What's the Difference Between having Major and Minor Holy Blood/Crests?

[Heir of Dragons and Beasts]

I've always wondered this playing Genealogy of the Holy War, but what made having Major Blood so special than having Minor Blood? While I get only Major Blooded characters can wield the Divine Weapons of their respective bloodlines, it still never made sense to me storywise. Were they meant to be the next incarnation of the Crusaders to stand against Loptyr? or were they simply meant to signify who was important and who wasn't?

I do like that three Houses kind of abolished this kind of weird mechanic as it doesn't matter if you have a Major or Minor Crest you can still wield your bloodline's Hero Relic or Sacred Weapon. But why didn't they just call them Crests then?

[Acacia Sgt]

In a way, yes. Minor blood still gave you a boost... but not as much as having major would. And yes, having major meant you had the full power of the Crusaders of old. And for the Loptrian blood, if you were a suitable vessel to house his echo.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[indigoasis]

Oh boy, HOLY BLOOD, I love talking about it. I'll leave how it works in the spoiler tag if anyone wants to read that.

Spoiler

In FE4, the firstborn child of an individual who possesses Major Holy Blood would inherit the respective Major HB (and thus the ability to wield that lineage's holy weapon), and any subsequent children would only inherit Minor HB. This can be seen with the half-brothers Arvis and Azelle, who share a father.

That's one of the biggest rules of Holy Blood, afaik. No matter a parent's HB, their children will always inherit Minor HB at the very least. For instance, Lex has Minor HB, but his children will always inherit that Minor HB no matter what.

Some additional things about it:

• If one parent has Major HB and the other has Minor HB, the firstborn will inherit both the Major and Minor HB, and any children after that will inherit Minor HB from both parents.
  • This can be seen with Quan and Ethlyn's kids, Leif and Altena. Altena inherits Major HB from Quan and Minor HB from Ethlyn, and Leif inherits Minor HB from both. 
• If both parents have Major HB, one child would still inherit one of the parent's Major HB (turning the other parent's HB to Minor), but the next child would inherit the other parent's Major HB.
  • This can be done if you pair Brigid and Lewyn together; Patty will inherit Lewyn's Major HB and Brigid's Minor HB, whereas Febail inherits it the opposite way.
• If both parents have the same Minor HB, the resulting children will both inherit Major HB; this can be done when pairing Ayra and Chulainn together or Claude and Silvia. 

Story-wise, holy blood is more or less a remnant of events prior to the game. It was bequeathed to 12 crusaders by magic dragons alongside holy weapons for them to use to essentially turn them into one-man armies capable of standing toe to toe with Loptous. After their success, they were revered as heroes and rose up to the ranks of nobles and royalty, and their Holy Blood was passed down. Most individuals with Major Holy Blood that we know of are typically the most direct descendants of those original crusaders; for example, Sigurd and Seliph are direct descendants of Baldr, and are more or less just as strong, if not stronger, than their ancestor (I should mention, that doesn't mean Sigurd's sister Ethlyn or her children aren't direct descendants of Baldr, but the connection isn't as strong as it is with Sigurd and Seliph). There are also individuals with Holy Blood that aren't royalty (like Chulainn). Otherwise, it doesn't play as big a role as you might think in the story (with exceptions).

Gameplay-wise, Minor HB gives a nice boost to a unit's growth rates and ups the HB's respective weapon rank by one, which you can review here if you'd like. Major HB doubles those growth rates, boosts a weapon rank to its max level, and allows a unit to use their respective HB's holy weapon. 

As for Crests, they're inherited completely at random; an individual with a Major/Minor/No Crest could have a child with a Major or Minor Crest, or no Crest at all. It's all luck, pretty much. A long dormant Crest that everyone thought went extinct could suddenly reappear one day, for instance. If it was Holy Blood, it would continue to manifest in each descendant from generation to generation until it stops being passed down, which would ultimately make it die out.

Basically, Crests can disappear and come back generations later, whereas Holy Blood will always be passed down and manifest to some capacity.

