Who is The Strongest Dragon In Fire Emblem Based on Lore? *Spoilers*

[bugmenot]

Many dragons have appeared in the Fire Emblem franchise over the years, who do you believe to be the strongest of them all based on lore?
 

Just a warning, there are some major spoilers to many Fire Emblem games here

When it comes to powerful dragons many come to mind Grima, Anankos, and Naga, but I believe Sombron to be the strongest dragon by lore in Fire Emblem. The reason being by the end of Fire Emblem Engage he was able to summon many powerful beings from the other games. Also he showed many powers like Grima and Anankos before gaining his power up, like being able to bring back and control the dead. By endgame he even gain the title Great Fell Dragon.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Naga, because I´m pretty sure her tooth alone is already effective on any dragon in any verse.

Supremely divine dental care.

also, ew, powerscaling

Edited May 27 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[indigoasis]

I'd say Naga is a pretty clear choice for the strongest dragon that we know of based on her influence; the creation of multiple dragon-effective divine weapons are attributed to her (as well as the titular Fire Emblem), she's made at least two known blood pacts (with Heim and the First Exalt, and so they carry her Holy Blood), she created two clones of herself, and she's (probably) got some control over time and space.

That doesn't necessarily say anything about how powerful she would be in combat, but like... c'mon, if she can do all of that, she's gotta be pretty strong.

Honorable mention to Forseti for being able to resurrect and possess the (previously) dead.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

My lean would be toward Anankos, because he's able to make a giant zombie army and rule his own country with an iron claw. Also resurrect and mind control named individuals. ...But it sounds like Sombron can do the same, but moreso. So I guess he edges him out.

Then again, there's the argumenent that Naga could make a zombie army... she just chooses not to for moral reasons. We don't know powers that aren't demonstrated.

[lenticular]

I would discount both Sombron and Anankos, on the grounds that both of them get defeated in battle by another dragon (Alear and Corrin respectively). Sure, you oculd argue that Alear and Corrin both have assistance from their friends, but it's not as if Sombron and Anankos were fighting alone either. Each of them, even with their giant zombie armies, was no match for their kids with their small human armies.

Like others, my initial instinct is to say probably Naga, but I think that Sothis has a pretty good shout too. She's capable of interstellar travel, defeated the technologically-advanced Agarthans, was only able to be killed while she was asleep, is able to (sort of) come back to life after she's been killed, shrugs off the setting's most powerful forbidden dark magic, can manipulate time, and is strong enough that her presence alone is significant enough to flip the balance of a major war.

[Jotari]

I wouldn't say Naga, specifically because she seems to think she's not strong enough to defeat Grima...course that's also Naga potentially coming down with a case of death some thousand years ago, so we don't know what she would be like in her prime, but we do know other characters in the setting were able to cause her a lot of trouble.

Personally I'd go with Anankos. People point out Sombron doing similar stuff, but Sombron's ultimate goal to go to another universe was one beyond him, while Anankos not only has interdimensional conquest as his whole thing, he seems to be infecting an infinite dimensions all at once (or something) in the Heirs of Fates scenario. His ability to vaporize anyone who talks about Valla, while being just ridiculously silly as a plot point, is powerful on a bizarrely high conceptual level. Everything about his abilities points to the fact that the only reason he ever loses is because the guy is just nuts and has no idea what he's actually doing.

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I would discount both Sombron and Anankos, on the grounds that both of them get defeated in battle by another dragon (Alear and Corrin respectively). Sure, you oculd argue that Alear and Corrin both have assistance from their friends, but it's not as if Sombron and Anankos were fighting alone either. Each of them, even with their giant zombie armies, was no match for their kids with their small human armies.

Like others, my initial instinct is to say probably Naga, but I think that Sothis has a pretty good shout too. She's capable of interstellar travel, defeated the technologically-advanced Agarthans, was only able to be killed while she was asleep, is able to (sort of) come back to life after she's been killed, shrugs off the setting's most powerful forbidden dark magic, can manipulate time, and is strong enough that her presence alone is significant enough to flip the balance of a major war.

Might be a weird question, but do we actually know if Sothis actually is a dragon? I know she kind of feels like one, and her children definitely are, but I know enough ancient mythologies to know that's not necessarily an indicator of anything. Deities don't really adhere to the species designation. Granted, she is a Breath unit in Heroes, but one that automatically negates dragon weaknesses.

