Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[BrightBow]

1 minute ago, ping said:

This might be a bit nitpicky, but no - Akaneia did not have queens between games. Both Sheema and Minerva are referred to as "Princess", and the same is true for Nyna. It's nitpicky because Marth is also still "Prince Marth" throughout the game, but he at least becomes king in his ending.

More importantly, Hardin marrying Nyna and becoming the king of Akaneia was already in his FE1 ending. It's not something that FE3 made up in order to set up a conflict for a sequel.

Meanwhile there was no mention of Minerva ascending the throne. Just that she is devoting herself to reconstruction.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

which means Kaga's love for divine right could override his love for male preference. So she might get to be the one true exception, once all's said and done.

It was actually revealed that Zade and Athol were swapped at birth and Zade is the real heir to the throne and Athol was just a duke's daughter.

Does this mean that her fiance was her brother the whole time? Don't think about it to much.

[Eltosian Kadath]

I am a bit surprised by myself that I didn't mention the Dual Protagonists sharing a throne in Gaiden. People love to talk about Alm overshadowing Celica, but Celica's role as a more religious Christ like figure has always muddled those comparisons.

...Odd as it is to say Kaga tends to make his avatars of the gods women. The heir of the Divine Dragon god Naga is the little dragon girl Tiki, Celica is believed to be the reincarnation of the Goddess Mila in her Gaiden ending, you have the godly dragons of TRS, not to mention the Popess of Berwick, and the Circlet Sisters of Vestaria Saga.

 

8 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

 

Meanwhile there was no mention of Minerva ascending the throne. Just that she is devoting herself to reconstruction.

The remake is more willing to say Queen about Minerva, but is ambiguous enough that Ping may be right about that technicality, and is certainly right about it in the original, but even in the official translation of the original they indicate she is a ruling princess.

 

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

 

I'll admit I didn't know it was possible for queens to happen in FE4, but the fact that it's only possible by killing off all the men only adds to the point. Kaga does not seem to believe queens should happen unless it's the absolute last resort.

This is kind of about FE4's ending, so spoiler box away.

Spoiler

Genealogy's ending is remarkably variable, highly dependent on both pairings and who lived to the end, with endings as variable as Seliph being emperor of the continent just like Marth (if basically everyone dies), to Seliph as the sole king of a continent ruled by queens (that would require Shannon and Skasaha die for Queen Lakche to rule Isaac, Leif to die for Queen Altena to rules United Thracia, Ares and Delmud dies for Queen Nanna to rule Augustria, for the Son of Lewyn to die but not his daughter, and of course the Son of Jamke to die but not his daughter...). There is a reason the translations project Naga and its rom expansion broke during the ending.

Actually, I seem to remember TRS's ending being just as convoluted, and would really need to look it up to remember who ends up as king and queen of what in the ending.

[BrightBow]

6 minutes ago, Armagon said:

It was actually revealed that Zade and Athol were swapped at birth and Zade is the real heir to the throne and Athol was just a duke's daughter.

Does this mean that her fiance was her brother the whole time? Don't think about it to much.

Why would that need to be the case? Kaga protagonists generally marry upwards. Zade is gonna become king on virtue of being Queen Atholphis' husband.

Though I suppose in Sigurd's case, he himself did not get to reap the benefits of marrying into the royal family. Only his son did.

[BrightBow]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Actually, I seem to remember TRS's ending being just as convoluted, and would really need to look it up to remember who ends up as king and queen of what in the ending.

As varied as the ending is, royal inheritance is very much locked in. Runan marries Enteh and becomes king of Reeve. Sennet becomes king of Canan. The king and queen of Salia turned out to be alive, so they will rule for the foreseeable future. As will Admiral Vals.

Not sure how Queen Liza reacts if it turns out King Loffaru and Princess Sasha died, though.

[ARMADS!!!]

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I did say "at least in the long term." Or, perhaps it would've been more apt to describe it as "at the end of the story." When the conclusion arrives, none of them are still sitting on their thrones. They either abdicate to a man or die, in Hilda's case. Any time women get to rule in Kaga's games it's a strictly temporary thing that either ends poorly or is swiftly passed on to men.

