Zidane Tribal is the main protagonist of Final Fantasy IX. He is a thief who works for the Tantalus Theater Troupe. His name has varied in spelling according to the game's localization as "Yitán" (Spanish), "Gidan" (Italian) and "Djidane" (French).
Zidane began his life as an "Angel of Death" created by Garland. Long ago, the people of a planet named Terra realized that their world was dying and as they had done several times before, they planned to save their civilization through the assimilation of another planet, Gaia. The people of Terra left their physical bodies and locked their souls in Pandemonium to be watched over by Garland until the Fusion's completion. However, the original Fusion was a disastrous failure, leaving Gaia's surface in ruin and ending up with Terra shifting inside the planet of Gaia.
Kuja, infuriated by Garland's decision to create another, more powerful Genome, deposited Zidane on Gaia and abandoned him there. Young Zidane, completely unaware of his mission, ended up in Lindblum where he was raised by Baku as a member of the Tantalus band of thieves and only remembering one thing of his childhood years: a blue light.