Judeau

Judeau is a slight, blonde young man with green eyes, small enough that his build belies his skill in a fight. The official guidebook places him at eighteen years old, roughly 159 centimeters, and 49 kilograms. He carries twin short swords on his back along with a supply of throwing knives.

Easygoing to his core, Judeau stayed devoted to the Band of the Falcon even after Griffith's fall from grace stripped the group of its standing. Welcoming by nature, he was among the first to reach out to Guts and ease the newcomer into the ranks. His perception ran deep, letting him sense feelings others tried to bury, and he paired that insight with unusual self-knowledge: he understood he would never be the finest at any single thing, only capable at many, and that acceptance is precisely what drove him to follow the one who seemed best.

He kept to the edges of arguments, speaking up only when he had something worth adding. His tenderness toward Casca ran so deep that he set her happiness above his own; rather than press his feelings, he quietly rooted for her growing bond with Guts. When apostles closed in to kill her during the Eclipse, he refused to let her die, insisting the band lived on as long as she did. For all his talk of being smooth-tongued, he never managed to voice the one thing that mattered most to her, even at the very end.

Before the Falcon, Judeau traveled with a performing troupe as a tumbler, and it was there he came by the elf dust that later figures in his story. Leaving the entertainers behind, he fell in with Griffith's fledgling band alongside Corkus and Pippin, drawn like the rest by the White Falcon's magnetism, and stood among its founders when Casca joined. Once Guts enlists, Judeau is among the earliest to genuinely speak with him, explaining what binds the band together and predicting the swordsman will find his place. After Guts holds off a hundred Tudor soldiers, Judeau hands Casca the elf dust from his circus days to treat the wounded man, brushing aside her doubt that elves are real.

Years on, when Guts makes up his mind to depart and live for his own sake, Judeau and Corkus take him to a Wyndham tavern; there Judeau concedes he was wrong about Guts belonging, walks out with the departing swordsman, and gently urges him to pursue Casca, laying bare how little room Griffith's climb toward Princess Charlotte leaves for her. When the band is branded traitors and scattered, he supports Casca as she takes command in Griffith's absence and joins the squad that breaks their leader out of the Tower of Rebirth. His sharp mind carries the group through repeatedly: he identifies the Bakiraka assassins in the Wyndham sewers and, blinded by the dark, tracks a hidden javelin thrower by the sparks of his own thrown knives, then has Pippin strike larger sparks for light. He recognizes the Black Dog Knights, gauges the ruin of Griffith's severed tendons, and knows enough of exotic arms to warn Guts about Silat's chakram.

At the Eclipse everything ends. Swept with the others into the God Hand's realm and branded once Griffith accepts his sacrifice, Judeau rides to Casca's rescue as the apostles fall upon them. He shields her again and again, losing the use of an arm to one creature and taking a mortal wound from another, though a last throwing knife opens the way for Casca to finish it. Told to save herself, he refuses to be left behind, admits he lacks Guts' toughness, and follows her anyway. As his sight dims he gazes up at her, mourning that he never spoke that important thing, and dies of his wounds.