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Okay. This is ... mostly me trying to get my ducks in a row in regards to post-game Kuja, but for those of you who might be interested, have an essay. It will likely be rambly, fair warning. Also, there will be spoilers since I can't do this without first explaining in-game Kuja.
To start off, the Kuja we see throughout canon is more or less a flamboyant, narcissistic bastard with a flare for being poetic. He quite happily encourages Brahne to start wars with more or less everyone, shows little to no remorse about thoroughly destroying Alexandria, and routinely makes soulless death-puppets. Not to mention the part where he abandoned his younger brother on the planet he was set to destroy. But for all this he is not happy about his lot in life. Or rather, he doesn't like playing puppet to Garland - this is one of the main reasons he's living on Gaia as opposed to Terra. He simply does not like Garland. At all. This is why he stole the Invincible and why he's picked up a sideline in collecting things-of-power (most notably, eidolons and later, Trance). So that he can kick Garland off the throne and live his own life. Garland in turn doesn't really seem to mind that his Angel of Death is bumming around Gaia as long as people keep dying, so it works out.
And then the party heads off to Terra. Kuja follows them, for ... reasons we really don't know since he actually says as much himself. "I can't believe I actually returned to this place, but... Soon...
Soon, the power will be mine alone." I'm going to assume he means the power Garland controls? Since he mentions that both Gaia and Terra will know who rules over them. Not surprising given his general me > you attitude. I am just going to be assuming that he was hoping that the party would kill Garland for him. Which... they almost do! And then Kuja kicks him off a cliff :D. Sadly, this is not the end you'd think it would be. Somehow Garland still manages to speak up for long enough to tell Kuja that he's going to be dying very soon. Kuja snaps. Hard. And since he was already Tranced, destroys Terra with Ultima. From there, he goes on to attempting to destroy the crystal, thus ending all existence. After all, why should the world exist without him?
Whether or not he does manage to destroy the crystal is unclear, but as of this point in canon the following things can be said of Kuja: He's manipulative, flamboyant, narcissistic to a fault, has little to no regard for life other than his own, and absolutely hates being under someone's control.
The major problem in playing post-game Kuja like that is his death scene, in which we get a total 180 of his personality. Not only does he save Zidane and the rest of the party from the wreckage of the Iifa Tree, but after Zidane risks his life to try and save Kuja we get this line: "After you guys beat me, I had nothing left...nothing more to lose. Then, I finally realized what it means to live... I guess I was too late." Quite a far cry from his earlier "Spare me the lecture. Lives come and go all the time. What's the big deal?" from earlier in the game. Admittedly, this is possibly just a 'as I lay dying' type of thing, but I have been playing him as if that realization is something that he brought forward into camp. So as of this moment, as things stand he is at the least not quite so willing to outright kill people. Which is a good thing all things considered.
However, he is still generically :| on people in general and very much still an ass (I may have been playing him as too... polite, I'm not sure?). Also, he still has yet to realize that he's just as trapped in the cage as everyone else. This was mostly done so that he could settle into camp a bit without being >| at everyone; now that he's gotten used to the place and picked up a few friends/acquaintances, I'll probably have him figure out that he's trapped too fairly soon.
So basically, my take on post-game Kuja is that he's a bit nicer to people as a whole (especially Zidane) although he's still an ass half the time, very much still flamboyant and poetic, and is mostly unconcerned with how people see him. Also, he feels very little remorse about trying to destroy Gaia or about the towns he destroyed directly and indirectly and his issues with being caged/a puppet are not going anywhere any time soon. In contrast however, his issues with death aren't nearly so prominent - this is partly because he's realized that to live is to die, partly because Zidane's told him (more than once, even) that he's not going to be forgotten, and partly because the way I see it he mostly snapped as hard as he did when Garland told him he was going to die was because he hadn't thought it possible for him to die - now that he has he's more aware of the possibility. That he can save certainly doesn't hurt, even if the moogles messed with his last batch of save data.
