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Character: Zelos Wilder
Series: Tales of Symphonia
Version: First game, after the scene with the doctor in Flanoir.
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Appearance: Zelos is a very attractive man with long, wild, curly red hair kept out of his blue eyes with a wide, white headband around his forehead. He wears a low, v-neck black shirt with a sleeveless, pink, long-tailed coat. Matching this coat and shirt combo are his gloves, which are pink and black with gold accents. Zelos’s pants are white and poofy and stuffed into his white and gold boots. Around his waist is a white belt with the sheathe for his sword.

Attached to Zelos’s chest is his Cruxis Crystal, red in color, which is in turn attached to a golden keycrest.

Personality: At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be all that much to Zelos. He’s a girl-crazy pervert who’s hardly serious about anything. Any girl he sees, he will flirt with and generally be nice to. Guys are typically brushed off unless he absolutely has to interact with them. Typically, he won’t tend to get to know either one. He seems like a loud, self-centered young man about as shallow as a wading pool.

But the truth is, Zelos isn’t really as fun-loving and perverted as he lets on. Used to people flocking to him more due to his status as Chosen than any actual want to get to know him, he acts completely obnoxious to weed out the sycophants from any actual potential friends. He’s still rather self-centered, willing to go with the strongest side in a conflict if it means he can get something out of it, but he’s not without a heart and will help those in need. Zelos is more than aware of his failings as a Chosen and often has fits of depression and a lack of self-worth, and as much as he brags about being the Chosen he would like nothing better than to shed the title completely.

Abilities/Weaponry/Strengths: In terms of battle, Zelos is adept with both melee and magical attacks, skilled with a shield and short sword. He is quite agile, his attack animations having a smoother quality to them than his style-twin, Kratos. Zelos’s magic mainly consists of elemental attacks—some of which he’s capable of using with his sword—but he also has some healing magic as well.

Zelos’s Cruxis Crystal on his chest boosts his abilities significantly, giving him greater fighting prowess, agility, and stamina than a normal human. Unlike regular Exspheres (of which Cruxis Crystals are a step up), Zelos’s Cruxis Crystal also grants him the powerful, light-based skills Judgment, Divine Judgment, and Shining Bind; and a pair of bright, glowing wings that he can summon when he wants. It’s doubtful that he’ll use either very often, however.

While Zelos might not be the brightest bulb in the lamp, he is extraordinarily cunning. He easily managed to come up with ways to get the party out of trouble multiple times, and while the party may have had a slight inkling of his intentions to betray him, he’s a good enough actor to fool either Cruxis or the party (depending on the ending). He pays close attention to his surroundings and knows how to use them to his advantage.

Once Zelos finally warms up to someone to the point where he trusts them and feels trusted in return, he’s fiercely loyal, and will go through hell and back to help that person out.

Finally, while once again his attitude and flirtatiousness tends to hide it, Zelos has a lot of common sense to him. He knows when to stay out of things and when to speak up, whether it comes to external or internal matters. For example, when Sheena is down about Corrine’s death, he’s the only one to try and act like nothing’s wrong, knowing that the entire party sulking would only just keep Sheena down too.

Weaknesses: As an all-rounder sort of character, while Zelos has little in the way of weaknesses, he also has little in the way of strengths. He’s not the most powerful in the group strength-wise and he also can’t use more powerful magic. He’s also quite the loudmouth in battle if he’s not being serious, making him easy to catch by surprise.

While Zelos’s Cruxis Crystal grants him a lot of power, it comes with significant drawbacks. Without the key crest the crystal is set in, Zelos’s Cruxis Crystal will slowly suck out his humanity, removing from him his appetite, need to sleep, sense of taste, and sense of touch until finally it takes his heart and soul and leaves him an empty shell. It’s important to reiterate that this is only if his key crest goes missing, however, as other Cruxis Crystal users are capable of using their crystals for thousands of years with little ill effect for the most part.

However, Zelos’s biggest weakness is his attitude. As he acts in order to push people away, his arrogance, flirtatiousness, and general jerky demeanor makes it difficult for him to form bonds of trust with others or gain any true friends at all. He’s become used to the fact that not many people are going to see him as more than the Chosen or will want to become close to him for any other reason than to use him. He dislikes himself more than he lets on and would do almost anything to rid himself of the Chosen title he feels he doesn’t deserve, whether by the institution being gotten rid of altogether or his death. He’s not picky. It’s likely that Zelos would prefer to stay in Paixao rather than leave it, perhaps at any cost, meaning he’ll probably end up with the wrong crowd.

