An Explanation of Fontaine's Retcons
A short write-up regarding the plot of the game and how it's evolved over time.
Genshin Impact is not exactly known for the quality of its writing in general, but there is one thing that many fans will agree on: That regardless of what you think, the show is well-planned. Having started off with a manga and a trailer that summarized the storyline of the main quests, narrated with punchy, poetic dialogue that takes on new meanings after the quests are played from Mondstadt to Sumeru, and an expansive yet cohesive lore, it really felt as though the lads up at Mihoyo had everything figured out.
Well, Natlan has been completed, and it’s clear that this one was extremely divergent from the plan, so that doesn’t need to be discussed. Everything from sidelining Iansan to not having Mavuika tell the Traveler some earth-shattering secret makes it difficult to believe the words of Travail from now on.
However, the eagle-eyed among us might have noticed that the retcons and divergences started happening one patch cycle earlier, and like many things that Natlan got wrong, such as powercreep, it all started in 4.0 with the nation of Justice, Fontaine.
I’m going to start off with a wild theory, and a few bits of information from the game that I have to support it.
I think Furina (or rather, Focalors) was originally intended to be a villain archon.
The primary piece of evidence I have is from the Oceanid boss battle and associated lore, as well as the Travail trailer.
“An assassin from our homeland? Or a fool who trespasses upon the waters of Qingce?” - Rhodeia of Loch
“We seek but a small haven of tranquil waters... is that so much to ask for...” - Rhodeia of Loch
“Dainsleif: The God of Justice lives for the spectacle of the courtroom, seeking to judge all other gods.
Dainsleif: But even she knows not to make an enemy of the divine.” - Travail
“Endora: We Lochfolk once spread far and wide to rivers, streams, and ponds all over the continent, and we largely served as Fontaine's spies.
Paimon: Spies!? What's the Hydro Archon planning?
Endora: The previous Archon had no plan to speak of. She merely wished to connect everyone in the world, in much the same way as all water is connected. But with her passing, many of us have cut off ties with Fontaine.
Endora: Like Rhodeia, the strongest of our number, they did not recognize the new Hydro Archon and desired only to keep the dreams of yesteryear alive.” - Oceanid Event Quest
From this brief summary of the materials, it implies that old Fontaine, pre-Focalors, may have had some culty, nefarious undertones, seeing as it was led by Egeria who had an extensive group of spies. New Fontaine, under Focalors, not Furina, I should mention, seems to be a dictatorship at the whims of its ruler, with a vengeful leader who would possibly send assassins after her Oceanids. It’s never stated by Endora that Rhodeia’s fears are unfounded and paranoid, in fact, she follows by assuming that they are real, saying that it is possible that a small drop of malice could overpower a larger body of water.
Following Travail, we see that “even the God of Justice knows not to make an enemy of the divine.” Previously, the only archon who toed the line with the Heavenly Principles was Ei, who was also a villain archon at the time. Due to this, I was actually quite looking forward to Genshin having a pattern of villain-hero-villain-hero-villain for its back half, with Ei as an antagonist, Nahida as a helper, then Furina as a villain, Mavuika as a helper, and finally the Tsaritsa as a villain. The Final Feast, being host to a whole litany of misinformation (as region teasers tend to be, starting from a Winter Night’s Lazzo) also fed into this misconception that Furina would be a Marie-Antoinette style villain, and so I was mildly disappointed when she turned out to be weak and ineffectual as an antagonistic force in the trial against Lyney.
In the end, she mostly spent her time cowering without much of a presence, which I suppose was the point seeing as she was a fraud who didn’t have the power necessary to make a move on her own, but it doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting story, in my opinion. On a personal note, one of my favorite moments from the AQ was actually in the dreaded Meropide sections, where Lyney and Wriothesley got into an argument. It was one of the first times we saw playable character on playable character arguments and it gave me hope for the future (which was later extinguished by later quests).
Unrelated, but isn’t it odd that during a trial, Lyney admitted to performing a whole appendix’s worth of crimes as he made an excuse for himself, including espionage, trespassing, and more, and yet that was never brought up again? He seriously had to be sent into the Fortress of Meropide for… stealing people’s wallets?
Regardless.
The second retcon that I believe happened was during the cycles of Inazuma and Sumeru, and it is when the devs decided that a Dragon Sovereign (Neuvillette) should attain high position within the Fontaine government, and so split the character of Focalors set up within the Travail Trailer into two parts, Furina and Neuvillette. At this point, they had also likely diverged from the idea that Focalors would be a villain archon, motivated in part due to the backlash created by making Ei a straight up villain for the majority of the archon quests.
Let’s revisit.
“Dainsleif: The God of Justice lives for the spectacle of the courtroom, seeking to judge all other gods.
Dainsleif: But even she knows not to make an enemy of the divine.” - Travail
The second part was completely reversed, but within the first line, we get two character traits.
“lives for the spectacle of the courtroom” is very clearly Furina.
“seeking to judge all other gods” is clearly Neuvillette. They do attempt to have Furina “judge” some other gods in her introduction, but it’s an extremely short and minor part of her character, and in my opinion was done simply to disguise that this aspect was moved to Neuvillette. It’s basically his main thing, which he gets memed for a lot.
It’s interesting to consider how these two aspects, seemingly contradictory, hedonic and vengeful, would have been able to coexist in a single character, but I believe that they were moved into two specifically for that reason— it was too difficult to write. Perhaps they had already had the Focalors-Furina dichotomy in mind from the start, and were planning to have them each take one of the aspects, or perhaps both were intended to move in tandem. At this point in time, the only thing I can do is speculate about what could have been, but I believe that this was certainly not planned out from the beginning of the game.
