Iris Midgar

Iris Midgar (アイリス・ミドガル) is the first princess of the Midgar Kingdom and the leader of the Crimson Order. After her sister was kidnapped by the Cult of Diablos and subsequently rescued by Shadow Garden, she began to investigate both organizations. Unfortunately, as the series progresses, she slowly shifts into an antagonist obsessed with defeating Shadow for personal reasons.

Appearance
Iris is a red-headed beauty with fiery straight hair that reaches down to her back and red eyes. She normally wears a knight order uniform sans cape, a royal dark violet uniform with light edges and black should straps, with cuffs folded back one-third up her arm from the wrist. Part of her attire requires her to wear white gloves for her dressing, a black shirt with matching edges to her uniform, and a ruby-like gem with a single ribbon necktie that stretches down into her uniform. Iris wears white tights and knee-high heeled boots with single-tie laces at the collar which folds over, and she can normally be seen with her sword adorning her side on her waist belt.

After the Black Rose incident, Rose amended her attire to a more professional Crimson Order uniform, as well as added a braid in her hair along with small jewelry down a lock of hair. She wears a gray uniform with black trims and a crimson interior. A black detachable cape with red lining rests on her shoulders, with two crimson braided cords connecting from the left breast pocket to the shoulder's rank strap. She sports a green-colored gem with a single dark velvet ribbon necktie that stretches down into her uniform, with red buttons with black borders. The right side of her uniform lifts a little to short the bottom of the waistcoat, colored black with red lining to match the cape. She retains her white gloves and trousers, but her knee-high heeled boots are recolored to match her uniform.

Personality
Iris is a brave, diligent, and prideful swordswoman who earnestly strives to fulfill her duty to protect her kingdom. She is revered as an exemplary warrior and princess by not only her people but the world as well. Ever since Iris was young, she was held in high regard for her abilities and accomplishments, which led to her people regarding her as the pride or icon of Midgar. She works diligently to uphold not only her father's but her people's expectations of her as a symbol of hope, protection, power, and victory. However, later in the story, these expectations would soon cause Iris's mental state to deteriorate.

Despite being a princess, Iris lacks the political and leadership skills to manage her organization, the Crimson Order. She admits that Alexia is smarter than her and implies that Alexia would do a better job with the organization. This can be inferred that Iris has a slight inferiority complex, but despite that Iris continues to improve her skills. At times, Iris's stubbornness prevents her from seeing that there are other beings in the world who are much stronger than her, such as when she overestimated her abilities to defeat Shadow and was easily defeated by him.

After the incidents with Alpha, the terrorist attack, and the Divine Teachings, Iris was left feeling inadequate and useless as she couldn't do much politically or physically. She felt the need to prove her worth and redeem herself at the Bushin Festival. However, the combination of her defeat by Mundane Mann (Shadow), the high expectations of her people, and the previous incidents crushed her mentally. Iris's loss to Shadow left her with a strong desire for revenge and an obsession with becoming stronger. Unfortunately, these desires caused her to become mentally unstable and gloomy.

Powers & Abilities
Iris is widely recognized as the strongest swordswoman within the Midgar Kingdom, having been the top student as the Royal Spellsword Academy before her graduation. However, she admits that her skills are nowhere near the level of legendary figures like Shadow and Beatrix.

Superhuman Physical Prowess
Iris Midgar is in excellent physical shape, with both her strength and stamina being close to that of Beatrix's. She was able to keep up with Beatrix during a supersonic chase when they fought against Shadow. However, despite putting in her best efforts, Iris's magical level prevented her from perfecting this skill. Although she was able to withstand Shadow's near-deadly melee attacks, even when he held back, it took all of Iris's physical energy to stand on her feet by the end of the fight.

When not actively using her magic, Iris can run at speeds estimated to be over 75 km/h. She also possesses superhuman strength, being able to split reinforced wood with some effort, and possibly even concrete.

Swordsmanship
From an early age, Iris has been recognized as a prodigy with the sword. During her time at the Midgar Spellsword Academy she was the strongest student without question and is arguably the greatest swordswoman in all of Midgar. However, her abilities are still far inferior compared to Shadow Garden's "Seven Shadows", with Alpha able to effortlessly disarm her when caught off-guard and defeated a monster that Iris was struggling against with a single blow. In the anime, Iris discovered that her opponent in the Bushin Festival who had defeated and humiliated her, Mundane Mann, was actually Shadow. Driven by anger and a strong desire to get revenge, she temporarily managed to match Shadow's incredible fencing speed. Iris was even able to briefly reach the same level of fencing, speed, and agility as Beatrix when she decided to go all out to try and kill Shadow. However, as time passed, she struggled to keep up with Shadow's movements due to her lack of judgement and fatigue from exerting herself too much. Shadow compared her to a wild animal, much like her sister Alexia.

