LGBT+ Representation in Fire Emblem

[Alistair]

Since we're in the middle of Pride month (and with Limstella making their debut in Heroes, coincidentally) I thought it could be worthwhile to talk about LGBT+ rep in Fire Emblem. I've made a list of characters who are, to my knowledge, explicitly LGBT+ characters in the games so far:

Spoiler

Leon (Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia): Gay in the remake. 

Dagdar and Marty (Thracia): They're two men in a relationship according to Marty's ending. 

Limstella (Blazing Sword): Non-binary in both Cipher and Heroes, though presented as female in the original game.

Heather and Kyza (Radiant Dawn): The former is lesbian and flirts with characters like Nephenee; the latter is non-binary in Heroes, though I understand they were a gay man in the Japanese version of Radiant Dawn.

Corrin, Niles, Rhajat, and Soliel (Fates): All bisexual, though Soleil's only S-Support options are with men. 

Byleth, Edelgard, Rhea, Sothis, Lindhardt, Dorothea, Mercedes, Yuri, and Jeritza (Three Houses): All bisexual. 

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of these or have forgotten someone; I haven't played all the games in question. In general, Fire Emblem's rep is bisexual, with some gay and non-binary characters, and both of the non-binary characters were made so in Heroes. Additionally, the number of LGBT characters increased dramatically between Fates and Three Houses. Additionally, Fates locked certain characters behind different routes that you had to pay for, and Soleil is unable to S-Support any women despite preferring women over men. Three Houses, meanwhile, has Gilbert and Alois who are S-Supportable for both Byleths but non-romantic. Overall, Fire Emblem doesn't have the best LGBT representation in all of video games, but it's a made a lot of progress, especially between Fates' initial release and now. 

[Yexin]

as far as mildly popular japanese videogames goes, FE might have the biggest LGBTQ+ representation i've ever seen, although my words don't carry much weight, as i've never actually went out of my way and made proper researches on the matter, so i'm only stating what my brain is allowing me to remember at the moment

i would find it extremely interesting if someone, someday, managed to organize an interview with some IntSys dudes and ask them why bisex girls outnumber any other kind of LGBTQ+ representation in FE games by such a large margin, but i think i already know the answer

Edited June 15, 2022 by Yexin

[Etrurian emperor]

I'd argue that Camilla might be part of the package too. She spends a lot, a lot of her dialogue drooling over other woman. Caspar may too depending on how we view him and Linhardt ''settling down'' in their paired ending. I guess there's Catherine too who makes it crystal clear she prefers worshipping Rhea's hips over the goddess. 

One somewhat damning observation is that until Three Houses most LGBTQ characters were either joke characters or freaks. It doesn't reflect well on the representation if the writers forgo more (relatively) normal options like Silas or Soleil and instead settle on people like Niles and not Rhajat. Heather is very clearly a one note joke character and while there some's substance behind Leon's crush he's presented as somewhat of a joke character. 

I think Three Houses should be praised for a more nuanced selection of LGBTQ people, and increasing their number by a fair margin too. That they decided to make a main character bisexual is even more praiseworthy. Its depicted pretty well too with Edelgard clearly having an interest in the same sex, but it just being one of her many traits. A non traditional love inclination even fits rather well with Edelgard's strive for reform.

It may be kinda cynical that IS went in pretty hard on female x female pairings, or bisexual female characters but that they mostly ignored more male related pairings. Officially you just have the boring Avatar sexual pairings and maybe Caspar and Linhardt. There's Raven x Lucius, and Ike and Soren of course, but while I can definitely see them in a relation I also think the pairings are not quite so self evident as their proponents suggest. The rather giant disproportian between female LGBTQ representation and male LGBTQ representation cast at least some doubt on their motives. Are they really interested in representation? Or have they just found out large parts of the fanbase find it hot if two woman are into each other?

Edited June 15, 2022 by Etrurian emperor

[eclipse]

Would Bramimond count?

