How they compare: The Queen of Tears (Princess: The Hopeful)

You will forgive the lack of pictures this time, I hope. Princess: The Hopeful is a fansplat for a tabletop game and as such there's not many pictures for it.

Millenia ago there was a magical world of great wonder and nigh-utopian virtue, a world attuned to the light, the metaphysical force of that which is good which easily held at bay all darkness of the world. The kingdoms of this world were ruled by great and powerful noble beings called queens who came to represent differnet ideals of goodness. One of these the gentle queen of cups, who accepted all into her domain, all those outcasts who never quite fit in anywhere else, showing universal acceptance and adjusting herself to help any wayward soul who came her way, encouraging self-discovery. All the queens had difference in ideals and with the darkness seemingly gone, a spirit of pride fall over the people of the light, a sense that their ideal of good was the only correct one. 

This was the trap that the darkness set, taking advantange of the strife of those of the light to invade, overwhelming the world of light. Great death and destruction followed the forces of the darkness, with even the world itself being turned into a wretched dark world and even queen dying to the darkness. The poor queen of cups who loved her subjects so, in desperation was willing to do anything to protect them. This was the fall of the queen of cups and her transformation into the queen of tears, one of the three twilight queens; living broken queens from the time of the fall. 

In the heart of the darkness lies a great bubble within is the city of Alhambra maintained by the wisdom of the ever-flowing queen, the queen of tears. She lives now in a great despair, always crying, and when she deigns to speak, her whole court falls silent to listen to her soft broken voice. The people there do horrific deeds to maintain their little bubble, for such is the way of the queen; her invocation as she fell, "I will do anything to protect the ones I care about." That bubble of dim light in the darkness, the bubble of despair in the bleakness of emotional deadness, the emotional torture that shows one they are still alive...these are what emotions Alhambra represents, and if one is willing to fight for it forever against the horrors of the dark, then it will grant sanctuary to the ones you love. Would you do anything to protect the ones you love?

Power-wise the Queen of Tears has one of the most prominent feats in Princess the Hopeful: She created a bubble reality holding her city of Alhambra safe for millenia despite being in the heart of the dark world. She's probably also similar in power to the Twilight Queen of Storms whose lightning is stated to tear mountains in half which suggests a similar level of strength. In terms of speed, princesses with the Aria invocation can get a 1 dot charm to move at the speed of lightning. While the ever-flowing queen is not associated with Aria, the sheer difference of power between a queen and a princess, let alone a 1 dot charm, strongly suggests she scales to at least this level of speed.

All queens are speculated as being essentially abstract entities, with the queen of storms being used as evidence for this, and the queen of tears herself being suggested to somehow being the animating spirit of Alhambra and to embody the laws and principles as the invocation of Lacrima. All the queens are fundamentally tied to their magical invocation with Tears' being Lacrima. The Queen of Tears is potentially an abstract entity and as will be mentioned below can turn into intangible things regardless. 

Lacrima is an invocation of the emptiness where once things were, the invocation of the desperate and those who have lost. It manipulate darkness and silence, the void and the distant astral plane. The ever-flowing queen is the invocation of such manipulation. Her astral manipulation is strong enough that she allows ghosts to manifest within her city to the point that 80% of her populace are ghosts, showing that she has city level soul manipulation.

The basic power of Lacrima is to drain; it drains light, and energy, and hope itself. The queen has drained the light from the mortal world across the millennia to preserve her kingdom, a horrid act that breaks her spirit, but done because it need be done.  

Lacrima can be used for a wide variety of abilities. It can be used to tell when the target is lying or gather basic information from a target. It can create a line which tells the caster if someone crossed it, and can cast an enchantment on a target allowing the caster to always tell if the target has been hurt. Lacrima has been used to see the astral plane, and to know things from it. It can null emotional pain in the face of harsh necessity, and can be used for stealth purposes of hiding someone from the darkness and making them become silent.

