Alex
 Alex
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|---|---|
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| Element | Mercury |
| Hometown | Imil |
| Relatives | Mia (cousin) Rief (first cousin once removed) Nowell (first cousin once removed) Amiti (son) |
| Hair color | Light blue |
| Eye color | Turquoise |
| Japanese name | アレクス Alex |
| Spanish name | Álex |
Alex (アレクス Alex) is a Mercury Adept and a major character who heavily factors into the stories of all three games in the Golden Sun series. In spite of this, he has yet to make any in-battle appearances either as an ally or as an opponent. Though he is the closest the series has to being the sole recurring antagonist in all of the games, his motives and personal agenda remain persistently inscrutable. Despite repeatedly aligning himself with the characters whom each game's main cast consider to be their antagonists, he is just as inclined to help the main characters as he would hinder their efforts.
Biography
Alex was presumably born and raised in the village of Imil in the wintry northern region of the continent of Angara. Alex and his cousin, Mia, are the last known descendants of the region's ancient Mercury Clan of Adepts. These practitioners of watery and healing Psynergy had once upheld a charge to guard the nearby Mercury Lighthouse, the Elemental Lighthouse of Water. As Mercury Adepts, only they can enter and exit the normally sealed-off tower, and they are considered duty-bound by blood to prevent its Mercury Beacon from ever being lit.
The English localization of Golden Sun describes Alex as Mia's "apprentice," though this is a change from the Japanese original in which he is described as having once apprenticed under Mia's unnamed father, his own uncle, who is deceased by the time Golden Sun begins. Considering how Alex appears to be older than Mia, this is the more commonly accepted background for him.
By the time the original Golden Sun takes place, Alex appears to have become proficient in various highly advanced and powerful Psynergy yet to be replicated by any other Adept in the series thus far; this includes levitating himself a short distance above the ground and conjuring powerful geysers out of the ground that can launch heavy objects far into the sky. The ability that can be considered his unofficial "trademark," the Warp, allows him to visually disappear in a flash of light and remain in an apparently invisible state for some short stretch of time until forced to rematerialize a fair distance elsewhere. He can even make someone else accompanying him and making contact with him disappear and reappear along with him.
Despite holding such an impressive array of abilities already, Alex seems possessed of a desire to acquire powers that vastly outstrip them, and for no discernible particular reason beyond the surface-level admiration of power he displays throughout the games. Apparently, he is aware of what ancient legends claim about Alchemy being the quintessential force at work when the four base Elements that are the four basic building blocks of reality are combined into the matter that makes up the everyday world. He ends up convinced that once the four ancient Elemental Lighthouses situated throughout the world of Weyard are lit and the seal currently restraining this force is broken, he would have an opportunity to gain limitless power and life from being there when it happens.
In Golden Sun
In League With Saturos
At some point within the three years leading up to the present day, Alex either encounters or is approached by the foreigners Saturos and Menardi, a duo of driven Mars Adepts who are seeking to break Alchemy's seal to save their imperiled home village of Prox far in the world's Northern Reaches. They are conducting research on each of the four Elemental Lighthouses in advance of an effort to initiate a second raid on Sol Sanctum, located inside Mt. Aleph further southwest on Angara, and they mean to make off with the four Elemental Stars stored within. Casting these colored jewels down the throat-like wells of each of the Lighthouses of the corresponding elements will activate their respective Beacons, and only the lighting of all four Beacons will return the unfettered use of Alchemy to the world's people and resupply the world with vitality, which will presumably halt the growing chasm at the north end of the world that threatens to consume Prox.
By this point, Saturos has found that a given Lighthouse can only be entered by a group whose numbers include at least one Adept corresponding to its element. Alex willingly conspires with Saturos and Menardi on this scheme as the Water Adept who will enable their entry into Mercury Lighthouse once they have procured the Stars, effectively abandoning Mia as he secretly departs Imil with them and betraying the sacred charge of their shared bloodline. He likely travels to Prox with Saturos and waits there until the group sets off on their quest; by that point, they have been joined by another willing companion, a Venus Adept named Felix, who personally seeks to win the freedom of his parents being held at Prox.
Alex, now part of a traveling company of four conspirators including himself, sails on Menardi's special Psynergy-powered ship to the continent of Gondowan south of Angara, where it is anchored at a peninsula named Idejima and sealed into a dormant state. From this starting point, the four of them make a long journey north until they reach the village situated at the foot of Mt. Aleph itself, Vale. Felix, who once hailed from this village, swears Alex and Saturos to a promise not to let any of Vale's people get caught up in their planned, secretive raid of the very sanctum the villagers venerate.
Coincidentally, the day the four travelers visit Vale happens to be a day in which the Alchemy scholar living at Vale, Kraden, plans to take his three students — who happen to be Felix's childhood friends Isaac and Garet and his younger sister Jenna — on a trip into Sol Sanctum to study it. Saturos meets with Kraden while scouting Vale for information about Sol Sanctum, and this conversation ends up leading to Kraden's decision to make an illicit intrusion into the sanctum and plumb its depths for actionable proof that Saturos had infiltrated it previously. When Kraden's group reaches the cavernous Elemental Star Chamber in the furthest depths of the sanctum, however, Kraden takes the opportunity to have Isaac and Garet fetch the Elemental Stars so that he may study them.
Saturos' group capitalizes on the situation by following Kraden's group into the sanctum and chamber and seizing Jenna and Kraden as temporary captives, and Isaac and Garet are forced into giving Alex the three Elemental Stars they have collected thus far. However, when Isaac removes the last of the Stars, the Mars Star, from its pedestal far across the chamber, all of Mt. Aleph suddenly trembles in direct response, and everyone watches in awe as the almighty creature spoken in local myths as the guardian of Alchemy's seal, the "Wise One," emerges and takes stock of everyone in the chamber. Saturos's group realizes that they have no choice but to leave the Mars Star behind with Isaac and Garet in order to make it out alive, even though the risk is extremely high that the Mars Star will be lost along with the two boys.
Alex, reasoning that Kraden is worth taking along for their quest for all the useful information he can give them, proposes that the group take Jenna with them as well. He reasons that if Isaac and Garet survive, they will pursue their group to try to win back Jenna and Kraden's freedom, and the two boys will surely be willing to hand over the Mars Star as part of an exchange. Felix lashes out at Alex for breaking their promise, but Alex pragmatically observes that the circumstances have since changed and that Jenna would probably die if they were to leave her behind. With this current plan of action agreed upon, Alex and Saturos's group flees the erupting chamber and mountain with only three of the four Elemental Stars.
Atop Mercury Lighthouse
The group Alex is part of, in having triggered Mt. Aleph's nearly cataclysmic eruption, has already initiated gradual but sweeping changes across Weyard, thanks to the volcano showering Psynergy Stones across the world that make Adept powers manifest in various people who make contact with them. At the same time, all manner of lesser creatures are driven mad and feral by the influence, which makes travel in general a much more dangerous prospect.
The four travelers, now accompanied by two very displeased captives, head northeast toward Mercury Lighthouse to carry out the first leg of their newly started quest, stopping in the town of Vault for the night along the way. Alex intentionally avoids showing himself to anyone at Imil even as the rest of his associates pass through the village on their way to the tower. Once they gather at the Lighthouse's sealed entrance, Alex uses his restorative Mercury Psynergy to grant himself and his associates passage inside, which causes the lighthouse to glow briefly. Seemingly understanding that Mia is sure to notice this intrusion from Alex's home village, the group takes special care to set up obstacles that would block Mia from following them inside.
