Asbel Lhant

Asbel Lhant is the main protagonist of Tales of Graces games.

He is the eldest son of Aston Lhant, the Lord of the Lhantterritory, located in the border zone between the countries of Windor and Fendel. From an early age, he was taught the skills necessary to inherit the title of Lord by his father and his butler, Frederic Barnes, but secretly aspires to become a knight. He one day decides to enlist in the Knight Training Academy in the capital of Windor and became devoted to his training, eventually growing into a polite and diligent young swordsman.

In the AWA fics, Asbel is a student at the AWA Academy.

Appearance
Asbel has dark brown-red hair and blue eyes, a trait he shares with the rest of his family. As a knight in Barona, he wears a green, long-sleeved shirt, lined with blue accents and gold buttons. Over it, he wears a long-sleeved white coat with gold buttons that keep each sleeve tied together. The coat has gray shoulder areas and is blue on the inside. He has a black scabbard that holds his sword. In the future arc, his most noticeable feature is his single purple eye.

Personality
Asbel is a spirited young man with a very strong sense of justice, even more so for that of a knight. He fails to turn away from those in need, and once he has decided on a path it is unlikely that anyone would deter him from it. He may be seen as naive and young, as Malik often states, usually stating ideals considered impossible, such as "saving everyone". After losing someone important seven years prior to the main scenario, he becomes a lot more self-aware about his actions and takes responsibility for his own actions; but at a cost, Asbel during his time as a knight ruminates too often about the past, as well as showing initial difficulty in trying to fully accept others' assistance (an issue that Richard himself deals with and relates to) until later in the story.

As a form of comic relief, Asbel at times can be normally quite dense towards the atmosphere of others around himself while also being too serious at being unable to take jokes and certain levels of sarcasm (despite also showing a low level of tolerance for Pascal's antics). His feelings for Cheria are often glossed over by his duty to maintain the world's peace and his friendships with others, whiel also being blissfully unaware of both Bailey and Raymond's affections for her; once he is able to settle down, Asbel's own feelings for Cheria soon come to light in the future arc.

Abilities
As a child, Asbel's fighting style relied on fighting with one sword with both hands while slashing and striking enemies. He was also able to use a number of artes that did not continue with his other abilities as he grew older. However, the style he uses is somewhat crude/unrefined, making it so that he clubs away at his targets with wide swings and decisive strikes. Compared to the other protagonists, Asbel also has a larger variety of elemental properties on his artes.

As an adult, Asbel refines his fighting style and instead uses two different ones; first is the Sheathed Blade Artes Style, where Asbel's sword is almost always sheathed when active. The second is Drawn Blade Burst Style, with its Japanese name and overall concept being modeled after the actual battoujutsu-style that originated from Japan; as such, Asbel fights more like a Japanese-swordsman as opposed to using a typical Western-based sword style, even with swords that are of a non-katana-shape akin to his starting weapon as an adult. The only exceptions are certain advanced artes where he will draw his sword to finish his attack, sheathing it again afterward akin to the fictional portrayals of iaidou. This makes Asbel rather unique compared to the other knights of the academy who also use sword styles, as well as making Asbel out of most Tales characters make use of one of the closest representations of Japanese swordsmanship thus far.

Asbel as an adult mostly makes use of kicks and striking with the sheath of his blade to attack when using his initial style, as well as occasional battoujutsu-based slashes with some iaidou. His Burst Style makes use of his drawn sword, activated by pressing the "Cancel" button as well as involving a variety of sword techniques such as two-handed slashes. His Burst Style artes often have two different animations which alternate if the same arte is used consecutively within a combo. These Burst Artes also have a few altered arte variations that allow him to activate various Artes Style attacks during a Burst combo, if a specific chain of attacks is used.

In Tales of Graces ƒ, Asbel's Accelerate Mode is called Spiral Surge, which summons a dark flame to surround his body to deal damage.

Trivia

 * Asbel appears in a special crossover DVD with Haseo, the main character of both .hack//Roots and .hack//G.U., available if the game .hack//LINK was pre-ordered in Japan. In addition to this, Haseo can obtain Asbel's clothing as a costume within the game, and in Tales of Graces ƒ, Asbel can obtain Haseo's "Xth Form" costume as DLC. This is mostly a voice actor allusion, as Takahiro Sakurai voices both characters in Japanese.
 * Asbel's clothing appears as a downloadable costume for the main character in the Namco Bandai game, Gods Eater Burst.