Again, the only true exception is Syvil of Sphire, from Vestaria Saga, who is still queen at the end of both Vestaria 1 and 2. But again, she's a mind-controlled villain and I am all but certain she'll be replaced if/when Vestaria 3 comes out and concludes the story. Then there's stuff like Kay of the Highlands and Aegina not seemingly marrying Sherpa or anyone else any time soon. Because Berwick is the best game Kaga ever made (it's all thanks to the fabled editor).

I'll admit I didn't know it was possible for queens to happen in FE4, but the fact that it's only possible by killing off all the men only adds to the point. Kaga does not seem to believe queens should happen unless it's the absolute last resort.

Athol's... eh. I suppose she kinda sorta counts, even though she might marry Zade and he'll be the defacto ruler of Meleda. Still, she does have more "power" than the average Kaga female ruler, what with her special position and powers and all, and being the direct descendant to the royal line while Zade is just some nobody duke's son, which means Kaga's love for divine right could override his love for male preference. So she might get to be the one true exception, once all's said and done.

...That being said, if I dared to argue that Athol is Kaga's best ruling lady I'd be, if anything, doing the man a disservice lol. Girls like Sienna, Sheema, Tia, Ayra, Linoan... for a few examples, might be doomed to play second fiddle to men, but they handle their roles with a decent amount of grace and badassery. Athol, meanwhile, is a complete mess of a character that just happens to have been written too "powerful" to play second fiddle to the guy (but not to be an active liability nearly all the time of course)... and even then, VS2 happens and she's just a rock for most of it lol

I suppose what I'm saying is that Kaga never allowing women to rule doesn't necessarily mean all of his female characters are terrible. He definitely has problems writing women, but he's not incapable of writing cool girls from time to time. It's just frustrating that, when he does, he still feels the need to hover a dude above them. Let Sienna be girlboss solo queen dammit.

 While it's true that no woman was sitting on the throne as queen by the end of the game, in FE4 Lahna was the queen of Silesse (which, yes, was because Lewyn's father passed away, and yes, she also wanted Lewyn to assume the throne, but it's never said that it's because she's a woman, but because Lewyn bares Forseti blood and she doesn't, also the people of Silesse like her and doesn't seem to have a problem with having a woman as rulee, it's her who cares the most about it) until after gen 1 ended, and after her death, Erinys (or whoever is married to Lewyn) is crowned queen too (not princess or anything else), and even becomes the actual main ruler after Lewyn runs away again.

 They do prioritize men rulling in FE4 in the epilogue too but you can still make women rule depending on what you do, for example if Shannan dies, Ulster will be the next king of Isaach but if you married Ayra to a noble man in gen 1, like Lex, then Ulster will go back to inherit his dad's land, and Larcei will inherit Isaach. They have a whole list of the priorities of which character goes where (depending on who are their parents, on who dies, on who married who, etc) in the wiki, is pretty cool.

 

 

[ARMADS!!!]

28 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am a bit surprised by myself that I didn't mention the Dual Protagonists sharing a throne in Gaiden. People love to talk about Alm overshadowing Celica, but Celica's role as a more religious Christ like figure has always muddled those comparisons.

...Odd as it is to say Kaga tends to make his avatars of the gods women. The heir of the Divine Dragon god Naga is the little dragon girl Tiki, Celica is believed to be the reincarnation of the Goddess Mila in her Gaiden ending, you have the godly dragons of TRS, not to mention the Popess of Berwick, and the Circlet Sisters of Vestaria Saga.

  Hide contents

Genealogy's ending is remarkably variable, highly dependent on both pairings and who lived to the end, with endings as variable as Seliph being emperor of the continent just like Marth (if basically everyone dies), to Seliph as the sole king of a continent ruled by queens (that would require Shannon and Skasaha die for Queen Lakche to rule Isaac, Leif to die for Queen Altena to rules United Thracia, Ares and Delmud dies for Queen Nanna to rule Augustria, for the Son of Lewyn to die but not his daughter, and of course the Son of Jamke to die but not his daughter...). There is a reason the translations project Naga and its rom expansion broke during the ending.

