From the very start of Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward expansion, Estinien comes off as a pretty stoic individual who speaks in a brusque manner. He has little to no respect for those he deems weak, and he often scorns social gatherings in Ishgard as he hates keeping up appearances.
He has spent a majority of his life hating Nidhogg and seeking revenge against him; hence, Estinien has been averse to companionship, and apart from his quest for vengeance, there is really nothing that he calls his own.
So it’s very surprising that the only friend that the Azure Dragoon has made till Heavensward is Aymeric. The illegitimate son of Thordan VII, whose very nature is the exact opposite of his.
Now, have you ever wondered how their friendship came to be? To understand their camaraderie, we will have to go all the way back to Estinien’s childhood when a group of dragons razed his village to the ground.
This happened 20 years before the Heavensward narrative. Estinien was the sole survivor of the massacre because he was out shepherding a flock when the dragons arrived.
He returns to find the charred bodies of his parents and brother, crushed underneath heavy masonry. It was on this day that he swore revenge on Nidhogg, and at the age of 12 he was taken in by Alberic Bale, who was the Azure Dragoon at the time.
The Estinien and Aymeric camaraderie in Final Fantasy XIV
Some years later, when he was in his early twenties, Estinien and his unit had been dispatched to Ever Lakes in response to a dragon sighting. He was a full-fledged Temple Knight by then, but no manner of battle prep was able to save his unit from dragon fire that day.
He and Aymeric were the only survivors, as Estinien was able to wound and repel the beast before succumbing to the smoke and losing consciousness. However, once he woke, against Aymeric’s better judgement to head back to the Holy See, Estinien decided to slay the dragon himself by following the trail of blood it left behind.
This was the first conversation that the two shared between them, and the first time Estinien learned Aymeric’s name, even though they were in the same unit for years.
Now Estinien ventures off alone to find the wounded dragon in a cave. He charges in head-on, but soon the dragon gets the better of him. Its tail hits him in the chest, incapacitating him and opening him up for a fatal blow.
However, before the dragon can finish him off, Aymeric comes to his rescue. He hits the dragon’s right eye with the arrow from his longbow, making it miss its mark.
This gave Estinien the chance to summon what remained of his strength and leap into the air. And at the height of his leap, he became as one with his lance and descended, tracing an arc worthy of the Azure Dragoon himself. With the full force of his weight, he came down upon his foe, instantly killing it.
This marks the beginning of a very deep friendship between the two, which grows throughout the Heavensward expansion as you come to witness it through the eyes of the Warrior of Light.