Edited May 28 by Jotari

[lenticular]

25 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Might be a weird question, but do we actually know if Sothis actually is a dragon? I know she kind of feels like one, and her children definitely are, but I know enough ancient mythologies to know that's not necessarily an indicator of anything. Deities don't really adhere to the species designation. Granted, she is a Breath unit in Heroes, but one that automatically negates dragon weaknesses.

Well, in addition to having children who are dargons, we also know that her humanoid form has the same features (pointed ears, green hair, extremely youthful appearance) as other Fire Emblem dragons do while in human form. We also know for sure that her bones look indistinguishable from dragon bones, and that a weapon made from said bones can be repaired with the same material that is used to repair other dragonbone weapons. Rhea also says at one point that she (Sothis) "changed her form to resemble that of a human", so (with caveats about Rhea being an unreliable witness), we also know that her humanoid form isn't her true/original form. None of this is entirely conclusive or definitive, but I think that on the balance of probabilities, I would say it's considerably more likely that she is a dragon than she isn't.

[Etrurian emperor]

Grima perhaps? They destroy the world in one timeline and in the bad future DLC Grima even starts to have killed Naga. 

[bugmenot]

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

I would discount both Sombron and Anankos, on the grounds that both of them get defeated in battle by another dragon (Alear and Corrin respectively). Sure, you oculd argue that Alear and Corrin both have assistance from their friends, but it's not as if Sombron and Anankos were fighting alone either. Each of them, even with their giant zombie armies, was no match for their kids with their small human armies.

Like others, my initial instinct is to say probably Naga, but I think that Sothis has a pretty good shout too. She's capable of interstellar travel, defeated the technologically-advanced Agarthans, was only able to be killed while she was asleep, is able to (sort of) come back to life after she's been killed, shrugs off the setting's most powerful forbidden dark magic, can manipulate time, and is strong enough that her presence alone is significant enough to flip the balance of a major war.

I did consider Sothis, but I was given the impression that she defeated the Agarthans with the help of her children who each individually were powerful dragons in there own right. If she did defeat the Agarthans alone though, she is more powerful than I originally thought, I might have miss that detail during my play through of the game. 
 

I would like to add, although manipulating time is a impressive feat. It was shown in Engage a dragon weaker than Sombron was able to do it with the price being years off there life (probably thousands), but it seemed like traveling far into the past is possible because of that cost. 

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I feel like it has to be Naga or Grima. Anakos could have a case, but I'm not really convinced about him.

[SnowFire]

Agree with most of the others.  It's a little tricky because sometimes plots will have ludicrously-OP-if-you-think-about-it abilities, but it doesn't pan out as OP as it could be in-game, and were there just hidden limitations or something?

Tier 1:

• Naga.  Does time travel that works which is essentially rewriting an entire universe.  Fates DLC was erratic, but to its credit, even Good Anankos is shocked this is even possible, and says it must have been a feat of incredible power.  She prefers to intervene via her human champions and whatever the heck Nagi is, but maybe this is from fear of overwhelming everything with a stronger touch?

Tier 2:

• Sothis (if she even counts as a dragon...  she does seem closer to, say, Ashunera).  A creator deity that also has time powers, but also canonically slain by missiles, sort of.  And her time powers are clearly more limited than Naga's feat above (you could argue hers were stronger than Byleth's remnant?  But even then...)
• Hypothetical sane Anankos ( / other Fateslandia dragons?).  Even insane Anankos can mind-control entire realms of people simultaneously and have mysterious cursey powers best not thought about too deeply.  Since there's no plot point about him powering up as he went crazy, I guess he always could have done that but just declined to do so?  And yeah, if used intelligently, that seems like the thing he could have conquered the world with no problems, although that gets into whether the other surviving Fateslandia dragons would have stopped him.  Apparently the backstory war between the dragons threatened reality itself, although this may just be an excuse to explain the Deeprealms.  But even if it's not really optimal, being able to shear off parts of reality into their own dimension a la Valla is...  powerful if not entirely controllable it seems.

Tier 3

• Grima is a weird science experiment, not a deity.  But given that he manages to give Naga trouble, you have to respect the hustle that he actually WINS at least once, has the ability to somehow get a second shot and follow the reset world back in time, and at least eats a truckload of people while threatening to win again on the second go around.
• Idunn apparently can crank out an entire army of War Dragons single-handedly somehow.  This is more impressive than the waves of monsters or undead some other villains have.  If the dragons had been better at hiding her from getting bonked with the BB by Hartmut, this seems like it could have been a winning plan.
• Corrin is Anankos minus who also wields a reality-cleaving superweapon by the end of Revelation.  Very blurry to know more, but you could make an argument that they're set up for similar ultimate power.
• Tiki is Naga minus, as The Future Past sets up a scenario where Tiki could die but be reborn more powerful than you could imagine a la Naga.

