What webshrine would be complete without a list of other characters in the game and an analysis of their relationship to the enshrined character? Below are thoughts on Zalbag's established relationships to other characters in game, as well as a list of characters that I or other people thing he has the potential to be shipped with.
in-game relationships. | potential ships.
Below are some of my thoughts about Zalbag's relationships to other characters he actually has some interaction with or connection to in canon.
Alma: Zalbag's most notable action as regards his little sister is saving her rather dramatically from the Death Corps while Teta Hyral is being dragged away. He speaks to Alma surprisingly little outside of that incident, and we only know that after the events of Zeakden, Alma comes to distrust her brothers as per her character bio. Still, by Chapter 3 of the game, Alma appears to be living in Lesalia with Zalbag instead of with Dycedarg at Igros, which may indicate that he is the brother she is closer to out of her two legitimate half-brothers. Ramza and Alma also seem to be in agreement that she could possibly turn to Zalbag for protection after having helped to defeat Zalmo, while she opines that Dycedarg might abandon her in the hopes of protecting the House.
I like to think that what's interesting about Zalbag's relationship to Alma is how one can read it in relation to his callous disregard for Teta. He's obviously prioritizing Alma's life in the Death Corps raid on Igros, but it's chilling that he can order the death of another girl his sister's age a short span of time later especially given his willingness to discard Ramza with classist jabs as to his commoner blood. I think the real question one ought have in exploring these two characters is whether or not Zalbag would have ordered Algus to take the shot if Alma were the hostage (FireEye, in "He Bearing Ill Tidings" seems to answer "yes."), and how one might read his seeming affection for and obligation to his sister in light of that reality. Another point that might be interesting to explore is the characters both having closer ties to the Glabados faith than their brothers.
If you want one of my takes on the two characters and their relationship after Zeakden, I did a short piece about them in the aftermath of Zeakden called "Boreas in the Field" (spoiler: their relationship involves Zalbag gets stabbed in the face).
Algus: The only interaction we really see between Zalbag and Algus is Zalbag ordering Algus to shoot at Zeakden, and Zalbag leaves immediately afterwards in pursuit of Wiegraf. It's a strange moment, as Algus' prior interactions with House Beoulve were not ones that seemed set to put him in good standing with House Beoulve (See: his ridiculous request that Dycedarg give him a hundred knights to lead).
Part of what I think is compelling about Zalbag's trust in Algus is that it shows how even at the beginning of the game, Dycedarg and Zalbag are more at odds with one another than it might appear. While Dycedarg would have no reason to put Algus in a position of power, given his presumptuousness and accidental interference with Dycedarg's plans regarding Elmdor, Zalbag may see Algus as a skilled and ambitious youth who was able to take his mention of the Dorter informant and use it to successfully recover his liege lord. It may be that Zalbag is also positively inclined to Algus on account of his homeland. It appears that the last battles of the Fifty Years War involved driving the Ordalians out of Limberry, and as Zalbag reports on this campaign when speaking to his dying father, it may have been the fact that he was recently in the region pre-canon assisting Elmdor's military efforts.
For Algus, being able to accompany Zalbag was probably seemed like an incredible opportunity to recover his family's honor, and part of the tragedy of his own arc is that Zalbag is quick to leave him to his own devices; the fact that House Beoulve never mentions him again after his death seems to hammer home that Teta was not the only youth at Zeakden deemed to be expendable.
Balbanes: Zalbag obviously feels deeply grieved over his father's murder once it's discovered, but we don't have much information as to what their father/son relationship was like prior to Balbanes' decline and death. It seems like Balbanes ought have held his son in high regard, given that they both were famous holy knights who won glory in the Fifty Years War. In the one scene in which we see them together, however, there isn't a lot of acknowledgement as to Zalbag's achievements as the focus of the scene is (appropriately) establishing Balbanes' character in relation to Ramza's narrative.