Offensively, Lacrima is most commonly used to induce sorrow and despair in the target, a form of emotional manipulation. With the charm "Queen's Sorrow" for instance she can drown a target in her sorrow. This has been used for other abilities such as the charm "Quoth the Raven" which creates an enchanting song which drains the willpower of the target and lulls them to sleep or No Choice, No Hope which drains the hope of those who hear her voice, bringing them under her control. She can use Darkling's treasure to turn a thing into a trap for the forces of darkness, making it irresistable to them but damage them on contact and she can use "Long May She Reign" to bind a soul to the physical realm even if it would normally reincarnate keeping the fallen princesses of tears around as ghosts to defend Alhambra. She can use the charm "Salted Wounds" to massively increase the pain of all wounds on a target and she can channel Lacrima through her Naginata to drain life energy at melee or at range. Perhaps most impressively offensively, she can use the charm "The Old Allegiance" to control the fates of many people to force them to serve Alhambra although this ritual takes longer and may be impractical in combat.

The empress of the ravens can also use "Empty Heart" to become a manifestation of the void itself or "Shadowmask" to become a living shadow. She can use "Memento Mori" to summon ghosts to fight or heal her. With her version of "Barrier Jacket" she can create an armor that creates a foreboding sense of doom to intimidate enemies and she can can use "Sheltered by her Hand" to create a forcefield, and it is in fact this very invocations she uses to protect their bubble reality, though the technique causes the user despair to maintain the powerful shield. Finally of her Lacrima charms she has "Ferryman's Shroud" which allows dimensional travel to Alhambra and implied out of it if she wanted.

Outside of Lacrima, the Queen of Tears can warp her bubble reality, as it is implied that the eternal rain of Alhambra is caused by the queen's tears, which is why that rain is slightly salted. As she used to be the queen of cups it's possible she could also use the old charm of Fulmine for lightning manipulation if need be, although it's possible the fall caused her to lose her old abilities, especially as most technology doesn't work in Alhambra as they don't have the power for it which you'd think she could provide if she had too. As a noble she also has access to the general powers of a princess such as tranformation, light emanation, enhanced physical abilities, intellect, and social abilities. She would also have sensitivity, the ability to better feel the emotions of those around her, which is intense enough that a newly blossomed princess can be completely overwhelmed by just the amount of suffering and malevolence possessed by people around her normally. 

The Queen of Tears is a massively intelligent and skilled individual, having lived millenia and fought to protect her city that entire time. The princesses of diamonds note with concern just how much developments in the field of magical study seem to come from defectors from the queen of tears, suggesting that they have by far the most knowledge of magic and its ways. Her strongest weapon may be her ability to get others to join her, not neccesarily out of manipulation, but just because her despair and her sorrow run so deep and can be so overwhelming that even the hardest of hearts of the princesses are moved to want to help her. This may partially be due to their sensitivty and ability to actually feel the queen's despair, but almost any character with emotional sensing and is not pure evil is in danger of defecting to her side out of sheer empathy.

In terms of weaknesses, Lacrima as an invocation, the dark magic of despair and the void, is dangerous as it wears and damages one's soul and spirit to use, however this restriction doesn't apply when one is truly desperate, when one is fighting to defend the lives of the ones most dear to them, and when one is is the underworld or Alhambra which would pretty much always apply to the ever-flowing one. Queens are noted to almost never go against their invocation as it weakens that invocation and the Queen of Tears would be weaker outside Alhambra but again these would rarely come up.

Her biggest weakness by far is her sheer lack of will coming from her massive depression. Nobles have a belief score, representing their convinction and confidence in themselves, with starting characters having a score of 7 and reaching 0 causing one to become soul-dead or a monsterous dethroned. The Queen of Tears has a belief score of 1. She is dangerously on the brink of collapse, her psyche overwhelmed by grief and with basically no willpower to fight a difficult fight. In fairness to her though, the reason she is that way is that she was a gentle queen forced to use a despair-causing forcefield for millenia, protecting her city surrounded by all sides by a literal world of darkness. The fact that she hasn't broken completely yet is honestly quite a remarkable feat. She is the hope of the hopeless, the last strands one clings onto before giving up completely, the despair that one feels to keep from being completely dead in ones heart.

