#Nohrian royals

[yunokarrot]

Leo, prince (my dark emo husband) of Nohr💜

I love Leo so much, I fell in love with him from the moment I first saw him in the promo for Fates at its release & on the cover art, & I resolved to marry him ASAP once I got Conquest. Not only is he extremely handsome, but charming, intelligent, witty, surprisingly kind, & adorkable (not to mention, he has two amazing voice actors that are some of my personal favorites, Mamoru Miyano & Max Mittelman)! *side note*: after all these years, I just realized that both of his VAs’ initials are M.M., & the first syllables of their names are Ma & Mi😆).

He’s my favorite royal out of both families & one of my absolute favorite characters in the entire FE series, so I’m very happy to finally have drawn him in a way that does him some justice^^

Edit: *if you notice the small mistake, please ignore it😭💔

[cindysnuts]

FATES NOHRIAN ROYALS HEADCANONS IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2023 BECAUSE I HAVE BRAINWORMS RN OKAY LETS GO:

Nohr:

Xander- Xander handpicked both of his retainers because he thinks they’re beautiful (canon btw. Okay well it is for peri but cmon). He of course could only marry a woman, and one of high standing at that, because of his duties as crown Prince, but he spends a suspicious amount of time with his retainer, taking “dance lessons.” Closeted bisexual. Camilla asked and knows and Leo surmised it. It is a secret to everyone else, including Elise and even Corrin (though only for a matter of time for them), as it is a scandal that could rock the nation.

Camilla~ Camilla is a lesbian. She ALSO picked out her retainers because she loves them and wants to dominate them. Well. Selena at least. She is a brat in need of taming frfr. Beruka is just a feral cat she’s trying to show love to. Technically Camilla is bisexual but she just loves women so much and only has female partners rn anyway so. Everyone knows though, she hardly makes a secret of it, much to Selena’s embarrassment. Technically an open secret due to Nohrian high society’s general intolerance, but it’s only spoken of in whispers, since no one wants to be on the bad side of the wyvern riding princess.

Leo- oh boy. This guy. The complexes… SO. Leo is very sharp. He’s very private, but very observant, and analytical. Being away from the spotlight of being the crown prince, he was able to privately deduce that he was gay very early on. Right? So like that’s it that’s the answer. So why doesn’t it feel quite right? And why doesn’t he fit his role exactly??? Must be something about being the second prince, yeah that’s it. Right? I mean he’s trying to be the man he has to be. I mean it’s weird being called a prince?? But that’s not right I mean he WANTS to be a royal so. Huh. Weird anyways he NEVER looks at the box in his mind marked “Gender” that’s rattling and SNAPPING at its lock and chain. Leo is the biggest egg this side of the bottomless canyon and everyone around him with even a hint of what trans people are know he’s a girl including all of his loved ones who already accept her for who she is. As soon as she realizes it. Camilla keeps trying to get Leo to wear dresses (while she wears the sharpest suits of all time, of course) but he just gets really weird and sweaty everytime she suggests it and always chickens out. Odin and Niles are NOT helping they’re both too insane to help (affectionate). Elise has the coming out party PLANNED on LOCK it’s in the CHAMBER ready to fire the second she gets the message. They’re all just lovingly waiting for her to crack.

Elise- Elise is ultimately straight. All of her closest, most meaningful relationships throughout her life are with women, but that’s a love that doesn’t run romantic, really. She is the STAUNCHEST ally tho!!! She isn’t really privy to many of the family secrets, not for a while at least, and is a bit oblivious when she’s younger, but she gets it eventually! And she loves her family so much you guys. She wants to throw them ALL huge coming out worries (even if they have to be private) no matter how they may object. Ultimately though, she loves boys! All kinds really. Later in life she even falls in love with a commoner boy, and they have a beautiful life together! The most normal and well adjusted of the Nohrian siblings, funnily enough, since she has the least pressure to succeed and has plenty of examples to lead from.

That’s it for now, I may do Hoshido + Corrin/ Azura or the Nohrian retainers later on, if there’s demand lol.

