Suzaku

A cascade of brown hair reaches well past Suzaku's shoulders, framing a face set with a pair of small, dark eyes.

Greed and deceit define nearly everything Suzaku does. He thinks nothing of forging documents to justify his claims on land he covets, and he happily manufactures border incidents so that any retaliation can be dressed up as self-defence. Every situation becomes a lever for his own advancement, and he expects his desires to be satisfied at once. That impatience betrays him when Kaguya's looks captivate him: what he mistakes for love is only a fleeting infatuation, and it curdles into terror the moment she wipes out his soldiers with ease.

Suzaku travels to the Land of Ancestors to meet its ruler, Tenji, presenting an old record that supposedly proves a lakeside stretch near the shared border belongs to the Land of That. He demands the territory be handed over and promises to return for an answer, mentioning in passing that word of Kaguya has reached him. Rather than wait honestly, he stations archers along the frontier to provoke a clash his larger army can answer, and the next night he and the fellow minister Genbu march a great force to the boundary.

A spy warns him that Kaguya is being relocated to the capital, so Suzaku orders her capture and personally directs the raid. Her beauty stuns him at first, yet his wonder collapses into dread as she massacres the men sent to seize her. The following day he arrives at the peace talks with a court lady to corroborate the slaughter, insisting that Tenji enforce his own decree against any who strike at the Land of That. When Genbu raises concerns, Suzaku brushes them aside, content to let the Ancestors chase Kaguya while the two of them carve up the rest of the country. Their takeover begins that very night, but both ministers and their whole army are swept into Kaguya's Infinite Tsukuyomi and fixed to the roots of the God Tree. His name, written with the characters for Vermillion Bird, points to one of the four mythological creatures of the Chinese constellations.