Dycedarg Beoulve

Dycedarg is the archetype Machiavellian of Final Fantasy Tactics, driven by his own desires and accomplishing them through any means necessary, devious or otherwise. In doing so, but not particularly caring, he is the only Beoulve who dishonors his family name. Cold-hearted only through his pursuit of power, he is often misjudged by many players of the game as being a complete sociopath who has a natural proclivity to kill, but, like the real-life person he can be compared to, Richard III of England, the way he achieves his goals overshadows the real person. To that end, it is his unabashed goal to become king.

Controversy Over Father's Death
Dycedarg became the leader of the Order of the Northern Sky during his father Barbaneth's illness, though he later complied with the latter's wishes and stepped down in favor of his younger brother, the Ark Knight Zalbaag. Both a skilled magician and fencer, earning the title of Rune Knight, he is also an excellent diplomat, helping negotiate the final treaties that ended the ruinous Fifty Years' War that Ivalice fought against the nation of Ordalia in the east.

The fact that Dycedarg murdered his father is clouded by alternate interpretations. Though not outrightly stated in the game, it could be that Dycedarg finished off Barbaneth, his father, because he had been suffering from "the long illness" mentioned in his in-game bio, thus being coldly merciful and self-serving at the same time. It could alternately argued, however, that "the long illness" was actually Dycedarg using Mossfungus poisoning over a long period of time, if this scenario is correct, Dycedarg is made to look like the cold-blooded, patricidal megalomaniac that so many players of Final Fantasy Tactics believe him to be.

In this vein too, it could be said that his close friendship with Duke Larg is one of convenience; using Larg for his own ends, while the former remains completely unwitting to the other's machinations. At any rate, it is certainly true that Dycedarg goes along with all of Larg's plans, including the kidnapping of Princess Ovelia, as evidenced by "Someone has learned of our plan, and is trying to stop us."

Role in the Destruction of the Corpse Brigade
A few months before the kidnapping of the Princess, he is vexed, like all high-ranking Order officials, Dycedarg being the leader of Gallione, with wishing to get rid of the anti-aristocratic, Mafia-like Corpse Brigade, led by a renegade knight of exceptional skill, Wiegraf Folles, and his sister, Milleuda. To accelerate the Corpse Brigade's demise, Dycedarg pays a Corpse Brigade fencer, probably promising clemency along the way, named Gustav Margriff, to kidnap Marquis Elmdore, the leader of Limberry, and thus create an excuse to declare all-out war on the Corpse Brigade, and in doing so, wiping them out for good. Zalbaag, unaware of Dycedarg's plans, expresses confusion in a brief meeting with his youngest brother, Ramza, a Limberrian Squire named Argath, and Ramza's best friend Delita as to why the Corpse Brigade would suddenly stoop to kidnapping.

Ramza, for his part, is spurred on by Argath, who he and Delita rescued from the Brigade on the Mandalia Plains to rescue Marquis Elmdore, the Squire's liege lord. Following clues from a Brigade captain captured in the Merchant City of Dorter, they trace the hostage Elmdore to a basement underneath the ruins of a desert settlement, the Sand Rat Sietch. There, Gustav is killed in a duel with Wiegraf, and the latter lets Elmdore free, knowing full-well that Dycedarg's sacrificing of Elmdore was meant to destroy the Corpse Brigade itself.

Dycedarg becomes furious at Ramza, obstentiably for disobeying his orders and leaving his assigned sentry-posting at Eagrose Castle, but more likely because his plot was foiled. Larg, making a timely entrance while Dycedarg is berating Ramza, mentions to him afterwards that both of them were once eager young cadets, like Ramza and Delita were. He also assures Dycedarg that Ramza might have ended up turning the tide against the Corpse Brigade even more so, which, it turns out, he most certainly did.

Shortly thereafter, nigh simultaneously with Ramza's eradication of Corpse Brigade forces at the Brigands' Den, Gragoroth Levigne tries to assassinate Dycedarg, and tries to kidnap his younger sister Alma before Zalbaag intervenes. He succeeds, however, in kidnapping Alma's best friend Tietra, and while Dycedarg promises Delita that he will make every effort to find her, he allows Argath a free hand to kill both Tietra and Gragoroth at the Battle of Ziekden Fortress, to finally quash the Corpse Brigade for good.