[lenticular]

Personally, I tend to differentiate between characters who are canonically LGBTQIA+ regardless of the player's actions and characters who can potentially be LGBTQIA+ if the player chooses to play them that way. So, for instance, I don't think of Byleth and Corrin as being examples of LGBTQIA+ representation. Yes, the player can choose to play them that way, and yes I would definitely much prefer that that choice does exist for avatar characters, but I don't think of it as the same thing as having a character be canonically written as LGBTQIA+. Similarly for "gay for the avatar" style characters, who are a romance option for the avatar, but otherwise show zero evidence of any same-sex attraction. Again, I'd rather that they be included than not included, but I find it hard to think of characters like Rhea and Jeritza as being good LGBTQIA+ representation. Fire Emblem has definitely got a whole lot better in this regard than it used to be (I think that Dorothea is an excellent character, for instance), but it's still not exactly great.

As for other characters, I think there's a case to be made for Petra, depending on how you interpret her paired ending with Dorothea. And while I'm not hugely familiar with Fates so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Forrest fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum? Or is that another case of "it depends how you interpret the character and/or "it depends how broadly and inclusively you define the LGBTQIA+ spectrum"?

[Armchair General]

 

18 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Are they really interested in representation? Or have they just found out large parts of the fanbase find it hot if two woman are into each other?

It's probably the latter if we're going solely by the combination of pairings. But there's an difference between being canonically whatever and someone grinding out support conversations

1 hour ago, Alistair said:

Three Houses, meanwhile, has Gilbert and Alois who are S-Supportable for both Byleths but non-romantic. 

Those two were married.

[eclipse]

8 minutes ago, lenticular said:

And while I'm not hugely familiar with Fates so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Forrest fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum? Or is that another case of "it depends how you interpret the character and/or "it depends how broadly and inclusively you define the LGBTQIA+ spectrum"?

Forrest cross-dresses, and that's about it.

[Armchair General]

9 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I'm not hugely familiar with Fates so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Forrest fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum? Or is that another case of "it depends how you interpret the character and/or "it depends how broadly and inclusively you define the LGBTQIA+ spectrum"?

IIRC, Forrest was mostly into feminine hobbies, but

 

Just now, eclipse said:

Forrest cross-dresses, and that's about it.

yeah, his dad kinda chuckled when he saw his son in an dress and hardly anyone else made an big deal out of it. FWIW, Leo eventually just stopped caring about it, but I might be misrembering something

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alistair said:

Three Houses, meanwhile, has Gilbert and Alois who are S-Supportable for both Byleths but non-romantic.

Both of those are already married and have children. Alois mentions having a wife at one point in part 1, and Gilbert has a daughter (Annette).

 

[Eltosian Kadath]

Is everyone really too shy to mention the contentious Ike. There is a fair argument to be made for him being Asexual based on his in game interactions, and him only having paired endings with men certainly hints at him being gay, plus him being the only main Lord in the franchise to have no possible straight ending emphasizes that he isn't straight.

[eclipse]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Is everyone really too shy to mention the contentious Ike. There is a fair argument to be made for him being Asexual based on his in game interactions, and him only having paired endings with men certainly hints at him being gay, plus him being the only main Lord in the franchise to have no possible straight ending emphasizes that he isn't straight.

Where does that leave Priam, though?  Would that make Mist x Boyd canon?

[Alistair]

4 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Would Bramimond count?

I guess? The official Heroes site uses he/him pronouns even post-dark magic but Athos does use gender-neutral pronouns in FE7, so I think it may be up to interpretation. And in any case you could argue that Bramimond being genderless wouldn't be the best rep since it frames the loss of cisgender-ness as a negative consequence of using dark magic rather than an inherent part of the character. 

