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Characters/Gilda

From EHOL

A.K.A.: Giruda
Current Age: ???
Birthdate: ???
Height: 180 cm (About 5'11")
Japanese Seiyuu: Tamagawa Sakiko
English Voice-Actor: ???

Gilda.svg

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OVA Timeline

This character only appears in this timeline.

Tall, grim, and imposing, Gilda is the Captain of the Creterian Armored Guards. It's a tough time to hold a position like that, too, considering that Creteria is slowly falling apart as its power source, the Spring of Life fails. With the loss of resources, a greater strain is put on the citizens of Creteria, and with that greater strain comes rising discontent, as well as the hungry eyes of rival nations, who would jump at the opportunity to take down the once-mighty Creteria, as a more immediate problem, White Bugrom are chewing their way into the basement of the imperial castle. To top it all off, the man who signs her paycheck is Emperor Dall Narcis, a flamboyant, self-absorbed, egotistical lump who seems perfectly content to spend his days drinking instead of actually addressing any of the problems plaguing his nation.

Yes, this woman is under a lot of stress, and it shows. She regards any newcomer with instant paranoia, and suspects them of being spies regardless of their behavior. The city of Creteria has been sealed. No one is allowed to leave. To ensure this, platoons of her heavily armed and armored soldiers patrol the streets and guard the city walls. Any aberrant behavior is first met with a hostile show of pikes and axes and any resistance is met with lethal force. With the floating farming colonies beginning to mutter angrily about the harsh taxes levied against them, every tax collection is performed by an airship brimming with still more armored soldiers.

Gilda is dedicated to the preservation of Creteria at any cost. As time passes, and her options rapidly dwindle, she turns to more and more desperate measures. Eventually, she turns to the Spring of Life. If it can be restored, Creteria could be saved. If it could be harnessed, Creteria could return to its former glory! It seems a reasonable plan, except when you consider that messing around with the Spring of Life is a terrible breach of holy protocol, and that the door sealing it away is one absolutely forbidden to enter. Most citizens of Creteria would consider her mad for such a plan, and when her plan is revealed, many do. Fortunately for Gilda, she is much loved by the soldiers under her command and enough of them are willing to stand behind her that she is able to force the issue.

To go to such lengths to preserve her country, one might guess that she's quite the patriotic Creterian. It might be surprising to discover that, originally, she was not Creterian at all, and that her motives go rather deeper than simple patriotism.

Gilda first came to Creteria as an arranged bride for the young emperor-to-be, Dall Narcis. It was a political arrangement, but the two of them were quite taken with one another. At the time, she was as feminine as one would expect a young noblewoman to be, a rather glaring contrast when compared with the cold, tough-as-nails soldier she eventually was to become. At the time, Creteria was apparently a prosperous nation, and the marriage looked as though it would benefit both countries.

Then, Dall Narcis got it into his head to take a peek at the Spring of Life. After all, his noble blood gave him the ability. Why shouldn't he use it? Well, holy scripture, tradition, and law were all good reasons, and Gilda reminded him of that. It was to no avail, however, and Dall treaded where he shouldn't have.

When he emerged from the chamber of the Spring of Life, he was a changed man. In spite of Gilda's concern, he refused to be consoled, going so far as to call off the wedding and order Gilda to return home. Jilted and confused, Gilda nevertheless remained devoted to Dall and was determined to remain by his side. In order to accomplish this, she left her native nation behind and joined the Creterian army.

Time passed and as Creteria gradually fell into ruin, its emperor changed into a debauched lush and her disgust for Dall Narcis grew and grew. Though her disgust never completely eclipsed her devotion to him, she began to lose faith in the possibility that the love she and Dall had shared would ever return. With her primary reason for remaining in Creteria gone, she came to be more concerned about the nation itself, determined to preserve it in spite of its lazy emperor. Indeed, perhaps even TO spite its lazy emperor, as it slowly became clear that Dall at least partly longed for its destruction. Her devotion to Creteria eventually became strong enough that she was willing to stage a coup to overthrow the emperor, to save the nation from his incompetence. Perhaps she would have even been willing to execute him, had she not needed his cooperation to control the Spring of Life.

In spite of everything, though, her love for Dall was never far below the surface. Soon after she had critically wounded Dall while under the control of the being known as Arjah, she was at his side, doing her best to preserve his life. As Dall revealed his secrets, Gilda was quick to forgive him. Among those secrets was a surprising one that turned out to be a blessing for the evil Arjah: Gilda's family also possessed the genetic code necessary to control the Spring of Life. Neither she nor Arjah had ever needed the emperor at all to achieve their goals. This, in fact, was Dall's reason for jilting Gilda as he had. If they were to have had children, those children would have inherited the responsibility of guarding the Spring of Life. After the horrors he had witnessed there, he did not wish to inflict that on them, or on Gilda.

In the end, thanks to the timely intervention of Makoto and his friends, everything that Gilda had hoped for became a reality. Creteria was saved, and restored to a new prosperity. Leaving the life of a soldier behind, she and Dall Narcis were wed and seemed destined for a happy future raising an adorable daughter. With the Eye of God and the Spring of Life forever sealed away, that daughter would never be forced to bear the burdens that Dall had feared.



Portions of this page originally belonged to The Wanderers' Guide to El-Hazard: The Magnificent world, co-authored by Jason Bertovich (Makoto) and Aaron Ziegler (Spanner).

The original page is no longer available on-line.
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