Even though Iris managed to keep up with Beatrix and fight Shadow, it was only because he allowed the two women to fight him on (relatively) equal terms. Shadow didn't have any intention of killing her or Beatrix, and he allowed Iris to fight at her full strength to see how much progress she had made. While Shadow enjoyed the fight and even laughed at times, he was somewhat disappointed to see that Iris had thrown away her warrior pride and resorted to using an artifact to try and kill him.

Magic
As a member of the Midgar royal lineage, Iris possesses an incredible quantity and quality of magic even without contracting the Diabolos curse. Iris has an average handling in her magic, being able to use it aggressively when fighting seriously. She can also use it to strengthen her body to tolerate or resist heavy damage, and even heal her wounds over time, although they may still hurt.

Depending on the type of weapon she wields, Iris can release more magic for her benefit. However, despite the prestige of her magic, she focuses more on the strength of her strikes rather than the refinement of the energy. Her magic takes on the shape of a flame or wildfire, blazing and raging with force channeled to overwhelm an opponent. This fiery depiction also matches her hotheaded personality.

Equipment
In the anime, Iris wields a broadsword. In other media, she just uses a regular-sized sword, but these are normal metal swords since they can only conduct 20 to 30% magic power. So, the sword could soon be destroyed by themselves, after Iris used them because it couldn't hold her raw magic channeled and caused a rather rapid wear and tear, to the point where she searched for a new sword constantly.

When she realized that Mundane Mann was Shadow at the end after losing to him at the Bushin festival, in the midst of the disaster, Iris regained her motivations and desire for revenge. As such, she took the artifact sword from one of the Three Heroes statue in the VIP room, destroyed after the clash of Beatrix vs. Shadow had begun.

Holy Sword: A magical sword that is an ancient artifact that was once wielded by one of the three heroes, Freya, who defeated the demon king Diabolos. It is made of a special metal called Mithril that is very hard to break according to those who have used this metal. The sword is also capable of conducting 35-50% of its user magical power. The magical inscriptions on the blade prevent anyone besides capable hero descendants to wield it. When wielding this sword, Iris is capable of releasing much more raw explosive magical power, more than what she could draw from herself, thus allowing her to fight Shadow for a short time.

Quick Slash
Iris can deliver fast and powerful cuts with her sword through the use of her magic, something that is usually very difficult for an elite magic swordsman to achieve. When fighting with the mutation of the Diabolos cult in Midgar, she used this technique.

Burst of Power
When she gets too angry, either by finding herself powerless against something or someone or hating them a lot, Iris can unleash tremendous magical power that surrounds her, enveloping her and allowing her to partially remove any trick or ability that tries to intimidate her in part. At the same time, this further enhance her burst attacks in exchange for losing her ability to reason and becoming reckless, throwing themselves at their opponent. According to Shadow, he considers this as a pure waste of magic and thus sees disappointment in Iris like her younger sister, Alexia Midgar, comparing them to wild animals.

Exploding Sword
Iris has the ability to channel her magic into her sword and launch a powerful attack in the form of a flaming blast. Iris can only launch this attack once since the sword she uses shortly after channeling it is destroyed, it is speculated that wielding the Holy Sword, it can increase the damage power and execute this technique more than once.

The level of damage that can be exerted when using this technique, allows you to destroy, cut, and through a burst of burning magical power, several large buildings, with a single attack, with an extension of between 50 to 100 meters long, or more, (as far as is known). If he uses the hero's sword, by not using it, it is speculated that at least he could destroy a large building or 3, with a short range, since he does not have a sword, capable of resisting or withstanding the magical conductivity exerted by Iris Midgar.

When she combines this technique with her "Power Burst", it is said that she can increase magic damage by 10% more, but she consequently loses a more magic to keep fighting.


 * Focused Explosive Sword:

Quick Flash
Iris possesses the ability through the use of her magic, to quickly move through any land that she can like any other elite magical swordsman.


 * Semi-Supersonic Flash: Although "Quick Flash" is a skill that is normally learned for a magic knight, when Iris decided to fight seriously and vengefully alongside Beatrix against Shadow, in her fury, Iris unleashed all her magic to channel it to be able to follow him, although with great difficulty, the supersonic, fast and subtle speed of Beatrix and Shadow to continue fighting, but since it was something she had never done, this quickly consumed her energy, so she could not be able to do much like that in that rhythmic state of fighting.

Walk on the Water
Iris has the ability to walk and run through the water for aquatic combat. It is speculated that this ability is of the standard type, that is, it can be learned in the normal way. But so far, only Shadow, Beatrix and she have been able to use this ability in a very effective, aggressive and evolved way.