Once the group arrives at the tower's aerie, the Mercury Star is promptly cast into the gaping well in the floor to light the Mercury Beacon, which manifests as a glowing sphere of Mercury-aligned energy perpetually maintained above it. In a shocking twist of fate, an elementally diverse group of four young Adepts reaches the aerie right at that moment — and they turn out to consist of Mia accompanied by none other than Isaac and Garet, who have indeed survived the events at Mt. Aleph and have since banded with a fourth companion named Ivan. Alex and Saturos immediately conceal themselves behind the swirling beacon as Menardi presses Isaac's group, and it is confirmed that Isaac's group has come not just to take back Jenna and Kraden but also to outright put a stop to their plans for the Elemental Stars and Lighthouses.
Saturos thus presents himself to Isaac's party boasting that he will put an end to their meddling lives outright in that case, and Alex watches in secret as Saturos engages the four all at once, not stepping in to help him because of how certain both are that the master Fire Adept would "obviously" win. To both men's shock, however, Isaac's party barely manages to best Saturos and leave him unable to stand. Alex decides at that point to step into the view of the victorious Adepts, casually noting how it has been a while since he and Mia last saw each other. A horrified Mia calls Alex out for his wanton betrayal of their shared oath to their bloodline.
Alex, stalling for time so that Saturos can regain the energy to stand, explains how the Mercury-aligned influence of the now-activated lighthouse had critically suppressed Saturos's Mars-aligned Psynergy to the point of weakening him physically. Alex also makes a passing effort to impress upon Mia the appeal of unsealing the great powers locked within each Lighthouse, given that the active Mercury Beacon had also been responsible for preventing Mia from running out of her personal Mercury Psynergy reserves. Once Saturos gets back onto his feet, Alex confirms from Isaac that the latter still has the Mars Star with him, and his parting statement to Mia is, "I can't stay the same Alex you knew forever..." He then warps himself and Saturos to the exit elevator, which they take to flee Mercury Lighthouse. The two men soon rejoin the rest of their group and resume their rushed journey, now aware that they will be pursued by Isaac and Mia's finalized party from then on.
Upheaval at Venus Lighthouse
With the short route back south to Gondowan blocked off by a bridge south of Vault that had been destroyed by Mt. Aleph's eruption, Alex accompanies Saturos' group clockwise across practically the full breadth of Angara. Along the way, the group purposefully sets off a rockslide at a critical crossing for a continent-spanning trade route to impede the course of their determined pursuers. They eventually make it back into Gondowan using a ferry service to cross the now-treacherous Karagol Sea, and they make a stop in the expansive city of Tolbi on the other side.
The next lighthouse on their course is Venus Lighthouse, which lies near where they had originally moored Menardi's ship southeast. That area of the continent is under the imperial control of Tolbi's monarch, Babi — who incidentally originally sent Kraden to Vale to unlock the secrets of eternal life at Sol Sanctum for his own benefit. Apparently, the group decide to wait until Tolbi wraps up this year's annual tournament of warriors before resuming their travels, and they head southeast through Suhalla Desert. Alex uses his water Psynergy to expose the local Tornado Lizards that have otherwise made the desert too treacherous to pass as of recently.
It is during this trek through the desert, however, that Saturos' company happens upon a young girl named Sheba, who was kept in Babi's palace as his unwilling guest until he suddenly allowed her to return to her hometown near Venus Lighthouse, Lalivero, following the conclusion of the tournament. Now lost in the desert thanks to her escort having been dispersed by the Tornado Lizards, she is immediately forced by Saturos into their traveling group because they see her as the Jupiter Adept they need to eventually gain entry into Jupiter Lighthouse in the future.
Saturos' party now numbers seven as they exit the desert and force their way past the guarded Suhalla Gate, and Felix soon admits the group into Venus Lighthouse the same way Alex had opened up his own lighthouse. In Alex's perspective, their subsequent climb through the tower to its aerie is apparently quite troublesome because the leading Mars Adepts are creatively challenged when it comes to solving these structures' ancient riddles. When the group finally reaches the tower's aerie, Saturos and Menardi keep Sheba with them while Felix and Alex are expected to bring themselves, Jenna, and Kraden back outside to Menardi's ship at Idejima.
When Felix decides to head back up to the aerie to "check on Sheba" out of worry for her, Alex presses Jenna on the foreboding feeling she has about the potential for a fight to break out between Felix and Isaac, who has surely arrived at the tower seeking to stop the lighting of the beacon. When Jenna asks to go back up and talk with Isaac, Alex turns her down by stating that Isaac has sworn himself to being their side's willing enemy, intent on preventing what both Alex and Kraden seek to enact: the lighting of the Elemental Lighthouses. This would lead to the restoration of the lost age of man, where the free use of Alchemy would once again allow mankind to work wonders across the land — though Alex nearly lets slip his own ulterior motives for seeing this quest through to the end. At any rate, Alex is confident that the Mars Adepts will not be defeated by Isaac's party.
Alex, Jenna, and Kraden step out of Venus Lighthouse' exit and find two large groups of men angrily eyeing them down: both soldiers from Tolbi and workmen from Lalivero, all demanding that Sheba be let go. To give the other two the opportunity to carve their own path back through the Suhalla Range to Idejima, Alex voluntarily steps forward to menace the group of armed soldiers, blowing some of them away with extremely powerful water-based Psynergy. Though he lightly chides the soldiers for resorting to making an undignified retreat back to Lalivero on his account, he more forcefully chastises them for their naive hope that they could somehow compensate with sheer numbers.
Alex, coming out of his unseen confrontation with Tolbi's soldiers none the worse for wear whatsoever, eventually rejoins Jenna and Kraden near Menardi's dormant ship, and they observe that the Venus Beacon is only now getting activated atop the tower. Unexpectedly to say the least, Venus Lighthouse itself suddenly sets off a severe, localized earthquake that tears a rift through the Suhalla Range, breaking Idejima off from the Gondowan mainland, and the three of them can do nothing but watch and get taken along for the ride as the island literally floats east into the ocean. Alex and the other two have now found themselves unexpectedly marooned on a buoyant island, unable to do anything but wait idly until further developments, since they lack Menardi's Black Orb needed to operate the Psynergy-powered ship being carried along with the island.
In Golden Sun: The Lost Age
In Search of a Ship
Some time after the incident at Venus Lighthouse, as Idejima continues to float far out into the Great Eastern Sea, Alex finds that Felix has managed to swim onto the island with Sheba and notifies Jenna and Kraden of this. Felix and Sheba relate an astonishing story: Isaac and his friends have somehow become powerful enough that they managed to defeat Saturos and Menardi and put them down for good. When the earthquake was set off, Sheba fell off the aerie toward what should have been certain death, and Felix jumped off after her in a blind fit of emotion — and yet, they both survived because the churning ocean happened to catch them where Idejima once stood.
Alas, all five of them are now forced to wait on the island, since Menardi's Black Orb has now been confirmed lost with her. However, as Idejima passes beyond the north coast of the island continent of Indra, the group is suddenly menaced by a tidal wave that appears to have been caused by the earlier quake; Alex is seen standing still and remarking on the lack of good that panicking would do even as the wave washes over Idejima and knocks everyone else unconscious. This fortuitously drives the island south into Indra's northern coast. Rather than check up on the other four, Alex immediately heads south into Indra and initiates his own efforts to search for a ship that can be used to reach the remaining lighthouses across the western sea.
