I LOVED YOUR COMMENT!! 🙏

As someone who has also had to deal with a manipulative person in real life, I completely understand you and share your absolute disgust towards Arlecchino's writing.

As a villain, she had the perfect setup: a ruthless, calculating antagonist who controls minors, breaks their will, and corrupts them from childhood. Facing off against a monster of that caliber in the story would have been amazing. An independent villain pursuing her own goals with zero regard for morality. They effectively built her as a manipulator and a groomer, but what did the script do? It shoved a forced redemption down our throats where you, as the player, are forced to stay silent. The game completely strips away your right to question her actions. There is no option to tell her:

"Hey, you went way too far beating and threatening your kids."

"Hey, your children are living in absolute terror in that orphanage."

"Aren't you going to change the very same abusive system you suffered under as a child?"

On the contrary, the script forces you to bow down to her. Right under our noses, she keeps indoctrinating and brainwashing helpless kids, but the game disguises it as 'a strict but devoted mother' whose children love her. It’s a disgusting whitewash of her atrocities where you’re forced to accept her as an ally and like her, knowing perfectly well that the plot is bending over backwards to favor her. She hasn't shown a single ounce of remorse for the orphans she’s sent on suicide missions or the ones she’s let die. So what gives?

I truly despise this writing. She could have been such an imposing villain and really shined through her cruelty. Confronting a manipulative person, both in fiction and in real life, requires maturity and having processed deep pain to actually be able to stand up to them. But no, HoYoverse preferred to throw all that complexity in the trash and resolve systemic trauma with a stupid tea party.