The final retcon I’d like to discuss is regarding Arlecchino.
Now, let’s get a couple of things out of the way. Yes, I believe that Crucabena was never meant to exist. Yes, I believe Arlecchino was meant to be the 10th Harbinger, and that would have made Capitano the fourth. Yes, this no longer makes sense given what we know about the Fatui, but bear in mind that most of that information comes from after Winter Night’s Lazzo, and it’s weird to have a teaser that supposedly has “all the Harbingers“, yet the 10th one is just… missing. Obviously, that’s canon now, but I don’t think it was intended to be.
Let’s start off with what we heard about Arlecchino before Fontaine— the Shrine Maiden World Quest in Inazuma. This one’s a big chunk of text, so be warned.
Efim Snezhevich: Understand this. My patience is limited, as is that of Lady Arlecchino.
Lyudochka Snezhevna: My apologies...
Efim Snezhevich: I did not spend all those years raising you to listen to apologies. What I want are results. Results!
…
Lyudochka Snezhevna: Teacher! I have no objections to your decision. But... You said that Lady Arlecchino can recall us from Inazuma at any time.
Lyudochka Snezhevna: And at this moment, the Shogunate and Watatsumi Island have reached a ceasefire, so... Is what we're doing really necessary?
Efim Snezhevich: Hah. That is precisely why our mission has value.
Efim Snezhevich: Lady Signora may have met her end here in Inazuma, but that makes it the best time for us to repay Lady Arlecchino's kindness and build up her prestige.
…
Lyudochka Snezhevna: We grew up in an orphanage set up by Lady Arlecchino. We do not know who we truly are. At the most, we know the blood that flows through our veins.
Other world quests which involve Fatui agents focus on this aspect henceforth— the Fatui stuck in the Chasm, as well as multiple members of the Fatui in Sumeru, mention their shared past as orphans raised in Arlecchino’s orphan crusher 3000, aka the House of the Hearth.
Also note that Efim says that Signora’s death is the best time to raise Arlecchino’s prestige. If she was at this time intended to be the fourth Harbinger, this line of dialogue is odd, because there would be very little prestige to gain seeing as she is four whole ranks higher. It’s as laughable as saying that Dottore has a good chance to gain prestige just because Scaramouche disappeared. While it’s still not known how public the rankings of the Harbingers are, it’s probably known within the organization itself.
It’s later revealed in 3.2 thanks to Nahida, that rather than prestige, rankings are ordered purely by combat capability, and thanks to Scaramouche in 3.3 that rankings are set in stone.
Arlecchino was likely intended to be the 10th Harbinger at the time of making this quest, assuming that the other Harbingers were already created and ranked at the time, and that the switch-up occurred for some unknown reason, but before they had the opportunity to create a replacement 10th Harbinger. This means the ranking pre–Winter’s Lazzo would’ve been as follows.
Pierro (1) Capitano (2) Dottore (3) Columbina (4) Pulcinella (5) Scaramouche (6) Sandrone (7) Signora (8) Pantalone (9) Arlecchino (10) Tartaglia (11), which makes a lot more sense than having Pierro be the director, and having the 10th Harbinger not present for the funeral with no one commenting on their absence.
Crucabena is a rare character which has zero lore whatsoever. There exists not a single mention of her outside of Arlecchino’s story, whereas every other Harbinger has mentions, references, and connections of dubious quality hidden within world quests, item lore, or simply existing in the mainline story. Dottore has a series of investigative notes and a hospital in Sumeru. Scaramouche has an artifact set and lore in Inazuma. Pantalone visited the Veluriyam Mirage and founded the credit coupon system in Meropide. Sandrone involved herself in the “Questioning Melusine and Answering Machine” quest in Fontaine. Pulcinella was mentioned in the Chasm Fatui Quest. Capitano was referenced by Varka, through Mika. Signora had an artifact set. Columbina has formerly dubious, but now pretty canon angel/moon sister lore.
Crucabena has nothing. With a game this interconnected and planned out in advance, a silent gap like that speaks volumes.
The motivation for this retcon is obvious: Arlecchino was considered too evil, on the same level as Dottore, due to her abuse of children. Such a character with a good design could not be wasted with an unsellable personality, thus, they had to retcon all the bad stuff to be done by a different Harbinger.
For some reason, they attempted to keep this misconception in place right up to the Final Feast, where they had her metaphorically knock down her children to take center stage, but this is sort of a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” thing. If Dottore burning Irminsul meant nothing, then why should I have believed that the Final Feast meant something? And since that teaser was also full of lies and deceptions, then why would anyone believe the Ignition teaser for Natlan? And now that we know that teaser was ALSO full of lies, we can be assured that the Nod-krai one will be full of lies as well, and will not have anything to do with the actual story of the region.
Sorry, I digress. I just got mad because trailers are an interest of mine, and while I enjoy misleading teasers, I hate being straight up lied to.
So, in summary, the three major retcons of Fontaine.
Focalors was originally likely intended to be a villainous archon in a similar vein to Ei.
Focalors and Neuvillette were originally one character, the God of Justice, but were split in two for unknown reasons.
Arlecchino was originally meant to be a huge bastard and pretty evil, but Crucabena was retconned into existence to make her more sellable.
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, leave them down below. If you want to tell me how wrong I am, that’s appropriate also. I’m well aware that I’m making wild leaps based off of connections made from a few year’s worth of sprinkled material. All I want to do is open up a new line of thought and perhaps draw those conclusions for other people to see.
If you made it here, I’d like to plug my new YouTube channel. I turned the Shades blog into a video essay. If you want to watch it, that’d be appreciated.