 Not that impressed:

• Sombron isn't actually that powerful.  He gets a power-up for poorly justified reasons at the end of Engage, but even that just lets him resurrect zombies better and open a gate to the multiverse.  I wouldn't give a lot of credit to the Dark Emblems - those are just his own corrupted with some cool extradimensional rings he found, I guess.  Having them is the equivalent of Alear's allies at best, they're clearly not as strong as the originals they're based on.  Plus, Grima uses a giant sacrifice to go from powerful to extremely powerful; Sombron uses mass human sacrifice to go from "dead" to "can move around outside his castle."
• Most PC dragons seem to be measured at "powerful in a 1 on 1 fight."  Rhea canonically loses to mooks, Lumera loses to an edgy girl, Lillith randomly loses all her power when she leaves Anankos's service, Medeus loses twice (and Gharnef seems the most effective one!), Dheginsea & Kurthnaga are just really dangerous fighters but that's it.

[Jotari]

19 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Agree with most of the others.  It's a little tricky because sometimes plots will have ludicrously-OP-if-you-think-about-it abilities, but it doesn't pan out as OP as it could be in-game, and were there just hidden limitations or something?

Tier 1:

• Naga.  Does time travel that works which is essentially rewriting an entire universe.  Fates DLC was erratic, but to its credit, even Good Anankos is shocked this is even possible, and says it must have been a feat of incredible power.  She prefers to intervene via her human champions and whatever the heck Nagi is, but maybe this is from fear of overwhelming everything with a stronger touch?

 

Despite the shock Anankos expresses at that, I don't functionally see anything different between what Naga did and what Anankos himself did. Fates takes place somewhere in Awakening's past. They are in continuity at least somewhat, even if it doesn't make much sense with Archanea's lore of dragons. He went to a distant future and brought the Awakening kids to the distant past. Naga sent characters form a ruined future to a more localized past. Sure, we can say Anankos wasn't actually time traveling, just sending characters from one universe to another that is the same planet only earlier in its history, but, couldn't Naga have done that exact same thing? It's not like Severa or Ingo understand the exact mechanics of temporal science that got them to Ylisse. And we also see Naga play this alternate universe time travel tactic in Future Past by using our own party as, functionally, time traveling heroes. We also see time travel that works with all of the time rewind mechanics that are now, probably, going to be in every game (except actually the first one, as far as I can remember, Mila's Turnwheel actually functions by sending Alm a vision of the future instead of actually rewinding time, maybe that's why you still get a game over if he or Celica dies while later games still allow turn rewind of the protagonist dies).

[bugmenot]

20 hours ago, SnowFire said:

 Not that impressed:

• Sombron isn't actually that powerful.  He gets a power-up for poorly justified reasons at the end of Engage, but even that just lets him resurrect zombies better and open a gate to the multiverse.  I wouldn't give a lot of credit to the Dark Emblems - those are just his own corrupted with some cool extradimensional rings he found, I guess.  Having them is the equivalent of Alear's allies at best, they're clearly not as strong as the originals they're based on.  Plus, Grima uses a giant sacrifice to go from powerful to extremely powerful; Sombron uses mass human sacrifice to go from "dead" to "can move around outside his castle."
• Most PC dragons seem to be measured at "powerful in a 1 on 1 fight."  Rhea canonically loses to mooks, Lumera loses to an edgy girl, Lillith randomly loses all her power when she leaves Anankos's service, Medeus loses twice (and Gharnef seems the most effective one!), Dheginsea & Kurthnaga are just really dangerous fighters but that's it.

I believe Sombron’s power-up also increased the size of his dragon form and gave him the power to lift up/put a barrier around the island where his castle was located. 
 

To be fair to Lumera she was quite weakened by the time she lost, since she has been giving her life force to Alear for a thousand years. I don’t believe this is the canonical reason but one of the reasons Lillith could have lost her powers is because she used a lot of it to create/maintain the dimension My Castle is located. 

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, bugmenot said:

To be fair to Lumera she was quite weakened by the time she lost, since she has been giving her life force to Alear for a thousand years. I don’t believe this is the canonical reason but one of the reasons Lillith could have lost her powers is because she used a lot of it to create/maintain the dimension My Castle is located. 

