Does serfdom exist in the Fire Emblem series?

[Nozomi Kasaki]

I have been wondering if there are serfs in the Fire Emblem games, especially considering that serfs are more common in the medieval era than slaves, at least in Europe I think. I mean, we could see that slavery does exist in the games (example: Linde being sold in a slave market and a lot of Laguz being enslaved by beorcs, especially in Begnion as far as I remember.), so why can't serfdom? 
 

If serfdom does exist in Fire Emblem, could you tell me where in the games was it shown or at least mentioned? Perhaps I overlooked a couple of details that showcases serfdom in the games. If so, please tell me so I will know.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Nozomi Kasaki

[Zapp Branniglenn]

This is an interesting question because we play as "lords", and that has always been the terminology. And on the very first turn of the very first fire emblem, you send Marth to collect what is presumably his tithe of 10000G - but that money really belongs to Ceada's dad.  I wouldn't suggest that Fire Emblem as a series understands Serfdom any better than the average 21st century person does. IS didn't figure out the word "retainer" until Fates. And didn't discover that there was actual class divide between nobles and commoners in society until Echoes, before then country bumpkins were marrying whoever. Remember also that the games are made by Japanese people to whom Serfdom is a totally foreign concept - like Kings and quests to slay dragons. Every culture has parallels to these things, but the fantasy is always being sold before the details.

So no I can't think of many hard examples. Ram Village seems to have no Lord. Everybody lives for themself, and our characters volunteer for the army rather than Lukas coming in to demand all second/third/etc sons to join. Does this place even have a mayor? That's who he would get that info from, not sit in the town square and wait for folks to offer their life.

If I had to name the most solid example, Probably Agustria, chapter 2 of FE4. The game narrative makes some attempt to show us that the state of the country has impacted the state of these villages in turn. They can't expect any help from the Knights now that the new leadership is a bunch of thugs, so it's up to Sigurd to protect Agustrian assets in order to gain favor from the lords and clean up his reputation a bit.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Hrothgar777]

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Remember also that the games are made by Japanese people to whom Serfdom is a totally foreign concept

 

Didn't Japan have the most notable feudal system outside of Europe? Like, "a samurai with a new sword is allowed to randomly decapitate a passing civilian to test its sharpness" kind of feudalism?

 

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And on the very first turn of the very first fire emblem, you send Marth to collect what is presumably his tithe of 10000G

 

Did Fire Emblem unironically use the word tithe?

[GuardianSing]

For most Fire Emblem games it's clear that peasants aren't as tied to the land as serfs would've been, usually being free to move around and do whatever they like, and I don't recall ever seeing a local lord for these small villages which makes me wonder how these communities even operate for the crown. Do they have elected mayors who collect taxes? Does Marth have to go to every individual one to collect them himself? Or are these villages secretly anarchist communes that pretend to worship the monarchy so they'll leave them alone?

There is certainly still a class divide as the peasants are kept in poverty, so maybe there's some in universe system where the peasants choose not to become the protagonist and become the new king or whatever happened in SoV.

[Jotari]

If I think farmer characters in Fire Emblem, I can only think of Ralph in Thracia (aka the least developed playable unit in the series) and Brom/Nephenee. And I guess the real question you need to ask about whether its Serfdom or just Agrarian is whether they can move off their land and go set up another trade. To which there's no clear answer, but at the very least Brom's daughter was allowed to leave her village in an attempt to marry someone in a different country.

7 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

If I had to name the most solid example, Probably Agustria, chapter 2 of FE4. The game narrative makes some attempt to show us that the state of the country has impacted the state of these villages in turn. They can't expect any help from the Knights now that the new leadership is a bunch of thugs, so it's up to Sigurd to protect Agustrian assets in order to gain favor from the lords and clean up his reputation a bit.

The following chapter also talks about how the Grandvale nobles who moved in were also abusing their power in some unspecified way.

Another interesting thing about Genealogy is that it's the only time in the series that you pay your army. There's no notification or anything,  but all your units get an amount of gold at the end of each chapter based on how many castles you control...I'm not sure how related that is to the question of serfdom, but it is some kind of dissemination of wealth.

1 hour ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Didn't Japan have the most notable feudal system outside of Europe? Like, "a samurai with a new sword is allowed to randomly decapitate a passing civilian to test its sharpness" kind of feudalism?

 

Did Fire Emblem unironically use the word tithe?

No, at least not in the English translation. It's always framed as the villagers donating to Marth to help him deal with the issue of pirates (or whatever else is happening in later chapters).

