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Is Naga a god or not?​


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“But know this: I am no god. I am no creator. I possess not the powers of making or unmaking. And neither does Grima. Neither of us bears the power to destroy the other utterly.”
—Naga to Chrom after the Awakening.

You know: Naga is the mother of Tiki.

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fireemblem/images/c/c1/Chiki_CG.png/revision/latest?cb=20120606074509

Yet Tiki has its own song (from FE 3/12), called "Sacred Child of GOD"

Is Naga a god or not?​

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Yeah, it's kinda always been a thing that humans have hailed Naga as their head god (often omitting the fact about her being a dragon; Awakening is the first where that seems to be widespread knowledge), but the various people who knew Naga personally (such as Gotoh, Xane, Forseti, etc) only refer to her as the Lord of the Divine Dragons. So yeah, Naga was never a god-god, but was worshiped by a god by the humans she protected.

Edited by Otherarrow
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I like how they made Naga a girl in Awankening because why the fuck not.

Awakening is the first where that seems to be widespread knowledge,

This was pretty dumb too.

Anyways, basing your question off of a Youtube video is uh...very questionable. Please find a more credible source next time, because that isn't just Tiki's theme and is actually just the wrong name.

Edited by Refa
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Nah, never mind in Awakening where Naga states neither she nor Grima are gods, even way back in Genealogy of the Holy War, Holsety told Seliph that the gods humans worshiped were simply dragons.

Also, it's highly likely Naga was female all along; in Genealogy, Naga took on female form. It's only in the Archanea games where Naga is depicted as male and only in the opening cutscene, which is probably a totally wrong historical account.

Otherwise, the gender of Naga was left ambiguous or misleading at best (i.e. the "Divine Dragon King").

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Xane refers to him as a dude as well (at least in the FE3 translation, which could be wrong I guess). Wouldn't Xane of all people know the gender of Narga?

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I think I heard once that any references to Naga using male pronouns or terms in the old fan translations were gender neutral in the original Japanese, and just translated using the male terms out of convenience.

Could be wrong though.

Exactly.

At the time, everyone thought Naga was a dude (because of the tapestry or because he/she was referred to as a "king", which BTW can alternatively be translated as the gender-neutral "ruler").

In English, it's hard to avoid using gendered pronouns when referring to people, so we just went with "he" since it made most sense--and for convenience's sake as mentioned.

But later FE4 rolled in with its female Naga, then Shadow Dragon gave us Nagi (Naga's incarnation) to further confuse us and finally Awakening straight out told us Naga was female.

Since the New Mystery of the Emblem patch was made around the same time as Awakening, we decided to dump the old "guess" of Naga being male.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The only actual god, as in a creator, in FE is Ashunera from Radiant Dawn.

Archanea and Jugdral have Naga, and Forseti says she, Loptyr, and the others were just plain old dragons. Though to be fair Naga is stated to be a Divine Dragon, but what that exactly entails isn't made clear.

Valentia has Mila and Doma, though it's unclear whether they're actual gods, Doma as he appears in game is a kind of goop monster, or something else. Like dragons.

Elibe doesn't appear to have any gods, and the major religion of the continent instead revolves around Elimine who was a mortal human.

Magvel, once again, in the only religion seen they worship dragons.

Ylisse once again has Naga, who is once again a dragon.

Hoshido/Nohr they don't even hide that it's just dragons.

Everything is dragons.

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Elibe doesn't appear to have any gods, and the major religion of the continent instead revolves around Elimine who was a mortal human.

Well actually, the Elimine Church does seem to include a god as well. It's mentioned quite often by most of the Church members in Binding Blade (Yodel, Saul, Ellen, that one bishop boss in the Western Isles).

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The only actual god, as in a creator, in FE is Ashunera from Radiant Dawn.

Archanea and Jugdral have Naga, and Forseti says she, Loptyr, and the others were just plain old dragons. Though to be fair Naga is stated to be a Divine Dragon, but what that exactly entails isn't made clear.

Valentia has Mila and Doma, though it's unclear whether they're actual gods, Doma as he appears in game is a kind of goop monster, or something else. Like dragons.

Elibe doesn't appear to have any gods, and the major religion of the continent instead revolves around Elimine who was a mortal human.

Magvel, once again, in the only religion seen they worship dragons.

Ylisse once again has Naga, who is once again a dragon.

Hoshido/Nohr they don't even hide that it's just dragons.

Everything is dragons.

Jugdral also has Ethnia, the Earth Mother Goddess mentioned in Thracia 776. Sounds like a similar figure to FE2's Mila, but we don't know who/what Mila actually is. Maybe Ethnia's also a dragon like Naga, Forseti, etc.

