Rufus Albarea. Heir to one of Erebonia's Four Great Houses, and member of the Ironbloods. A self-proclaimed absolute villain, and one of the most cunning characters in the series.
If you couldn't tell, I'm a big fan of Rufus. First introduced in Trails of Cold Steel as a seemingly innocuous major supporting character, he goes on to have one hell of a rollercoaster for a character arc. I'd even go as far as to say he's one of the best developed characters in the series outside of Renne, and that's saying a lot.
When you first meet him in Cold Steel I he's a decent guy. Yes, he's a member of the nobility in the only country in western Zemuria to still practice extreme social stratification, but he's polite, well-mannered, and lacks the arrogance that a lot of other nobles exhibit.
And then everything goes to hell at the end of the game, when the Noble Alliance starts an all-out civil war. By the time you actually see him again in Cold Steel II, he's part of said alliance, meaning he's firmly on the enemy's side. Not only that, but he wipes the floor with Class VII before having Rean taken aboard the Pantagruel in hopes of negotiating and persuading him to join the Noble Alliance.
Once you hit the finale of Cold Steel II, Rufus starts to get sus, to put it lightly. Turns out he was actually working for Chancellor Osborne (leader of the Reformist Faction) the entire time as a member of the Ironbloods. And then Erebonia goes and annexes Crossbell, and now he's the governor general of the province.
By all accounts he actually does a decent job at it, with Crossbell's economy improving in the process.
But it's his continued association with Chancellor Osborne that sends him further and further down a dark path. Disillusionment with the nobility — and his father Duke (former by this point) Helmut Albarea's treatment of him and his brother Jusis in particular — led to him latching onto Osborne, seeing him as his real father figure.
Unfortunately, while Osborne did have good intentions in the end, his plans and legacy left a bloody trail behind him, and that, by extension, means that Rufus was guilty of helping Osborne instigate a war with Calvard under false pretenses, as well as being complicit in the (attempted) murder of Altina Orion by Crown Prince Cedric.
For Class VII, though, his absolute nadir has to be towards the tail end of Cold Steel IV, where he backstabs and kills Arianrhod in cold blood following her defeat by Rean in one of the Rivalries. Not only does this royally piss off everyone who could've still cared about him by this point, including his own brother, it makes him an enemy of the Stahlritter, who are obviously none too please about him stabbing their master in the back.
By the end of Cold Steel IV, he has virtually nothing. He loses his Rivalry battle against Rean and his Divine Knight with it, and with Osborne dead at the end of the game, he turns himself in and takes the blame for starting the war, forever tarnishing his reputation.
As far as I was concerned, that was probably the end of that. One of the series' most despised characters both in and out of universe had reached the end of his story arc, and that was the last we were going to see of him.
But then Trails into Reverie happened.
In its opening hours, he somehow manages to sink even lower, leading an army to invade and take over Crossbell yet again, and soundly defeating the SSS in the process.
It's not long, however, before the truth is revealed: this Rufus is a fake, and the real one was still imprisoned in Aurochs Fort up until the former tried to have him assassinated to cover up any potential loose ends.
At this point, the real Rufus has already started to change as a person, and so he decides to take this chance to break out of prison, investigate the truth, and put an end to the "Supreme Leader's" ambitions.
At the start of his route in Reverie, he's disguised himself with a mask and started calling himself "C", and it's here that a chance encounter sets in motion one of my favorite character redemption arcs in all of fiction, rivaled only by Kratos himself in the Norse God of War games.
Two ex-assassins, Swin and Nadia, run into Rufus near the outskirts of Crossbell, where, coincidentally enough, he is to be the recipient of a package the two were assigned to deliver. On opening the trunk, the three are greeted by Lapis Rosenberg — an advanced yet amnesiac doll.
I have to admit, it felt a bit weird introducing a handful of new major characters — who are playable, no less — this late into the Erebonia arc, during a game that was essentially a 60-hour epilogue. But the integration of Swin, Nadia, and Lapis into the ongoing story was nothing short of masterful, because in addition to setting up concepts for the Calvard arc to explore, they all play a huge part in changing Rufus's outlook on life.
Through his travels with the three, especially Lapis, Rufus finally learns to accept himself and leave behind his goal of surpassing his chosen father figure. And while he remains as pragmatic and cunning as ever, he channels that side of himself towards atoning for his past sins, and finally putting to bed his past self — symbolized by the imposter calling himself Supreme Leader.
Still, by the end of Reverie, he's still got one last big lesson to learn, and that leads into one of my favorite moments in the entire series. Long story short, the combined forces of Class VII, the SSS, Rufus, and all of their friends are finally able to bring down Ishmelga for good, after the latter had been brought back via a simulation of an alternate possible timeline.
Ishmelga, however, has one last trick up his sleeve: in death, he sets the Retributive Tower's massive cannon to fire at whatever humanity hates the most, ensuring that the world will be destroyed, either by humanity's hatred, or by the septium veins running completely dry thanks to the cannon's overuse.
Rufus, however, decides to take this moment to make the ultimate sacrifice. Seeing as his imposter had already dragged his reputation through the mud at this point, he goes and makes a broadcast to the world, claiming responsibility for the ongoing crisis, and spicing things up even further, states that he'll simply have to sacrifice more lives to achieve his vision.
This, naturally, pisses the public off, and since Rufus stayed behind in the Retributive Tower, this means that its cannon will fire on the tower itself, effectively causing self-destruction.
It's only thanks to Lloyd, Jusis, Swin, Nadia, Lapis, and Zeit that Rufus is safely rescued from the tower before it destroys itself, with Lloyd pointing out that Rufus hasn't realized that there are people who still care about him — namely, the new friends he made over the course of this journey.
When he next awakens in St. Ursula Medical College, Rufus has lost everything a second time. Now presumed dead by most of the world, he no longer has any claim to his former identity or his homeland, and the gravity of his "crimes" (committed by his imposter) would instantly land him a death sentence if he was known to still be alive.
But now, he's no longer tied down by his past. He's free to travel the world, and as the game ends, he embarks on a new journey with Swin, Nadia, and Lapis.
It's a beautiful ending to his character arc, and as someone who's admittedly a sucker for the "power of friendship" tropes in RPGs, I loved seeing him form a bond with people from a completely different generation, but also from very different walks of life. Rufus, Swin, Nadia, and Lapis together form kind of an oddball team with a special dynamic that isn't present in the SSS, Class VII, or even the Daybreak arc's Arkride Solutions.
And personally speaking, Rufus's character arc is a testament to Falcom's masterful writing, and one of the strongest arguments as to why the Trails series needs to be as long as it is. We had five whole games — and now six with Trails beyond the Horizon — to watch him grow and change as a character, and while I'm not saying you can't write a good story in a single game, the amount of screen time these characters are afforded in Trails means they have an order of magnitude more time to grow on the audience.
So here's to Rufus Albarea, a character that went from one of my most hated to one of my most beloved practically overnight.
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