[feif-incorrect-quotes]

[honeydots]

stuff from my (xanlow) mermaid au~

[gloamvonhrym]

my character design chops are dogshit this aint about that it’s just that I think we can and should have masc fairies in feh

[purplemagehawke]

xander: i saw leo raise his hand during meeting and then silently put it down. i don't understand where this fear of speaking out comes from.

also xander whenever leo says something:

[pegasusknightsonly]

one angle of leolicia that i think about far too much is Leo admitting that his own plans for marriage were to wait until there was a girl Xander couldn't keep refusing to whom he would offer Leo as a consolation prize with some diplomatic end and when Felicia hears this she's like "oh no... I'm so sorry... I've ruined your chance for a loveless political match that primarily benefits your older brother at the expense of your happiness..." and she means it. she is 100% sincere. but Leo tells her it's fine because "[she's] the princess of the ice tribe so this wasn't a complete waste" and that reassures her! so they continue to live in perfect bliss and harmony and are mated for life like swans until they die of old age within a week of each other and everyone else gets divorced within a decade

[voxmilia]

Plans my conquest route ships on the notes app on my phone bc I left my colored pens at work and can't bujo yet

[pumakaji64]

ngl I was kinda hoping that when they added any of the fates royals (because we all knew they would eventually) it would be Xander and Ryoma in one ring like the Three Houses lords or the Azure twins rings, but I'm not shocked they went with Camilla for... disappointed, but not surprised lol

[theothervonkarmagirl]

“I was curious, so I looked for other familiar names in our family tree. There was a Maria before you.”

“There was?”

“Yes, she was King Siegmund’s favorite concubine. His wife couldn’t have a child but she could, so he sent the wife to a convent and married Maria. Maria was a pretty good queen. The king was less murderous with her around. When she was poisoned, he had an emotional breakdown and started a 30-year reign of terror.”

“...Oh, how romantic. I hope that if I was murdered, Leo would burn this kingdom to the ground. I’d smile down from the heavens.”

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

the secret underground city of nohr that the nohrian royals (besides elise) are completely oblivious to was such a banger plot line and it's absolutely hilarious to me that it only appears in birthright and not in the game where you're SIDING with nohr. say what you want about fates but it's full of little gems that are mentioned once and never, ever again like what do you mean corrin can play the piano and why is it that this is mentioned by kaze in your room in the astral realm of all places

.

[elite-4]

the thief is born anew

the vampire prince reminisces

from the blood of a royal

my full piece for @nohrpirezine, a free digital zine focusing on the nohrian royal family as vampires. go check it out <3

[twilightprince101]

FIRE EMBLEM CONQUEST REWRITTEN IS COMPLETE

After over a year of editing, re-formatting and fighting against Google Docs, my developmental editing project "Fire Emblem Conquest Rewritten" is finally done!

For those who don't know, this project is my love letter to the game and to the franchise as a whole. Taking the story of Fire Emblem Conquest, I put it under a microscope to analyze the pieces of story left on the cutting room floor from its rushed development cycle, and help improve the story without changing any of its core story beats. Rather than changing plot events entirely such as Lilith's death, I include her in more scenes beforehand to give her death a stronger impact. The outcome stays the same, the buildup and framing is brand new!

If you're interested, check out the link below! Not convinced yet? Take a look under the "Read More" to get a rundown of everything new!

STREAMLINED PAGE LAYOUTS

I've spent an entire week re-formatting all of the google docs to make them more cohesive. The reading experience is now much more streamlined for fans of Fire Emblem, or those who may be unfamiliar with the story entirely.

FULL ISOLATED ORIGINAL SCRIPTS

Frustrated in getting the scripts from a wiki? Not interested in the rewrites? No problem! This project provides full scripts of the original Conquest storyline in one consistent format, free to use!

A CONSTRUCTIVE DISSECTION OF THE CONQUEST STORYLINE

Do you wish that Lilith had a more significant role in the story? That the Nohrian royals could all have unique dialogue against Garon in Chapter 27? That Garon was less blatantly evil and more of an abusive father? This project builds upon all of these things and more! Including but not limited to:

-Camilla learning basic empathy and becoming the older sister that her family needs -The Kitsune Tribe's massacre gaining genuine story significance and not being forgotten after the chapter ends -Characters like Katarina and Arete, though still off screen, gaining more prominent significance in the story as late mothers -The protagonist realizing that her paragon mentality of "no murder" isn't healthy, developing into a responsible leader for Nohr -Complete removal of "Revelation-Bait," which causes Conquest's storyline to be deliberately unsatisfying so people will pay twenty dollars for other routes, allowing Conquest to stand on its own as a wholly satisfying story.

