Petrine Speculation [Spoilers]

[DH_Ninja]

So I was talking with a friend the other day and I mentioned Petrine from PoR and by some chance I also looked at an image of Renning right after and I noticed something.

They've got the same exact hair and eye color. Giving it a little bit more thought I also realized they share the same class. Now there's not a whole lot of information out on either of these characters save for one is branded and has a hatred of Laguz and the other was part of the royal family.

Petrine is fighting with Daein and has a lance specialization while Renning is with Crimea and has a Sword specialization. Lances beat swords according to the weapon triangle. Renning for some reason was also sparred and was warped and twisted into a weapon for reasons unknown.

I don't know if I'm pulling at strings but does anyone think there's more to these two than once thought or at least there there may be more going on?

[MRDRHAWK]

They fucked.

The end result was Elincia *shot*

[-Cynthia-]

Petrine is Renning's half sister or something you're thinking? (which would make her Elincia's aunt....weird) There's not much evidence for it I'm afraid, but it would be interesting.

[DH_Ninja]

Possibly but I was thinking more bastard child but half sister seems viable as well. It's all speculation.

[Snowy_One]

Honestly, it's more likely that, assuming there is a connection, Petrine was the half-sister/bastard child of Renning. Obviously there is no concrete evidence to support it. People can have the same hair-color and have 0 relations, there are a ton of mounted units, there are plenty of units who use mono-lances, and I'm sure that, somewhere in the Daien army, there was a unit with matching hair color who was mounted and used lances which no one would dare to consider being related for any reason.

However, speculatively, it is certainly not impossible that someone in the Crimean royal family couldn't keep it in their pants and Renning ended up with a half-sister/daughter via a Laguz. IMO, it seems pretty clear that there was supposed to be at least some subplot regarding her that simply never came about. Which is sad since both her and Bryce seemed to have a lot of potential while Renning could have just been 'shmuck who touched the emblem and went bonkers' in terms of character development. While the concrete proof is non-existent, I'm going to say 'sure. Makes her more interesting and she really should have gotten more screen-time'.

[bookofholsety]

Renning for some reason was also sparred and was warped and twisted into a weapon for reasons unknown.

actually, those reasons aren't unknown. Bastian explicitly talks about how and why Renning survived (sort of) in part 4 chapter 5:

Bastian

Duke Renning was apparently killed three years ago...But as you can see, he is still alive. Duke Renning was one of the strongest warriors in Crimea, and while Daein tried to kill him, he survived. When the Mad King heard of his skill, he had Renning kidnapped and gave him the drug that creates Feral Ones. This drug made Duke Renning even stronger, but shattered his mind.

he was too strong to be killed the first time and we all know by now how much Ashnard likes strong people. not exactly an intricate or foolproof explanation but it gets the job done

that said, potentially interesting theory

[Lord Glenn]

Honestly, it's more likely that, assuming there is a connection, Petrine was the half-sister/bastard child of Renning. Obviously there is no concrete evidence to support it. People can have the same hair-color and have 0 relations, there are a ton of mounted units, there are plenty of units who use mono-lances, and I'm sure that, somewhere in the Daien army, there was a unit with matching hair color who was mounted and used lances which no one would dare to consider being related for any reason.

However, speculatively, it is certainly not impossible that someone in the Crimean royal family couldn't keep it in their pants and Renning ended up with a half-sister/daughter via a Laguz. IMO, it seems pretty clear that there was supposed to be at least some subplot regarding her that simply never came about. Which is sad since both her and Bryce seemed to have a lot of potential while Renning could have just been 'shmuck who touched the emblem and went bonkers' in terms of character development. While the concrete proof is non-existent, I'm going to say 'sure. Makes her more interesting and she really should have gotten more screen-time'.

With regards to the coincidental aspect of the first paragraph, don't forget that this is the same game that had Renning's portrait hidden in the data and, when lined up with Bertram's, provided very convincing circumstances that they were indeed the same person. (Not to mention the (battle) conversation with Elincia.) It was also the game that left enough bread crumbs through conversations and hidden data to piece together the Zelgius theory well before Radiant Dawn was released. Coincidences tend to evaporate into fact in the Tellius series.

Now, when looking at this? The hair color is extremely close in shade and it should be noted that even Lucia and Geoffrey do not have exactly identical RGB values for the colors making up their hair. The eyes are a little off between the two, though. While I love the idea of the theory, I should note a few things. From the few "families" that we get a view of that have a member that is Branded, said member does not seem to share hair colors with their parents or siblings. Soren has neither Ashnard nor Almedha's hair color (which does bring the coincidence thing back in, since Ashnard and Pelleas had a remarkably similar hair color). Micaiah and Sanaki do not share the same hair color, despite being sisters.

With Almedha looking for a child bearing resemblance to her or Ashnard, plus the various other examples in the game (Elena -> Ike, Greil -> Mist, Brom -> Meg, etc.), it is obvious that the genetics of Tellius follows a reasonable ruleset of inheriting hair color from a parent while allowing for some deviance in shade/hue (Elincia's hair being more vivid and bright than Renning's, for example). Based on the observable evidence, it would seem unlikely that Petrine and Renning are related as half-siblings and share a parent. It is, however, given the decelerated aging of those marked as Branded, possible that Petrine is one of Renning's ancestors. How that would actually end up occurring, I can't definitively say. If Petrine were his ancestor, she would reasonably have stayed with the royal family. Perhaps she did not wish for others to realize that she wasn't noticably aging and ran off at some point, eventually ending up in Daein and earning a place within Ashnard's ranks.

Or, maybe the answer is simply that when Intelligent Systems came up with earlier revisions of the story, Petrine and Renning shared a link somehow. And, through revisions, they decided to drop those components, but still wanted to use Petrine as a character. And, from there, either added in the Brand, or converted it from a scar/tattoo/Spirit Mark into it.

