Warrior of Light

Character
Name:	Warrior of Light
Occupation:	Champion of Eorzea
Relationships:	Inherently player-defined, rather than dictated by canon
Fandom:	Final Fantasy XIV
Other:	The default Warrior of Light used in promotional material, from the Endwalker trailer
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The Warrior of Light is the player character and protagonist of Square Enix-created video game Final Fantasy XIV.

Canon

Being a player character, canon dictates few facts about the Warrior of Light. Species, gender, appearance, ingame class, name, backstory and personality are all largely left to the player's imagination. While dialogue choices exist in the story, they only offer a limited range of options and (outside of very few exceptions) have no lasting influence on how the story unfolds, as implementing that in an MMORPG would be difficult. Owing to this, they Warrior of Light also has no noteworthy voice acting beyond a selection of battle shouts and similar. However, there is a 'default' Warrior of Light, frequently dubbed Meteor by the fandom, who acts as a stand-in for trailers and other promotional material.

Following the Shadowbringers expansion, players theorised that the Warrior of Light was a sundered shard of Azem, the former fourteenth member of the Convocation of Fourteen. This was eventually confirmed in Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal, creating one of the few canonically confirmed facts about the Warrior of Light.

Using the character creator, the Warrior of Light may be one of the following species:

• Au Ra
• Elezen
• Hrothgar (with female Hrothgar being added at an unspecified time in the future)
• Hyur
• Lalafell
• Miqo'te
• Roegadyn
• Viera

Fandom

The Final Fantasy XIV fandom frequently expand on the sparse details on the ingame Warrior of Light, coming up with elaborate backstories, explanations for the classes their Warriors of Light have in the game, relationships both romantic and platonic their Warriors of Light have with canon characters etc. Furthermore, many seek to go beyond the limitations of the ingame character creator through mods. They range from texture upscaling to new outfits to additional custom options such as fangs or claws. Outside of the game, this of course also manifests in art and writing about WoLs.

While the ingame character creator is restricted to a few specific species, it isn't uncommon for people to write or draw their Warriors of Light as one of the unplayable species in canon, or as a hybrid of different species. Completely custom species are rare.

A breakdown of ingame species and genders of WoLs reveals that female Miqo'te are by far the most popular choice, followed by female Au Ra.

Shipping

Being the player character, the Warrior of Light has no canonical love interest, nor is there an option to pursue romance arcs in the game. While some characters may express feelings for the Warrior of Light that may be interpreted as romantic, none of them are unambiguously so. Shipping the Warrior of Light with canon characters is exceedingly popular in the fandom, however.

Despite the lack of canon love interests, there are some fans who insist that their WoLship is unambiguously canon. Full-on ship wars over this are rare, though; most are content to simply ignore these isolated incidents.

Owing to the Warrior of Light's unspecified nature, it's common to use them as a Reader-Insert for the purpose of writing Character/Reader fics.

Pairings

• Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light
• Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
• Estinien Wyrmblood/Warrior of Light
• Zenos yae Galvus/Warrior of Light
• Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
• G'raha Tia/Warrior of Light

Archives and Fannish Links

• Works featuring the Warrior of Light on AO3
• Works featuring the default Warrior of Light used in promotional material on AO3

Trivia

The title Warrior of Light is used in many Final Fantasy titles. Among others, Warriors of Light is used as a collective name for the Final Fantasy I party and for the version of the FFI protagonist used in the Dissidia games.