An Eternal Promise or How a Little Chaos Gremlin Fell For a Nerdy Catboy
This post is part of an answer to @caffeinated-moogle's open ask list about WoLships! There's going to be references to specific scenes from Shadowbringers and Endwalker, so spoiler warnings for those expansions!
I would ask her about her next adventure. And should she wish me to be a part of it, oh… how happy it would make me. Together, we would travel the lands and cross the seas and take to the skies upon the eternal wind… My heart swells simply to imagine it.
When Lulu started her journey back in 2020, I had no intentions of ever shipping her with anyone. I'm a bit of a slave to canon and since there's no “official” romance in the game, I figured there wouldn't be any point in thinking about her romantic interests since there wouldn't be any official representation in the game. Also, I had my own misgivings about Lalafell and romance back then, but more on that later.
This “none for me, thanks” approach towards Lulu's love life is probably why I wasn't too enamoured with G’raha at first blush. Sure, he was cute, but who isn't in this game? Honestly, I was a little annoyed by how he toys with you in the early parts of the Crystal Tower storyline, and while I had gotten over that as the story progressed, I wasn't totally heartbroken when he sealed himself in the Tower seemingly never to be seen again.
By the time I got Lulu to Shadowbringers, I already knew the Crystal Exarch’s true identity. I wasn't too upset by the spoiler because, well, I was still pretty ambivalent about G'raha. So I went through Shadowbringers largely not paying much attention to the Exarch and the little hints of just how important the WoL is to him. Until the scene before Mt. Gulg where we have a private chat with the Exarch.
This was the first time that G'raha touched my heart. Here he was, in a roundabout way, confessing that everything he's done since awakening from his slumber wasn't just because we're important to the star, but because we're important to HIM and how his greatest wish was to be a part of our story. I'll admit to being left a little flustered by the scene! As far as grand gestures go, traveling across time and space to save someone and waiting over a century for their arrival is pretty romantic!
So here I was, starting to fall for G’raha, but I didn't really know what that meant for Lulu yet. By this point in her story, I had started to ship her with Aymeric. My intentions to not romance her with anyone had fallen to just how gorgeous and charming the Aymeric was and I felt like the game was showing some pretty obvious signs that he was in love with her. As I progressed through the rest of Shadowbringers and saw a strong connection forming between Lulu and G’raha, I had to make a decision for her love life, Aymeric or G'raha?
Be it across time or space, our promises have always connected us. And so I ask that you indulge me once more, that this won't be the end.
I had my answer by the end of base Endwalker. While poor Aymeric had gotten pushed to the side with his state leader status, G’raha’s relationship with Lulu was given so much more screen time and I ate up every bit of it. Even from the very first voiced scene where she woke up next to him on the boat to Sharlayan, I was giddy seeing them on screen together.
And then came the inn scene before the start of the Final Days. It's such a marvelous, sweet scene. G'raha's talk of sharing burdens and memories made my heart soar. This was probably the closest the game would come to a full on confession, or so I thought.
Ultima Thule was an incredibly emotional experience for me, as it was for a lot of players. I will admit that the Scions’ sacrifices didn't get a huge physical response from me. Sure I was a little sad, but I think I was being a little too genre savvy to let their sacrifices bring me down too much since I knew they would be coming back. When it came to G'raha's turn, I braced myself for heartbreak, but it still wasn't enough.
“I want you to make me a promise.” As soon as he uttered those words, my heart burst. I cried like I've never cried before playing a video game. Here he was again, waiting until the last moment to lay his heart bare. As G’raha’s “final” speech continued, it hit all the right emotional beats, leaving me sobbing with every sentence. It was like he was cultivating my heart to the perfect ripeness before tearing it from my chest in a devastating harvest. When it was all over, I was a mess. Even though I knew he'd be back, my heart was shattered by even this temporary loss. That's when I knew how much I loved this character and since I had put so much of myself into Lulu, that's when I knew for sure she loved him, too.
I've rambled on quite a bit already and I've only really addressed the first couple of questions from the prompt! I'm going to stop here for now and address the other questions in a later post, I promise!
Speaking of promises, I'll end with one last bit of ship history. The two quotes I left in this post and the scenes they're from are so fundamental to Lulu and G'raha’s relationship, serving as bookends to its conception and realization, that I named their ship after them:
