Genshin Impact just revealed the villain it's been teasing for 6 years

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Published Jun 26, 2026, 11:31 AM EDT

Ladies and gentleman, meet the Tsaritsa

A Pale woman dressed in silver jewelry and fur cross her hands

The Tsaritsa's shadow has loomed over Genshin Impact since the game's release in 2020. Yet players have never seen hide nor hair of the mysterious figure pulling strings across every major update to Hoyoverse's open-world gacha RPG. Until today.

A new trailer for Genshin Impact version 7.0 that released this morning, June 26, finally gives players a look at Genshin Impact's greatest antagonist. Visually, the Tsaritsa (full name: Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya), is a tall, slender woman with incredibly pale skin, silver white hair, ice blue bordering on white eyes, and pointed ears. The outfit she wears in the trailer also shows light blue and silver tones. As the Cryo Archon, the Tsaritsa controls ice powers, so her design evokes snow and chill. She will be voiced in English by Lara Korba, who plays Irrheia in the gacha title Path to Nowhere.

The excitement over the Tsaritsa's reveal stems from her role in the story of Genshin Impact so far. While this trailer marks her first official appearance, characters in the game have been speaking of her with equal fear and admiration for years. The central conflict of Genshin Impact revolves around her machinations to collect powerful items called Gnoses with the ultimate goal of using their combined power to overthrow the creators of Teyvat (the game's world).

Basically, the Tsaritsa wants to attack and dethrone god, and it has been the players' goal to stop her. "Death is not the enemy of love," the Tsaritsa says in the trailer, "The real enemy is the blessings given by deluded gods." Her mission has been enforced by powerful characters called Harbingers, many of whom have served as big bads during the major arcs of Genshin Impact's story so far.

Genshin Impact has been building up to a huge confrontation between the player and the Tsaritsa since 2020. The arrival of the Tsaritsa coincides with version 7.0, which will bring the game to the setting of Snezhnya. The snowy region is the seventh major nation in Teyvat and the only one missing from the game so far. It is also the region ruled by the Tsaritsa. While it hasn't been stated by Hoyoverse, version 7.0 feels like a climactic finale.

While the potential conclusion to the story Genshin Impact has been building to since release is exciting, it also raises questions about what comes after. It is very possible that, as has been the case with previous villains, the Tsaritsa is more of a grey figure that players learn to work with towards a common goal. Perhaps finally meeting face to face will allow the mysterious figure to explain the reasoning behind her schemes. Whatever the case, version 7.0 will have huge ramifications for the future of Genshin Impact when it releases on August 12.

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