Personally, I think a lot of how one reads the relationship between Balbanes and Zalbag depends on what translation of Balbanes' final words you are reading. In the original game, his last words to Ramza are "Take good care of Alma... Become a fine knight... Ramza." In War of the Lions, they are "Take care of your sister. And show these brothers of yours what it is...what it is to be a knight..." While I tend to favor the PSX translation in my readings of the game, I really love the potential angstiness you can read into Balbanes going out on a statement that might imply his older sons are in some way deficient. Zalbag avenging a father who deeply cherished him is a compelling narrative, but I love thornier interpretations in which Zalbag is an avenger who was not a particularly favored child (See "Let Your Curse Be On Me," "The Cuckoo," "In Memoriam Mei," "Draught," "Ghost," and "Homecoming" for some of my "Balbanes was not a great dad" imaginings; I feel you can also read him in this light in moemachina's "Horns" and Jaydee_Faire's "The Beggar of Sephravaim.")
Delita: Zalbag's only really interaction with Delita--before he orders his sister shot--is to greet him at Igros and mention that his not-yet-shot sister looks happy (she isn't). As his actions at Zeakden makes clear, however, Zalbag obviously isn't invested in either Hyral child to prioritize their well-being over the integrity and honor of the Hokuten. He never mentions them after the end of Chapter 1, and even at the point of his second death, he offers no apologies for wronging them.
What I think is much more interesting, however, than Zalbag's take on Delita is Delita's take on Zalbag and what means that he doesn't seem particularly driven by further considerations of revenge after he disposes of Algus. Even once Delita is in a position of power among the Nanten, it's clear that he is primarily interested in pursuing his ambitions for the crown, and he treats Zalbag and Dycedarg's coming deaths as something of an afterthought. It would have been fascinating to get a showdown between the two of them in battle or to have some insight as to how Delita decides precisely where Zalbag does or does not fall in the architecture of his schemes. (See my own "Echoes" or colloquialrhapsodist and Silento's "Ice-Cold Hearts of Charity Bare" for some takes on the two of them in fanfiction.)
Dycedarg: Dycedarg is absolutely the most important figure in Zalbag's narrative, and I LOVE reading anybody's take on the two of them. The game does such a slick move in presenting them as innately linked characters (with everyone referring to Ramza's brothers as a unit) and then gradually showing us how different they really are. Wiegraf falsely assumes Zalbag is in on the plot to kidnap Elmdor; Delita insinuates that Ramza's brothers are both attempting to control his life; Ramza himself is shocked when it drops in Chapter 3 that Zalbag wasn't aware of the Hokuten's involvement in Ovelia's abduction. The game very much sets you up to assume that Zalbag is a baddie of the same stripe as Dycedarg, only to pull away and finally have him stand up for something noble before he's destroyed.
And part of what's oh so satisfying about this whole set up is how so much of it hinges on Zalbag and Dycedarg having such a shared sense of loyalty and trust. It's telling that after Ramza murders Zalbag's troops, disappears into the snow, and runs off to take a gap year with Gaffgarion, what causes Zalbag to disown him are his accusations against his eldest brother. It's even more telling that when Larg is murdered, Dycedarg orders Zalbag to frame a dead knight for the deed and assumes that he will obey (and for all we know... he does it. There's no indication that Zalbag did anything at all about his liege lord's murder until after he had evidence of the Beoulve family patricide). Once you get to the battle at Igros, there's plenty of available evidence that can make Dycedarg's "I dirtied my hands to keep yours clean!" hit awfully hard. I also think it's worth noting that while Dycedarg is nonchalant in ordering Ramza's death, he frames his orders to the Hokuten by saying that Zalbag is mad and must be restrained rather than saying that Zalbag is treasonous and must be killed. Even if Dycedarg is terrible to the core, there seems to be some sort of shared sympathy and regard between him and Zalbag, which makes the ultimate collapse of House Beoulve all the more compelling.
