Names
Ajax
The name “Ajax” comes from the Greek hero who fought with the Achaeans in the Trojan War. He’s portrayed as being a very strong, skilled fighter but also kind of an arrogant, silly jock boy. He also has a brother named Teucer, just like Childe.
Obviously, he’s mentioned in the Iliad, where he is second only to his cousin Achilles in strength — this is loosely referenced in one of the notes you can find in the Narzissenkreuz Ordo:
He was the second-strongest warrior in his alliance.1
In the Odyssey, Ajax makes an appearance when Odysseus travels to the underworld — he refuses to speak to Odysseus, but Odysseus basically tells him he was one of the best of all the Greeks. It’s a really touching part of the story that makes me a little emo.
He’s also a prominent character in Troilus and Cressida, where he’s chosen to fight Hector in one-on-one combat in place of Achilles, who is busy wallowing and being depressed. The other Greeks spend a lot of time making fun of him in this play, and it’s honestly very funny.
As with all other names pulled from Greek mythology in Genshin, we can assume the name Ajax comes from the time of the ancient unified civilization .
Jillian
Before we had more in-game information about Ajax the historical figure, I thought the name must have come from Enkanomiya. Now that we know he was named after an old hero, I think we can kinda rule that out. It does kinda help place him on the timeline, though — this dude lived a looooong time ago. Probably before Enkanomiya sank.
Sophocles
Please read Sophocles’ Ajax — it’s a great play, it won’t take you very long to read, and I promise it’s relevant. They literally directly referenced it in that same Narissenkreuz Ordo note from before:
“Io, Io, Pan! That which lies beneath the great sea!”1
In the Sophocles play, the line “Io, Io, Pan!” is spoken by the chorus — in this moment, they’re relieved because they think Ajax has been talked off the ledge (they’re wrong).
This play tells the story of Ajax’s death. Sometime after the events of the Iliad, Ajax is upset because he thinks he should have been given Achilles’ armor after his death, but the other Greek leaders voted to give it to Odysseus instead.
Ajax flies into a murderous rage and plans to kill Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Menelaus — but Athena intervenes, and he ends up killing a bunch of their cattle, seeing them as humans instead of animals. When he realizes what he’s done, he commits suicide out of shame.
Then, we get to the real heart of the play (and my favorite part): Teucer finds his body and wants to give him a proper burial, but Menelaus tries to forbid him. An argument between the two ensues, and Teucer just wrecks him — talking about how Ajax wasn’t fighting in the war for him or his men, yet helped him anyway; how Menelaus and the others hated Ajax for no reason, when he never did anything wrong to them.
MENELAUS: Is it just to defend a killer?
TEUCER: How strange, to be killed and yet living!
MENELAUS: A god saved me, but in his mind I was dead.
TEUCER: So the gods saved you and now you dishonor the gods?
Eventually, Odysseus convinces Agamemnon and Menelaus that even their enemies deserve proper burials, and that failure to do so would be to go against the will of the gods. I find it so interesting that the play opens with Odysseus talking shit about Ajax to Athena, and ends with him defending Ajax and offering to help Teucer with the burial.
The final lines of the play, spoken by the chorus, are:
Mortals know what their eyes can see,
but of what will come out of time there is
no seeing, no knowing what the end will be.
Childe
Childe is a term for a “young lord” who has not yet achieved knighthood. If we just leave it there, it does make sense. He’s the youngest of the Harbingers, with the most to prove.
I think there are a few other sources of inspiration for Childe’s title, though. One of them is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narrative poem by Lord Byron. I’m still making my way through this one, but I definitely see some of the inspiration for Childe — the way he’s always traveling far away from home, never quite satisfied. The way he’s lonely.
I also came across a fairy tale called Childe Rowland, which inspired Robert Browning’s poem, “Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came.” The story of Childe Rowland going to the dark tower reminds me somewhat of Childe falling into the abyss as a kid.
Tartaglia
Tartaglia is one of the Commedia Dell’arte stock characters. I don’t know a ton about Commedia Dell’arte, and it’s weirdly difficult to dig into it online, so unfortunately I have nothing to offer here. For some of the other Harbingers, it’s not too hard to figure out why they’ve been given the role they have, but I’m not really sure where we’re going with “Tartaglia” yet.
Footnotes
-
Note from the Narzissenkreuz Ordo ↩ ↩2