Lieutenant Virgil

_Xenosaga_

Background

4000 years into humankind's future, the race has fled Earth and has colonized the universe. An Interstellar Federation links the planets in a common government, much as in the Star Wars series, and planets engage in their own development like countries in a much larger world than anything we know today.

Technology has evolved to the point where robots with human emotions and thought capabilities have been built. Known as Realians, they compose the bulk of many squadrons of armed forces on various planets, and serve all manner of tasks. They have begun to demand basic human rights due to their status as sentients, and this inspires backlash from racist humans.

Federation Lieutenant Virgil is a perfect example of such a racist. He heckles the Xenosaga heroine, Shion Uzuki, about her affection for the Realians, whom Virgil views as tools. But Virgil also has a dark secret—he is a DME addict, meaning he kills Realians and takes apart their neural networks for consumption. In other words, he eats their brains, which have addictive qualities. Shortly after his introduction, however, Virgil is killed by an android when he gets in the way of its line of fire.

 

Analysis

Though he is only briefly in the series, Virgil presents excellent dialogue about the nature of the relationship between man and machine. He represents those humans who are so comfortably entrenched in their positions of authority that they cannot comprehend how any creature that was formerly less capable than humans could ever want to consider themselves humanity's equal. His xenophobia reaches a climax when he manipulates the Realians and forces them to self-destruct to put an obstacle between himself and advancing Gnosis. Perhaps, however, there is some poetic justice in the fact that Virgil is ultimately destroyed by that which he hates most.