Well, according to Anankos, it's because she left Valla. Either way, eventually Moro turns her into an Astral Dragon anyway.

The Deeprealm housing My Castle wasn't created by her. She simply asks Moro for permission to use it.

[bugmenot]

On 5/29/2024 at 8:07 PM, Acacia Sgt said:

Well, according to Anankos, it's because she left Valla. Either way, eventually Moro turns her into an Astral Dragon anyway.

The Deeprealm housing My Castle wasn't created by her. She simply asks Moro for permission to use it.

I didn’t know the reason she got weaker was because she left Valla. I have a odd question, do you know if that is true for Anankos as well. If he left Valla would he also lose some of his power?

If I remember correctly Moro is a First Dragon. The First Dragons do sound very powerful, I remember learning recently that Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons are descendants of the First Dragons.

 

Edited June 2 by bugmenot

[Acacia Sgt]

12 minutes ago, bugmenot said:

I didn’t know the reason she got weaker was because she left Valla. I have a odd question, do you know if that is true for Anankos as well. If he left Valla would he also lose some of his power?

He says so as much, so I'd assume yes.

12 minutes ago, bugmenot said:

If I remember correctly Moro is a First Dragon. The First Dragons do sound very powerful, I remember learning recently that Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons are descendants of the First Dragons.

Hm? Where did you learn that? There are no Divine nor Fell Dragons in Fates.

[bugmenot]

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

He says so as much, so I'd assume yes.

Hm? Where did you learn that? There are no Divine nor Fell Dragons in Fates.

It was briefly mentioned by Nel, one of the DLC characters from Fire Emblem Engage. She mentioned Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons came from the first dragons. I assume this is only relevant in that world, but it is worth some thought since lore from some Fire Emblem games sometime crossover into others.

[Acacia Sgt]

Just now, bugmenot said:

It was briefly mentioned by Nel, one of the DLC characters from Fire Emblem Engage. She mentioned Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons came from the first dragons. I assume this is only relevant in that world, but it is worth some thought since lore from some Fire Emblem games sometime crossover into others.

Well, unless there's an actual connection, usually take each game's lore is its own.

Fates' First Dragons are not a clan of their own. Just the collective name for the strongest of... each, I think? Like, the First Dragons include Moro (Astral Dragon), Anankos (Silent Dragon), the Dusk Dragon, the Dawn Dragon, the Wind, Fire, and Ice dragons which the tribes descend from, the Rainbow Sage, and for the rest their clans were not mentioned. Since, again, there are no Divines or Fell in Fates, then that can't apply.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, bugmenot said:

It was briefly mentioned by Nel, one of the DLC characters from Fire Emblem Engage. She mentioned Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons came from the first dragons. I assume this is only relevant in that world, but it is worth some thought since lore from some Fire Emblem games sometime crossover into others.

I don't remember that line, but I kind of question it's validity. Because, really, what would Nel even know about it? Sombron was a child when he came to Elyos, he likes doesn't have a solid foundation of his own origin himself, and it seems unlikely he would even care to inform his children. She's also talking about Fell and Divine Dragons collectively as two different parts of one group, when we know Fell Dragons are essentially aliens to the setting and any shared origin they'd have to Lumera and her Divine Dragons are going to be coincidental giving the Divine Dragons of Sombrons home world and Elyos are likely as different as the Divine Dragons in any two given Fire Emblem settings.

[bugmenot]

On 6/2/2024 at 11:28 PM, Jotari said:

I don't remember that line, but I kind of question it's validity. Because, really, what would Nel even know about it? Sombron was a child when he came to Elyos, he likes doesn't have a solid foundation of his own origin himself, and it seems unlikely he would even care to inform his children. She's also talking about Fell and Divine Dragons collectively as two different parts of one group, when we know Fell Dragons are essentially aliens to the setting and any shared origin they'd have to Lumera and her Divine Dragons are going to be coincidental giving the Divine Dragons of Sombrons home world and Elyos are likely as different as the Divine Dragons in any two given Fire Emblem settings.

The lore for the Elyos in the DLC is a bit different than the main game. We know this because the origin of the Alear in that world is different than the MC. From the way the conversations went it sounded like the Sombron of that world is a native of that world, I could be wrong on this though. You have a point that Divine Dragons are different in any two Fire Emblem settings.