INFORMATION: MARGARET OF ANJOU.

Final Fantasy Tactics is very obviously based upon the fifteenth century English War of the Roses, with Larg's camp standing in for the Lancaster faction and Goltanna's camp standing in for the York faction. Almost all of the very direct parallels between the personages in the historic civil war and Matsuno's high fantasy cast are fairly removed from the main plot (although Delita and Wiegraf seem to be patterned in some way after Richard III and Jack Cade respectively). The warrior king Denamunda IV is an obvious stand in for Henry V, whose military victories in the Hundred Years Warled to the near unification of France and England. Omdoria III, who is sickly and weak, is ery evidently modelled Henry VI, Henry V's son who ceded the French throne, suffered from mental illness, and has been characterized by historians as timid and war averse. Ruvelia's historical equivalent is Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's wife.

Like Ruvelia, Margaret often functionally served as her kingdom's ruler, owing to her husband's frequent bouts of insanity. She was also widely villainized in literature and histories of her day and re-imaginings of her story do not tend to be kind to. She is notably domineering and bloodthirsty in Shakespeare's Henry VI plays, which may have been an inspiration for Final Fantasy Tactics given the Shakespearean names sprinkled throughout Matsuno's work (Ovelia in FFT, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Vagrant Story), and she is the inspiration for the ruthless and incestuous Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. Unlike Ruvelia, she is a historical personage who did leave behind some record of her own thoughts and perspective (a book of her letters is available at Archive.org); however; I think that what is most compelling in looking at her in tandem with Ruvelia is how both women's reputations are shaped by political realities in which their faction lost the war.