After an unspecified period of time, Alex goes back to the coastal village of Daila and promises Daila's mayor that he will pay him a fortune for a boat, but the mayor simply does not have any boats available and instead directs Alex to the town at the south end of the continent, Madra. As Alex steps out of the mayor's residence, he coincidentally comes across Felix's party also searching for a boat, and he relays what the mayor had said about Madra. However, Alex is rather eager to turn down any suggestion that they make the trip together, leading Jenna and Sheba to accuse him of being self-absorbed, but he calmly counters that he simply prefers to work alone. He then rather hurriedly departs the village.
As Alex travels south toward Madra, he catches sight of the very same model of Psynergy-powered ship as what Menardi originally used, now beached at Indra's eastern shore — only this ship has a captain of its own: a seemingly young man named Piers, whom Alex witnesses being taken away unconscious by the people of Madra. Intrigued, Alex follows them south to their town, and he watches as Piers gets thrown into their jail under suspicion that he is aligned with the dread pirate Briggs, whose pirate crew, originating from the Angaran fishing village of Champa, raided the town recently. Alex continues to watch as Felix's party arrives at Madra and catches sight of Piers in his prison, and both parties witness firsthand that Piers is a Mercury Adept when the latter is provoked by one of the townspeople into casting the Frost Psynergy at him.
That aside, the Black Orb that Piers had been using to commandeer his ship is currently secure in the care of Madra's ruling family. Alex finds out that any other ships Madra could have offered were destroyed by the tidal wave as well, but that he might have better luck with the bustling town of Alhafra to the east. Based at the northwest coast of the neighboring island continent of Osenia, Alhafra had recently completed a massive sailing ship that is powered entirely by catching wind in its sail. Unfortunately for Alex, he reaches Alhafra only to find that both the town and its prized ship were also damaged by the tidal wave, and yet Briggs and his crew had purchased it with their ill-gotten wealth after retreating from Madra.
Alex lodges at Alhafra's inn and gets a room with two beds entirely to himself through his apparently vast wealth. Felix's party soon arrives at Alhafra intent on not only continuing their search for a usable ship but also beating out of Briggs his vow that the imprisoned Piers is not part of his gang like the Madrans presume. Felix and his party therefore happen across Alex inside the inn, and he tells the party that they might as well try to fix up the ship after they beat down Briggs. Though Felix does soon secure the vow needed for Piers' freedom, his party does not have the right type and potency of Psynergy needed to fully repair the ship, but Alex warmly describes their efforts as "fine exploits" regardless and mentions that Mia would have done the same.
Alex eventually makes the journey back to Madra, seemingly intent on making off with Piers' still-beached ship for himself. However, he finds that Madra was once again raided in his absence, this time by the warlike Kibombo tribe native to the lower heart of Gondowan just past Indra's western border — and they had made off with, of all things, Piers' Black Orb from the mayor's manor. Both Piers and Felix had since followed the tribesmen into Gondowan. Though Alex clearly would be inclined to now "borrow" Piers' ship for himself, it is unknown whether he has any other means of commandeering and manipulating the ship at this time. He withdraws as soon as Felix's party returns from their trip having not only retrieved the orb but also recruited Piers as part of their traveling number.
As Felix and Piers's expanded party departs for the open seas on the latter's ship, Alex encounters two new arrivals to the scene: the Mars Adepts Karst and Agatio, a duo of highly motivated warriors who have recently sailed from Prox in search of their fallen comrades, Saturos and Menardi. Karst had since discovered from a chance encounter she had with Felix just a short time earlier that a Venus Adept named Isaac slew their kin, and they now seek both vengeance against Isaac and the conclusion of Saturos' quest to ignite the remaining two lighthouses. Alex, formerly part of the group that originally set off from Prox in pursuit of this goal, gives the duo critical updates on matters such as Isaac holding the Mars Star, and he joins them and makes use of their own sailing vessel from here on out.
The Lighting of Jupiter Lighthouse
Though Felix retains the Jupiter Star and harbors the Jupiter Adept Sheba among his company, Alex tells Karst and Agatio that Felix's party is actually more reliable and better fit to lead the effort to light Jupiter Lighthouse than the duo presume. Alex uses what Agatio calls his "remarkable foresight" to anticipate that Felix and his party will eventually visit Champa; therefore, the trio wait at Champa until they arrive. Before getting to the important matters, Alex puts on an affected show of poutiness over Felix having "replaced" him with a new Water Adept, and he makes the grandiose (but possibly false) claim that he was on the verge of taking Piers' ship for himself when Felix just had to come back from Kibombo when he did.
Alex explains that he had originally judged Felix's group "rather useless" in the absence of Saturos and Menardi and claims that was why he originally abandoned them. However, he has since amended his appraisal because Felix's party was resourceful enough to successfully retrieve Piers' Black Orb from the warlike Kibombo without resorting to the reckless use of their Psynergy to terrorize the tribe. Alex believes that such finesse will ultimately be what is needed to light the lighthouses successfully in the end, which is why he goes so far as to smugly and brazenly tell his new "allies" to their faces that they would probably be as daft at solving the lighthouses' riddles as Saturos and Menardi were.
The Mars Adepts are stunned enough by this affront that they ask Alex whose side he is even on, and he makes his stance transparent: "I am on no one's side. My only concern is to see the lighthouse beacons lit once again." He reveals that his purpose in introducing the duo to Felix's party was to ensure through the threat of pressure that the latter group always remains committed to opening the way to Jupiter Lighthouse as soon as possible (since, at present, the oceanic passage into the Great Western Sea is blocked off by after-effects of the tidal wave that cannot be cleared by anyone's current Psynergy). Karst and Agatio begrudgingly accept having effectively been used by Alex to scare Felix into action, and they leave after promising that they will always be lurking nearby to push the party forward.
Before Alex himself leaves, it occurs to him to relay to Kraden some news he apparently caught wind of during his time sailing with Karst and Agatio: Babi has passed away in Tolbi, having failed to unlock the secrets of Alchemy in time to prolong his life. According to Alex, Tolbi is now looking for Felix's group because they baselessly presume that the presence of Saturos' group during the tournament was somehow connected to Babi's death, which is why Alex recommends that Felix avoids needlessly endangering his quest by sailing anywhere near northern Gondowan. As Alex leaves, the group is left to speculate on whether he was also, in his own roundabout way, doing Kraden a "favor" with that news, since it would imply that the elderly scholar, who had been pursuing this quest studying Alchemy on Babi's behalf, would no longer feel bound to accompany Felix and continue putting himself in danger in so doing.
Alex, Karst, and Agatio do not directly come across Felix's party again throughout the remainder of both groups' time spent restricted to the Eastern Sea, for Felix eventually manages to gain the Psynergy needed to clear the route between seas and enter the Western Sea on his own. Alex's company soon follows Felix into Jupiter Lighthouse on the southwestern continent of Atteka. As Felix climbs through the tower and solves its ancient riddles as previously agreed, the trio successfully anticipate the subsequent arrival of Isaac's party, who are bent on stopping the lighting of Jupiter. Karst and Agatio thus prepare a trap improvised through the tower's ancient mechanisms to ensnare their enemies.
