"Don't mistake me for royalty," he says, and now he's wearing a faint smile that's more wry than anything. "I'm sure that I could have been, had I fought for it in the senate. But I've always preferred the beasts in the wild to those particular monsters."

How annoyed must his superiors have been, when he left - every time Balthier has lent his insight to Jack's political notions, it's been with a keen eye. Effortless, almost. (Then again, that could easily be why he so badly wanted to run from it.)