The thing that I really enjoy about this though is that it really gets you to think about the characters and the world more and honestly stroke your imagination about what might actually be the case. The reasonable odds, given that there wasn't an interview mentioning any details and most likely won't in the future, is that it's simply an unintended coincidence. Or, heck, maybe the planners intentionally left it vague just to see if anyone would notice and start throwing up conjecture. I would honestly enjoy it if more games harkened back to the feel of older games where you HAD to do stuff like this - it made playing through games as a kid significantly more enjoyable.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Lord Glenn

[Florete]

There are really a lot of possible ways to look at it. I doubt there's definitive proof of anything, but the comparison is pretty interesting.

Going off of what Lord Glenn said, if we assume Petrine keeps her general role in PoR, I could see a situation where Renning does not "die" at the beginning and some sort of scandal eventually comes out that he's the illegitimate son of [whoever the father is] and some Daeinese general he bears a striking resemblance to. Siblings/Half-siblings would be another possibility, but I can't see that happening while Petrine has the brand and is a Daein general, so that would have to have to been in an earlier build or something where one or both of their origins were vastly different from our final product.

Additionally, while parents and child may often share classes (supporting that idea), siblings in the series usually don't unless they're Laguz - in which I assume they kind of need to be the same class - or Pegasi; from Tellius alone, we have Boyd/Rolf/Oscar, Marcia/Makalov, Ike/Mist, Lucia/Geoffrey, and Micaiah/Sanaki, all having different classes from one another (well, I suppose one could argue Micaiah and Sanaki), and no sibling pairs sharing classes, Laguz aside. But parent/child combos often do, like Brom/Meg and Greil/Ike (Elena/Mist as well?) and plenty others from the rest of the series (not counting Morgan, Yarne, or Nah, half of the Awakening children inherit the mother's class [although hey, Morgan always inherits a parent's class], Dayan/Rath/Sue, Niime/Canas, Karla/Fir, etc.).

Edited November 29, 2013 by Red Fox of Fire

[DH_Ninja]

I'd like to object with regards to the branded fact that Soren does share a slightly less intense eye color with his mother and the fact that his hair is a very dark green and not black. If you look closely you can see that it possibly was darkened by Ashnard's but that seems to go against most of what we do see.

Also, Sanaki and Micaiah have the same exact eye color but these two aren't sisters exactly but even then they both display an aptitude for magic.

As for Petrine being a branded, at this point I may say they may not even need to be direct descendents.

I also threw Palleas in there but even though he has similar characteristics to Ashnard, he's still not a branded. There are a lot of hair colors but not many who share ones with one another, let alone classes.

Just throwing more food for thought.

Edit: Though I suppose she could be like Palleas and show signs still and not be tied. It could be coincidence but unlike him the brand/lack of brand isn't a truly damning factor here.

Edited November 30, 2013 by DH_Ninja

[Anacybele]

Interesting theory, but I'm going to agree with the idea that IS once intended for Renning and Petrine to be related, but later dropped the idea. They've dropped ideas before, after all. Even in the Tellius saga alone. Bryce was originally going to survive the PoR war and appear in RD, because he has an unused RD portrait in the game's data (I saw it put up on FE wikis). There's some evidence that Heather might have originally been planned to be in PoR (something about data for an unused unit). A third example is the evidence that Levail was originally going to be recruitable in RD (growth rates in his data). And so on.

Also, in the thing about hair colors in family, you all seem to forget that as people age, their hair colors can change. Even at a young age, they can change. My mom was blonde until she was four. My dad was blonde until his late teens. Me? I'm still blonde and have been since I was born, but it's darkened some since my childhood. I could very well be a brunette by the time I'm 30.

Greil's hair has clearly become duller since his younger years. He probably had the same exact hair color as Mist when he was her age. Elena's hair isn't as bright as Ike's either. It could've once been as bright, though. Relatives can also have varying hues of the same hair color too. Brom and Meg both have slightly different shades of brown. But both are brown nonetheless. It could also explain why Marcia and Makalov don't share the exact same pink.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Anacybele

[Snowy_One]

Wouldn't be surprising. There are certainly a lot of unused things that got cut from RD, most likely due to time constraints. Things like support endings *glare*. I can definitely see why they'd want Bryce to survive as well since he's a pretty stand-out character. A noble, honorable, soldier fighting for his country despite his own personal disdain for its king. I can also see Petrine being more influential easily.

There is certainly enough evidence to consider that it was at least planned, though, and simply never made the final cut in the game. I wish we could get a definite answer though.

However, there is one thing. If Petrine was going to be related to the Crimean royal family in any way, wouldn't such a thing need to be a huge cover-up regardless of said relation? I mean, imagine a group of Daien sympathizers finding out about Petrine and trying to support her accession to the throne of Crimea over Elincia.

[Ein]

Ashnard looks so happy in that picture.

[cyron]

shiharam looks sort of constipated

However, there is one thing. If Petrine was going to be related to the Crimean royal family in any way, wouldn't such a thing need to be a huge cover-up regardless of said relation? I mean, imagine a group of Daien sympathizers finding out about Petrine and trying to support her accession to the throne of Crimea over Elincia.

that would actually have been really cool or ashnard could have used her to legitimize his right to the throne via marriage

[Snowy_One]

Yea, but it could also have resulted in the plot being far too political to be engaging or a growing plot-tumor of why Ashnard doesn't do just that.

I can see why such a thing might have been cut, though it's still VERY lame on the whole. Petrine was awesome and deserved more screentime than she got. Figures, we get Oliver back in RD and not Petrine or Bryce.