Father
The Search for Wyatt Lightfellow;
Chris's father disappeared from her life when she was a young girl. He simply left for battle and never came back. Everyone is sure he must be dead, but there's a nagging loss of closure. Though her mother, Anna, is also dead, Chris feels the empty place where her fortther should be far more than the loss of her mother. I don't think she has much of a memory of her mother. She remembers her father. The manga shows a young Chris dreaming about the day when she can accompany her father on the battlefield as a fellow knight of Zexen. Even when her father vanishes, she carries on that dream. The memory of her father is part of what fueled her determination to get through the military academy, the prime motivation of her choice to become a knight.
The sight of her father's armor still causes a strong reaction in her heart. Coupled with the igniting effects of Sarah's spell, finding his armor in the Karaya village causes her to wish death upon all that dwell there. In this rage, her past clouding her present, she kills a young boy. Lulu was attacking her, but that doesn't change anything that matters.
So, when another village is burning and a strange Karayan man tells Chris to seek the Flame Champion if she would find her father, she listens. She leaves her homeland and her responsibilities to scour the enemy countryside in search of a legend.
Nash Latkje knows more than he should.
In the manga, Nash tells Chris that her father is alive. That he was one of the Flame Champion's companions during the first Fire Bringer War, and that he holds the True Water Rune, granting him effective immortality. Chris is heartbroken: if her father really is alive, then why did he abandon her? She doesn't understand, and sets out with Nash to find him.
In the game, the mystery of Chris's father isn't revealed until Chris returns to Brass Castle and her journey is over. When the Masked Bishop and his group of ne'er-do-wells locate the bearer of the True Water Rune, the Firebringer is not very far behind. But it is too late. Jimba of the Karaya clan, Wyatt Lightfellow in another life, is dying. Before he goes, he tries to explain to his daughter why he never came home. The Howling Voice guild was after him, and Nash is sorta kinda proof of how much Harmonia loves true runes. In order to protect his family and the rune, Wyatt Lightfellow had to die. Before finally passing away, he assures Chris that he loves her and always has. The True Water Rune is then passed on to Chris, or, if Chris is the Flame Champion, Hugo.
Will the real Wyatt Lightfellow please stand up?
While the events are touching and they give Chris definite closure, it's hard to imagine she's completely satisfied. After all, she had just learned the previous Flame Champion had sealed away his rune to live a normal, mortal life with his wife. But of course, she loves her father, and that's really all that needs to be said.
Much of what motivated Chris in becoming a knight was making her father proud. After she killed Lulu at Karaya village, she wondered if she were really doing the right thing. Would her father be proud of her? The new lead concerning her father's whereabouts came at a complex time in her life. She needed her father's approval more than ever, and so she dropped everything to look for him. However, I think it's important in the original game that she didn't find her father or learn of his whereabouts until after she had closed that chapter of her life. She made her peace with herself without his help. By the time she does meet him, she doesn't need him anymore.