However, Alex secretly abandons his two "allies" right as they successfully divide and ambush Isaac's party, leaving them to find out for themselves that they will have to put down Isaac on their own. He also watches from afar as Felix's party witnesses the ambush and rushes up to help the victims, Felix having clearly decided that the current ideological friction between him and Isaac does not justify letting Karst kill off the people who were once his friends. Operating on sheer pragmatism, Alex approaches him and openly acknowledges that Felix, in lacking Alex's own capacity to "discard" people who are no longer "of use" to him, would likely be incapable of going through with lighting Jupiter if he leaves his own childhood friend to die. Thus, Alex voluntarily heals Felix's party and warmly sends them off to save Isaac first. Alex even harbors a thought that he himself feels an emotional compulsion to help Mia; he seems to judge this as a weakness of his own character.
Over the course of several dramatic developments, Felix manages to force Karst and Agatio into agreeing to spare Isaac's life in exchange for letting him take the Mars Star and lighting the Jupiter Beacon, only for the Mars Adepts to then steal the Mars Star for themselves and attempt to kill Felix as punishment for his betrayal. This culminates in one of two distinct scenarios in which Alex plays one of two roles that both shape a similar outcome, that being the Mars Adepts safely departing Jupiter Lighthouse with the Mars Star still in hand:
- If Felix manages to best the Mars Adepts, Karst invites him to finish them off but suggests that Prox might retaliate by killing his still-captive parents, and Alex steps in to make sure Felix does not put Karst to the sword anyway. He appeals to Felix's better judgment by stressing that it would be far too great a risk to presume that Karst is merely bluffing about the potential fate of his parents, whom he has been pursuing this quest for the sakes of. Since Felix would just leave the Mars Adepts here otherwise, Alex revives them just enough that they can begrudgingly flee Jupiter Lighthouse with him before Isaac's party arrives.
- If Karst and Agatio manage to beat the party down, Alex steps in to tell Karst off for considering spending her precious moments satisfying her "petty grudges" instead of getting away from Jupiter Lighthouse in time to avoid Isaac's impending arrival. He is unfazed by their threats to kill him for his wanton betrayal because of how drained they are from the fighting, which have clearly left them in no condition to fight him next; on this basis, he successfully convinces them to flee with him.
The Golden Sun Event
Alex and the Mars Adepts part ways after the episode at Jupiter Lighthouse and are presumably quite content to do so. From his perspective, he has optimized the likelihood that Mars Lighthouse will be successfully ignited because both Karst and Felix's respective parties are on hand to make separate and earnest efforts to light the final beacon. Alex thus immediately travels back to Angara and begins climbing Mt. Aleph, and he reaches the peak just in time to fulfill his grand scheme. With Mars Lighthouse now having been lit successfully by those he manipulated, the four Elemental Beacons concurrently shoot beams of their purified elemental energy from their respective lighthouses toward Mt. Aleph and form the Golden Sun, a short-lived sphere of golden energy embodying pure Alchemy made real. Alex is bathed in the golden light showering the mountain's peak, and his body is infused with what he presumes to be limitless power and eternal life.
Proclaiming his triumph in achieving his long-desired goal, Alex eagerly attempts to test it by vocally ordering the sky itself to summon a thunderstorm to ravage Mt. Aleph and the village of Vale below... but no storm appears. After he spends a moment puzzling, he is suddenly approached from the air by the Wise One, the protector of Alchemy's seal, who rather backhandedly describes Alex as having successfully bolstered his powers and lifespan to vast degrees. Alex, taking offense at the Wise One's insistence that his newfound gains are still limited in scope, turns his powers against the divine entity and continues gloating, but the Wise One effortlessly drives him into the ground with some kind of psychokinesis and leaves him lying prone.
Alex, horrified to learn that his dream has been critically undermined, asks who is responsible for this outcome. The Wise One proceeds to explain that when he originally awoke in the Elemental Star chamber and took stock of those who had taken the Stars from their pedestals, he made a certain adjustment to the Mars Star that was left behind with Isaac; this has resulted in some of the power of the forming Golden Sun entering Isaac's body once that Star was cast into Mars Lighthouse's well. The implication is that the Wise One had anticipated Alex's plans and set up an unseen precaution that would ensure that Alex would be left with an incomplete form of the power he sought.
As the destructive phenomenon that would later be called the Golden Sun event begins to wreak havoc on the mountain and its surroundings, the Wise One tells Alex that he must flee if he wants to avoid being "drawn into the heart of the earth forever." Alex exclaims that he is incapable of even so much as moving, and the Wise One forebodingly states that Alex now sees the limits of his power for what they are, and that he may not survive what is to come. The Wise One issues one last cryptic statement to Alex before the latter supposedly gets drawn into his demise: "If you survive, perhaps we shall meet again someday..."
Affiliation with the Tuaparang
Alex somehow survives being caught up in the devastating epicenter of the Golden Sun event, but there is little information on his movements between then and the events of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn three decades later. The fallout from that event is far-reaching and results in no small degree of chaos for both Weyard itself and the people on it, for the released power of Alchemy does just as much to revitalize the once-dying world's life force as it causes natural disasters and gives rise to a new era of military conflict between nations. This leads to the eight surviving travelers who had eventually stepped up to finish the legwork bringing about the Golden Sun, now known far and wide as the Warriors of Vale, being both praised and blamed across the world for their efforts.
Within this expansive time frame, a sinister new nation calling itself Tuaparang emerges somewhere on Weyard through some method. Also known as the "Zenith Tribe" because of its access to advanced technology that allows it to deploy airships, it is ruled by one "High Empyror" who is bent on the pursuit of scientific advancement and military might above all else. The Tuaparang are, as Alex would later put it, the "scions" of an "Umbra Clan" of Adepts who were originally forgotten by history; those descended from this clan may employ an unusual category of Psynergy that manipulates the powers of Darkness, one of two other fundaments that help constitute reality's fabric in concert with the four great elements.
At some undisclosed point, Alex is somehow able to earn the High Empyror's personal trust despite apparently remaining an outsider to his empire, and he is treated as though he were at least as "high-ranking" as two of Tuaparang's most fearsome and established field commanders: the warlike Blados and the cunning Chalis. Whether by being granted it or being allowed to pick it for himself, he acquires the codename Arcanus (エース Ace), which naturally carries an implication that his position is an even more "important" role than the other commanders actually native to Tuaparang. This is because the three codenames correspond to a set of cards sometimes used for fortune-telling in Weyard.
The Tuaparang Empire already has some connection to the Psynergy Vortex phenomenon that has appeared off and on to torment the peoples of Weyard in the years following the Golden Sun event; at the very least, they have realized a technological means of manipulating vortexes. They and their Empyror, however, ultimately seek to take control of an ancient and extremely dangerous apparatus named the Apollo Lens, located atop Angara's highest peak. The peoples of the ancient world, not content with merely achieving mastery over the four base elements, originally sought to further their effective godhood over the realm by attaining control over the additional fundaments of Darkness and Light. The Apollo Lens was but one product of their labors, and it is essentially a giant cannon that can fire a beam of amplified light energy with astoundingly destructive intensity at a designated target.
The Apollo Lens is deeply sealed, however, and one of the various conditions that must be met for it to be reached and operable is for a pair of ancient and related "Alchemy Machines" south of it in Angara's Ei-Jei region to be activated and made operable themselves. The Alchemy Forge is based within an ancient stronghold in the nearby Khiren Mountains that continues to be called home by the smithing village Passaj, and the Alchemy Well is based within desert ruins that are the modern-day domain of a kingdom called Ayuthay. It will only be when the Alchemy Forge and the Alchemy Well are both in simultaneously operable states that the ancient power network shared between them will provide power to Apollo Sanctum and its Lens.
