They really wanted Ced in Thracia 776

[Jotari]

This is Chapter 8 of Genealogy of the Holy War, it covers most of Munster's main territories.

In Genealogy of the Holy War, Leif is automatically deployed in Leinster, the castle on the top left. The first objective of the map is to seize Connaught, the castle in the top right. A few waves of powerful enemies come at your during the opening chapters that you need to endure, Thracia 776 ignore that part for some reason. Even though it's you recruit Faval and have your first encounter with Ishtar, both of which are rather significant (in Thracia, you fight Ishtar's hunky bodyguard instead, twenty years later fans of Heroes rejoiced about this). Anyway, as you can see, the flow of battle leads to Connaucht. Here Leif faces Bloom, the man who's been oppressing his country. They have battle convos and it's pretty epic. Thracia also ignores this. It still happens, just off screen and by Seliph instead of Leif. Instead, Leif decides to go and liberate Munster, the castle on the middle right, whoose latitude is about the same as Seliph's starting position. So for this to work, Seliph and Leif's armies need to criss cross, with Seliph travelling north east and Leif travelling south east. This is pretty illogical.

Now the theory goes, that the reason they did this was because Leif has a bit of an arc where he has to accept that Seliph is a bigger man than him and that he's just a minor side character supporting the actual important people (or if you're feeling nicer, it's about valuing the achievements you do make and not measuring yourself against others). So he doesn't get to fight the big important bad guy (who only gets one freaking line in Thracia, incidentally), instead fighting these lesser villains that he has more personal reasons to hate.

I propose an alternate theory! And that is they just really liked Ced and wanted him in the game. I come to this conclusion because Leif's liberation of Munster makes even less sense than it initally seems, even if you ignore all the Holy War descrepencies. The game starts when Raydrik travels to Fianna to capture Leif. Fianna's one of those villages on the right, by the coast. The first problem, is that Raydrik brings Leif to Munster. Why is this a problem? Because Raydrik is from Connaught. He has this whole history where he betrayed the king of Connaught to Thracia, someone wrote a (nonfanfiction) story about it. So if he's from Connaught, why is he running things in Munster? Remember, the whole Munster District (not the same as Munster Castle, confusingly enough) is really four seperate countries with an alliance. They have their own royal families and stuff. The closests real world equivalent would be like the EU or something. So it's particularly strange for Raydrick to be in charge of a completely seperate country to the one he hails from. It would be like French guy who collaborated with the Nazis being put in charge of Norway. Okay, maybe something like that has happened in history, I'm sure some history buff will cite an example. Or maybe Connaught just as really bad weather like it's real life counter part and Raydrik wanted to rule Munster because he's a hurling fan.

Promblem Number 2 (or 3 if you want to count Genealogy of the Holy War continunity errors). Ced defending Munster. In Genealogy of the Holy War, after you beat Bloom, you're next mission is to sieze Munster as those darn Thracians are getting all full of themselves. This one's a little different though, as your real goal is the south eastern most castle. Munster Castle has Ced (or Hawk if you suck at ugenics) defending it already. Leif's sister shows up briefly and it's all very fun to play. This, and the first siege of Leinster are pretty much the only things Thracia 776 tried to stay loyal to. And all things considered, they did a really good job. They even gave you the same minor throw away boss to fight (Coruta, who hilariously gets redesigned from Most Generic Shared Portrait Guy A, to Most Generic Shared Portrait Guy B. I almost hope for a remake purely to see what he actually looks like). This is all well and good in Genealogy of the Holy War where they say Ced has just sucessfully launched a revolt to gain Munster, but it makes no bloody sense in Thracia 776, despite how arousing the continuity porn is. There's three more chapters after this battle in Thracia 776. Three more battles where you take control of Munster. So what was Ced even doing defending the castle from Thracians? He didn't control that castle. He just stood up on the ramparts and made things more difficult by fighting two enemies at once when he could have done much better to just sit back and let Raydrik and the Thracians fight it out and then just take the castle from the winner (maybe Coruta could have experienced the agonizing bullshit of Chapter 24x instead then), or better yet, get all the civilians out, which is something he even does in Holy War.

So it seems like they twisted the entire story just to have Ced show up with Holsety and blast Thracians. Even though this A)Interferred with the continuity of it's predescessor B)Interferred with it's own lore established purely for this game and C)Interferred it's own plot by putting Ced in a logical quagmire, just to recreate a moment from Genealogy of the Holy War. Raydrik didn't have to be a Connaught traitor, he could have been from Munster. That wouldn't have been a hard change. But I think Connaught originally was meant to be where the climax of the game took place, when the Leinster's Fall short story was written. They're the villains of the story and Munster is the place Leinster is trying to aid. But then someone probably thought it not fitting to finish the game when part of the Munster District is still under threat and we'd miss out on this moment with Ced (and Altenna wouldn't even get to appear in the game at all!), so they made Munster itself the climax and just sort of mushed everything else to fit that idea. It might even explain why Saias ends up as such a non character that gets overwritten by Ced. Perhaps, originally, there was no plan for Ced and Saias would have played a larger role in the Connaught Climax, but then then they didn't have room for him when they moved the plot to Munster and included Ced.

Now...I'm not particularly upset or disapointed that they did this (do wish you got to fight Ishtar and recruit Faval though), because man did they do a good job in making Chapter 23 of Thracia match up with Genalogy (they even have those villages near Munster adapted, that's your starting point in Thracia!). And earlier in the game it led to a nice Hannibal cameo. But, well, I just thought I'd point it all out. You know, because I find writing long pointless things that require me scouring scripts as a fun activity for a Saturday night.