Weaknesses
For all of her strengths in martial prowess, Iris has one fatal weakness: her intelligence. While far from foolish, she is short-tempered and prone to letting her emotions cloud her judgment, leading her to make bad decisions. She is also a poor judge of character, being easily manipulated.

Trivia

 * The name Iris refers to the Greek mythology as both the personification of the rainbow and 'the messenger of the gods among themselves’.
 * In ancient times, Iris symbolizes faith, hope, wisdom and valor to which considered as a symbol of power and majesty, and was dedicated to the God Juno.
 * Despite her mature and dignified image, she sleeps hugging a teddy bear and has bunny-print underwear.
 * Iris bears resemblance to Rias Gremory from the Light Novel, Highschool DxD. Fittingly enough, both characters were voiced by Yoko Hikasa.
 * Even Iris' mana color is bright red, which is also the same color as her eyes and hair, and resembles fire.
 * Iris disliked modern underwear that was exclusively for women which created by the Mitsugoshi Company because she considers it obscene and indecent, unlike her sister Alexia, who does like it. But ironically, in the game she shows some interest in wearing red thongs on the advice of her sister, when she is in a drunken state.
 * Also, unlike her younger sister Alexia, Iris doesn't have a good tolerance for bitter things like coffee, just like Sherry Barnett. On Cid advice, she could only drink coffee when she mixed it with milk and mostly sugar, which came as a surprise to the nobles who saw her do that in front of those present at the VIP seats during the Bushin Festival.
 * Although everyone in the academy knows it, Iris is not aware that Alexia and Cid had a "love relationship".
 * According to her own words, when she fought Mundane Mann in the final match of Bushin Festival, she realized from the moment she lost, because what Mundane exercised was a skill that Iris's teacher told her about, called "Realistic Feint Sensation", something that only very powerful, and above all, skilled magical warriors possess and develop. But, what Mundane used on her was at a much higher level than she could ever reach, no matter how much she trained it in her own way.
 * Following Iris' humiliating public defeat, including in front of her father, at the Bushin Festival against Mundane, she realized that Mundane's true identity was Shadow, which made her concurrently surprised and angry because she felt that her pride as the strongest, and also her own views, had been insulted and shattered.
 * Iris Midgar has her pride as a magical swordsman, which indicates that she does not like to use any magical artifact, which increases her power. Being forced and motivated by revenge when facing Shadow, she gets progressively more enraged with him after he tells her that he was surprised that she would have to use something like the Mithril Sword in a fight against him, hinting that Shadow believed that she at least had her pride as a strong swordswoman.
 * Shortly before losing to Shadow, he confesses to Iris Midgar and Beatrix that only his name and his way of acting are all that he is, that everything else that has happened is just a pure fictitious invention of his mind, but she only took that as an insult, motivated even more to fight.
 * After Iris's ultimate defeat with Beatrix against Shadow in the Midgar royal capital, and for Shadow's ruining the Bushin Festival also tarnished the name of the Midgar Kingdom's pride and honor, as well as the kingdom's fighting style. Iris was traumatized by losing against him again, feeling useless despite having Beatrix's aid.
 * Beatrix tries to warn Iris not to be obsessed with seeking revenge against Shadow, since she is still too young and her enemy is at a level that can no longer be considered a human, more like a very powerful entities that no mortal could ever hope to defeat and to give up the foolish idea of facing Shadow again. But, Iris ignores her advice and already made up her mind.
 * Afterwards, Iris had strong nightmares that lead her to swear to herself that she would have no mercy on anyone who impeded her vengeance against Shadow, not even Alexia.
 * Because of this, she was eventually manipulated by the Cult of Diablos after they infiltrated her Crimson Order to manipulate Princess Iris with their spy, new Vice Commander Hubb, and blaming Shadow Garden for all past evils of the Cult on her kingdom.
 * In the Anime, the end of the Bushing tournament arc shows a frightened and frustrated Iris due to not being able to do anything in the face of Shadow's immense power. This was done for purely dramatic purposes since in the Light Novel and Manga, Iris is just puzzled after the fight over the "true enemies" that shadow mentioned.
 * Interestingly, Iris's similarity to Alexia is much more then their outburst as they both take what people think of them too seriously. Iris being praised since childhood led her to always attempt to fulfill people's expectation but her position as First Princess was not allowed to act in certain scenarios. This is similar to Alexia who was always being compared to Iris that she tried to be as good as her, which led to Alexia being called "The Fencer Ordinaire," thus both were desperate in their fulfillments.
 * After Iris lost to Shadow, her humiliation was similar to when Alexia lost in the Bushin Festival, depressed and lashing out at others. The major differences being Alexia is smarter and didn't take her defeats as seriously as Iris, who was fooled easily by Hubb while Alexia was able to quickly suspect Zenon.