 

 Oh, never thought of that, but religious stuff does seem to be represented by women... 

 (Double posting cause I can't quote on edits)

[Armagon]

42 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am a bit surprised by myself that I didn't mention the Dual Protagonists sharing a throne in Gaiden. People love to talk about Alm overshadowing Celica, but Celica's role as a more religious Christ like figure has always muddled those comparisons.

On that note, I did see a post arguing that Celica as a whole was overall treated better in SoV despite.....things because in Gaiden, Alm got all of the cool stuff. Celica doesn't have any prfs in Gaiden and a random NPC is who gives her her promotion instead of a named character.

43 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Skasaha

 

43 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Lakche

Using the old fan-translated names in the year of our Lord current year.

[Interdimensional Observer]

12 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Using the old fan-translated names in the year of our Lord current year.

Old habits die hard, and really, as long as the point is understood.

 

32 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

but it's never said that it's because she's a woman, but because Lewyn bares Forseti blood and she doesn't,

Actually, is that ever said? Lewyn's uncles don't have Forseti blood, and they're said to be the late king's brothers. So then Rahna has the holy blood? Or is this just "IS was too lazy to program the usurper dukes gameplay-useless holy blood" or "holy blood inheritance is more random than the gameplay implementation would have you believe it to be"?

Edited February 15 by Interdimensional Observer

[Acacia Sgt]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Actually, is that ever said? Lewyn's uncles don't have Forseti blood, and they're said to be the late king's brothers. So then Rahna has the holy blood? Or is this just "IS was too lazy to program them gameplay-useless holy blood" or "holy blood inheritance is more random than the gameplay implementation would have you believe it to be"?

I mean, when you consider Mussar, who has a vendetta with Sigurd for killing his father and targets Seliph by proxy... and he has Forseti blood...

Edited February 15 by Acacia Sgt

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just now, Acacia Sgt said:

I mean, when you consider Mussar, who has a vendetta with Sigurd for killing his father... and he has Forseti blood...

Well, I suppose that'd be evidence for it going in one direction. ...Although the man also carries droppable Tornado, and there isn't a single promoted "normal" magic class that gets A in any element. So it could be his world-building situation was invented to address a gameplay quandary ...if still canonical.

[Acacia Sgt]

Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

Well, I suppose that'd be evidence for it going in one direction. ...Although the man also carries droppable Tornado, and there isn't a single promoted "normal" magic class that gets A in any element. So it could be his world-building situation was invented to address a gameplay quandary ...if still canonical.

That's one reason. But then you have the Pegasus Knight boss trio with minor Forseti too.

[Armagon]

10 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Old habits die hard, and really, as long as the point is understood.

Well setting aside that it's a huge pet-peeve of mine, the point also to like, use the term people are more familiar with. 

and something i've realized about a lot of early fan-translations is that they just take the Japanese pronunciation and literally translate it to English. Like i'm pretty sure Larcei and Lakche is supposed to be the same thing, with the latter just being the Japanese pronunciation. But it doesn't always work if you just make it English literally. It's also how we got names like Ferry and Leaf.

[Acacia Sgt]

Well, I'd say, at least while in Ruan I don't have to worry about Mira. Just win enough at Poker, and use the Medals to buy stuff to sell.

Also have tons of ingredients surplus to sell too, if I need to.

[Saint Rubenio]

1 hour ago, BrightBow said:

As will Admiral Vals.

Vals is a special case because he just washes his hands of all responsibility and heaves everything onto his son's shoulders. Holmes then manipulates Attrom to return to Granada and get roped into leading it himself instead.

Our hero.

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 While it's true that no woman was sitting on the throne as queen by the end of the game, in FE4 Lahna was the queen of Silesse (which, yes, was because Lewyn's father passed away, and yes, she also wanted Lewyn to assume the throne, but it's never said that it's because she's a woman, but because Lewyn bares Forseti blood and she doesn't, also the people of Silesse like her and doesn't seem to have a problem with having a woman as rulee, it's her who cares the most about it) until after gen 1 ended, and after her death, Erinys (or whoever is married to Lewyn) is crowned queen too (not princess or anything else), and even becomes the actual main ruler after Lewyn runs away again.