Name: The Queen of Tears, the Ever-Flowing One, Lady of Alhambra, the Last Empress

Origin: Princess: The Hopeful

Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Physical and Mental Capabilities, Potentially Abstract Nature, Reality-Warping, Life, Energy, and Hope-Draining, Soul Manipulation (City Scale), Emotional Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Sleep Inducing, Summoning (Ghosts), Darkness/Void Manipulation, Stealth, Enhanced Senses, Forcefield Creation, Transformation, Light Manipuation, Fate Manipulation (Possibly not Combat Applicable), Dimensional Travel, Possibly Lightning Manipulation

Weaknesses: Weaker outside Alhambra, can't go against her nature, massively depressed and low on willpower

Destructive Capacity: City Level

Range: Inter-Dimensional (Grants access to Lacrima across dimensions)

Speed: Massively Hypersonic (Faster then relatively weak Princesses of Spades who can move at the speed of lightning)

Durability: City Level

Stamina: Cosmically high, maintained a barrier for millennia

Standard Equipment: Her Naginata "Ever-Dutiful"

Intelligence: Vast, possibly the most skilled spellcaster in Princess: The Hopeful, far above most Graces who are extremely good manipulators, has fought for millenia

So how well would the Queen of Tears repel threats from other series?

In the DCU, the Ever-Flowing one would either do really incredibly well or would be stopped instantly without much in-between. This is because the verse is filled with entities vastly stronger than her, and with a fair number who can actually affect her even if she is a concept. The problem comes that a lot of characters are emotional sensers in DC, and as mentioned her greatest ability is her ability to convince people she's in the right via her sheer depression, it's not like a power one can resist or anything it's just feeling how broken she is. Kryptonians, Daxamites, and Tamaranians, all distantly related, can emotionally sense. Martians can emotionally sense. Azarathians can emotionally sense. Lanterns can emotionally sense. If a bunch of the big name characters were convinced of the rightness of her cause, it would cause massive chaos for the verse.

Even worse is the fact that her invocation is an archetypal power that would probably interfere with the Sphere of the Gods which could make her ludicrously powerful, like approaching a god tier powerful. This is especially because she has really good control of souls for DC, with each soul in DC being able to create their own platonic reality for their afterlife. If she's not stopped really quickly, which is very possible, then she probably becomes a massive threat on par with like a Trigon invasion.

However there is a group that I think would be uniquiely suited to dealing with her. In Princess the Hopeful: the Queen of Tears is opposed by the twilight queen the Queen of Storms, embodiment of all-consuming rage and hatred and her follows can uniquely resist the despair causing effects of the princesses of tears despair because it makes their rage stronger. I think the Red Lanterns would likely be able to stop the Queen of Tears using their inter-dimensional travel and rage based abilities especially given that the Queen of Tears very low willpower means she would have no resistance to the red light's mental effects and the Red Lanterns can arguably hit conceptuals as lantern lights can affect the electro-emotional spectrum entities.

In Marvel Comics, the Queen of Tears performs kind of similarly although she's much safer at the start and can't grow in power nearly as quickly making it a far less risky and rewarding verse. There are also plenty of emotional sensers in Marvel Comics, in particular the vast amount of psychics running around. 

Unlike DC the Queen of Tears doesn't have an easy access to cosmic power in Marvel, but on the other hand ability to hit conceptual entities is much more devoid from almost every universe in the multiverse. While none of her offenses individually would be that broken in Marvel, the sheer fact that almost every psychic on the planet would go into a depressive state obsessed with helping her or uncouncious from her presence would be cause massive difficulties. 

However the verse has a really good counter in the Hulk. The Hulk is empowered by sheer rage and not only can effect intangible things when enraged enough but outright absorbs dark magics tried to use against him meaning Lacrima would just be absorbed if the Queen of Tears tried to use it against him. Even if she tried to escape, he can simply punch through dimensional barriers to BFR her where her power is heavily limited. 

