Ghis



Judge Ghis is a character in Final Fantasy XII. An antagonist, he is a Judge Magister, the highest rank possible in the Archadian Empire. An older Judge, he leads the Imperial 8th Fleet, a detachment of the Western Armada, aboard his flagship, the Dreadnought Leviathan. Ghis is best described as a careerist and a schemer.

Appearance
Ghis is an older man, with curled gray hair, a lock of it curling over his forehead. Ghis's Judge Magister armor is more distinctive than the other Judges', being gold, white and red instead of black and silver, and his armor is lighter with his arms and legs being comparatively unarmored. As with the other Judges, Ghis wields two individual weapons that can be joined at the ends of their handles to form a dual-weapon. His primary weapon is a sword while his off-hand weapon is a large crescent-shaped weapon with spikes. The two are colored gold to match his armor.

Personality
Ghis is arrogant and condescending, frequently taunting the party with the Empire's plans and his own knowledge of their actions to show how powerless they are. He goads Ashe about her desire to restore Dalmasca, declaring her royal bloodline of no value against the power of deifacted nethicite that could prove her lineage. In the Final Fantasy XII manga, Ghis looks down on Gabranth as well, for his youth and foreign heritage. When fighting Balthier and Fran, he pauses to explain what he has ascertained about their attack patterns, and how his power and experience are superior. However, Ghis reigns in his contempt for the party with devotion to Archadian law, following it by restraining the party until circumstances demand he kill them for attempting to escape, and in the manga he personally wishes to kill Fran for nearly defeating him, but instead chooses to imprison her in Nalbina Dungeons to await a proper sentence.

Ghis makes telling comments that imply his ambitious nature extends to even Vayne. He uses pretense of "testing" to ensure the Dawn Shard is deifacted nethicite to gauge its power for himself, and muses using it to show Vayne that blood alone does not make an emperor.

Story
Ghis visits the Lhusu Mines in Bhujerba with Marquis Ondore, as Lhusu Mines is where the Empire gets its magicite for use in Draklor Laboratory. Ghis taunts Ondore in his position as Archadia's lapdog. They bump into Penelo and Larsa, and Ghis becomes outraged at having found her in the mines in the company of the Emperor's potential heir, but Larsa interferes and takes her to safety.

Responsible for capturing Princess Ashe, Ghis's men found her in the Garamsythe Waterway, and she was taken aboard the Leviathan where Ghis keeps a close eye on her. When Vaan and the party are sent aboard the Leviathan they encounter Ghis on the bridge. He tells everyone the woman they thought was Amalia is the Princess Ashe.

He takes the Dusk Shard from the party, and sends them to the brig with the intention of executing them. The party escapes, but Ghis cuts them off at the hangar where he witnesses the power of nethicite first-hand, when one of his spells is absorbed by Penelo's piece of manufacted nethicite. Ghis fights the party, but is defeated, letting the party escape on an Atomos.

Ghis captures the party again at the Tomb of Raithwall. This time, he takes the Dawn Shard off them. Wanting to test its power for himself, he places the Dawn Shard in the Leviathan's engine. At first, the results look good, giving Judge Ghis delusions of grandeur. As he begins to contemplate taking the crown for himself, the shard reacts violently, causing the engine to malfunction. Ghis, along with his entire fleet, is destroyed in the resulting explosion, though Ashe and her party escape.

In the Final Fantasy XII manga, Ghis serves a prominent role earlier in the story, taking charge of the Imperial forces from Gabranth during the attack on the Royal Palace of Rabanastre, and leads a force of soldiers into the Garamsythe Waterway, where Ghis single-handedly destroys a Firemane. He battles Balthier and Fran and overpowers them until he is distracted by Vaan, allowing Fran to get in close to freeze his sword and attack him. Ghis's men take Balthier captive, and Fran and Vaan stand down, the three being sent to the Nalbina Dungeons. After the party is captured with the Dawn Shard his role is much the same, when the party escapes, he is defeated in single combat by Basch, causing him to lament that he was "beaten by a mere Landisian."

In the aftermath of Belias's defeat and the retrieval of the Dawn Shard, the party is captured by Ghis. On the Dreadnought Leviathan Vossler hands the Dawn Shard to Ghis and reveals Vayne has agreed that Dalmasca shall be restored with Ashe as ruler in exchange for it. Ghis orders the shard tested while Vossler takes the party away. The Dawn Shard's reaction causes a chain of explosions through the airship and a wounded Ghis tries to deactivate the Dawn Shard's reactor, but Vossler stabs Ghis's hand, telling him they will die together. The airship explodes and obliterates the rest of the fleet as Ashe and her friends flee in an airship back to Dalmasca. Because the manga was cancelled, this serves as the ending to the adaptation.

Voice
In the English version, the voice of Ghis is provided by. voices him in the Japanese release.

Gameplay
The party fights Ghis while trying to escape the Leviathan after rescuing Princess Ashe. While he is defeated, he survives the battle, but is not battled again.

Final Fantasy Trading Card Game
Judge Ghis appears on promotional card for Final Fantasy Trading Card Game depicting his official render.

Trivia

 * When Ghis casts a spell at the party in the Dreadnought Leviathan, it looks like Flare, and has the same animation.
 * In Dissidia Final Fantasy and its extended universe, Gabranth appears as a playable character. Although none of the other Judges appear, Gabranth borrows Ghis's Aero as a Bravery attack.
 * Ghis's voice actor, Mark Wing-Davey, is married to Anita Carey, the voice of Venat.

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