True, I did forget the Silessian queen. Silesse in general seems to be an unusually matriarchal country, with its many female military commanders and its queen. It's neat, I just kinda wish it was more common and didn't rather stink of "I wanted to give this country a special flavor so I did the unthinkable of letting women be relevant here."

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

On that note, I did see a post arguing that Celica as a whole was overall treated better in SoV despite.....things because in Gaiden, Alm got all of the cool stuff. Celica doesn't have any prfs in Gaiden and a random NPC is who gives her her promotion instead of a named character.

I saw that post. The tone of the responses and its introduction made me steer clear, it all feels rather confrontational and I didn't feel like it at that moment. From what I could tell, though, the post mostly defends that SoV Celica is better because she's more developed, which like... Yeah, sure, but that extra development comes shackled with nonsense like Conrad. Kind of a bad look.

31 minutes ago, Armagon said:

and something i've realized about a lot of early fan-translations is that they just take the Japanese pronunciation and literally translate it to English. Like i'm pretty sure Larcei and Lakche is supposed to be the same thing, with the latter just being the Japanese pronunciation. But it doesn't always work if you just make it English literally. It's also how we got names like Ferry and Leaf.

Admittedly, it varies from case to case. Sure, there's stuff like Skasaha probably being intended to be Scathach and just being transliterated in older fanslations. But then you have idiocy like changing Harold's name to Arthur even though there was already one, arguably two Arthurs in the series before - heck, recently I also realized, he has a fucking H on his belt buckle that has no meaning when his name is Arthur. I'd have to respect someone calling him Harold out of spite lol. And like Observer said, force of habit. Took me a long time to stop using Jerrot for Zelot. Also I like Jerrot better but that's entirely subjective

That, and I'll admit it kind of annoys me when people see a name in the CyL ballot and just instantly jump to calling it the only valid name and every fanslation rushes to change it as well. Like, hello? Have we forgotten that CyL fucking forgot Niime and Murdock were both officially localized in 7 and called them Nimue and Mardok and had to change it later? Or that it translated Dorias as Dryas even though his original katakana is one character off of Darius, which was probably the intended reference? Some intern translating a list of hundreds of names in a hurry to make a publicity website for a gacha of all things isn't more trustworthy than a fan making a translation out of love for a game.

[BrightBow]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

On that note, I did see a post arguing that Celica as a whole was overall treated better in SoV despite.....things because in Gaiden, Alm got all of the cool stuff. Celica doesn't have any prfs in Gaiden and a random NPC is who gives her her promotion instead of a named character.

Golden Dagger hype!
...except it's not actually Celica's pref. But whatever.
She also sold it to Saber. So it's really not her's anymore.

Also the name of the named NPC who gives Alm his promotion is... well Celica.
Celica gets the cool coronation class change, while Alm is simply made more powerful because Celica asked some schmuck to make it so.

Edited February 15 by BrightBow

[Armagon]

22 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Scathach

Scathach is also funny because in Awakening, he was Ulster and remained Ulster until relatively recently.

23 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

But then you have idiocy like changing Harold's name to Arthur

On that note, it did lead to the fun y situation where Faye's JP name was Effie but we already have an Effie in English so it was changed to Faye even though Effie's Japanese name is Faye.

24 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

That, and I'll admit it kind of annoys me when people see a name in the CyL ballot and just instantly jump to calling it the only valid name and every fanslation rushes to change it as well.

The rule of thumb for that should be wait until the character shows up in Heroes on way or another.

My fav is Gwendolyn though. People can get away with calling her Wendy still because now it's just shorthand for her full name.

[Acacia Sgt]

35 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

heck, recently I also realized, he has a fucking H on his belt buckle that has no meaning when his name is Arthur.

Could still stand for Hero...?

35 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Or that it translated Dorias as Dryas even though his original katakana is one character off of Darius, which was probably the intended reference?

