5. Bellara
At first, Bellara felt primed to slip through the cracks for me. The elven mage, introduced as an expert on ancient elf technology and magic, seems scatterbrained if she’s not fixated on one of her interests. But as her story unfolds, it becomes clear that Bellara’s preoccupation with elven artifacts, lost history, and hobbies like fiction writing are all born out of a need to distract herself from her grief, and possibly make up for her failures.
When you meet her, Bellara has been hunting for a way to make the world make sense again, only for the elven gods she had known her whole life to return, and everything she knew is repeatedly flipped on its head. What does someone who seeks to restore history do when it’s constantly changing? What decisions do you make when the answers you’ve found can hurt those who have already gone through so much? Bellara is the kind of character a story like The Veilguard needs: as the world changes, she’s the most well-equipped to understand its significance and ponder the effects it will have on everyone when the dust settles.
