u/HighlanderOneTrick

As far as non-combatant gacha MCs go, Tyrant is fairly typical- a master strategist and a charismatic leader which most of the cast revolve around. They're helplessly weak but peerlessly intelligent. Except, that's not exactly the case either. The Tyrant is, put bluntly, kind of a idiot at some very crucial points, such as the decision of "let's give guns to the criminal anarchist group" (which in all fairness didn't go wrong for that reason per se but still). And make no mistake- these decisions ARE canon, with the main events of Chapter 8 directly referencing the Redemption of United Harvest BE from Chapter 7. Tyrant doesn't just fail as a possibility, but canonically, and not just once or twice- they fail every single important decision before finally arriving at the singular correct solution.

This was already known. However, Chapter 8 changes that understanding. Albedo tells us Angie presented her with two different wishing prompts to be used for the Monolith Bid based on our decisions during Chapter 7. This explains a large part of why the events of the BEs were so drastically different from the current timeline- because it was all part of her plan to verify our identity as the true Tyrant. By the end of that chapter, she received her answer, and by the start of this chapter, she was convinced. Only the Tyrant of legend is capable of making those very decisions. Except, that wasn't their first pick nor even their second pick, but the literal last option they had left. In other words, the literal Tyrant does not behave like the Tyrant. Angie defines the Tyrant by those telltale choices but the Tyrant in actuality is defined by lack of choice.

At this point it could all be dismissed as the Tyrant getting nerfed upon reincarnation, that they used to be smarter. But what if that wasn't the case? What if the Tyrant never had a choice this entire time? That every time they tried peace or diplomacy they got a knife in the back and had to choose violence? Well, that would massively recontextualize how we view the character. I think up til now the old Tyrant has been presented in a somewhat Christ-like manner, as a person who knows what is right and fights the good fight only to be put down by corrupt dictators and die a martyr. That's tragic in its own right but this right here is a different breed of tragedy. If I'm right, the Tyrant essentially has no agency, and that's what makes them so dangerous. The Tyrant is not a human being that consistently makes uncannily wise decisions but an algorithm in human form that always picks the correct option. The Tyrant does not act out of pleasure or malice or naivete and thus cannot be negotiated with nor manipulated. I think this is what Angie meant during Chapter 8's BE where she corrects Greyhorn's misconception of the Tyrant. When the Tyrant destroys the world, it will not be a conscious, deliberate act, like spreading guns to the people. The apocalypse wrought by their hand will always come as a byproduct of their good intentions. The Tyrant only acts in self-defense- for themselves and for their loved ones, likely not out of some grand ambition to remake the world, and yet the bare minimum they do brands them as the demon lord.

This gives an idea for how Angie's redemption arc might look like too. She stresses her role as the "hero" to our "demon lord", and notice how those roles do exist but in a distorted form. The hero fighting to protect a precious world against the demon lord who seeks to break it is corrupted into a hero who fights to protect a status quo not worth preserving and the demon lord who only seeks to shatter the status quo to fix the underlying problem. Both fight for the "world" but the hero has defined the world as the corrupt system while the demon lord defines the world as the people that inhabit it. I believe the Book of Prophecies is designed as a sort of counter-algorithm to the Tyrant- if the Tyrant always acts in a way that will lead to the eventual collapse of the system, then the Book of Prophecy reverse-engineers the string of events that would create that outcome to stay one step ahead of the Tyrant. That then begs the question- "if you could calculate something like this, why not use that ability to fix the system instead?" I think a thought along those lines will be the catalyst for Angie's redemption as she realizes she's complicit in a system that serves no one and that the risk of destroying the whole world might be worth it because there's the chance something can be salvaged afterwards whereas the rot that plagues Nova currently will leave nothing behind. I'm probably reading way too hard into it all but it was a blast having some more things to think and theorize about with the new chapter that I just wanted to air some of it.

I learned of this historical figure in passing and immediately what stuck out to me was the bit about her leading armies into battle because I can't imagine that being a very common thing for the time. Also she was Italian, and United Harvest or Philae (or rather just the game as a whole) might have some Italian/Latin theming going on (Firenze is Italian for Florence, the capital of...Tuscany). The overlap isn't strong enough for me to feel confident about declaring but I also didn't want to just dismiss the possibility that it's a small nod towards that person. Just in case I looked up how many Matildas in history were known to have lead armies and there was only another one- an Empress Matilda from a shockingly close time frame. Anyways thought that was worth tossing out.