It's made pretty obvious in Three Houses, but people that have Crests typically hold the power and are put onto ridiculously high pedestals by almost everyone around them. Sylvain and his brother Miklan are probably the best example of how Crests negatively affect the people who inherit them (or don't). I'm sure something akin to all of that happens in Jugdral with Holy Blood, but it's pretty much never brought up. The closest thing I can think of would be Seliph being the rightful successor as the King of Grannvale, but that has more to do with his lineage on his mother's side than it does Holy Blood, honestly.

To be honest, I don't know as much about Crests gameplay-wise as I do Holy Blood, so I'll link this GameFAQs thread to help answer your question. Like FE4 and Holy Blood, Major Crests give stronger bonuses than Minor Crests do, but that's about it. Story-wise, Major and Minor Crests don't really have much of a difference besides one manifests stronger than the other.

[Punished Dayni]

18 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

To be honest, I don't know as much about Crests gameplay-wise as I do Holy Blood, so I'll link this GameFAQs thread to help answer your question. Like FE4 and Holy Blood, Major Crests give stronger bonuses than Minor Crests do, but that's about it. Story-wise, Major and Minor Crests don't really have much of a difference besides one manifests stronger than the other.

I think there's a bit in the backstory of Houses Galatea and Daphnel in relation to Galatea's ancestor having the crest and running off with Lúin to Faerghus, splitting off to form their house in doing so. May also contribute to Daphnel's reduced status in Leicester by the time of 3H, but I'm speculating on that and the split happened decades ago at the earliest.

Course that's not so much about the crests themselves, but we don't get too much comparison between major and minor crests, despite there being a couple of opportunities to with the cast we have.

22 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

As for Crests, they're inherited completely at random; an individual with a Major/Minor/No Crest could have a child with a Major or Minor Crest, or no Crest at all. It's all luck, pretty much. A long dormant Crest that everyone thought went extinct could suddenly reappear one day, for instance. If it was Holy Blood, it would continue to manifest in each descendant from generation to generation until it stops being passed down, which would ultimately make it die out.

HB can fade away over time, considering Scopio has no HB despite his dad having some and his grandfather having Major Ullr. But that's a weird case anyway as it's an outlier in Genealogy and could have been an error (though the only notable case of this is Hilda having Major Dain which was absolutely a mistake)

There's also the other exceptions (Maricle and Ayra having an older sister who also had Major Odo? Probably would make more sense for her to have minor and her husband to have it too to explain her descendants and Holyn also having minor Odo, Hilda's kids not getting Minor Fala) I suppose those could just happen.

[Acacia Sgt]

3 hours ago, Dayni said:

There's also the other exceptions (Maricle and Ayra having an older sister who also had Major Odo? Probably would make more sense for her to have minor and her husband to have it too to explain her descendants and Holyn also having minor Odo, Hilda's kids not getting Minor Fala) I suppose those could just happen.

Mariccle and Ayra are only half siblings. So it's possible Mananan's first wife had minor Od, resulting in both Mariccle and Galzus' mother having Major Od, then the second wife had no Od blood, thus Ayra only having minor. I'd put Galzus' mother being the full-blooded sibling of Mariccle over Ayra due to Galzus' age, since he looks as old if not older than Shannan, specially with how old Mareeta is in Thracia. Unless Mariccle fathered Shannan young enough, there has to be a considerable age gap between him and Ayra, if Ayra herself is only a few years older than Shannan, and by proxy she is around Galzus' own age. Also implying the other sister is actually the oldest sibling of the three.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[Punished Dayni]

5 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Mariccle and Ayra are only half siblings. So it's possible Mananan's first wife had minor Od, resulting in both Mariccle and Galzus' mother having Major Od, then the second wife had no Od blood, thus Ayra only having minor.

5 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Unless Mariccle fathered Shannan young enough, there has to be a considerable age gap between him and Ayra, if Ayra herself is only a few years older than Shannan, and by proxy she is around Galzus' own age. Also implying the other sister is actually the oldest sibling of the three.

Good points, didn't consider that.

Doesn't help that we see Galzus in Thracia, which is 17 years after Gen 1.