I wonder. Dryas refers to a plant genus. Then we have Glade. And Carrion... well, Callion is a type of winter cherry. Maybe they were aiming for a theme with the Leonster knights... but then changed their mind mid-way?

[Acacia Sgt]

Also, Dryas is ドリアス while Darius is ダリウス. Not exactly one kana off.

[Saint Rubenio]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Scathach is also funny because in Awakening, he was Ulster and remained Ulster until relatively recently.

Ulster's the one I don't get at all. It's just completely different.

...Actually, doing a quick search, the original Scathach from Irish mithology was a woman and mentor to the hero Ulster. So I guess they just figured since he's a guy and OG Scathach was a woman, they had to give him a male name and just chose to give him the completely different name of a related mithological figure? And then Heroes went "nope lol" and undid it. How fickle this whole thing is...

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

On that note, it did lead to the fun y situation where Faye's JP name was Effie but we already have an Effie in English so it was changed to Faye even though Effie's Japanese name is Faye.

I know there's a lot of characters in the series but it's really rather amazing how they keep having problems with name reuse. There's so many names out there, just name someone Lieselotte already.

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

The rule of thumb for that should be wait until the character shows up in Heroes on way or another.

My fav is Gwendolyn though. People can get away with calling her Wendy still because now it's just shorthand for her full name.

The thing that sucks about Gwendolyn is that, had FE6 been officially localized, it would've been impossible for that to be her name - it doesn't even fit in the original game's interface. It's way too long. The fanslation had to implement the fanmade thin font just to be able to accomodate Heroes's shit. If a fanslation had done this of their own accord people would've lambasted them for the choice.

59 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Could still stand for Hero...?

That works as a Watsonian explanation, but the Doylist reason is obviously that he's a walking superhero reference, and Superman's big red S on his chest stands for his name. Admittedly the fact that his portrait cuts off just a bit too high for the H to be seen in most circumstances does more to ruin the effect than the name change, but with the name change the letter might as well not even be there at all lol

59 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I wonder. Dryas refers to a plant genus. Then we have Glade. And Carrion... well, Callion is a type of winter cherry. Maybe they were aiming for a theme with the Leonster knights... but then changed their mind mid-way?

Might be on to something there. That does add up. I mean there's obviously also Leif (Leaf), but the pattern kind of peters out after that.

49 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Also, Dryas is ドリアス while Darius is ダリウス. Not exactly one kana off.

Ah, my bad. Misread one of the signs.

[ARMADS!!!]

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Vals is a special case because he just washes his hands of all responsibility and heaves everything onto his son's shoulders. Holmes then manipulates Attrom to return to Granada and get roped into leading it himself instead.

Our hero.

True, I did forget the Silessian queen. Silesse in general seems to be an unusually matriarchal country, with its many female military commanders and its queen. It's neat, I just kinda wish it was more common and didn't rather stink of "I wanted to give this country a special flavor so I did the unthinkable of letting women be relevant here."

I saw that post. The tone of the responses and its introduction made me steer clear, it all feels rather confrontational and I didn't feel like it at that moment. From what I could tell, though, the post mostly defends that SoV Celica is better because she's more developed, which like... Yeah, sure, but that extra development comes shackled with nonsense like Conrad. Kind of a bad look.

Admittedly, it varies from case to case. Sure, there's stuff like Skasaha probably being intended to be Scathach and just being transliterated in older fanslations. But then you have idiocy like changing Harold's name to Arthur even though there was already one, arguably two Arthurs in the series before - heck, recently I also realized, he has a fucking H on his belt buckle that has no meaning when his name is Arthur. I'd have to respect someone calling him Harold out of spite lol. And like Observer said, force of habit. Took me a long time to stop using Jerrot for Zelot. Also I like Jerrot better but that's entirely subjective

That, and I'll admit it kind of annoys me when people see a name in the CyL ballot and just instantly jump to calling it the only valid name and every fanslation rushes to change it as well. Like, hello? Have we forgotten that CyL fucking forgot Niime and Murdock were both officially localized in 7 and called them Nimue and Mardok and had to change it later? Or that it translated Dorias as Dryas even though his original katakana is one character off of Darius, which was probably the intended reference? Some intern translating a list of hundreds of names in a hurry to make a publicity website for a gacha of all things isn't more trustworthy than a fan making a translation out of love for a game.