Edited July 1, 2018 by Jotari

[Slumber]

On the Raydrik point... He's more of an invading ruler than one that has any sort of right of succession. Remember, he betrayed Leif's grandpa and orchestrated the deaths of Ethlin and Quan. He was making vacancies across Munster so that he could take over the whole thing. 

Think of it like the vikings conquering England. England had Danish kings for a while. It's not quite the same, but assume the vikings worked with the Turks(Just roll with it) to take over England, with the agreement being that the Turks got to rule England. 

That's the Raydrik situation. Worked with the Lopto sect to control a larger portion than he would have gotten otherwise. 

Edited April 1, 2018 by Slumber

[Jotari]

20 hours ago, Slumber said:

On the Raydrik point... He's more of an invading ruler than one that has any sort of right of succession. Remember, he betrayed Leif's grandpa and orchestrated the deaths of Ethlin and Quan. He was making vacancies across Munster so that he could take over the whole thing. 

Think of it like the vikings conquering England. England had Danish kings for a while. It's not quite the same, but assume the vikings worked with the Turks(Just roll with it) to take over England, with the agreement being that the Turks got to rule England. 

That's the Raydrik situation. Worked with the Lopto sect to control a larger portion than he would have gotten otherwise. 

He also murdered the King of Connaucht and left a vacancy open there. It would make more sense to put him in charge of the area he presumably came from, rather than relocating him to a different area (and one that would have more reason to hate him as he destroyed Leinster's reinforcements of Munster, while Connaucht itself got by releatively fine in the war by collaborating with Thracia and later Friege). And it's less that it's super unrealistic for one guy to be put in charge of a neihbouring country (if I was to rationlize it, I'd say Bloom moved him there as he was a capable leader and Munster was at the most risk from an attack by Thracia...except wait, Raydrik already collaborated with Thracia in the past, so positioning him there makes even less sense), and more that he easily could have just been from Munster from the start and there would be no oddities that he's in charge of it.

Edited April 1, 2018 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

37 minutes ago, Jotari said:

He also murdered the King of Connaucht and left a vacancy open there. It would make more sense to put him in charge of the area he presumably came from, rather than relocating him to a different area (and one that would have more reason to hate him as he destroyed Leinster's reinforcements of Munster, while Connaucht itself got by releatively fine in the war by collaborating with Thracia and later Friege). And it's less that it's super unrealistic for one guy to be put in charge of a neihbouring country (if I was to rationlize it, I'd say Bloom moved him there as he was a capable leader and Munster was at the most risk from an attack by Thracia...except wait, Raydrik already collaborated with Thracia in the past, so positioning him there makes even less sense), and more that he easily could have just been from Munster from the start and there would be no oddities that he's in charge of it.

Perhaps, I think there may be real world examples of this, but I cannot think of any specific ones right now, would be that it would be better to divorce a lackey from a place they originated from. The idea is that if you leave them in their home realm, their personal connections and intimate understanding of the locale gives them a chance to later turn treasonous. By sending them somewhere that isn't their native land, they have no personal connections nor intimate knowledge of the landscape and such, keeping them from fomenting treason/undermining the system (like keeping more of the agriculture/mineral output for themselves than giving it to the demanding core) there. They can only do their assigned job as best as they can, or lose it and have no other recourse like rebellion.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Perhaps, I think there may be real world examples of this, but I cannot think of any specific ones right now, would be that it would be better to divorce a lackey from a place they originated from. The idea is that if you leave them in their home realm, their personal connections and intimate understanding of the locale gives them a chance to later turn treasonous. By sending them somewhere that isn't their native land, they have no personal connections nor intimate knowledge of the landscape and such, keeping them from fomenting treason/undermining the system (like keeping more of the agriculture/mineral output for themselves than giving it to the demanding core) there. They can only do their assigned job as best as they can, or lose it and have no other recourse like rebellion.

There's logic in that. Of course it also runs the risk of giving said lackey two territories to control if he ever tries to waltz back into his accepting home land ala Hitler into Austria. Hard to say how much love Raydrik would have gotten from the common people of Connaucht though, given that he did murder their king, yet he also protected them from the worst of the invasion. Leinster's Fall does say he'd been consolidating power among the nobility for a while though.

Edited April 1, 2018 by Jotari

[Slumber]

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

There's logic in that. Of course it also runs the risk of giving said lackey two territories to control if he ever tries to waltz back into his accepting home land ala Hitler into Austria. Hard to say how much love Raydrik would have gotten from the common people of Connaucht though, given that he did murder their king, yet he also protected them from the worst of the invasion. Leinster's Fall does say he'd been consolidating power among the nobility for a while though.

I think the reason the Lopto Sect gave Raydrik so much was because he was dumb. He was super strong, but he was very dumb/simple. He wanted power, but he didn't want overboard power. He wanted Munster, not just Connaucht, but as far as we know, that's it.

They probably saw that as something beneficial, as Raydrik would be easier to control. Compared to giving Munster to Travant and having Travant control ALL of Thracia. Travant's a wild card. He wants what's best for his people, and he'll do anything to do it, including plotting against the Grannvale Empire/Lopto Sect. Or somebody else who they don't know. Raydrik's been plotting with the Lopto sect ever since they started creeping across Jugdral. They probably were familiar/comfortable enough with just having Raydrik do what he wanted.

Edited April 1, 2018 by Slumber