It is not known for certain whether Alex is already affiliated with the Tuaparang when he goes to the dry and ailing kingdom of Ayuthay ten years after the Golden Sun event, though he certainly advances their interests in the long term during his brief time there. He is somehow aware that using Water-aligned Psynergy on the machine makes it spring to life, and he somehow acquires and inserts an ancient implement designed to unlock its capacity to be operated, the Luna Mask. These two actions cause the Alchemy Well to start producing enormous volumes of water the way it apparently used to in the ancient past, which all but saves the kingdom and transforms Ayuthay into a flourishing oasis settlement. However, he tells the ruler of Ayuthay, Paithos, that he is not the Adept the kingdom's own legends prophesied would restore the greater civilization spanning both it and Passaj, and that it would be many years before the actual Adepts of the prophecy would finish his work by activating the Alchemy Forge via similar methods.
Though Alex avoids letting himself be seen by the people of Ayuthay and conceals his face and identity from its court during his time there, a notable exception is Paithos' sister, a non-Adept named Veriti. She falls in love with him at first sight, seemingly the day after he arrives, and she claims to Paithos that he feels the same way for her. Alex leaves Ayuthay seemingly right after he is finished with the Well, which leaves Veriti crestfallen. She would soon bear Alex's child, the Mercury Adept Amiti, and she would pass away not long after. Seemingly to shore up his people's national pride and hide the fact it was a shadowy outsider who saved their country, Paithos would spend the next two decades telling both the populace and Amiti himself that Veriti used her miraculous Adept powers to start the Alchemy Well, and that Amiti himself was conceived entirely through those same powers. It is unknown whether any of this pertains to any plan of Alex's or the Tuaparang's, or even if he is aware of his own son in the years to follow.
Among the numerous other ancient factors that must be either set up or collected in advance of the plan to win the Apollo Lens are a trio of elusive Colored Orbs that function as keys needed both to reach the site of the Lens and to set it up. The Tuaparang manage to collect the Blue and Red Orbs in advance of their campaign through undisclosed methods. Furthermore, another Alchemy Machine slumbering underneath ruins north of the Lens, the Alchemy Dynamo, seals a dangerous structure underground called Eclipse Tower, which was another product of the ancients' experimental pursuits toward manipulating the fabric of darkness. A sporadic legend claims that the Apollo Lens' capacity to be set up and used also requires Eclipse Tower to be raised above the ground and actively performing its dark process because the Lens was designed with the intent to be shot at the tower and overload it with light energy should the need arise.
It is unknown how aware Alex and the Tuaparang are of all the workings behind these ancient edifices and their related locations, since every sanctum and dungeon that seems even tangentially connected to the Apollo Lens and related elements contains instructions written in a glyphic language that is lost to the ages. The ability to read these tablets is important for solving the ancient riddles contained within these areas, and it is possible to obtain special knowledge of this language in the ruins of an ancient forum that was unearthed in southwest Angara after the Golden Sun event, the Konpa Ruins. Apparently, the Tuaparang are incapable of acquiring the knowledge for themselves at the moment, so their grand scheme seemingly hinges on finding Adepts who are capable.
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
"Arcanus" and Blados stake out in the caves underneath Konpa Ruins and watch as his old traveling companion, Kraden, enters the caves with Mia's children, Rief and Nowell, as his newest pupils. As they study a Tuaparang machine inside currently maintaining a Psynergy Vortex, several offspring of the infamous Warriors of Vale, led by Isaac's son Matthew, explore Konpa Ruins while on another errand. While Blados sends some of his soldiers to test the latter group's abilities as Adepts, Alex kidnaps Rief, his own first cousin once removed, and he gets Matthew to admit to having just acquired Konpa Ruins' elusive knowledge of the ancient symbols. Alex claims that this is what ultimately saves Matthew and his friends' lives at this juncture, when normally the party would have been done in for witnessing Tuaparang's secret technology.
Alex also playfully admits to having known Kraden from before and hints, by observing that Kraden must have gotten his life extended from the Psynergy emitted by Mars Lighthouse, that the scholar might realize who he is once he devotes the proper mental effort to it. Apparently, it does not matter to Alex whether his identity as the infamous figure from the Warriors' past is "outed" at any point, though he does not volunteer his name, either. Kraden, at least for the moment, cannot say for sure who the man is because he, the Warriors of Vale, and their children had spent the last 30 years presuming that Alex was killed in his attempt to claim the powers of the Golden Sun for himself.
Having been compelled by the High Empyror specifically to let Matthew live until he has played his part in Tuaparang's scheme, Alex and Blados have apparently been given free reign to choose how to manipulate Matthew towards those ends. They thus drop Rief at the cave's southern exit to force Matthew and his friends into the southern Ei-Jei region while splitting them apart from Kraden and Nowell. By caving in the southern entrance and portraying Matthew's party as having little hope of crossing the Khiren Mountains and resuming their errand, Blados subtly nurtures the young Adepts' desire to cross the mountains, which necessitates fully activating the Alchemy Forge at Passaj.
Matthew's party has no clue that their efforts to get themselves out of Ei-Jei and into the northern half of the continent amount to carrying out critical legwork the Tuaparang had left unfinished up to that point. For example, when they retrieve the Sol Mask needed to operate the Alchemy Forge and use it to allow both the Forge and the Well to work in tandem to provide lushness to the Ei-Jei region, they are unaware of the power they are also supplying to the Apollo Lens further north. For Alex's part, it is unknown whether it is intended, anticipated, or even known by him that his now-19-year-old son, Prince Amiti of Ayuthay, is the person who volunteers to join Matthew's traveling party as they labor to bring both machines in harmony. Amiti proceeds north with Matthew to help the latter pursue his original errand.
The Dread Machine at Morgal
The northeast swath of Angara had long since been claimed as the geopolitical dominion of a new race of hybrid beastmen that were mutated out of both people and animals in one of the many bizarre after-effects of the Golden Sun event. They had founded their kingdom's capital of Belinsk upon the foundations of ancient ruins just north of Apollo Sanctum — the very ruins that connect to the subterranean complex leading to the Alchemy Dynamo that seals Eclipse Tower underground. "Arcanus," Blados, and Chalis hatch a complex plan to unseal the tower and allow it to produce a dire and destructive phenomenon that had once ravaged Weyard in its ancient past, the "Grave Eclipse." Doing so is another necessary step for unlocking the Apollo Lens high up in its sanctum, since the apparatus was originally constructed to allow the peoples of Weyard a means of putting a stop to the tower's boldly experimental processes.
The trio have an easy time securing the willing cooperation of the beastman king, Volechek, because he desires a method of cowing his domain's neighboring countries — Bilibin to the west and Sana to the southeast, which both had hands in decades of bloody conflict that sought to take away his people's sovereignty. Alex and his conspirators describe the structure slumbering underneath Belinsk as an operable war weapon that Volechek can use to subjugate both nations before they can presumably return the beastmen to slavery. At no point does Alex's side disclose what the dark cataclysm that the tower will set off will ironically entail for Volechek's own people even as Volechek willingly throws his lot in with the outsiders.
