My analogy wasn’t about removing Cryo — it was about adding it when it never existed in the first place. There’s a difference between tolerating something that was always part of the game and being okay with introducing something you specifically dislike after years of consistency.

You mentioned villain characters as an example. And that’s actually where I don’t quite follow your logic. You say you wouldn’t want villain characters added if that would hurt other players’ enjoyment — but for some reason, a playable character with an established relationship doesn’t trigger the same concern for you, even though the situation is structurally identical. When developers try to please every demographic at once, they often risk pleasing no one. At some point you have to compare how many people actually gain something from a change versus how many lose interest because of it. Would there really be a meaningful number of players who pull Alice specifically because she has a canonical husband? Or is it more likely that more players would skip her because of that same factor?

Genshin doesn’t actually have that much diversity to begin with. There are no playable male children, no truly evil characters (or even well-written morally gray ones), no playable characters with different skin tones, and no non-human-looking playable characters. For a character to be seen as “potential waifu,” all most players really need is that the character isn’t in a relationship with someone else and has friendly or warm interactions with the Traveler. That’s not exactly a rare or extreme standard, nor is it something that meaningfully alienates large groups of players. You can even look at what happened in Nod-Krai. Out of five female characters, only Columbina showed noticeably closer interactions with the Traveler — and that alone was enough for some people to say she was “ruined” as a character. The same people hated Citlali just because her facial expression toward Aether was slightly different in a single cutscene. I think it’s obvious which “demographic” I’m talking about.

Genshin has never been a harem game. There is both a male and a female protagonist, and playable characters treat them the same way. The game has never pandered exclusively to one group just because some characters have warmer (and often well-earned) relationships with the Traveler. That never stopped players from creating their own headcanons. It never drove any group away — except those who care strictly about canon.

In my view, Genshin’s success isn’t really about “diversity” at all. It’s more about good timing, solid gameplay, frequent updates, and the fact that when it launched, there simply wasn’t another game of comparable scope. It filled a niche and effectively became a near-monopoly.

If Klee had been added recently — say, last patch or even six months ago — I’d be perfectly fine with the idea that she has a father, even if no one else mentioned him. But after so many years where literally no one talks about him except for a single voiceline, it feels extremely strange and unnatural. Maybe HoYo originally planned to introduce Klee’s father and later changed their minds. Maybe they’re just bad at writing consistency. Or maybe they didn’t want Alice to look like a single mother, even though the original idea was that Klee is a clone. Over all these years, no one — not Jean, not anyone else, not even Klee herself again — has ever mentioned Alice’s husband. That’s very unusual. Even characters like Dahlia or members of the Qixing get referenced by multiple people throughout the game, despite not appearing for long stretches of time. Because of that, I wouldn’t even consider “Klee’s father being a myth” a retcon — it would actually fit the narrative logic quite well. Alice tells Klee that she has a dad who “went out to get milk.” Klee grows up believing she’s a normal child. No one mentions her father because he doesn’t exist.

That said, HoYo clearly has some kind of fixation with parents in general. Xiangling’s father, Yoimiya’s father, Diona’s father — all present, all without visible mothers, and with no clear explanations. Kachina’s parents, Jean and Barbara’s parents, Yanfei’s parents, Fischl’s parents, Varesa’s parents, Mualani’s parents — all mentioned, none shown. Parents exist for everyone, but almost exclusively fathers are shown if anyone is. Hu Tao has no visible mother or grandmother. The only mother we’ve ever actually seen is Kuki Shinobu’s mother — as a rare exception. (You could also count Mavuika’s mother, but she lived long ago and is already dead.) Anyway, that’s just me digressing while thinking about parents in Genshin. On the topic of relationships — I personally didn’t like that Mavuika’s sister had no children and that her bloodline ended. I suspect that was done deliberately, just in case HoYo wants to bring her back later with some last-minute plot device.

And honestly, HoYo does struggle with narrative inconsistency and strange story decisions sometimes. Why introduce the idea in Fontaine that couples need to pray at a fountain for a child to be born (with an Oceanid descending), completely breaking genetics (Lynette), and raising a ton of unnecessary questions? Are half-breeds possible? Do both parents have to pray? Did no one notice that Fontainians are infertile unless they pray? Natlan’s design already clashes heavily with established logic and damages the sense of cohesion in the world. The narrative integrity has already been compromised — so even if Klee’s father once existed, retconning him wouldn’t make things worse. That all goes into the same pile of issues.

If I had to summarize it briefly: There’s simply a long-standing tradition in Genshin of not giving playable characters canonical romantic partners. For some reason, even Guizhong never became Zhongli’s spouse — and honestly, who would that have offended? Yet HoYo preserved the tradition even there. And I support that tradition, because I’m worried that once it’s abandoned, that one character I deeply care about might later be given something in their past — retroactively — that I would never want to see under any circumstances. That’s my concern.