Outbreak of the War of the Lions
Three months later, Dycedarg hires a Fell Knight named Goffard Gaffgarion to kidnap Ovelia and blame it on the Order of the Southern Sky, the rival knight-force of the Northern Sky, thus providing an excellent casus belli for the Northern Sky to declare war and put Prince Orinus, supposed son of the late king of Ivalice, on the throne, and so, of course, putting Dycedarg and Larg as the powers behind the new monarchy. Larg, as Prince Orinus' uncle, would be appointed regent in such a case, giving him immense power over the whole of Ivalice.

Dycedarg's animosity toward Ramza reaches a high point by this time, and he informs Gaffgarion to kill Ramza if he happens to get the way. He makes this pronouncement over a glass of wine in his office, Gaffgarion standing at attention, characteristic of Dycedarg's usual cold-as-ice persona.

During the actual kidnapping, Agrias Oaks, a Holy Knight in charge of defending Ovelia, berates Lezales, the leader of the troop trying to perform the actual kidnapping. Ironically enough, this is exactly what happens: the plot to kidnap Ovelia ends in disaster, and in fact backfires spectacularly. Duke Goltanna, leader of the duchy of Zeltennia, on the Ordallian border, had in his service the kidnapper himself, Ramza's boyhood friend Delita, who takes Ovelia back to him. Shortly thereafter, King Ondoria dies of the Black Death.

Murder of Duke Larg
Having had Ovelia delivered to him by Delita Heiral, Goltanna, attempting to take the initiative, marched the Order of the Southern Sky on the kingdom's capital, the Royal City of Lesalia and declared her Queen. However, Larg enthroned Prince Orinus in opposition to his rival's claim, and marched on Lesalia himself with the Order of the Northern Sky, resulting in the Battle of Lesalia Plain, whereupon Goltanna lost control of the city and retreated to Zeltennia.

Delita, endearing himself to Duke Goltanna by ratting out a treacherous minister in Goltana's council named Glevanne, recommended the Southern Sky march and captured Queen Louveria at Lesalia, and imprisoned her in the impregnable bastion of Fort Besselat. However, the Northern Sky under Zalbaag later responded by marching on Besselat, in order to liberate the Queen (an ally of Duke Larg) and disrupt the Southern Sky enough to claim victory.

Both armies were debilitated by the spraying of Mossfungus poison over the battlefield by the disgraced engineer, Barich Fendsor, and high atop a sentry tower overlooking the bloody battles below, Zalbaag came across Dycedarg and Larg. Much to his horror, Dycedarg, affecting his plan to remove Larg and move in on the Regency himself, thus becoming that much closer to the Ivalian kingship, stabbed Larg in the stomach with a small dagger, which he instructs Zalbaag to place in the hand of a dead Northern Sky knight to make it look like the latter was a Southern Sky spy, thus pinning the assassination as the Southern Sky's fault.

Larg, hacking up blood in his last moments, bitterly lashes out at Dycedarg for being a patricidal traitor, in effect explicitly accusing that Dycedarg was personally responsible for his father Lord Barbaneth's death. Passing out from the Mossfungus toxin in his system, Dycedarg never left an explanation, much to the chagrin of the thunderstruck Zalbaag.

One With Adrammelech
Later, recovering from the mild Mossfungus poisoning, Dycedarg meets the Church of Glabados' envoy, a mysterious and sinister knight named Loffrey Wodring, to negotiate with the Northern Sky. During the conversation, which Zalbaag overhears, to his horror, Loffrey coolly references to the fact that Dycedarg was skilled in poisons, and that Barbaneth died with symptoms similar to Mosfungus poisoning. Dycedarg sits in uncomfortable silence, never revealing whether or not he committed patricide, as Loffrey offers him the Capricorn Zodiac Stone as proof of the Church's good intentions.

Appalled, and not sure what to believe, Zalbaag sets off to find the truth, and is horrified to find mushrooms poking out his father's grave. A local chemist identifies the mushroom as Mossfungus, and Zalbaag, distraught, sets out to avenge both Larg and his fathers death.

Dycedarg, Capricorn Stone in hand though unaware of its vile supernatural powers, fights Zalbaag in a duel with Ramza eventually helping. Zalbaag defeats him, but as Dycedarg is dying, the Capricorn Stone takes over, transforming him into the Lucavi demon Adrammelech. Adrammelech then wipes out the Northern Sky knights that were originally defending him, kills Zalbaag, and attacks Ramza. Ramza prevails however, and with the destruction of Adrammelech, Dycedarg also perishes.