Spoiler: Endgame
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I wound up saving before making my choice of "Maiden" and seeing a few different ones, just to get an idea what they're like. Seems like the male ones are all going for a "close friendship" angle, not an actual romance, which is somewhat disappointing but not terribly surprising for a Japanese-made game. The female ones are more obviously romantic, though I feel like more effort went into some than others.
Case in point, my favorite scene easily was Berengaria (and not just because she was already my pick). She actually starts the conversation by outright telling you she's not interested in the ring, even before you offer it, and you need to pick extra dialogue options to get her to reconsider. She's concerned about the high price of breaking the bond, given she doesn't believe there can be any guarantee neither of you will ever turn on each other, especially given she's from Drakenhold and has previously made clear that if conflict ever breaks out between Cornia and Drakenhold again, she'll be on Drakenhold's side. Trying to reassure her that you'd never turn on her fails utterly; she basically calls you naive and walks away (though you can still select her to try again after this, slightly disappointingly). Telling her that's a risk you're willing to take if it means spending you life with her is what gets through to her - she clearly both respects how bold you're being and wasn't expecting you to harbor feelings that strong for her, and this leads to the only version of the scene that I saw where Alain outright asks her to marry him, rather than just implying it, and ends with a much more touching scene between them than the rest that I watched. Compared to that, the rest of the scenes I watched were fairly ho-hum, particularly Nina and Aramis.
As for the ending itself, I'm not entirely sure what the point of the reveal with Queen Illenia was. Just to provide that last branch to the ending, I guess? But it kind of raises some questions they don't address, such as why she doesn't look like she's aged at all in the last decade, or why Alain would be being crowned King if the rightful Queen is still alive. Sure, she could choose to abdicate for him, but the issue isn't addressed at all when it probably should be. Speaking of the branching ending though, even though freeing Galerius' soul (and saving Illenia) is obviously the better ending, I did rather like the "striking Gallerius down" ending scene, very dramatic and cool. If that one didn't leave Baltro as a major hanging plot thread, I'd almost prefer it.
Also, yeesh, I really don't get the point of dumping all those new characters on you in the post-game bonus mission - especially not the couple of them that were pretty minor villains who don't even have a unique class. There's nothing left to do with them after that mission, the game doesn't have any sort of New Game+, and even if you had saved side-quests for after you'd gotten them you'll be over-leveled and steamroll them without trying, since everybody from that mission is joining you with their level already in the 40s and nothing scales in this game. Just a bizarre design choice to me, it doesn't make any sense.