Giles - Hierophant

[madimpossibledreamer]

Previously: Buffy - Death, Xander - The Magician, and Willow - Priestess.

Giles was never going to be anything else.  As the authority and parental figure in their story, he was going to be Hierophant.  In the Persona games, the Social Link tends to be an older, wise, and logical character who’s obsessed with the past.  It should be noted that the Arcana doesn't make you a Rules Lawyer or Lawful Stupid (Lawful Letter of the Law?  Contract Lawful? Lawful Strict doesn't quite demonstrate how far it goes), either, at least not in Persona--Hierophant characters can bend the rules in truly dire situations to help Good triumph, despite being pretty strict about following the rules most of the time.  And most of the time, Giles often despairs of the illogical actions of the teenagers he looks after, and whether it’s learning from the past in the form of books about the demons they fight or a very real desire to try to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past (or simply a distrust of the present; who would trust this thing called ‘technology’), he fits very well as Hierophant. 

Then there’s the tarot meanings—sure, the name references the religious leader, but in the more metaphoric general sense it’s just a knowledgeable guide who interprets, translates, and transmits the esoteric and unknown, and, again, that sounds exactly like Giles’ role as Watcher and support.  And the associated Persona tend to be guardians.

If he does get to fight, I’d guess he veers more toward the support skills like recarm spells, attack reflect spells, healing and ailment removal spells, and maybe a few ailment inflicting spells.  He’s one of the few who can fight hand-to-hand besides Buffy and other Slayers, but as far as offensive magic goes, even buffed up he didn’t stand much of a chance against buffed up Willow.  While that could have been meant as a comparison thing, we didn’t really see too much of him actually using his magic and never got that Ripper show, so we got more tell than show in that department.

If we wanted to change that up, he’d get more Almighty damage Megido-type skills or at least heavy damage –dyne type skills.