(I assume Ethnia is the dragon/goddess that granted Crusader Nova the powers of the Gae Bolg aka Earth Lance but I've never seen Word of God confirming it.)

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If it counts, TRS has the goddess Utna, her four god children, and her god mother Miradona.

Naturally, of those six figures, five of them are actually dragons.

But yeah, I think Valencia is the only Kaga-era setting to have gods who aren't actually dragons (not that one-eyed slime monsters are more appealing to worship). Elibe and Magvel seem to both worship a generic "God" alongside their national heroes but it doesn't really go more into it than that.

Apparently, Awakening era Valm worships both Mila and Naga because...uhh, because.

The point is, it's dragons at least 60% of the time.

Archanea and Jugdral have Naga, and Forseti says she, Loptyr, and the others were just plain old dragons. Though to be fair Naga is stated to be a Divine Dragon, but what that exactly entails isn't made clear.

Divine Dragon is just the name for Naga's specific race. Tiki is a Divine Dragon. Fa is a Divine Dragon. Hell, Xane is a Divine Dragon. At most, they are shinier and have anti-dragon breath, but I think at no point are they said to be actual gods.

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The only actual god, as in a creator, in FE is Ashunera from Radiant Dawn.

Archanea and Jugdral have Naga, and Forseti says she, Loptyr, and the others were just plain old dragons. Though to be fair Naga is stated to be a Divine Dragon, but what that exactly entails isn't made clear.

Valentia has Mila and Doma, though it's unclear whether they're actual gods, Doma as he appears in game is a kind of goop monster, or something else. Like dragons.

Elibe doesn't appear to have any gods, and the major religion of the continent instead revolves around Elimine who was a mortal human.

Magvel, once again, in the only religion seen they worship dragons.

Ylisse once again has Naga, who is once again a dragon.

Hoshido/Nohr they don't even hide that it's just dragons.

Everything is dragons.

I think this is a pretty good analysis, and this helps support the theory that Tellius is chronologically first, since at that time, beings had a close relation to the gods and understood that the dragons were lesser beings than them. With the gods growing distant after that, and dragons likely growing more and more powerful (ie no longer restricted to having to take human form as laguz Transformer's Beast Wars style and becoming manaketes) they became pantheons of powerful beings that people worshipped, not unlike the Greek or Norse gods. It makes me wonder what beings like the Demon King and Valentia's gods are though.

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In regard to Valm having worship of both Naga and Mila, it could be that, like most religions, worship spread as commerce and trade were done. Given that Validar and Aversa mention that Gangrel was told of Valm's invasion, it could be that both Ylisse and Plegia have trade ties or did at one point, to Valm. Missionaries from the Church of Naga could have gone over and spread the word around creating the worship of both Mila and Naga to happen. Word of Naga could have happened prior to that as well. I'm guessing given that the Nada Kayu (or however you spell that character's name) from Magval's history could have been a relation to Marth (the whole fang being possible the falchion) it could have lead to some nod to Naga being a minor god there as well.

The Demon King (Fomortiis) could easily be just a demon brought about after the Tellius stories via magic mixed with dragon and other creatures given birth and that thing spawned other things. Grima's design reminded me a lot of Fomortiis as a whole, except in Dragon Form. I'm assuming whatever host it takes, it will take on some of the creature's form so in the case of Grima, who probably was a dragon, it made itself look like that. Anyway off topic, as for the Valentia Gods, I'm wondering if Duma's (Doma) appearance comes from the fact that he's been corrupted? I think back to Shino religion and how in some cases when a spirit gets corrupted it mutates to look horrible. So maybe that's the case here and we only see the corrupted version of him and not the true appearance?

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Is Naga a god? No

Do people lowere than him/her see him/her as a god? Yes.

Yeah, she was always female, and gender neutral words were used in the Japanese versions of FE3

Actually, Naga is still depicted as a man in the opening cg or fe3. I think it's best that we just completely ignore the debate on Naga's gender and just roll with whatever he/she appears to be in each game.

Edited by Jagen
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It you count things kaga revieled in interviews, there were existing religions and belief systems in jugdiral before the miracle of darna, but they were supplanted by crusader worship after the fact. No additional information is given, except that some aspects of crusader worship were borrowed from previous belif systems

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The opening of FE3 is also basically a retelling of the skewed wrong version of events that humanity believes, not what actually happened. In other words, it's irrelevant. The game itself reveals that version of events is all lies. (likely pro-Akaneia propaganda, since it has Naga just giving the Shield to humanity, when in reality Adrah stole it)

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