[Acacia Sgt]

I doubt it would be changed in localization.

Looking up... yep, it's the same.

[Village head]
Welcome, Mr. Mars.
Here are 10,000 gold coins collected by the villagers.
Please use it to equip yourselves and save our country from the pirates of Garda.

As always, Japanese script found here:

https://www.pegasusknight.com/wiki/fe11/?章別会話/1章+マルスの旅立ち

27 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Another interesting thing about Genealogy is that it's the only time in the series that you pay your army. There's no notification or anything,  but all your units get an amount of gold at the end of each chapter based on how many castles you control...I'm not sure how related that is to the question of serfdom, but it is some kind of dissemination of wealth.

Well, at least in a gameplay-visible way.

I do recall that Bartre and Dorcas talk in their supports about how they spend the money that Eliwood pays them.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Acacia Sgt

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

10 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

And didn't discover that there was actual class divide between nobles and commoners in society until Echoes, before then country bumpkins were marrying whoever.

This doesn't seem to be correct. Priscilla's two paired endings are with Erk and Guy. Both are commoners, but Priscilla is able to marry Erk, since he's Pent's protege. As for Guy, who has no noble connections, the relationship could never be.

13 hours ago, Nozomi Kasaki said:

If serfdom does exist in Fire Emblem, could you tell me where in the games was it shown or at least mentioned? Perhaps I overlooked a couple of details that showcases serfdom in the games. If so, please tell me so I will know.

"Serfdom" is a weird word for it - the system as a whole is called "feudalism". As for whether it exists - yeah, it's the default state of most FE settings. Most countries are kingdoms, empires, or confederations. In each case, you have a central authority, along with individual nobles who exert control over a general area. Lycia, for instance, is a confederation of houses (i.e. Pherae, Laus, Thria), with Ostia functioning as something of a "first among equals". And in each reqlalm, the inhabitants depend upon their "marquess", and vice-versa. In Santaruz, the residents pay some sort of tax to Lord Helman, who in turn operates a militia to defend and/or extort them. Does that make the locals "peasants", and/or "serfs"? Maybe, although the game doesn't refer to them as such. It does appear possible in most settings for commoners to become knights, suggesting that there isn't a rigid "caste system". At the same time, one's opportunities and duties depend largely on the family that they are born into.

So it's definitely a feudal system (or at least a feudalism-adjacent one), but as for "serfdom", that's a bit more subjective.

[lenticular]

Fire Emblem tends to show the budget pop-culture version of feudalism. Whcih is to say, it has just enough hints of it to give the vague impression that we're in a world modeled after medieval Europe without really going into any of the details. It also mostly focuses on the more glamourous parts (knights! castles! princesses!) while leaving aside the parts that would be less palatable to modern sensibilities. So it's not really surprising that we don't see much of anything that resembles serfdom or manorialism. Our heroic noble characters would probably seem a whole lot less heroic if we saw that they were living lives of relative luxury based on the backbreaking work of indentured servants. Instead, when we see members of the peasant classes (Brom, Nephenee, Donnel, Mozu, Leonie, etc.) they are all free men and women. It's up to us to decide whether we think that serfdom is happening off-screen or not, and I don't think that we're really supposed to think one way or another. If anything, we're probably not supposed to think about it at all.

(And for the record, none of this is a bad thing. Fire Emblem doesn't even remotely try for historical verisimilitude, so I don't think it's a problem that they're cherry picking the aspects of the past that tell the story that they want to tell. I do have a problem when games that present themselves as being historically accurate (eg Assassin's Creed) pull this kind of thing, but I don't think it's an issue for high fantasy worlds like Fire Emblem.)

[Armchair General]

12 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Ram Village seems to have no Lord

Except for Slayde. 

 

5 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Like, "a samurai with a new sword is allowed to randomly decapitate a passing civilian to test its sharpness" kind of feudalism?

That was kind of an myth, but there is an documented case when an foreigner refused to stand aside (or just get off his horse) when an noble and his procession was marching past him. The short version was that the European was summarily executed, which sparked an international incident, which lead to an shore bombardment.Other than that, Japan was more or less extremely strict with their caste system to the point where everything revolved around agriculture and the occasional small scale war.

 

But anyways, @Nozomi Kasaki the only example of an serf that I know of is Cyril, but he's somewhere between an illiterate errand boy with hardly any conventional ambitions in his life to some kid who's been barely formally trained as an warrior. Plus, he's also working with an church; which kind of ruins the point. In fact, he's more of an unassigned squire than anything else. 