Zelos bottles his emotions up. If something’s bothering him, he won’t show or tell it to anyone, keeping his easygoing façade up to keep people from asking questions. Getting information out of him is like pulling teeth and he will only tell you if he feels like he can trust you enough—a considerable feat, as mentioned above.


History: Long ago, after the death of the Great Kharlan Tree, which kept the world alive by the generation of mana, the world was split into two. These worlds, Sylvarant and Tethe’alla developed a parasitic relationship with one another, siphoning the mana from one to the other. As a result, one of the worlds was always constantly in decline. Reversing the mana flow required an individual called the Chosen to go on a journey of regeneration, visiting the temples across their respective worlds and breaking the seals on summon spirits before finally visiting the Tower of Salvation and becoming an angel. A successful journey could take up to hundreds of years.

Because of that, the Chosen line (as Chosens are born to a specific family) of the flourishing planet was to continue the family line, with their partners being carefully selected for them throughout the ages.

Zelos was born to such a family in the city of Meltokio in Tethe’alla. However, his parents were in a loveless marriage, and so his father took a mistress for himself, a half-elf who would eventually give birth to Zelos’s half-sister, Seles. When the time came for one of the children to be given the title of Chosen, Seles’s mother, seeking a better lot in life for herself and her daughter (as half-elves were barely even second-class citizens in Tethe’alla), set out to kill the then six-year-old Zelos. It was a snowy day in Meltokio that day, the first time Zelos had ever seen snow. His mother took the blast of magic meant for Zelos and died. Zelos’s most prominent memory of the event was his mother’s blood on the snow and her last words: “You should never have been born.”

After the incident, Seles’s mother was executed and Seles was sent to be confined in an abbey for the rest of her life. Because of his mother’s words and his status of Chosen, Zelos blames himself for his sister’s punishment.

As time went on, Zelos developed the attitude he’s famous for having today, gathering women and groupies around him wherever he went. At some point he met the then-president of the Lezerano Company—the most powerful company in Tethe’alla—Regal Bryant, and dated and broke up with Sheena Fujibayashi.

The party first meets Zelos in Meltokio, accompanied by a bunch of vapid, Zelos-obsessed women. Zelos attempts to flirt with a de-souled Colette only to be thrown away. He’s shocked for a moment, but then proceeds to flirt with Raine Sage, the other female member of the party currently there. When the party goes to speak with the king of Meltokio, Zelos convinces him to let the party do their thing to save Colette in Tethe’alla, as Lloyd’s party is trying to stop Colette from becoming an angel and Tethe’alla’s mana flow won’t reverse if Colette doesn’t become an angel. However, the party is only supposed to remain on Sylvarant. Zelos accompanies them to keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t cause any trouble..

However, after a time, the party realizes that they need to return to Sylvarant to get Lloyd’s adoptive father, a dwarf named Dirk, to help them with the key crest they need to return Colette to normal. Zelos decides to let them go do this and is immediately branded a traitor by the Pope for his actions.

But, he decides to stick with them, stating that they’ll need the flying machines that brought the Sylvarant group to Tethe’alla to begin with, the Rheairds, fixed before they can get anything more done. He claims to have something that’ll make it easy to carry the machines around, but when he leads them to the crash site, Cruxis (the organization that controls the Chosen lineage and want to revive the goddess Martel—really the leader’s dead sister—through Colette) and the Renegades (a group against Cruxis) are waiting there for them. But as they’re about to take Lloyd and Colette, Colette’s key crest begins to work and she goes back to her normal self.

Before they can do any more, the group decides to help Presea, a woodcutter who helped the Sylvarant group initially get into the castle suffering from the same symptoms that Colette initially had, go back home. But first, to see if they can help her out with her emotionless problems, they need to visit Meltokio, whose gates are closed to the party due to their status as traitors. Zelos is the one to guide them through the sewers past the gates and into the city. They are attacked by convicts on their way in, but make it through unscathed.

The Elemental Research Laboratory there needs a day to finish what they need to help them out, and so Zelos offers to let them stay at his mansion for the night. The next day, Colette’s shoulder is feeling a bit stiff, but she brushes it off as nothing.

As the party goes to take Presea home, they’re attacked by one of the convicts from before—whose true identity is Regal Bryant—and he joins the party as well. Regal wants to speak with Presea once the party drops her off, so they return, only to find that Presea has living a very robotic life for a long time, to the point that the corpse of her father has been lying in bed, rotting and she hasn’t even noticed. The party goes to try and help her, but along the way, Colette’s condition becomes worse and she collapses. Presea moves to help her, but then proceeds to hand over Colette to the Desians, agents of Cruxis meant to wreak havoc on the declining world. Presea then gets her key crest fixed, returning her to somewhat normal, and is horrified at what she has done.