 

9 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Personally, I tend to differentiate between characters who are canonically LGBTQIA+ regardless of the player's actions and characters who can potentially be LGBTQIA+ if the player chooses to play them that way. So, for instance, I don't think of Byleth and Corrin as being examples of LGBTQIA+ representation. Yes, the player can choose to play them that way, and yes I would definitely much prefer that that choice does exist for avatar characters, but I don't think of it as the same thing as having a character be canonically written as LGBTQIA+. Similarly for "gay for the avatar" style characters, who are a romance option for the avatar, but otherwise show zero evidence of any same-sex attraction. Again, I'd rather that they be included than not included, but I find it hard to think of characters like Rhea and Jeritza as being good LGBTQIA+ representation. Fire Emblem has definitely got a whole lot better in this regard than it used to be (I think that Dorothea is an excellent character, for instance), but it's still not exactly great.

I'm personally inclined to include them. It's not as if every character in Three Houses, for example, can be S-Supported regardless of Byleth's gender, so for me characters like Lindhart and Jeritza are bi even if their only same-sex S-Supports are with Male!Byleth. 

 

15 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Those two were married.

 

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Both of those are already married and have children. Alois mentions having a wife at one point in part 1, and Gilbert has a daughter (Annette).

I guess those factors would exclude those two from romantic same-sex S-Supports, provided polyamory isn't an option. But I think the bigger question is why they were written to be such in the first place, rather than the in-universe justification. For example, there's nothing that mandates Alois be a character with a wife (especially as IIRC we don't see her in person in the game) but the developers still made the decision to write them as platonic S-Supports when every other S-Support in the game is explicitly romantic.   

[eclipse]

1 minute ago, Alistair said:

I guess? The official Heroes site uses he/him pronouns even post-dark magic but Athos does use gender-neutral pronouns in FE7, so I think it may be up to interpretation. And in any case you could argue that Bramimond being genderless wouldn't be the best rep since it frames the loss of cisgender-ness as a negative consequence of using dark magic rather than an inherent part of the character.

Without knowing about Bramimond beforehand, it's impossible to say.  Perhaps they weren't attached to their gender, so the "consequence" wasn't much of one at all.

[Armchair General]

With Alois, it kind of feels off to be marrying your dad's best friend. Plus, it also weird how often he talks about Jeralt, in a way. I get that he idolizes him; but going farther than that with his kid just feels wrong, in my opinion.

 

With Gilbert, I really don't have much of an opinion on him, considering how I never did that support chain.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Just now, eclipse said:

Where does that leave Priam, though?  Would that make Mist x Boyd canon?

That is one theory that fits the facts fine, adoption is another, although the alternative of Ike's technique & blade being passed down from teacher to pupil instead of blood is also a solid alternative, especially with how Priam behaves in what little we see of him in his chapter and his supports.

[Alistair]

7 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Without knowing about Bramimond beforehand, it's impossible to say.  Perhaps they weren't attached to their gender, so the "consequence" wasn't much of one at all.

Yeah, that was why I didn't include Bramimond in the list, since there's a lot up for interpretation and argument that there isn't with other characters like, say, Limstella. 

[lenticular]

10 minutes ago, Alistair said:

I guess those factors would exclude those two from romantic same-sex S-Supports, provided polyamory isn't an option. But I think the bigger question is why they were written to be such in the first place, rather than the in-universe justification. For example, there's nothing that mandates Alois be a character with a wife (especially as IIRC we don't see her in person in the game) but the developers still made the decision to write them as platonic S-Supports when every other S-Support in the game is explicitly romantic.   

