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.

The incidents (with Alpha, The Terrorist Attack, and The  Divine Teachings) in which Iris couldn't do much politically or physically left her feeling inadequate and that she needed to prove her worth at the Bushin Festival. During the Bushin Festival, the culmination of her defeat by Mundane Mann, Shadow, the high expectations of her people, and the previous incidents crushed her mentally. Iris's defeat by Shadow left her craving revenge and a strong obsession with getting stronger. These desires eventually led her to become mentally unstable and gloomy.

Powers & Abilities
Iris is widely considered to be the strongest swordswoman within the Midgar Kingdom, being the top student as the Royal Spellsword Academy before her graduation. However, by her own admission, her skills are nowhere near the level of legendary figures like Shadow and Beatrix.

Physical Skills
Iris Midgar is in good physical shape, both her strength and stamina were close to Beatrix's and her speed is able to keep up with the supersonic chase when Iris fought alongside Beatrix against Shadow. But Iris's magical level couldn't perfect this skill despite putting a lot of her best efforts into it. She was also able to barely withstand the near-deadly melee attacks that Shadow gave her, even when he held back. By the end of the fighting, it took all the physical energy Iris had to stand on her feet.

Without actively using her magic, Iris is able to run at speeds estimated to be over at 75 km/h when she doesn't have to force herself to fight, and with the superhuman strength of being able to split reinforced wood with some effort to possibly concrete.

Swordsmanship
From an early age, Iris has been considered to be a prodigy with the sword, being the unquestionably strongest student at the Spellsword Academy during her time there and arguably the greatest swordsman in Midgar overall. However, her abilities are still far inferior compared to Shadow Garden's "Seven Shadows", with Alpha effortlessly disarming her when caught off-guard and defeating a monster the princess was struggling against in a single blow. In the anime, when Iris Midgar realized that the opponent who defeated and humiliated her in the bushin tournament, Mundane Mann, was Shadow, in her anger and strong desire to kill him, she managed for a few moments to almost match Shadow's tremendous fencing speed instant,achieving for brief moments, almost matching the level of fencing and speed management, and displacement of Beatrix, when she decided to go all in so she could kill Shadow. But after a short time, she was unable to keep up, as her attacks became less fast and more predictable for Shadow, due to her lack of judgment, and partly due to fatigue from not being used to exerting herself so much, Shadow describes her, that like her sister Alexia, both are wild animals.

Although although she was able to maintain the fight and follow-up with Beatrix, against Shadow, since he never had the intention of killing her or Beatrix, he only let her be as she was now, after revealing her identity in the final of the tournament bushin, to see so much progress Iris Midgar could perform at full power against him. Although he entertained himself well and laughed against Iris Midgar, he was somewhat disappointed that she cast away her warrior pride by relying on a holy artifact from a heroine, only so she could try to kill him.

Magic
Being of royal lineage, Iris is possibly being one of the descendants of the human hero from the fabled Three Heroes, and thus has an incredible quantity and quality of magic without contracting the Diabolos curse. She has an average handling of her magic, being able to use it aggressively when fighting seriously, but can also use it to strengthen her body to be able to tolerate or resist heavy damage, able to heal her wounds over time even if they still hurt. Depending on what type of weapon she wields, she can release more magic from herself for her benefit. However, despite the prestige of her magic, her utility of it is primitive and focuses more on strength of the strike as opposed to the refinement of the energy. This is notable as her magic takes shape indicative of a flame or wildfire, blazing and raging with the force channeled to overwhelm an opponent. The fire like depiction also matching her hotheaded persona.

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 Jimina 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.

Hero's Mithril 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 wielded this.

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 time, this further enhance her burst attacks in exchange for losing their reasoning of themselves in part, and throw themselves like a killing machine. According to Shadow, he consider this as a pure waste of magical use 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 "Hero's Mithril 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.

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.