 Yah, I call some characters by their fan translation names too, Scathach is Ulster for me, fuck it, if someone wanna shit me for it go ahead, sometimes I don't like switching the spell I used. Didn't remember that Murdock was Mardok in FE7 lol, but Niime was so obviously supposed to be Nemue... 

 Also, why "arguibly" 2 Arthurs? They're really two, no?

 Also, sorta unrelated, but I just realized that FE4 has a Lana and a Lahna, even though the names are not identical, they're extremely similar. 

 

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Could still stand for Hero...?

YEAH I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS THAT, never knew his name was Harold before Saint Rubenio said it now.

 

47 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Ulster's the one I don't get at all. It's just completely different.

...Actually, doing a quick search, the original Scathach from Irish mithology was a woman and mentor to the hero Ulster. So I guess they just figured since he's a guy and OG Scathach was a woman, they had to give him a male name and just chose to give him the completely different name of a related mithological figure? And then Heroes went "nope lol" and undid it. How fickle this whole thing is...

I know there's a lot of characters in the series but it's really rather amazing how they keep having problems with name reuse. There's so many names out there, just name someone Lieselotte already.

The thing that sucks about Gwendolyn is that, had FE6 been officially localized, it would've been impossible for that to be her name - it doesn't even fit in the original game's interface. It's way too long. The fanslation had to implement the fanmade thin font just to be able to accomodate Heroes's shit. If a fanslation had done this of their own accord people would've lambasted them for the choice.

That works as a Watsonian explanation, but the Doylist reason is obviously that he's a walking superhero reference, and Superman's big red S on his chest stands for his name. Admittedly the fact that his portrait cuts off just a bit too high for the H to be seen in most circumstances does more to ruin the effect than the name change, but with the name change the letter might as well not even be there at all lol

Might be on to something there. That does add up. I mean there's obviously also Leif (Leaf), but the pattern kind of peters out after that.

Ah, my bad. Misread one of the signs.

 They have problems with name reuse because they want to keep using mythological names from the same places or names from King Arthur and the song of Roland, instead of sometimes picking other stuff, look how Heroes had to name Odin as Alfador because Fates already had one, or how they named Thórr's axe as Mjolnir something instead of just Mjolnir.

 What I don't get is why they kept Selena from Fates like that, in japanese her name is Luna! (While Severa is "Serena" which is probably a try to spell Selena, but since Serena is a name too, and we already bad a Selena in FE8, they could've named her Serena, OR instead could've let it be Selena in Awakening and then Luna in Fates, as it is it looks like they picked Severa to avoid Selena but then they went for it in Fates just because, I get it, both of her names are to be related to the moon in japanese but in english they probably didnt pick the reference in Awakening and then just tried to use a name that looked like Severa, but still... There are more names that look like Severa then).

Edited February 15 by ARMADS!!!

[Armagon]

50 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

The thing that sucks about Gwendolyn is that, had FE6 been officially localized, it would've been impossible for that to be her name - it doesn't even fit in the original game's interface. It's way too long.

Clearly the long game in preparation for the FE6 remake.

[Acacia Sgt]

8 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 What I don't get is why they kept Selena from Fates like that, in japanese her name is Luna! (While Severa is "Serena" which is probably a try to spell Selena, but since Serena is a name too, and we already bad a Selena in FE8, they could've named her Serena, OR instead could've let it be Selena in Awakening and then Luna in Fates, as it is it looks like they picked Severa to avoid Selena but then they went for it in Fates just because, I get it, both of her names are to be related to the moon in japanese but in english they probably didnt pick the reference in Awakening and then just tried to use a name that looked like Severa, but still... There are more names that look like Severa then).

I feel it might be due to the skill. Awakening Stahl is Sol in Japan I believe, for that matter.

[GuardianSing]

On 2/13/2024 at 6:56 PM, Acacia Sgt said:

For its worth, they're also skipping Arvis, so you can't say they're singling her out for being a woman. I hope.