I view it as a positive that some characters are already in established relationships, as opposed to "everyone is young, pretty, and available". I also view it as a positive that other types of relationships are given an equal footing with romantic relationships, that philia is not depicted as lesser than eros. I think that the big misstep was in the presentation. With the way it's presented, I know that a lot of people were expecting a romantic relationship between male Byleth and Alois, and when they didn't get it, they felt like it was a big bait and switch. I think that if it had been clearer to people from the outset what those S supports represent that people would have been more positive about them.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think if more of us had even heard of the concept back in the day, we'd read Ike as Asexual rather than Gay. The debate between Ike liking women or liking men was tiring because there isn't evidence of either. This scene is particularly suspect. Because imagine Ike having worked and lived with Gatrie for years - knowing how much of a horndog he is, and still failing to catch the innuendo repeatedly. Ike isn't dense, he just can't relate. And of course the Aimee scene where he's literally running from women. It's certainly weird that Ike has gotten close to so many women and pursued none of them romantically. It's not like he doesn't like them or doesn't regularly put his life on the line for them. Some believe that Ike is just an emotionally stunted individual, or exhibits some platonic stoicism ideal, but I don't think he's lacking in emotions or empathy. He's just not expressing them in a way that you'd expect from a hormonal teenage boy who's under such constant pressure as a leader. I haven't played Radiant Dawn in over a decade so I don't remember what sort of evidence is in that game regarding his sexuality but I don't think his paired endings (or lack thereof) are an accident. 

Soren is for sure gay lol. I just don't know if he would ever act on it. Soren strikes me as the sort of person that would never pursue that, for fear of losing the place he does have in Ike's life. In his mind, this is the best that it gets.

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

As for other characters, I think there's a case to be made for Petra, depending on how you interpret her paired ending with Dorothea. And while I'm not hugely familiar with Fates so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Forrest fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum? Or is that another case of "it depends how you interpret the character and/or "it depends how broadly and inclusively you define the LGBTQIA+ spectrum"?

Forrest could definitely be considered gender-nonconforming, although whether that falls into the "alphabet family" is rather unclear. He uses male pronouns, but he also faces prejudice akin to transfeminine people so... I dunno.

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

there some's substance behind Leon's crush he's presented as somewhat of a joke character. 

I thought Leon was great! His devotion to Valbar is kinda jokey, but they also give him a seriously tragic romantic backstory.

Plus, being the only Bow-user on Celica's side is no joke.

2 hours ago, Alistair said:

the latter is non-binary in Heroes, though I understand they were a gay man in the Japanese version of Radiant Dawn.

Neat! Almost makes me wanna play Heroes. Almost.

Anyway, while it's great that we've been seeing a ton of bisexual characters from IS - and a few non-binary ones - there's a weird reluctance to represent strictly homosexual characters. And I don't think we've gotten a single binary trans person yet. Not saying these are "must-do" moves for future games, but I think those kinds of characters would be cool to see.

55 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Where does that leave Priam, though?  Would that make Mist x Boyd canon?

We don't know that Priam is descended from Ike, only that he thinks he's descended from Ike. Maybe he is, maybe he's not. At the very least, I doubt his "Ragnell" is the one Ike used. Ike would've almost certainly returned Ragnell to Sanaki and the Begnion Empire after the war (as he did after the Mad King's War). It was their holy weapon, not his.

[Eltosian Kadath]

6 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I think if more of us had even heard of the concept back in the day, we'd read Ike as Asexual rather than Gay. The debate between Ike liking women or liking men was tiring because there isn't evidence of either. This scene is particularly suspect. Because imagine Ike having worked and lived with Gatrie for years - knowing how much of a horndog he is, and still failing to catch the innuendo repeatedly. Ike isn't dense, he just can't relate. And of course the Aimee scene where he's literally running from women. It's certainly weird that Ike has gotten close to so many women and pursued none of them romantically. It's not like he doesn't like them or doesn't regularly put his life on the line for them. Some believe that Ike is just an emotionally stunted individual, or exhibits some platonic stoicism ideal, but I don't think he's lacking in emotions or empathy. He's just not expressing them in a way that you'd expect from a hormonal teenage boy who's under such constant pressure as a leader. I haven't played Radiant Dawn in over a decade so I don't remember what sort of evidence is in that game regarding his sexuality but I don't think his paired endings (or lack thereof) are an accident. 

Soren is for sure gay lol. I just don't know if he would ever act on it. Soren strikes me as the sort of person that would never pursue that, for fear of losing the place he does have in Ike's life. In his mind, this is the best that it gets.

 

Personally I think Ike is an Asexual Homoromantic, but things were left a little ambiguous.