 

But it's kind of weird that it's something that they've never really touched on, though. Although, where an baron might actually have around an dozen or so lesser knights and more or less and company or so of regular soldiers; Fire Emblem is something that consistently gets the scale of medieval fantasy horrifically wrong. Although, there's an evil cult that needs to be eradicated, an bunch of monsters and bandits roaming about because important people are too busy scheming against each other instead of protecting their sole source of power, an giant insane dragon god that's ruining everything, and an teenager with an band of semi-pros is somehow capable of undoing this shitshow.

[Acacia Sgt]

I mean, it is medieval fantasy for a reason. So I'd say Ienticular pretty much nailed it.

4 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Except for Slayde. 

Hm? I'm pretty sure he's not.

[Sunwoo]

FE as a whole tends to care mostly about the affairs of royalty and lords and is pretty bad at showing how royal squabbles affect the common people. Of all the games I played, Tellius probably did the best and that's still not saying much.

The newer games are worse, where your avatar and most important characters are royals or some other high up important figure, and the story revolves around them so much it forgets anyone without name is even a part of the universe.

So it wouldn't surprise me if the writers never thought of serfdom, period.

[Original Alear]

16 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

IS didn't figure out the word "retainer" until Fates. And didn't discover that there was actual class divide between nobles and commoners in society until Echoes, before then country bumpkins were marrying whoever.

No, in Priscilla's endings in FE7, her noble status makes it difficult for her to marry Guy, Heath, or Erk (though in Erk's they do eventually marry, and in Heath's he promises to return for her). I think there are some other endings with similar themes before Fates?... And when I was looking up FE7 endings to confirm that, I found out that Rebecca and Lowen are referred to as Eliwood's retainers in their paired ending.

[Jotari]

Class is also obviously given some lip service with Ike in Path of Radiance.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

3 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Except for Slayde. 

If he ever gets the Deliverance situation under control, maybe? But the fact that nobody regards Lukas' rebel recruitment drive as controversial (let alone an act of treason), it seems clear that Ram is lawless land and that General Desaix isn't particularly well respected despite being Zofia's head of state for five or so years

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But anyways, @Nozomi Kasaki the only example of an serf that I know of is Cyril, but he's somewhere between an illiterate errand boy with hardly any conventional ambitions in his life to some kid who's been barely formally trained as an warrior. Plus, he's also working with an church; which kind of ruins the point. In fact, he's more of an unassigned squire than anything else. 

Cyril is introduced as Shamir's apprentice, and he expresses right there that he intends to use those skills to serve Rhea. You'd think that means he's part of Shamir's "mercenary company" in the short term but she's a lone contractor, and Cyril seems to just be another stray with no ties to any land or lord. The question of whether Shamir or the Church cuts him a paycheck is up to our imagination. The Church takes in people like him and refugees with seemingly no demand for pay or work, but Cyril is obviously looking for ways to pay them back beyond doing chores. He's free to leave the monastery, if he wanted to, so it's not a serf-style relationship. But with Fodlan's distrust of outsiders, he may not be welcome under any Lord's employ as knight or servant. He could only be a mercenary like Shamir.

5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This doesn't seem to be correct. Priscilla's two paired endings are with Erk and Guy. Both are commoners, but Priscilla is able to marry Erk, since he's Pent's protege. As for Guy, who has no noble connections, the relationship could never be.

Priscilla's endings are curious, but they are definitely outliers when looking at the aggregate of FE7's relationships and command structures. Even ones involving main characters like Eliwood and Hector marrying Ilian mercenaries. And Lyn taking up House Caelin, wow. The Lycian League has got to have a hell of an open mind to just let this scandal happen. Even if they did believe her story and bloodline, she'd be deemed unfit for leadership because she wasn't brought up the way Eliwood or Hector were. A neighboring regent would campaign to take over her land. Security of the League over bloodline.

[Acacia Sgt]

2 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

If he ever gets the Deliverance situation under control, maybe? But the fact that nobody regards Lukas' rebel recruitment drive as controversial (let alone an act of treason), it seems clear that Ram is lawless land and that General Desaix isn't particularly well respected despite being Zofia's head of state for five or so years

Ram Village is too remote, they actually don't know yet that Desaix killed the King. That's why no one thinks much about Lukas, because they don't even know why he's there. Even Alm is shocked to learn why.

