Who doesn’t love a good mom character in a video game to make themselves feel cozy? Final Fantasy doesn’t have a lot, but there are some good moms to point out. For example, Final Fantasy 7 had Elmyra, who was the adoptive mother of Aerith. She raised her after Aerith’s real mom, Ifalna, died.

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It’s always nice to have a good mom in a series like Final Fantasy, but there are certainly a few bad eggs worth mentioning too. Some of these moms are downright evil to the core, while others are merely neglectful at the very least. There will be spoilers.

5 Jenova

Final Fantasy 7

Jenova is an alien that crash-landed on the planet in Final Fantasy 7. Her corruption is what led to the destruction of The Ancients, or so it is theorized. Eventually, Jenova is captured by the Shinra Corporation and exploited through rigorous genetic research. Sephiroth, for example, was created in a lab using Jenova’s cells, thus making him, and several others, her son.

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It’s a technical inclusion, as Jenova was never really depicted as a humanoid. There has yet to be a scene in any of these games where Jenova even talks. That could change in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth or the sequel beyond that. It is doubtful that she will be a nice mom to Sephiroth if she does appear though, given that she is a destructive alien.

4 Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia

Final Fantasy Type-0

Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia is a character from the often-forgotten spinoff, Final Fantasy Type-0. She is the head of research within the academy who created the Class Zero program. All the kids involved in the class were orphans and rejects around campus. She experimented on them to make the class stronger, and helped train them to change their fates for the good of the Academy.

Every character in this unit had a special weapon trait and call Sign. For example, the main character’s name was Ace, who could throw cards out like Gambit from the X-Men. Everyone within Class Zero refers to Dr. Al-Rashia as their mom, which is sweet, but it also feels a bit like brainwashing. Do good mothers train their kids to be war machines?

3 Edea

Final Fantasy 8

Edea falls into a similar boat as Dr. Al-Rashia because she too raised a bunch of orphans. This is a secret kept late into the game, but most of the party members in Final Fantasy 8 were raised by Edea and her husband Cid. The reason why Squall and the others forgot about this was a combination of magic from the real villain, Ultimecia, and the Guardian Forces that they equipped. Guardian Forces were the new version of Summons in this game, including mainstays like Shiva and Ifrit.

Before this revelation, Edea was the central villain of the game. She harmed a lot of people before she too was cured of her brainwashing spell. Her rampage technically wasn’t her fault, then, but it’s kind of hard to forget the atrocities she committed while under Ultimecia’s spell. Should she have been forgiven as easily as she was in the game?

2 Queen Brahne

Final Fantasy 9

Continuing the chain of brainwashed adoptive moms, let’s talk about Queen Brahne from Final Fantasy 9. She is Garnet’s mom, who raised her as a baby after her real mom died in a boating accident. How that scene really played out is never revealed, but it is assumed this was the truth. As a girl, Queen Brahne was seemingly loving to Garnet but things changed once Zorn and Thorn entered into Queen Brahne’s council, along with Kuja later on.

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They started corrupting her mind, planting ideas of war, which is the state she is in when Final Fantasy 9 begins. Her destructive tendencies almost lead to a mass genocide of the rat-like people of Burmecia, who not only lose their kingdom, but their second home of Cleyra too. Queen Brahne snaps out of her drunken power state as she lies dying in Garnet’s arms toward the middle of the game. Even after apologizing, it was one of those too little, too late situations in many regards.

1 Anabella

Final Fantasy 16

Anabella is the latest mom in the series, hailing from Final Fantasy 16. Unlike a couple of these entries where brainwashing and neglect could be faulted for bad motherly decisions, Anabella was just a straight-up power-hungry demon of a woman. What she wanted was power, and she did everything to obtain it. She helped orchestrate the assassination of her husband along with the dismantling of their kingdom.

The deal was that she could be the queen of a more powerful kingdom in exchange for this mass destruction. She loses a son, Joshua, in this fight, but still has Clive by the end. Instead of celebrating that Clive was still alive, she instead turned her back on him and allowed Clive to be enslaved. This is just in the first hour or so of the game, and her crimes got worse from there. At the end of the day, Anabella at least got what she deserved: an absolutely brutal death.

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