Also Soren came across as very gay

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Both of those are already married and have children. Alois mentions having a wife at one point in part 1, and Gilbert has a daughter (Annette).

 

Before the game came out there was this hilarious comic depicting the different romance options for male and female Byleth sitting with them in a bar. Fembeth had all the girls while male Byleth had a sleeping Linhardt. Alois saying ''its okay my wife won't mind'', and an angry Annette asking what her dad was doing there. 

After that I was kinda dissapointed Alois and Gilbert's Byleth pairing turned out platonic. 

Quote

And while I'm not hugely familiar with Fates so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't Forrest fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum?

Forrest claims to be straight and while he can't use the words transgender or cis, I think the implication is that he's just a straight guy who likes feminine things. 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Etrurian emperor

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Alistair said:

Overall, Fire Emblem doesn't have the best LGBT representation in all of video games, but it's a made a lot of progress, especially between Fates' initial release and now. 

True. 

As it stands, from what I'm generally aware, AAA/mainstream video gaming hasn't fully adapted to the LGBTQ+ community yet. The indie scene is where the heart of queer gaming lay right now, at the margins thats gets few sales and little recognition. Not sure if one of the West or Japan are further along in repping queers (I'd have a hunch the West is given Japan hasn't legalized s/s marriage yet, but I haven't done my research), though both could stand to improve things.

From what I've noticed, the dating and life sim genres is what is where the progress is starting to be made in Japanese video games. Coming up with sexually non-hetero characters who exist without the capacity of being shipped either with the player-self-insert-MC or other playable characters, is what I think we need to see more of. And characters who deviate from cisgender in general need more repping, since it seems, as with the situation IRL (from what little I've seen), acceptance and visibility of queer genders is somewhat lagging behind the acceptance and visibility of queer sexualities.

 

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

That is one theory that fits the facts fine, adoption is another, although the alternative of Ike's technique & blade being passed down from teacher to pupil instead of blood is also a solid alternative, especially with how Priam behaves in what little we see of him in his chapter and his supports.

If you wanted to invoke some old-timey Japanese traditions, then you could go with Ike adopting an heir to his sword style. Premodern East Asia wasn't opposed to adoption, Cao Cao the warlord of Three Kingdoms fame was the grandson of a eunuch, and feudal Japan seems to have inherited this from China if it didn't develop this option on its own.

Notable among the individuals I'm aware of is Miyamoto Musashi. The famed duelist, philosopher, and writer of the way of the sword, who lived in the last years of Sengoku and into the early Edo period. Musashi never married and adopted four sons and one daughter.

 

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

The rather giant disproportian between female LGBTQ representation and male LGBTQ representation cast at least some doubt on their motives. Are they really interested in representation? Or have they just found out large parts of the fanbase find it hot if two woman are into each other?

I heard secondhand that Reddit has two "lesbian" subreddits. The second was invented b/c the first was dominated by heterosexual men, the second is where the real lesbians gather.

18th century Frenchmen also wrote of purported rampant lesbianism in Catholic nunneries. Given their certain misogyny, it was probably all fiction made to amuse themselves, and not representative of any lesbianism -if such existed (I mean, when you have enough people of one biological sex living communally for life together, it's bound to spring up among someone sooner or later?)- in the nunneries of Europe.

We also have modern yuri to consider. I don't know its audience, but I do know that its m/m counterpart yaoi is written by either straight women or straight men, and is consumed mostly by a straight female audience (not to say a few gay guys don't appreciate yaoi).

 

45 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Plus, being the only Bow-user on Celica's side is no joke.

That's the cool thing about video games having gameplay, it lets fictional people potentially gain value and popularity that doesn't relate to their writing.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Interdimensional Observer

[zuibangde]

I’m actually not sure if FE made huge progress for LGBT+ representation between Fates and TH. While the wlw options in Three Houses were great, the route they decided to take for mlm options feels like they were taking one step forward and then two steps back. 