2 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Priscilla's endings are curious, but they are definitely outliers when looking at the aggregate of FE7's relationships and command structures. Even ones involving main characters like Eliwood and Hector marrying Ilian mercenaries. And Lyn taking up House Caelin, wow. The Lycian League has got to have a hell of an open mind to just let this scandal happen. Even if they did believe her story and bloodline, she'd be deemed unfit for leadership because she wasn't brought up the way Eliwood or Hector were. A neighboring regent would campaign to take over her land. Security of the League over bloodline.

To be fair, Eliwood's ending with Fiora does state some nobles protested... but apparently it is a much bigger uproar if he marries Lyn, not Fiora. Or even Ninian, since she'd also be a complete stranger, yet she's the one where there was no protest or complain whatsoever.

[Armchair General]

6 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Hm? I'm pretty sure he's not

Well, it's pretty clear that he's has enough leeway to do whatever the fuck he wants since whomever actually cared to oppose him is living in exile and Desaix was basically the second most powerful man in the kingdom. Other than that, it seems that everyone else is more or less some rich dude who owns an manor and could bankroll an small army. 

But then again, the route to that village has been overran by bandits; which is technically something that the standard army of Zofia should be doing something about.

[Acacia Sgt]

4 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

Well, it's pretty clear that he's has enough leeway to do whatever the fuck he wants since whomever actually cared to oppose him is living in exile and Desaix was basically the second most powerful man in the kingdom. Other than that, it seems that everyone else is more or less some rich dude who owns an manor and could bankroll an small army. 

But then again, the route to that village has been overran by bandits; which is technically something that the standard army of Zofia should be doing something about.

I was referring to him being Lord of Ram Village. Since he doesn't seem familiar with the area when he goes there during the prologue segment.

[Jotari]

Given Slayde knows about Delthea, he's probably from around that area of Zofia.

[Sunwoo]

19 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

IS didn't figure out the word "retainer" until Fates.

We need to hide the word "retainer" from IS

How much a given FE society tolerates nobles marrying commoners (or even lower status nobles) seems to vary depending on continent. Nyna was famously fucked over due to having to marry a prince, of which there were only two options. Apparently there was little to no fuss over Sigurd marrying Deirdre back when everyone thought she was a forest maiden. Roy can marry all of his female supports, whether they be nobility, mercenary, Sacaean, or random woman he found while in the army.

Tellius has Elincia getting some shit from nobles over her presumed affair with Geoffrey (but there's little to no issue mentioned if she actually marries him) and Micaiah, queen of Daein and true apostle of Begnion, is allowed to marry a commoner thief who is also her not-brother whom she raised but let's not get into that here. Awakening and Fates lets you MARRY (almost) EVERYONE so no one gives a shit whether your royals marry another royal, a noble, a commoner, or RANDOM UNIVERSE JUMPERS. 3H is a bit more discriminate about marriage options, but Lorenz and Sylvain and Ferdinand are all able to marry the commoner Dorothea.

Priscilla only being able to marry Erik because he got peerage due to being attached to Pent, or eloping with Guy (which I've heard was the original Japanese ending) is definitely odd.

[Acacia Sgt]

34 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Roy can marry all of his female supports, whether they be nobility, mercenary, Sacaean, or random woman he found while in the army.

It's worth pointing out Larum's paired ending does state there was initial discontent over, quoting, "bringing in a woman of unknown origins into the family". Strangely enough this does not happen with Sophia, who'd likewise be in the same situation.

34 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Priscilla only being able to marry Erik because he got peerage due to being attached to Pent, or eloping with Guy (which I've heard was the original Japanese ending) is definitely odd.

I suppose we can surmise that in Etruria they are strict about it. As well in Lycia, considering the above and also likewise with Eliwood's own paired endings. Not enough to prevent the marriages, but it does make people talk about it.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Acacia Sgt

[scigeek101]

 

13 hours ago, Armchair General said:

That was kind of an myth, but there is an documented case when an foreigner refused to stand aside (or just get off his horse) when an noble and his procession was marching past him. The short version was that the European was summarily executed, which sparked an international incident, which lead to an shore bombardment.Other than that, Japan was more or less extremely strict with their caste system to the point where everything revolved around agriculture and the occasional small scale war.

Not really a myth. The concept is called "kirisute gomen" and it referred to the samurai right to summarily execute people of lower classes, sort of, actually it is similar to being able to start a duel. But they couldn't just kill whomever they wanted for whatever reason. They'd be required to justify their decision to other samurai or face ritual suicide themselves for dishonor. 

It could only be done immediately after someone had attacked the samurai's honor, and the person getting cut down also had the right to self defense. Afterwards the samurai would have to report the incident to the local authorities who would decide post ex facto whether or not it was justified, and if they decided it wasn't the samurai would be dishonored and face ritual suicide or the death penalty. 

