Love & Romance

Please keep in mind that this page is pretty much almost all opinion based. It also mainly focuses on Kratos’ devotion to Anna, and explains why Kratos and anyone (mainly Raine because it seems to be a pretty popular fan base) would not work out romantically. If that is a subject you wouldn’t enjoy, please turn back now, okay? Okay.

Tales of Symphonia only speaks of two women that Kratos has feelings for. The first was Soleille, the queen of Tethe’alla back when Kratos was a knight. Mithos worries that it is his fault the two of them never end up together, but Kratos simply responds that she had already planned to marry someone else so it didn’t matter. Still, the subject is brought up after Mithos discusses Yuan’s love for Martel, so we can assume that Kratos was in love with her. He accepted his position as a knight and hers as the queen, however, so he probably didn’t pursue her for that reason, especially since he has a personality that tends to go with whatever happens without taking action on his own. If Soleille was to marry someone else, then that was okay with him, it didn’t matter too much. I’m sure that if he really did have strong feelings for her, he was probably bothered or at least a little jealous, but I guess Kratos isn’t one to let emotions like that show or get in the way of what he’s doing. So, he moved on.

A few thousand years later, he meets Anna, a test subject for the Angelus Project. He explains their relationship to Kate in Tales of Fandom 2 as “getting close to her,” but I’m going to assume that he probably fell in love with her because he stayed on the run in constant danger in order to be with her, and they did have a baby. Anna made him realize that he was being irresponsible turning a blind eye to Mithos, especially when he didn’t support Mithos’ ideals to begin with. She brought some light to his darkened world and he came to rely on her as his “new hope.” He tells Kate that he relied on Anna as he had relied on Mithos before he lost Martel, and how he relied on Lloyd after Anna’s death, so she was obviously someone he cared about anyway. Tales of Symphonia never goes into what Kratos and Anna’s relationship was like, so we can only assume, but what is important for this page is that he at least cared about her and killed her. Years later, his heart is unable to move on from the fact that he killed Anna, even though he was forced into the situation with no other choice. His anger flares anytime Kvar is mentioned and he feels tremendous guilt when speaking with Lloyd… The chances of him falling in love, or even wanting to be with someone again are not very high because he’ll never forget the pain and guilt of killing the person he loved. I know that people move on when they lose the people they love, but most aren’t the reason their loved ones are dead. So, on some level, Kratos will always be devoted to Anna, even if he is eventually able to move on even more than he has. At the very least, Kratos would not want anything like that to happen ever again, so he’d seem like he’d avoid the situation all together.

Not to mention, Kratos also hates himself. He may change by the end of the game, but the fact still remains that he betrayed and hurt the people he cared about most. He’s probably not too concerned about his own happiness at this point, as long as Lloyd is safe and doing well and he has his goal to atone for the sins of the past, he’s probably as satisfied as he’s willing to get. I doubt he thinks he deserves another chance at love, even if someone happened to catch his attention.

I’ve noticed that that certain someone catching his attention seems to be Raine among the fans. Don’t get me wrong, I love Raine, she’s one of my favorite Tales characters, but I honestly do not see how any romance would be able to blossom between them. First of all, all the time he spent traveling with her, he was still his “old” self, completely absorbed in the guilt he feels for killing Anna, so I highly doubt he’d ever look at any woman during that time as a possible love interest. Secondly, Raine doesn’t trust people easily, and Kratos was not an exception. She thought he was suspicious from the beginning, offering to protect Colette like it was nothing, having a vast knowledge of places and other random things…There’s no way she would be able to get close to anyone in a short period of time. It took her long enough to get close to Sheena, and she never betrayed them at all. Raine has also never mentioned anything about men in general, as I think she’s content with her friends and ruin-maniac moments. Lastly, Raine and Kratos are too similar in the fact that they are both incredibly logical, quiet and can be rather harsh at times, so I don’t think they’d be the first people to form an incredibly strong bond. I’m guessing that Anna’s personality was probably a bit, if not a lot different than his, and she probably wanted to support and listen to him, so he most likely fell in love with her for that reason. Kratos has a personality that needs and wants to be supported in order to be happy, and I don’t believe Raine would be like that in a relationship with someone like Kratos unless they had a lot of time to get to know each other (they didn’t).

But either way, this essay is supposed to be against Kratos falling in love with anyone in the near future, not just Raine. Assuming Kratos did live for another few hundred years and he and the rest of the people on Derris-Kharlan found a place to live in peace, he may eventually find someone and fall in love. But as for the near future, I don’t think so. Kratos’ heart has finally been relieved a little by Lloyd’s acceptance and guidance, so he’s going to need some time for it to heal again.

b a c k   .   c l e a r   .   f o r w a r d    Count the Stars and its contents are © Samantha, however Kratos and Tales of Symphonia are © NAMCO. Count the Stars is a part of AFTER-DEATH.ORG.