Grannvale must have a weird mix of Agnatic-cognatic primogeniture and having Naga Blood also bumps you ahead of the queue. So Arvis, having no Naga blood, can only hope to be King Regent to his own children. That's my take of this.

I can understand skipping Arvis because he is prince consort. I'll see if he becomes any kind of king consort or just...the king.

They should just do the Jadwiga thing and make Deidre king

On 2/13/2024 at 7:30 PM, BrightBow said:

Only "almost"?

I'm willing to believe it as being based off of implicit biases of the creators rather than an intentional endorsement of sexism.

Still feels pretty insistent but it could be a translation thing.

On 2/14/2024 at 4:09 AM, Saint Rubenio said:

It's always fun when those kinds of people are like "it's very realistic, it was that way in real life!" to justify misogyny, but then you throw a butch woman at them and they're like "why are they putting ugly woke in my fictional videogame, it's not supposed to be realistic." Only tangentially related to this, but I figured I'd get it out of my system.

Oh I despise that as well, especially when it becomes obvious the complaints are coming from people who have a somewhat limited knowledge of history and only criticize inaccurate history when it portends to their own modern views and biases. There is a massive difference between showing the disrespect and oppression of a certain group of people in history and giving a certain group of people barely any agency at all on an inherent level in a piece of media.

And when it comes to fictional fantasy games like Fire Emblem the critique makes even less sense because again.

I don't remember that part of history...

I think Three Houses does a decent job at displaying sexism as an existing issue in it's world and how it affects various female characters. Genealogy so far feels more on the side of "Author's personal biases" on the scale of narrative thematic framing.

On 2/14/2024 at 7:55 AM, Lightchao42 said:

Don't worry, Arvis will rewrite the law to allow absolute primogeniture after he and Deirdre have seven girls in a row. It's not like Azmur can come back as a ghost to haunt them over it or anything.

(Fun fact, the first real life monarchy to adopt absolute primogeniture was Sweden in 1980.)

Honestly the most interesting stories of real life monarchies are when succession happens and the rules for such are almost never commonly defined or the rules at place come into clash with the current situation of the dynasty. The rise of the few women monarchs in history are especially interesting because of that.

Also 1980 being the earliest absolute primogeniture was adopted in a country reminds of one of my personal favorite quotes from comedian Jay Foreman.

"There's been some changes over the past few years to drag the House of Lords, kicking and screaming into the 19th century."

On 2/14/2024 at 9:06 AM, Acacia Sgt said:

Bah, who needs lance infantry.

I genuinely think they should make the naginata infantry from Fates a standard in the series.

16 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

That could easily be part of it, although I generally got more the impression that it is more of a male preference form of succession generally, but with Dierdre being an amnesiac stranger that has never been trained to rule even before losing her memories, Azmur might be making the practical assumption that her husband will probably be the real power when he passes, with Dierdre as a figure head at best.

Male preference yes, though I can't help but feel like the rest wouldn't even be brought up if Dierdre was a prince. It wouldn't be "Oh you must have Arvisa bear the real heir as quickly as possible." Dierdre would just be the next heir.

Perhaps that is indicative of the male preference but I can't tell if that's intentional or because of a lack of imagination.

16 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

...That is a bit more debatable. Archanea has queens rule between the games, with Sheema, and Minerva, although both were vassal queens of the Archanean empire,

Minerva in particular, even if Marth didn't manifest destiny, was well on the road to be overtaken by her thought-to-be-dead brother which depletes a lot of her original agency.

Note how both of these characters are always referred to as princesses, never queens.

5 hours ago, ping said:

This might be a bit nitpicky, but no - Akaneia did not have queens between games. Both Sheema and Minerva are referred to as "Princess", and the same is true for Nyna. It's nitpicky because Marth is also still "Prince Marth" throughout the game, but he at least becomes king in his ending.

