What Is the Work
Genshin Impact is about a traveler that goes on a trip around Teyvat in search of their twin sibling who becomes affiliated with the Abyss who want to ruin their natural order.
Who Is She
Focalors was the second and final God of Justice and Hydro Archon of Fontaine who was one of first Hydro Archon Egeria’s followers before being promoted to Archon after her sacrifice in Tunigi Hollow.
What Did She Do
After the death of Egeria, the first Hydro Archon, Focalors, a human transformed from among the initial batch of Oceanids, ascended to the throne and was placed there so that Egeria could find a solution to the prophecy. However, most of the other Oceanids were not content with this like toxic fanboys, as the waters of Fontaine eventually raged with pain and hatred upon Focalors' rule, and thus left Fontaine, among them being one of their strongest, Rhodeia of Loch.
However, Focalors spent most of her time cooking up a plan to put an end to the prophecy, which is to deceive the Heavenly Principles into thinking the prophecy is happening while saving the Fontainians midway to prevent Celestia from destroying Fontaine. This began with Focalors separating her divine and human halves, where Focalors, as a deity, would hide away in the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale with her Gnosis to gather Indemnitium collected from her human half Furina de Fontaine, who was cursed immortal for Focalors' lifespan, and set up to pretend to be the Hydro Archon, succeeding for 500 years with the plot broken once Furina is revealed to be an imposter, speeding up the prophecy.
Focalors would collect the Indemnitium used to prepare for her own execution to return her authority to the Hydro dragon Sovereign Neuvillette, thereby destroying the Hydro Archon's divine seat, to return Neuvillette complete control of the Primordial Sea and the full extent of his powers, allowing him to turn the Fontainians back into humans, sparing them from the prophecy.
What Makes Her Close to Pure Good
Focalors does more than passing the standards of her work as her execution was central to saving thousands of people from being dissolved in the prophecy as Neuvillette required the full extent of his power as a portion of it had became the Hydro Archon's seat which had to be reabsorbed into his authority for him to be able turn the Fontainians back to humans. To make this possible, she also makes Furina pretend to be a deity to protect the thousands who would be doomed by the prophecy over the course of 500 years whilst silently collecting a portion of the Indemnitium used to power the Fontaine region to create a guillotine for her execution with her Gnosis.
Focalors does not have much of an issue with admirability as while other posthumous Archons like Greater Lord Rukkhadevata and Baal have longer lasting sacrifices, Rukkhadevata had the Akasha to connect minds, the Varuna Contraption to grow a forest and almost all the knowledge recorded in Teyvat, whereas Baal has no on-screen appearances other than in flashbacks and has access to puppet generation technology, Focalors only has her Gnosis after splitting making it hard for her to be directly compared to them. As for the present day deities, Zhongli has a coalition of magical beings and their descendants/apprentices known as the Adepti, creating entire landmass and his Exuvia form which he used to fake his death, Ei has the Shogun puppet and the Musou no Hitotachi while Nahida like her predecessor carries all the knowledge in the world and can create constructs like a mini Akasha Terminal in addition to using living peoples' bodies as her vessel, all of which she doesn’t have, making her only comparable to Venti who already has way less resources due to his indirect rule, helping Focalors pass the high admirable standard in her divine resource tier.
What Prevents Her from Being Pure Good
Firstly, the waters being tainted with hatred and pain is highly implied to be an issue out of her control, since Endora described them as "desiring only to keep their dreams of yesteryear alive," making the Oceanids departing Fontaine at the time clearly at fault. Arrogance is not much of an issue for Focalors either as while the Hydro ascension stones describe her as a haughty god who believes that her ideas are spotless, her actual appearance in the story has those traits extremely diminished in the present day.
The real problem here though is her curse on Furina and placing the burden of Archonhood on her for 500 years which sounds very severe unlike most common one-time jerk or rough moments which are not preventing due to being minor or pragmatic, due to traumatising Furina and stripping her of her peace as long as she lived, making it clear that she grew to be aware of the curse's side effects despite not knowing initially, because in her final conversation with Neuvillette she makes it clear that she left Furina in the dark about the plan saying that she had to deceive herself to deceive others and in an earlier scene she admits the curse prevented her from living in pursuit of happiness proving that she eventually knew the curse's side effects, making her forced to play the role as the main character while the prophecy will strike sooner or later, which Neuvillette calls her out for by pointing that Furina's mind is no stronger than that of any other ordinary human being.
To continue, it is not shown to be subverted enough despite Neuvillette forgiving her in their final interaction, since there are mentions of her saying she owes Furina an apology implying a good amount of remorse. The issue though is that she doesn’t completely give an apology to Furina even though the curse negatively impacted her mental state very much, as we only hear her thanking Furina and wanting her to live happily as a human with nothing else in between, making this very much similar to Travis Phelps, whose prevention is that there is barely any time to show he truly redeemed despite being remorseful and forgiven.
Final Verdict
Firm keeper.