In the most famous tabletop RPG D&D the Queen of Tears would fit in well as a high level enemy, scaling to dragons who can create city-scale stoms and high-level adventurers who are able to lightning-time. Her abilities are actually pretty normal in the verse with most being able fairly easy to replicate spellls for high-level spellcasters save for possibly her fate manipulation and her city-scale soul manipulation. Even her possibly abstract nature isn't that big a deal as in D&D magic is a conceptual force that can even affect the true natures of beings from the outside realms which are conceptual in nature.

She could potentially be a danger if she encounters a powerful psychic race being able to convince them of her suffering into serving her end, though a lot of the strongest psychic races at this tier like Mind Flayers or Beholders are evil to the extent that they would not really be swayed by such despair, and would only perhaps feel demotivated to their usual causes. In general the Queen of Tears would be viewed as about as strong as a single high level spellcaster with perhaps some odd but not broken abilities.

In Yuki Yuna-verse, the Ever-Flowing one would be an immense and nearly unstoppable threat. While the Heroes could resist all her physical powers, their fairies explicitly can't stop the soul and fate manipulation of the dark queen, and she's as strong as their base state and faster too. Even in their Mankai form, and even if she's not abstract she would be able to avoid them by turning into a shadowform, which they can't affect.

Generally it would take the Shinju to stop her, but the problem comes from the Shinju is extremely liable to sympathize with the Queen of Tears, someone who also maintains a small world in a greater world of darkness, forced to allow for horrible deeds to take place to maintain the world. 

However the verse has two possible counters to her. It's possible the heroes could seal the Queen of Tears' soul if she is not physical, although they would be in danger while doing so as they can't resist her abilities. The other possible counter is Sonoko who seems to have a mild toonforce. Not enough to do most broken abilities, but enough that she can effect characters when they're undergoing a special effects loop and pull them out of it. Given that the Queen of Tears power is the power of despair and the reason Sonoko can use this toonforce is her optimistic bubbly nature, toonforce being the the power of optimism, it would make sense for her to beat the ever-flowing one via it.

In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the Queen of Tears....would basically just be a witch. She's a magical girl who fell to despair, transformed and created a city-sized dimension which she warps with her psychological state that can drive mortals into a horrendous suicidal despair. The Puella Magi-verse is uniquely suited to fighting these type of enemies. I made this blog specifically because I noticed the weird similarlity, like even the stats are about right.

Technically the Last Empress does have better soul manipulation then normal witches, but soul manipulation doesn't work normally on a Puella Magi as their soul is in their soul gem, not their body, which she would have no way of knowing. She does have a few more abilities that might be threatening in the verse but Pre-Akuma Homura is the I think the absolutely best counter to the Queen of Tears I've seen.

Homura is easily above most witches, putting her above the Queen of Tears, and can easily counter most of her arsenal. She has time stop, a power that works even queens and keeps her from escaping through dimensions. The Ever-Flowing one may be able to steal the light, the hope, the energy from people but Homura has the same but enough to work on a conceptual entity defeating even the Queen's abstract nature. Even the Queen's despair would not work for Homura is a character defined by her willpower that transcends time and which gave her the resolve to withstand the mental anguish of life after life of losing Madoka. This willpower is described as creating a miracle, a power that defies even fate and inevitability, showing that Homura would defeat even the Queen of Tear's fate manipulation. 

It's honestly quite the interesting the court of Tears lists Homura as its inspiration when Homura is such a perfect counter to its queen. While the queen's lack of willpower is her weakest quality, Homura's willpower is arguably her strongest, and would allow her to turn the queen's greatest strength against her, because Homura has faced the same despair the Queen has across these countless timelines facing darkness, and in doing so doesn't need to feel bad for the ever-flowing one, instead feeling assured in the rightfulness of their goals. Both are defined in their willingness to sacrifice anything to protect the one they love and so just as Homura knows she is willing to sacrifice herself to the darkness of constant struggle to save Madoka, she also knows she's willing to destroy the Last Empress.