I also love just how much one might be able to read into the sizeable age gap between them and the fact that neither of them, despite being the last two legitimate heirs to House Beoulve, ever married. What happened to their mother? Why weren't there any other legitimate heirs for nine years after Dycedarg's birth and before Zalbag's? Why did the two of them fail to wed when their line is dying out? Were the younger Beoulve's legitimized in the anticipation that neither brother would have any issue? There's so much fodder for cool interpretations and sad fanfic in what little we know of their family history, and I think that both brothers feeling a marked loyalty to one another while being the very last nobleborn heirs to their household is incredibly compelling. For all Dycedarg makes a fine speech about him doing all his treason and scheming in the name of bringing House Beoulve to power, it's worth noting that "House Beoulve," in his mind at least, really just seems to be him and one brother.
Most of the fine fic about these two has been linked to above, but for the sake of completeness, check out "Let Your Curse Be On Me," "Ex Corporibus," "The Cuckoo," "Echoes" for some of what I think is my stronger work regarding these two and check out moemachina's "Horns" and "The Godmothers", and Jaydee_Faire's "The Beggar of Sephravaim" for other writers takes I particularly like.
Larg: Zalbag isn't ever shown interacting with Larg save during the scene in which Larg is stabbed, so its hard to gauge what his relationship with his liege lord is like. He certainly seems to regard Dycedarg's murder of him as a black deed, although as mentioned above, it's telling that he doesn't take action against Dycedarg immediately after Larg's death and waits until he has evidence regarding his father's murder. It a relationship that could go a number of different ways in fannish interpretations, from close (Larg is Dycedarg's childhood friend and may extend that friendliness to his younger brother) to aloof (vassalage makes for less-than-warm interpersonal dynamics) to romantic (Not my cup of tea, but--hey--why not?) The fun here is that Larg is enough of a blank of a character that one has room for a broad range of interpretations.
Ramza: Zalbag's relationship to Ramza is one of the ones we see the most of, given that Ramza is Final Fantasy Tactics' protagonist. The basic arc of their relationship, in which Zalbag rejects Ramza in Chapter 3 and then later comes to realize that he was right and feels remorse over that rejection is compelling, but something I like to consider are his actions toward Ramza in Chapter 1, in which he both teases Ramza about not wanting to be spoken of highly and then sets his teenage brother up to go slog through the Dorter slums. What strikes me as interesting about it is that Zalbag seems to be invested already in treating Ramza like an adult, and he's willing to send his brother into dangerous circumstances in light of it (unlike Dycedarg who--if one is being exceedingly charitable--might be read as showing something like fraternal concern in telling his brother to guard the castle and not go traipsing about as his various schemes unfold). I think that this is a fascinating moment in which one can read Zalbag as already diverging from Dycedarg and also one in which he's poised to see Ramza in terms of his own youth, where there was a decent chance he was already winning glory against the Romandans and/or Ordalians as a teen).
And I think that a lot of what might be interesting to look at with regards to Ramza and Zalbag are the ways in which they both are heroes of their age, albeit one is a recognized hero and the other is not. It's clear that Ramza rejects the callous, elitist outlook Zalbag has earlier in the story, but one has to wonder how his own sense of moral duty might have been shaped by members of his family beyond his father. I think it's sad that there may have been ways in which they two of them were genuinely alike, although the tragic circumstances of their narratives never provided much opportunity for them to realize and explore that.
Teta: Zalbag's complicity in Teta's death seems to get overshadowed by Algus being a murderous, gloating asshole at Delita, but it really needs to be emphasized that his actions at Zeakden are reprehensible andhe never shows remorse for them. His command to Algus is somewhat ambiguous, but whether you want to read him as having anticipated Algus would shoot Golagros or having decided explicitly to have Teta killed, the most striking thing about his relationship to Teta is how discardable he finds her to be.