 

Testing swords on criminals was something else they did. They'd rate blades based on how many criminals they could cut through at once. But they weren't going around killing peasants willy nilly. At least they weren't supposed to. 

[scigeek101]

20 hours ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Didn't Japan have the most notable feudal system outside of Europe? Like, "a samurai with a new sword is allowed to randomly decapitate a passing civilian to test its sharpness" kind of feudalism?

Yes it definitely isn't a foreign concept. Though it likely differs substantially from European serfdom. 

 

All I know specifically is that peasants were taxed in rice, which following the relative period of peace in the Edo era leading to an abundance of rice and a decline in it's value, left the samurai class fairly poor in comparison. Also peasants weren't allowed to travel freely and had to get "passports" which were in the form of wooden tokens with writing on them and enforced via a bunch of checkpoints along the major roadways. 

I'm also aware of a couple of peasant rebellions happening in the late Edo period that were put down very violently with the Bakufu essentially finding the ring leader and sticking his head on a pike outside the town gate as an example of what happens when you decide not to pay your rice tax. 

[Armchair General]

6 hours ago, scigeek101 said:

Not really a myth. The concept is called "kirisute gomen" and it referred to the samurai right to summarily execute people of lower classes, sort of, actually it is similar to being able to start a duel. But they couldn't just kill whomever they wanted for whatever reason. They'd be required to justify their decision to other samurai or face ritual suicide themselves for dishonor. 

Yeah, I'm aware of this. But the shitshow that I mentioned earlier was the only documented case that I know of where it probably happened. But even then, Japanese said that they tried to get that guy to move out of the way, so you know

[SnowFire]

I believe what Hrothgar was referring to was not kirisute gomen, but rather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri .  Of which it's hard to say how historical it was - there was a big spree killing that was the equivalent of famous crimes in your country, and certainly during periods of lawlessness there were lots of people who wound up dead on the roads for unknown reasons, whether it be bandits or duels or insane samurai testing their new sword or something else.

On serfs: Well, usual disclaimer goes here that "shares the same English word" does not necessarily mean every use case is that similar.  A French serf in the manor system in 1050 may not be all THAT comparable with a Russian serf in 1850.  Additionally, even if not burdened by legal dues & requirements to a local lord, practical requirements made it difficult for many farmers - whether serf or not - to exercise freedom in an era of scarcity and expensive transit.  This is where I remind people that 80-90% of the populace were farmers, broadly speaking (obviously not with their own personal farms or doing the same thing, but "involved in agricultural labor" somehow), back in the day.  Only so many people could escape from farming anyway because the surpluses just weren't as high then as now.

Anyway...

• Elibe FE6/7: The most likely of any setting to have 'em.  There seem to be a very broad array of government types and styles.  It wouldn't shock me if one or both of Bern/Eturia have some feudal parts leftover.
• FE8: We learn so little about the life of commoners, it's impossible to say.  Give Amelia's supports a real close reading, I guess?
• Tellius: Probably not, actually.  Crimea seems like 1700s England which prides itself on its freedoms down to the common people (even when this manifests as them being jerks, a la C10 PoR or in Ludveck).  Benignon seems to have explicit slaves, so no need for serfs.  Daien is the most likely, I guess - they have a powerful nobility (if a well-liked one if Jill's dad is any indication) we see operating, and it's implied the Dawn Brigade gets a big boost to their prestige from recruiting Pelleas.  It's too bad we don't have more lines from Fiona or the like to know for sure.  Laguz nations we only ever talk with the upper crust of 'em.
• Awakening: Seems doubtful.  While the world has its rough edges, they're fairly inclusive rough edges, even for the bad guys?  Maribelle is portrayed more as rich than as a lady with a domain.  Gangrel is a nationalist for whom the support of the common people of Plegia is important, and Henry & Tharja both seem independent sorts.  Walhart has a vibe of "I dismantled the old order to build a new one based on strength" which is uninterested in petty problems like farming.
• Fates: Maybe.  But as already noted, they're flexible categories if so.  The world of Fates does seem to have lots of hierarchy with kings and princes and rival domain leaders and such.  But we again learn very little about common people other than Mozu and maybe Benny / Charlotte, who doesn't tell us a lot.
• Three Houses: This setting has a substantially more "modern" vibe than some of the castles-and-princes fantasy of earlier games, feeling like it takes place in the 1700s but with less guns.  As such, if it has serfs, they'd be early Modern style serfs not medieval manorial ones.