Did Arete and Garon truly love each other?

[Vera]

I'm think Fate's has a really good story, but there's a lot we don't know. Esp. with the whole Garon pre Anankos and his army of psychotic concubines. Arete and Azura fled to Nohr from Valla when Anankos destroyed it. Sumeragi and Mikoto had already met and Sumeragi adored Mikoto the minute he saw her. It's implied that King Garon was also infatuated with Arete as soon as he saw (and heard,)her. It's clear that Garon is a man who loves love, and sex. I do believe that he loved Arete and Katerina dearly, but since Garon is a polygamous lover, it makes sense that he'd fall in love with the elegant Queen of Valla.

But what about Arete? Did she love Garon? Did she just marry him as a way to protect her and Azura?  Obviously a lot of issues arose when Arete became the Queen of Nohr, but perhaps it was still better than the alternative. We never meet Azura's father but I imagine he and Arete were deeply in love given what little we know. I'm pretty sure Mikoto loved Sumeragi, due to his kindness and acceptance of her and Corrin. Plus he wasn't insane like The Silent Dragon. Though Mikoto probably loved Anankos deeply as well. 

So, what do you think?

[SnowFire]

We simply don't know because Fates is deeply underwritten*, especially Azura's plot and the backstory of what exactly happened in the ~20 years previous.  There's precisely one scene in Fates where we get a sense of the relationship Azura specifically has to Garon, and that's in Conquest after Azura joins up.  ( https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Uprising/Script )  It's...  not a bad scene, and establishes that Garon is weirdly distant and uncaring about this returned step-daughter, but it's never followed-up on (nor is it made clear at the time that Azura isn't a blood daughter).

So we're stuck inspecting the way 15 years-ago Garon is portrayed at the margins for a guess, and the result is...  inconsistent.  If we take Xander & Camillla's plot seriously, they grew up with a reasonable and strict if caring father whose word deserves deference, and Garon's actions are, if harsh, not bananas evil.  In this realm, it's quite possible to imagine a happy pairing.  It's also possible to imagine a political pairing, maybe, depending on how exactly the ill-defined curse-of-Valla works (i.e. could Arete have explained she was visiting royalty and thus a big catch?  Or was Garon's memory of Valla's existence eaten too?).  On the other hand, if Corrin & Hoshido's plot is taken seriously, Garon was already crazy enough X years ago when Corrin was a sufficiently young baby to have no memory of the event.  Let's say Corrin is 17 years old, so this implies Corrin was ~5 or so at most, meaning Garon was already evil at least 12 years ago.  Additionally, in Hoshido's plot, there's apparently been a war with Nohr going on for a long time, since characters like Oboro are salty and hate Nohrians, but Mikoto has been shielding the nation with some sort of giant magical peace shield for like a decade.  This implies that even backstory Garon was a warmonger out to conquer Hoshido.  If you run with these pieces of evidence, then Garon was a real piece of crap, and Arete either has terrible taste in men or seduced him solely to give Azura a noble upbringing or something.  We don't know enough about real Arete's character to know for sure, since her dialogue in Revelation is either mind-controlled Arete or dying Arete saying she loves Azura very much.

Anyway, I guess the moral is you can take your pick - we're not given enough to know for sure, and the writers didn't bother to clarify.  Really what seems to be going on, IMO, is that Azura was set up to be a foil/mirror to Corrin at some point early in development (they're both Vallite nobles brought to Hoshido/Nohr, then kidnapped to the "other" side), and then the writers utterly forgot to *do* anything with this mirror.  So Arete wasn't really thought through deeply as a character in her own right, she's just there to be a boss in Revelation and a Mikoto-equivalent.

(* On being underwritten: Well, there's tons of writing in the supports, but more specifically, the separate team they had writing the supports seemingly didn't have "permission" to create too much backstory, perhaps due to fear of contradicting the main plot.)

 

[ZeManaphy]

This is the script from Chapter 22 of Birthright :

 

Spoiler

Cassita: Oh, yes. I worked for both of them for a time. Both fine ladies, just fine! I remember King Garon was really broken up when queen Katerina died. Said he'd never marry again! Hah! That changed the minute he met Lady Arete. She had such an amazing voice. Her singing would fill the castle. And she was so beautiful! She looked an awful lot like your friend there, actually. You know—the one with the blue hair!

The dialouge heavily implies that Garon did love Queen Arete before he was posessed. 

[Vera]

Garon clearly loved Arete (as confirmed in the Birthright script posted)

I've always assumed Garon wasn't a war monger like he is post possesion. Albeit with a bit of a grudge towards Hoshido. Xander implies that things "got bad," after Arete died.

I saw a fan written post about Garon actually getting some backstory at the end of revelations. Unfortunately I don't have a link. I gather that Arete's death was the final straw for Garon that made it so that Anankos could make him his vessel. The fanfic went into more detail but given Xander's statement along with Casita's story and the timing of everything that seems likely. 

It's unlikely we'll ever get a satisfactory answer about Arete herself. My gut is that she had some affection for Garon but not head over heels like he was. I imagine she and Azura's father were deeply in love. Supposedly Garon and Katerina were but Garon is ... Garon.