Akaneia's worldbuilding is rather holey, so there's no concrete reason given why Sheema and Minerva never had a coronation, but there's the precedent of Nyna still being the "Princess" to Hardin's "Emperor" even though she is the one carrying the legitimacy of that claim, so it's hard for me not to assume that a similar arrangement would've been made had Sheema and Minerva remained their respective countries' rulers.

Fire Emblem in general is reluctant to use queen or any other female gendered term for the very few female rulers it has. Celica and Elincia are the only ones I can think of at the top of my head with Celica fitting the description as more queen consort than anything.

"In marrying Alm, Celica became the first queen of the One Kingdom of Valentia, and aided her king with wisdom and compassion. Believed by the people to be a reincarnation of Mila, she was universally loved for her work fostering peace in the nascent kingdom."  -Echoes ending for Celica

"As first king of the One Kingdom of Valentia, Alm spent his life restoring the land to glory. He would be remembered fondly by later generations as Saint-King Alm I, who cast off the gods' oppressive yoke and founded a dynasty that would last a thousand years."  -Echoes ending for Alm

Celica's explicitly displaying her dependency on Alm with Alm's not even mentioning Celica. She is only queen because she married the real monarch.

Edelgard is referred to as Imperial Princess and then just Emperor after succession, not Empress.

Of course I'm remembering Corrin now who can become queen of Valla at the end of Revelations, no strings attached, though I don't know if I'd count avatars since by nature they are divorced from characterization. Corrin is only queen if the player picked the female version of her and bought the 20 dollar DLC of the actual Fates games. In Birthright Ryoma becomes king of Hoshido and Camilla, despite being the eldest heir, specifically abdicates as queen and passes it onto Leo to become the king of Nohr. In fairness this is countered in Conquest with Hinoka becoming queen of Hoshido but only after both males in her family have already died.

I would be remiss not to also mention how Mikoto was queen of two kingdoms, both of which she was queen consort to the real monarch though since Sumeragi is long dead she might as well be the absolute queen for the 5 minutes of screen time she gets and is treated as such.

Sanaki however does get to be an Empress. And Micaiah always becomes queen of Daein regardless if Pelleas is alive or not. And of course Elincia is always queen. Leave it to the egalitarian game to have the most egalitarian view of its female rulers.

N-Not that a monarchy is egalitarian, a girlboss is still a boss

4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

...Odd as it is to say Kaga tends to make his avatars of the gods women. The heir of the Divine Dragon god Naga is the little dragon girl Tiki, Celica is believed to be the reincarnation of the Goddess Mila in her Gaiden ending, you have the godly dragons of TRS, not to mention the Popess of Berwick, and the Circlet Sisters of Vestaria Saga.

It is a very common thing in fantasy to have female religious figures bless men to go out on dangerous holy quests. Whether this is inspired from the Catholic idea of the Mother Mary or in Fire Emblem the Japanese idea of Shrine Maidens I'm not sure but either way I've always been fascinated with the fact that many fantasy worlds will have Goddesses and female religious figures yet still have an explicitly patriarchal world. After all in real life the justification for patriarchal society was that God himself was a man and so only men could be godly. It's why you have father priests and popes but never mother priestesses and just sister nuns who are married to God.

That's honestly a big reason misogyny bugs me in these games because it's always in a world where it doesn't really make sense to exist as a prejudice, at least not in the same way.

In general it comes from the fact that most Fire Emblem games, despite having a 13th century aesthetic, have a 19th century culture with the ideas of nationalism and rationalism overshadowing the ideas of divine right of Kings and general religious matters, stuff that would be much more significant in that time in actual European history. Most priests, monks, or clerics in FE aren't religious, especially in the modern titles. If a character is religious that is usually their gimmick as a character and very rarely are characters presented as being casually religious. The state and the nation is a lot more important to these stories than the Gods and faith. The religious characters in FE are almost always women while the nationalists are almost always men, and historically Fire Emblem has been far more willing to do away with the faith to protect the state.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15 by GuardianSing

[BrightBow]

Well, personally I am not declined to let the Bride Sanaki software determine how I address anything.

The result are rather fascinating, though. Like Fury ending up as Eriynis. Hard to imagine a different reading of kanji could result in such drastic differences.