Outside of being instrumental in her death, the only remark he makes regarding Teta is that she seems happy, at a time where she is actually unhappy and suffering abuse at the hands of her classmates (a fact that Alma decides to share with Ramza rather than with her older brothers). The one place where I think one might be able to read some interesting sympathy between the two characters is honestly that they are both committed to upholding the status quo in warped ways: with Teta stoically attempting to make herself small and untroublesome and Zalbag thereafter casting her aside without trouble.
Below are some of my thoughts about ships involving Zalbag that I have either written about, given some contempation to, or seen elsewhere on the Internet.
Agrias/Zalbag: I never heard of this pairing until TV Tropes indicated it was a feature of "The Lion of Ivalice," and while I haven't read the entire fic, I'm not entirely certain what my stance is on it. Both characters clearly prioritize certain standards of fealty and knightly duty, and both of them--being holy knights--arguably have similar experiences with faith and combat. While we honestly get very little characterization as regards either Agrias or the Lionsguard, I feel like there's also a lot of room for both characters to come together in terms of the conflicted feelings they no doubt have about a civil war where their loyalties alter. Agrias has to make a decision to refuse loyalty to the parts of the royal family who aren't Ovelia and Zalbag is suddenly fighting against people from the Eastern provinces who would have surely been his allies in past battles (especially Orlandu). That being said, it's really not a ship that grabs me.
Dycedarg/Zalbag: As this is a 00s style webshrine, let me open with a 00s style disclaimer in which I state that I DO NOT SUPPORT ACTUAL REAL LIFE INCEST, that it's very bad, and that if you Don't Like it being described in a brisk list of ship thoughts, I suggest you close your browser and Don't Read. With that being said, I feel that there's honestly a lot of potential to take the miserable dysfunction of their canonical relationship as brothers and render it into something even more warped. As I alluded to above, the amount of blind faith they seem to have in one another seems excessive (with Zalbag disowning Ramza over his insinuations that Dycedarg might be corrupt and Dycedarg just assuming--and possibly assuming correctly--that Zalbag will cover for his murder of Larg). Taking the level of influence/control that Dycedarg appears to have over his younger brother and adding a sexual dimension could add to the sense of House Beoulve's innate rottenness; it would offer an explanation as to their lake of marriages/issue; it would add an extra bit of Game of Thrones flair to a narrative based on the same historical civil war. Whether you envision the ship as something occurring in deeply horrifying darkfic where Dycedarg is a Lucavi or in just normally horrifying darkfic in which they're both mortal and consenting, I feel there's a lot of genuinely interesting narratives you can tap into with this permutation of Beoulvecest.
Elmdor/Zalbag: Zalbag is the very religious celebrity war hero from the West. Elmdor is the very religious celebrity war hero from the East. I feel like this makes them ripe for either a friendship or a rivalry, and as Zalbag appears to have been active in Limberry at the end of the Fifty Years War, I feel that there's a great opportunity for them to have friendly or unfriendly sparring sessions and/or make out sessions in light of that relationship. While they never quite interact in canon and Elmdor has no real readable personality before he becomes a Lucavi, I like to think there's enough here to justify a few fanworks about hot pixelated dudes hooking up (even if nobody has yet made them).
Kletian/Zalbag: I've seen this ship floating around Japanese twitter (there's some gorgeous art here), and it seems to be a pairing where people envision the two of them getting together while they are both studying at Gariland. I wrote my own, much darker take on the ship in "Disintegration," where Kletian is an amoral, Temple-Knight-affiliated magician and Zalbag is a helpless experimental zombie. Given that Kletian is a bit of a cipher (his characterization is bare bones in the original game and minimal in WotL), I feel that this is a pairing open to a ton of different interpretations, but I personally like the idea of takes that focus on how both characters are--in some way--skilled prodigies at what they do.
