child, as a replacement for the real Princess Garnet who had recently died.

I mainly came up with this one based on the symbolism:

1. Garnet stones come in many colours, but by far the most well-known are the red ones, which can pass for rubies at sight and are often used as imitation or fake rubies. 

2. At the start of the game, Ruby was meant to play the princess in “I Want to Be Your Canary” but Garnet takes her place at the last minute.  

Also, Ruby has a decidedly blue tinge to her (her artwork seems to have a blue tint to her skin, but her in-game render has very pale skin and blue lips). Considering that the Princess’ biological mother, Queen Brahne, has blue skin and lips, and very light white/blonde hair, Ruby’s colouring fits nicely.

 

(It’s said in-game that the original princess and Dagger looked nearly identical as small children. Ruby has a similar build and face to Garnet, so it’s not too farfetched to think they could have looked alike as babies/toddlers, and Ruby’s desaturation happened as she got older - the condition that causes blue skin in real life has been known to give skin a blue tint as those afflicted reach adulthood in some cases).

Since the world of FFIX is heavily based on Shakespeare {and ‘I Want to Be Your Canary’ seems to be based on Romeo and Juliet}, I thought it would be apt if the original Princess Garnet’s ‘death’ was caused by someone slipping her a potion similar to the one Juliet drinks (the one that fools everyone, including Romeo tragically, into thinking she’s dead).  

After several days, the (real) princess was set to be buried, but woke down in the crypts and wandered off into the catacombs/sewers under the city, delirious. When the embalmers found that the body was missing before they could work on it, they decided to keep quiet about it in case they got in trouble, and buried the coffin full of bags of sawdust. Thankfully most of the palace was distracted by “Princess Garnet” (Dagger) returning to the palace, seemingly having made a full recovery, and the embalmers never spoke of this again. 

The child, ragged and dazed, was found wandering the streets of Alexandria some days later (by a southern belle Lamia called Miss Lilli, proprietor of a classy club), and was named Ruby after the red jewel pendant she was wearing.