Questions/comments/what have you are more than welcome, and I will work on getting him out more often in general.
To start off, the Kuja we see throughout canon is more or less a flamboyant, narcissistic bastard with a flare for being poetic. He quite happily encourages Brahne to start wars with more or less everyone, shows little to no remorse about thoroughly destroying Alexandria, and routinely makes soulless death-puppets. Not to mention the part where he abandoned his younger brother on the planet he was set to destroy. But for all this he is not happy about his lot in life. Or rather, he doesn't like playing puppet to Garland - this is one of the main reasons he's living on Gaia as opposed to Terra. He simply does not like Garland. At all. This is why he stole the Invincible and why he's picked up a sideline in collecting things-of-power (most notably, eidolons and later, Trance). So that he can kick Garland off the throne and live his own life. Garland in turn doesn't really seem to mind that his Angel of Death is bumming around Gaia as long as people keep dying, so it works out.
And then the party heads off to Terra. Kuja follows them, for ... reasons we really don't know since he actually says as much himself. "I can't believe I actually returned to this place, but... Soon...
Soon, the power will be mine alone." I'm going to assume he means the power Garland controls? Since he mentions that both Gaia and Terra will know who rules over them. Not surprising given his general me > you attitude. I am just going to be assuming that he was hoping that the party would kill Garland for him. Which... they almost do! And then Kuja kicks him off a cliff :D. Sadly, this is not the end you'd think it would be. Somehow Garland still manages to speak up for long enough to tell Kuja that he's going to be dying very soon. Kuja snaps. Hard. And since he was already Tranced, destroys Terra with Ultima. From there, he goes on to attempting to destroy the crystal, thus ending all existence. After all, why should the world exist without him?
Whether or not he does manage to destroy the crystal is unclear, but as of this point in canon the following things can be said of Kuja: He's manipulative, flamboyant, narcissistic to a fault, has little to no regard for life other than his own, and absolutely hates being under someone's control.
The major problem in playing post-game Kuja like that is his death scene, in which we get a total 180 of his personality. Not only does he save Zidane and the rest of the party from the wreckage of the Iifa Tree, but after Zidane risks his life to try and save Kuja we get this line: "After you guys beat me, I had nothing left...nothing more to lose. Then, I finally realized what it means to live... I guess I was too late." Quite a far cry from his earlier "Spare me the lecture. Lives come and go all the time. What's the big deal?" from earlier in the game. Admittedly, this is possibly just a 'as I lay dying' type of thing, but I have been playing him as if that realization is something that he brought forward into camp. So as of this moment, as things stand he is at the least not quite so willing to outright kill people. Which is a good thing all things considered.
However, he is still generically :| on people in general and very much still an ass (I may have been playing him as too... polite, I'm not sure?). Also, he still has yet to realize that he's just as trapped in the cage as everyone else. This was mostly done so that he could settle into camp a bit without being >| at everyone; now that he's gotten used to the place and picked up a few friends/acquaintances, I'll probably have him figure out that he's trapped too fairly soon.
So basically, my take on post-game Kuja is that he's a bit nicer to people as a whole (especially Zidane) although he's still an ass half the time, very much still flamboyant and poetic, and is mostly unconcerned with how people see him. Also, he feels very little remorse about trying to destroy Gaia or about the towns he destroyed directly and indirectly and his issues with being caged/a puppet are not going anywhere any time soon. In contrast however, his issues with death aren't nearly so prominent - this is partly because he's realized that to live is to die, partly because Zidane's told him (more than once, even) that he's not going to be forgotten, and partly because the way I see it he mostly snapped as hard as he did when Garland told him he was going to die was because he hadn't thought it possible for him to die - now that he has he's more aware of the possibility. That he can save certainly doesn't hurt, even if the moogles messed with his last batch of save data.
Questions/comments/what have you are more than welcome, and I will work on getting him out more often in general.