Larg/Zalbag: As I mentioned above, Larg doesn't have a lot about him that leads you to one interpretation or another about his relationship with Zalbag, but at least one artist (krozinworks, although their blog and art has since been taken down) did some cool ship art of Larg/Zalbag. It's not a ship that particularly appeals to me, but there's so much drama you could extract from a narrative in which Zalbag's eventual confrontation with Dycedarg is influenced by the fact that his lover was stabbed in front of him. While it's probably not going to be me creating fanworks for it, I'd love to encounter somebody else's takes on this ship.
Ovelia/Zalbag: Okay. Nobody actually ships this (that I know of). I don't even really ship this. HOWEVER. I want to point out that a Zalbag/Ovelia arranged marriage would have stood a decent shot of actually accomplishing Dycedarg's aims of setting House Beoulve up as rulers while still appearing to support Larg's camp and that having a celebrity war hero marry the daughter of the warrior king who named him savior of Ivalice would probably sound pretty appealing to the populace in general. Like, I don't think they'd actually be a good couple, but this is a pretty workable scenario where Larg's faction (or more specifically... Dycedarg) could have carried out their scheming more efficiently and saved Ivalice a civil war. Could Alma perhaps be convinced to talk up her hot war hero brother to her only close friend? Could Zalbag perhaps be convinced to get his bride to renounce her claim to the throne or else add to the weirdness of Atkascha double relations and adopt Orinus as heir? It would take some finessing, but I think this is a nice ship to consider for weird AU purposes where you just don't feel like a Lion War.
Ramza/Zalbag: Scroll back up to the Dycedarg/Zalbag paragraph if you need to be reminded of my disclaimer. Scroll back down here to be possibly disappointed to read that I consider this to be second rate Beoulvecest: decent but not top tier. I do think there are interesting potentialities for Ramza to be caught up in the heroics of his brother and to develop some sort of forbidden crush, and I am always interested in scenarios that explore family dysfunction in dark ways. A number of the fanworks I've seen for this pairing, however, either seem to paint Ramza/Zalbag scenarios less dark than I feel comfortable with or they alter a non-zombified Zalbag into an OOC rapist for porn reasons. While I don't begrudge anyone their properly tagged fun and I've enjoyed some very nice darkfic featuring this ship, I don't feel as compelled by it, conceptually, as I do with Dycedarg/Zalbag.
Ruvelia/Zalbag: This is a weird ship, given that the characters aren't shown together and that Ruvelia is never actually in the game, but I think it's worth noting that Ruvelia is nearly Zalbag's age and as Larg's sister, she could have conceivably been growing up at Igros around the same time as him, giving the two of them a shared childhood in a fashion similar to Dycedarg & Larg, Delita & Ramza, or (to a lesser extent given Alma's time at Orbonne) Alma & Teta. While I prefer Dycedarg/Ruvelia as a ship, I feel like there's still something deeply satisfying to Zalbag also having had a childhood companion of a different social rank just like everyone else in his family. Symmetry! As I hint at in the fics where I tease at this pairing ("The Cuckoo" and "Echoes" ), I love where one could take things with one of them becoming a queen and the other a national hero: how they both fell into sort of fairytalesque roles that just happen to fit with their families' machinations.
Teta/Zalbag: Who doesn't love a ship where one character kills the other? This is another pairing I've seen mainly in Japanese fanworks, and I'm not sure I have a good feel for it. I get the impression that it has a similar vibe to Teta/Algus, with an emphasis on what could have been rather than on what actually happened. Personally, if I were to put my spin on it, it would be interesting to consider if Zalbag having some sort of attraction to Teta fueled his willingness to have her killed--both in that he did not wish to feel emotions swayed his military decision making and (more darkly) that having her dead would be a solution to an unwanted attraction to a much younger girl raised as his sister. Overall though, it's not a ship that really grabs me.
Wiegraf/Zalbag: My OTP. My favorite FFT ship of all time. I wrote a 10K word manifesto as to why I think these two losers who never interact in the actual game are perfect for one another, and I could probably drop another 10K if pressed. I love this dumb ship so much, and I am game for every variant on it one could imagine.