The critical component needed to raise Eclipse Tower is a portable source of magma energy informally called the Magma Orb, which naturally forms in the innards of a gigantic bird that roosts at Morgal's northeastern peak, the Mountain Roc. This creature takes the form of stone as it slumbers atop Talon Peak and can only be roused with a very specific type of wind-based Psynergy that carries "slapping" properties, and a royal treasure of Morgal's royal family, the Slap Glove, allows any non-Beastman Adept to produce a simulated form of it. As it so turns out, Matthew's original errand, which he is currently in Morgal pursuing, is to fetch one of the Mountain Roc's feathers, and he would need to awaken the Roc from its stone slumber for the same reason.
Among other relevant details, it is possible for someone outside Belinsk to use this same magma energy to make use of the top level of the ruins as a "secret route" into the interior of Belinsk's capitol building, which they would do if they were to seek to free someone held captive inside it. Meanwhile, the inability of the Tuaparang to directly bring the Magma Orb to the Alchemy Dynamo by themselves is owed to their personal lack of access to Adepts of all four elements, which the ancient systems require of any outsiders who would approach the machine.
Whether they had planned from the start for all these pieces to end up placed as they are, or if there is some level of improvisation at play, the conspirators enact a scheme to manipulate Matthew and other parties into helping them achieve their goal with the tower. First, Volechek kidnaps the princess of Sana, Hou Ju, and slates her to be publicly executed in Belinsk by the coming full moon. Volechek repulses efforts by her brother Ryu Kou and his mentor Hou Zan to reclaim her, but he rather conspicuously allows them to flee back to safety. The conspirators successfully anticipate that Volechek's wayward sister, Sveta, who is known to sympathize greatly with Hou Ju, will respond by bringing the Slap Glove over to Ryu Kou in an effort to help him in his next effort to extricate his sister.
With the Slap Glove lent to him, Ryu Kou joins up with Matthew's traveling party to get what they respectively need from the Mountain Roc together. At the top of Talon Peak, Blados and Chalis are present to make sure that the group leaves with both the Magma Orb and sufficient motivation to enter the ruins under Belinsk with it. Despite some friction that briefly flares up between Matthew and Ryu Kou's camps, they both end up back together inside the ruins under Belinsk Castle, and Volechek triggers secret mechanisms to block their intended route into the castle above and force them to descend into the heart of the underground complex. Sveta joins Matthew's party as they and the Sanans descend through the complex. Meanwhile, Alex, Blados, and Chalis descend further ahead of them, and Alex relies on his overwhelming powers to muscle their way past one particular riddle that would otherwise force visitors to spend time painstakingly positioning the pieces of the solution.
Matthew's extended party finally reaches the chamber with the Alchemy Dynamo, and as they question whether activating it would forward their efforts to save Hou Ju, "Arcanus" steps in with his two companions to threateningly demand that they place the Magma Orb in the machine. Blados and Chalis promptly decide to engage the six Adepts in battle to punish them for their lack of willing cooperation. Alex takes advantage of the commotion to knock out Hou Zan and escort Ryu Kou over to the machine, and when the Adepts surprisingly manage to best their cruel opponents, they see Alex on the verge of making what he calls "history" happen in front of them. Tyrell of Matthew's party tries to tackle him, but Alex resorts to a rare instance of violence to knock him down. When the party reveals they learned from Sveta that activating the tower is Tuaparang's scheme, Alex claims that he is not personally a Tuaparang himself.
A beam of light signifying that the full moon has reached the exact position needed of it shines into the chamber. Despite Alex's overt threats against the party moments earlier, when Ryu Kou hesitates to deposit the Magma Orb, Alex suddenly changes his tone and claims that he "won't force" Ryu Kou, but he also gently mentions that Hou Ju's safety hinges on Ryu Kou's decision. This breaks down Ryu Kou's resolve and indirectly drives him to deposit the orb as first instructed, causing the chamber to thrum with activity, and the beaming Alex reassures Ryu Kou that he will not renege on his promise to let Hou Ju go safely. Hou Zan regains his footing and accuses Alex of forcing Ryu Kou's hand, but Alex insists that Ryu Kou had exercised his own free will in doing this. Alex then warps to dodge Hou Zan's incoming blow and picks up Blados and Chalis.
Before he flees with the Tuaparang commanders, Alex — who allows the party to know his "Arcanus" codename at this point — explains he had everyone activate this tower to unleash a sealed force similar to what the Warriors of Vale unleashed when they originally ignited the Elemental Lighthouses. Unlike what was the case with those towers, however, Alex claims that the ancients never wanted this particular tower to have its dark secrets let out into the world. Claiming that he has only ever been honest in his dealings with Matthew's party thus far, Arcanus ominously departs the chamber with the words, "Opening the seal on this dread machine was only the beginning."
Alex, seemingly never one to pass up being gracious even to those ideologically opposed to him when they turn out to be useful, makes one last stop at Belinsk Castle and orders Volechek's guards to allow Matthew's group into the castle and up to Hou Ju's cell. Alex, Blados, and Chalis avoid being caught up in the calamity that soon ensues: Weyard's sun, Sol, ominously halts its rise as it positions itself behind the full moon, Luna, and both celestial bodies are rigidly maintained at their respective points in space by the unseen processes of Eclipse Tower, which causes a perpetual solar eclipse to cast down. Eclipse Tower itself, described as outright absorbing light, generates a colossal dome of dark energy that encases the vast majority of Angara and northern Weyard. This, in turn, leads to the mass emergence of shadowy creatures that begin slaughtering much of Angara's population. This is the Grave Eclipse phenomenon made manifest.
Volechek has found out too late that the Tuaparang deceived him and that the weapon he once sought as a means of protecting his people is itself the most calamitous threat his people now face. In a desperate act of defiance, Volechek manages to steal the Blue Orb from Blados and hurl it toward Matthew and Sveta's group as they sail away from Belinsk, hoping that Matthew will somehow be able to counter the Tuaparang's interests with it. Unknown to any of them, this achieves anything but throwing the Tuaparang's plans off their course, since the final stage of their plan to gain the Apollo Lens hinges on Matthew collecting and using all three of the Colored Orbs to reach and unlock the Lens.
The Apollo Lens
Regardless of whether the mass death being wrought across the land by the Grave Eclipse is anything more than an incidental outcome of the Tuaparang Empire's core scheme that Alex has willingly helped enact, the conspirators have successfully motivated Matthew's group into seeking to put a stop to the destruction as soon as possible. That party's proactive efforts and personal discovery of the existence and function of the Apollo Lens lead them on a frenzied search across the Eastern Sea for hidden pieces of ancient shadow clothes that will allow them to withstand the light energy perpetually barraging Apollo Sanctum.
To further spur Matthew's quest from the sidelines, "Arcanus" heads to the Sanan capital kingdom of Tonfon and gives its emperor the Red Orb, telling him to give it to Matthew when they eventually pass through Tonfon as part of their efforts to bring an end to the dreadful eclipse. Arcanus even has Unan relay instructions on how the Red Orb and Blue Orb should be used on "the statue" to retrieve the Yellow Orb, indicating that he knows that the Yellow Orb hides in the ruins under Yamata City. Matthew's party makes use of this "gift" and retrieves the third Orb as intended.
With Matthew's complete party of Adepts having assembled all the remaining pieces of the puzzle, Alex simply has to sit back and watch as they make the difficult climb to Apollo Sanctum and use the three Colored Orbs to bring out the Apollo Lens and set it up. As soon as they are done, he arrives in advance of the Tuaparang commanders to all but rub it in their faces that their actions were what the grand plan called for. Kraden immediately identifies "Arcanus" to Matthew's party as the very Alex whom everyone had presumed dead for the past 30 years, and Alex is outright flattered when Kraden draws a connection between the symbolic significance of the name and the most important cards in fortune-telling decks. Alex also stands unfazed as Rief angrily describes him as a power-mongering schemer who betrayed Mia and the Mercury Clan.