In order to find Colette, the party needs to use the Rheairds, but can’t due to their current, broken state. Volt, the summon spirit of lightning who Sheena was unable to form a pact with, is needed to power them. After some convincing, Sheena and the others go to Volt’s temple, where Sheena is eventually able to form a pact with Volt, but loses Corrine in the process. Volt’s defeat severs a link between the two worlds, as the party had made a pact with the summon spirit of water before, and thus the party decides that in order to break the dependency on mana between the two worlds, they will break all the links binding Tethe’alla and Sylvarant together.

But first, to get the Rheiaird’s back, they need to head over to the Renegades’ base on Tethe’alla. Zelos doesn’t arrive at first, and later when the party reaches the Rheairds, they’re attacked by the Renegades. They manage to defeat Yuan and Botta, however, and use the Rheairds to escape and save Colette.

As the party attains summons, they wonder what they’ll do and what world they’ll live in once the connection between Sylvarant and Tethe’alla is severed. As they exit the ice temple, where they gained the summon Celsius, a light cuts through the sky, destroying Ozette. The party quickly goes to check on the destroyed city and comes across a young man by the name of Mythos, who they have accompany them for the time being.

More shenanigans happen and the party ends up back in Sylvarant in an attempt to find and shut down the mana cannon, a large weapon that could cause massive destruction. The group goes to the Palmacosta Human Ranch and finds the Renegades there. The Renegades tell the group about the Giant Kharlan tree, stating that they have a plan to revive it and ruin Cruxis’s plans in the process, thus saving both worlds. The Renegades lead the party to one of the bases, Botta sacrificing his life in the end to reprogram the base to send mana to the Great Seed to revive the tree. Mithos saves the party from death and the party escapes.

The final summon pact is made, but instead of the worlds being fixed, the Giant Kharlan tree grows out of control, threatening to engulf and destroy both worlds. In order to stop it, an new plan is made: to feed the energy of the Tethe’allan summon spirits into the Mana Cannon and fire it at the tree.

They make the trip to the Iselia Human Ranch to cut off the flow of mana to the tree and Sheena uses the summons to fire the Mana Cannon, stopping the tree and returning it to its seed form. But in the process, it’s revealed just how sick Colette is, and beyond that, the people of Sylvarant have decided that Colette has failed her Journey of Regeneration.

The party returns to Tethe’alla, and learns how to cure Colette’s disease, but they need access to the castle in Meltokio to get more information. They’re confronted by knights of the castle but Zelos manages to convince the knights that Colette is a vengeful angel, granting them a way past. The party proves that the Pope is poisoning the king as well as access to the library, learning that they need to visit the village of the elves for certain materials.

They get that material, but also need to enter the Tower of Salvation, which can only be accessed with a Cruxis Crystal, so Zelos decides to visit his sister in the abbey, because she has it. The interaction seems cold, but as Zelos leaves, Seles whispers for him to take care.

They enter Tethe’alla’s Tower of Salvation, only to find that it’s the same tower as the one in Sylvarant. But before they can do much more, the party is attacked and eventually tossed into cells on Derris Kharlan. As they try to make their escape, they get the last thing they need to help Colette. On their way out, they find the Eternal Sword, the sword that originally split the worlds in two and could be used to bring them back together, but they are interrupted by Yggdrasill, leader of Cruxis. They battle him and manage to escape again, Yggdrasill shielding one of the members of the party from an attack before they do.

Eventually they head back to another dwarf, Altessa’s, house and create a crest that completely cures Colette. That night, Yuan appears and lures Lloyd out. It is revealed that Kratos is Lloyd’s father and Mithos is actually Yggdrasill—that is, Mithos Yggdrasill. Mithos takes his leave and Kratos states that in order to wield the Eternal Sword, first one has to release the seal on Origin, and to do that, Kratos himself must be defeated.

But first, they have to get a doctor for Altessa, who was injured by Mithos. Sometime around then, Kratos takes Zelos aside, stating that in order for Lloyd to be able to wield the Eternal Sword, he must also ingest Aionis, a rock allowing humans to use magic—which is how Zelos is able to use magic himself.

Lloyd mentions that he plans on defeating Mithos the next day, and the party sleeps for the night with Lloyd having a conversation with one party member. It is before the party can set out for the Tower of Salvation again that Zelos is brought to Paixao with a weighty decision on his shoulders.