The platonic S support endings with Alois and Gilbert were a baffling choice considering that the fans have always associated S supports to be romantic. So base game basically has 1 mlm option and 5 wlw options. To rub salt in the wound, you end up marrying some random girl in Alois’ ending. IS then added two mlm options via DLC. Jeritza, who is probably more deranged than Niles and Yuri, a guy that wears makeup (not that there’s anything wrong with that but I was hoping for a less stereotypical choice). 
 

Other somewhat popular games in Japan with dating aspects such as Story of Seasons and Rune Factory have already implemented ss options across the board. While Rune Factory 5 launched with no SS options, they went out of their way to create new cut scenes and gender specific terms for the Western launch. 
 

The next FE game will be the most telling to me in regards to the developers’ stance. While I’m not expecting them to go all out like Rune Factory, I’m hoping they’ll at least do better than what they did in TH (which IMO is a pretty low bar for this day and age). 

Edited June 16, 2022 by zuibangde

[Michelaar]

Before Three houses especially, the LGBTQ+ representation in this series was not good. A lot of representation was very campy at best, and insulting at worst. I don't think I need to mention the Soleil thing that even treehouse had to change in the localization. But honestly, the gay options themselves are also just.. bad. Why are they path-exclusive? Why did they make the two options clearly more campy, made Rhajat an obsessive stalker and made Niles a criminal who loves inflicting pain, and is just 'broken' inside? Not saying I don't like those characters, but when you look at the game and those two are the *only* options, that doesn't look good. Silas and Soleil should have been options, clearly (Though Soleil is also not good representation, i'd argue.)

Three Houses, while better, still has a lot of problems. For the male side, similar issues from Fates arise. In the base game, we had a grand total of 1 gay option, and while I adore Linhardt, he is clearly the most feminine guy in the entire cast. It kind of feels that to not make their straight male audience feel uncomfortable, the only guy they could make a gay romance option was the one who looked the most feminine. Yuri shared a similar issue, where many felt he was very feminine. He does have this to a lesser extent, as he definitely feels more masculine than Linhardt, but it still applies. And then we have Jeritza, who looks like a fine option, but then once again making the serial killer who has a lot of mental issues to work through the gay option, while the neurotypical people who are conventionally attractive are straight. It's like they're feeding us breadcrumbs while keeping the delicious-looking bread for themselves, as i they're saying the bread they gave to us isn't valued as much. Whether that was their intention or not I don't know. but it's hard to see it any other way. I can't really talk much about the female options as I haven't really looked much at them, but at a first glance they seem... fine? Which makes it all the more annoying they dropped the ball on the male gay options.

Actually, I have been calling it gay options this whole time... but those actually don't exist. All the options are bisexual. And this to me is the prime way of saying ''I don't want to put the effort in.'' There isn't really much 'gay' representation in Fire Emblem. The only ones we really have outright are pretty campy and generally bad stereotypes (E.g Leon & Heather.) Why wouldn't they make certain options only gay? They make a whole lot of options only straight, so why are they making no gay-only options? Because they don't want to take away the choice for their straight audience, naturally. And the s-support conversations are barely any different between genders, which would make me question why they even bothered to begin with limiting the options. They might as well just make everyone bisexual if all that happens in the writing is perhaps changing a few pronouns.

So yeah, it's getting better, but they can and should do a LOT better. 

/rant over.

[regularturtle]

Felix and Sylvain's paired ending in Azure Moon definitely gives off some not straight vibes (they promised they'd stay together until they died together, and then they did? bro...), but I'd say that's more a common interpretation than actual canon.

Also, a couple lines from Felix's Goddess Tower support:

Quote

If you're looking for a passionate affair, you've got the wrong man. Go find someone else. I've spent my life avoiding love and romance.

Quote

I'll always be more comfortable holding a sword than a woman's hand.

I've seen people interpret him as being aspec because of this :0

Honestly, it seems like a lot of the good LGBT content in the FE fandom comes from headcanons and these kinds of interpretations of canon... reiterating what others have said, they've gotten a lot better but there's definitely still a ways to go.