Blados and Chalis soon arrive with a platoon of their men dropped via a Tuaparang airship, ostensibly so as to claim the now-usable Apollo Lens for the High Empyror. Alex, however, suddenly antagonizes them by disclosing what appears to be sensitive secrets outing the existence of Dark Psynergy and pointing to a schism between the Dark Adepts and their Empyror. According to Alex, the Dark Adepts who make up the Umbra Clan under the yoke of the Tuaparang Empire do not consider themselves Tuaparang and have been, in fact, secretly intent on firing the Lens against the Empire itself (which apparently lies along the same trajectory as Sol Sanctum from the Lens' position). The Empyror, apparently having predicted that Blados and Chalis' supposed loyalty to him is anything but sincere, is described by Alex as having personally sent him to make sure the Apollo Lens is used according to the Empyror's plan, which was apparently never disclosed to the duo. Blados and Chalis ominously commend Alex for "figuring it out eventually," and Alex suddenly instructs Matthew's party to fire the Apollo Lens at Eclipse Tower instead while he personally keeps the Dark Adept insurgents occupied through battle.
(Owing to the vague writing at critical points in this scene, Alex having Matthew's party fire the Lens at Eclipse Tower can easily be interpreted as him fulfilling his obligation to "make sure the Apollo Lens was used according to [the Empyror's] plan." That notion would suggest that the High Empyror's plan specifically called for the Lens to be used against the tower whose active state is apparently the only thing currently enabling the Lens' use in the first place. In the game, once Eclipse Tower is shut down by the Lens, no one again mentions or is concerned about the Lens as a potential weapon, as though the entire cast has accepted that it no longer constitutes a threat that can still be exploited by the High Empyror's side of things. There is no tangible information shedding further light on these matters, so it is not known whether, in this scenario, the Empire's entire campaign regarding the Lens had somehow fulfilled some other goal elsewhere to justify for its ruler the effort of setting the weapon up only to immediately render it useless.
An alternative reading of the events and dialogue suggests, however, that the High Empyror did not want the Lens fired against Eclipse Tower either. The interpretation goes that Alex, even while saving the Empire from Blados and Chalis' destructive insurgency scheme, had actually backstabbed his employer and made Matthew's party use the weapon in a way that benefited neither faction in the Tuaparang civil conflict. This scenario is supported by Chalis noting at one point that Alex seems just as disinclined toward Imperial loyalty as she and Blados are, and by Matthew's party's unquestioning willingness to use the Lens the way Alex instructs despite their prior antagonism with him. The tone of said willingness, which includes Rief of all people saying Alex's name with sympathetic acknowledgement, generally aligns with how the game seems to purposefully invite the player to consider Arcanus as not entirely villainous when Kraden poses his question at Tonfon about whether Arcanus is "[helping them] in his own way.")
For reasons not shown or hinted at, Alex's implied off-screen battle with Blados and Chalis does not prevent the Dark Adept commanders from eventually returning and heading off Matthew's party from attempting to fire the Apollo Lens at Eclipse Tower. Alex apparently watches idly from the sidelines as the duo sic a twisted werewolf-like monster on Matthew in a bid to claim the greatest weapon of the ancient world. After not one but two harrowing battles between the sides, however, Blados, Chalis, and the monster are ultimately defeated by Matthew — though it is quickly discovered that the monster is actually what remains of Volechek, whom the Dark Adepts warped and twisted through Dark Psynergy.
Matthew then makes several attempts to climb onto the Lens' control panel, but the oppressive light energy keeps pushing him back; Alex sees fit at one point to remotely tell Matthew to stop before he loses his life straining himself in his clearly fruitless efforts. He does not make any other comments even as Matthew and Sveta elect to sacrifice themselves together to manage the deed, though Volechek ends up regaining his original sense of self and forcefully sacrifices his own life in place of theirs. As a result, Apollo Lens is finally fired at Eclipse Tower, bringing a decisive end to the Grave Eclipse that has wrought death and despair on such a massive scale.
The profound vagueness of the epilogue sequence in Dark Dawn leaves little tangible information on Alex's circumstances following the incident atop Apollo Sanctum. He had all but forced the initiation of the deadly Grave Eclipse that led to the unsealing of the Apollo Lens and then manipulated Matthew's party into setting the weapon up, the latter stage of which the High Empyror had explicitly decreed. Alex had then fulfilled the Empyror's decree to prevent the treasonous Dark Adept commanders in the Tuaprang's ranks from using the weapon against the Tuaparang Empire itself. However, it cannot be disproven that the High Empyror intended for Alex to instead use the Lens against the Grave Eclipse's source, even though it seems to have locked out the Lens from being usable anymore. Otherwise, if Alex had betrayed the Empyror on this count, his continued affiliation with the Tuaparang would seem to require that the Empyror remains unaware of what exactly took place during the finale. As always, Alex's personal motivations in continuing to do the contradictory things he does — this time critically advancing a villainous faction's destructive plans only to seemingly undermine them at the end — cannot be reliably inferred.
Trivia
- Hidden within the code of Golden Sun (and The Lost Age by extension), even beyond the reach of what the various Debug Rooms showcase, is this portrait of Alex that features subtle differences from the canonical portrait used to represent Alex throughout the GBA duology.
- In a related detail, where exactly this alternate portrait is placed in the games' internal lists of facial portraits carries implications. In both titles, it is indexed as the eighth portrait, placing it after the portraits of Isaac, Garet, Ivan, Mia, Felix, Jenna, and Sheba, in that order, with the portrait for Piers inserted into the previously empty ninth slot in the code for The Lost Age. This takes place in a block of code that seems to be reserved for "playable characters," whereas the normal portrait for Alex occupies the section where all the rest of the games' NPCs have their portraits stored. This may suggest that Camelot originally tossed around the idea of Alex being the second game's resident playable Mercury Adept before introducing Piers for that role. (The way Alex chides Felix's party later in The Lost Age for "replacing" him with Piers parallels this situation in a way that may or may not be coincidental.) The concept of a playable Alex could also have been envisioned by the developers as necessary for him being a temporary guest character like Jenna from the first game.
- It is not shown or explained how Alex traveled across the ocean from Atteka to Angara to reach Mt. Aleph in time for the epilogue sequence in The Lost Age. Since it seems unlikely Karst and Agatio were willing to transport him and drop him off on the mainland before parting ways with him, it is commonly presumed that Alex stole the Lemurian Ship that Isaac was using up until that point in the game; this would simultaneously explain why Isaac's ship never makes an appearance nor is mentioned in the second game.
- This idea would require that Isaac had left his own Black Orb "plugged into" his previous ship so that an Adept like Alex could operate the ship successfully, but Isaac's Black Orb will (uselessly) be part of his inventory if the player uses the game's Password feature to transfer the party's exact inventory from the first game to the second (even though certain other key items will have been removed). Since Isaac will not have his Black Orb with him in a game of The Lost Age that is enhanced with at most a Silver-rank password, and since Felix never has any need to bring his own ship's Black Orb with him on the many occasions he disembarks, it can be assumed that the Black Orb being part of Isaac's party is a development oversight.
- An unused text string stored in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, somewhere among the Shrine of the Sea God and late-visit-to-Daila sections, reads: "I took all the money that was in here to pay for a boat. Don't think badly of me. -Alex." This might have been intended to explain how Alex has the wealth to lodge at a two-bedroom inn at Alhafra entirely by himself a little later in the game.
- That Alex fathered Amiti is very heavily implied in Dark Dawn:
- Ayuthay's ruler, Paithos, tells the story of how Amiti's father was a mysterious and powerful Adept who kept his face and identity concealed to him even as he used Mercury Psynergy to start the Alchemy Well.
- In Kolima Forest, Tret voluntarily sizes up the aura of each member of Matthew's party to guess which of them are related to which members of the original Warriors of Vale, and he comments that Amiti's aura points to him being a relative of Mia.
- The revelation in the in-game book "Sun Saga 2" that Alex and Mia are cousins amounts to significant context for the above item.
- After Unan hands Matthew the Red Orb, an old man near Emperor Unan's throne mistakes Amiti for Arcanus making a return visit and asks why "his" mask is missing. This correlates with how Amiti, Alex, Mia, Rief, and Nowell all share a similar facial structure that is distinct from characters not related to their family tree.
- At the end of the game, if Sveta reads Amiti's mind through Spirit Sense, he realizes his mind is drifting to Alex and doesn't personally know why.
- This was all before a family tree image was posted on Nintendo of America's official Twitter page that stated this familial relation outright, though errors with several displayed portions of the diagram cast doubt on whether this image should be considered reliable.
- In the German localization of Dark Dawn, Alex is described in the Sun Saga as Mia's brother instead of her cousin.
- There are only two occasions throughout the series where Alex is shown using force against other people: using a water geyser Psynergy to attack soldiers from Tolbi facing him down outside Venus Lighthouse and using a kinetic effect to knock the attacking Tyrell to the ground at the bottom floor of Belinsk Ruins. Other occurrences that happen without the player's party seeing it include knocking Hou Zan unconscious and presumably fighting Blados and Chalis off-screen in the Apollo Sanctum.
- In the English localization, Alex's "Arcanus" codename as an affiliate of the Tuaparang is an extension of the Tarot theme put forth by the elite Tuaparang commanders Blados and Chalis, whose names are references to the Suit of Swords and Suit of Cups. However, as Kraden points out, the name "Arcanus" is fittingly conceited for Alex because it evokes the word "Arcana", which can refer to either the Minor Arcana (which includes all four suits — Swords, Cups, Wands, and Pentacles) or the Major Arcana (which contains 22 cards of much greater portent than any other). Kraden notes that the name "sounds like the term for the most important cards in the deck"; indeed, regardless of which Arcana the title is referencing, it would either imply the most potent cards in general or a comparatively less significant category that still "encompasses" the suits symbolically aligned with by Blados and Chalis.
- The Japanese version provides Tuaparang codenames that are themed after a much more straightforward playing card motif, where Alex's "Ace" codename references the most "powerful" value of cards while Blados and Chalis' "Spade" and "Heart" themes represent mere suits that can appear on cards such as aces.
- The European localization revises the conversation to more directly state that the name "Arcanus" refers to the entire deck, which leads Karis to guess that Alex liked how it implies he is, so to speak, "holding all the cards" — especially fitting considering his M.O. throughout the series.
- The heart-shaped decorations on both his belt and shirt in his Dark Dawn outfit incidentally look identical in shape to the heart featured in many Kingdom Hearts games' title logos.
- In the Japanese script, Alex's speech is always exceptionally polite, even when making overt threats.
Quotes
| In Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age |
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| In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn |
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Alex uses the alias "Arcanus" throughout most of Dark Dawn.
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In fan circles
Alex is easily the most debated aspect of the Golden Sun series among the fan community because he is very specifically written to keep everyone guessing both in-universe and out of it. In a series populated with antagonists who die off near the ends of the games they debut in, Alex is commonly considered the sole recurring villain for his voluntary roles in advancing other villains' plots throughout all three games, making use of the playable cast's own altruistic efforts, and always coming out ahead in his efforts to benefit himself. However, whether he actually counts as an outright villain is contentious because his self-serving efforts either help the main cast save the day or undermine other villains' plans, even when he might be helping advance those plans to begin with.
Because of the nature of his scheme in the original duology of games, it is up for debate whether Alex is a master manipulator who holds all the cards in every story or is merely someone who fashions himself as such and thinks himself more clever than he really is. His plan largely amounts to helping out the other characters' efforts to save their dying world with the unsealing of a great power so that he can be there at the source to gain limitless power and life for himself in the process, which doesn't even amount to depriving the world of any of what it needs to spring back to life. There is certainly an immorality and malice he will stoop to both when pursuing power and exercising it once he has it, such as attempting to unleash a storm upon the innocent village of Vale, but it is not known whether his interests resemble any form of world domination in the end.
Alex's schemes in Dark Dawn 30 years later are far more inscrutable and seemingly contradictory because he seems to willingly ally with a very antagonistic nation and initiate an apocalyptic event that seems to be an important stage of its campaign to acquire an ancient weapon, only to just as readily help the main characters undo the apocalypse and apparently negate the usability of the weapon. Though Alex's willingness to manipulate/force other characters into setting off an event that causes mass death across the land is highly villainous in its own right, unanswered questions about his personal motives in defeating his "allies'" efforts to achieve supremacy from it leave it open to speculation that he had sought to undermine the empire's long-term capacity to menace the world from the start.
Fan fiction had portrayed Alex as the main villain of the series ever since the release of The Lost Age, where it was popular to depict him as possessed of a grudge against Isaac and/or the Wise One for undermining his otherwise successful pursuit of ultimate power and limitless life. Because the games were never clear until Dark Dawn as to whether he and fellow Mercury Clan member Mia were biologically related, much fan fiction referred to as "Imilshipping" had been written shipping them. At any rate, Alex is most often paired with Jenna in shipping stories because of the rather affectionate tone he takes with her early in The Lost Age, despite the possibility of him being facetious about it; these stories are categorized as either "Simmershipping" or "Zitshipping."
Dark Dawn would reveal that Alex would briefly enter a relationship with a woman named Veriti before departing her kingdom just as suddenly, and that she would bear his son on her own time, but the extreme vagueness of in-game accounts of this leave it uncertain whether he felt romantically attracted to her like she had claimed before she passed away. Stories that run with the presumption that Alex was seeking human companionship when interacting with her are categorized under the terms "AlchemyWellshipping" and "Truthshipping." It is also unknown what his perspectives on his own son are, or even if he is aware that said son is part of Matthew's party during his encounters with them later in the game, since he never once devotes any particular attention to Amiti over the other party members in those scenes.
External links
| Main characters in the Golden Sun series | |
|---|---|
| Playable Characters | |
| Golden Sun |  Isaac  Garet  Ivan  Mia
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| The Lost Age | Felix Jenna Sheba Piers
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| Dark Dawn | Matthew Karis Tyrell Rief Amiti Sveta Eoleo Himi
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| Non-Player Characters | |
| Golden Sun & The Lost Age |
Agatio Alex  Babi Briggs Dodonpa Dora Feizhi Hama Hammet Hydros Karst Kraden Kyle Menardi Moapa Puelle Saturos Susa The Wise One Tret
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| Dark Dawn | Arcanus Baghi  Blados Bogho Chalis High Empyror Hou Zan King Wo Laurel Nowell Paithos Ryu Kou Unan Vande Volechek
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