Still interested? Great! Here's another link to the project here so you don't need to scroll all the way back up. Thanks for reading this far, I hope you have a lovely day!

[honeydots]

anons funny thought: ophelia in a bi/pan crisis having to choose between soleil or seigbert

GJSJGJ HAHAHA oh what to do about the pretty eldest nohrian royal children.... she's looking to the stars and gods for an answer and the reply boils down to essentially ~☆ ;) good luck! ☆~

[ai-wa]

Seems like a random and out of the blue question so apologies if you talked about this already somewhere but-

What your thoughts on Gen 2 Nohrians (royals/non-royals) and the relationships with their respective fathers? The concept of babyrealms is ... questionable to say the least but I do like observing some of these characters through the bonds they have with their children, like Odin and Ophelia or Xander and Siegbert for example.

Anyhow- Keep doing what you do! Every piece you create is incredibly inspiring!

Thank you a lot!! No problem! To be honest I have been mostly ignoring the second gen because of the babyrealms basically. I think most Fates criticism is in bad faith and not even true, but this really is the one thing I could do with.

There are a lot of really good designs among the kids and some interesting concepts, but you really gotta make up their whole story and most of their relationships because all of them come with a built-in "baby realm backastory" that's not really interesting nor unique. They neither have any impact in the current story. I know they have a dlc but I'm not a fan of parents died and kid take over and definitely doesn't do any favors to integrating them with the main cast. I'm more about analyzing every single detail than making up my own story so it's a side of Fates I never looked into.

This said Xander and Siegbert are the most likely relationship, probably because Xander is old enough and has a fatherly personality, but I think their actual relationship would be similar. I like the idea of Leo helping with his education, but that's more about the brothers that Siegbert himself.

I did love Selkie in Feh though, her design is the cutest and her just a silly girl personality doesn't need any lore to work.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

in defense of revelation

most of y'all know me as a pre-tumblr tellius fan who recently got suckered into fates/(especially revelation) in the past year and how often i've repeatedly stated how very fucking glad i was not around for peak fates fan/hatedom. even living afar from the field in other fandoms for that brief 2015-2021 time period, fates discourse was... special, to say the least.

me being me, i do want to take a step back and consider in good faith... why?

why the outsized hatedom for rev especially?

every FE game has its warts with its strengths. and i feel like i'm in a unique position of seeing from a more macro/neutral standpoint having abruptly fallen in love with fates/rev when it's left in the dust for shinier games, and whose viewpoint was never really colored either which way while also living the historical context of the series. (shoot at one point i was a by-default fates hater/"pre-DS fe" snob; I freely admit to eating my own words).

the odd bit of it all is that revelation is by far my favorite of the routes. yes, gunter's outsized impact on the plot is a large part of it, but I actually think I would still like it over conquest/(certinally over birthright and a good 90% of FE games) even if another character had taken that role, as long as it was handled in a similarly complex way (anankos' cosmic horror shtick was fuckin' rad).

let's start with the common criticisms (a few picked from this halfway reasonable reddit thread that attempts something similar) and others gleaned elsewhere from the interwebs over the year.

the unit balancing

IMO this is the fairest criticism of the list; i can see why a bunch of underleveled units handed out slowly before the cast rolls into valla would be a legitimate annoyance to old hats and newcomers alike.

that said: something about gameplay with Fates that i think was brilliant is there's a massive intentional difference between royals and every other character. royals get special weapons, they're a class unto themselves literally and also in being able to solo entire swaths of levels. (birthright being a literal name of one of the routes, for pete's sake.) i've attempted both a rev run with royals and a rev run without royals (using gunter too lol) back to back and honestly the sheer difficulty spike is genuinely fascinating from a story perspective.

you feel how utterly powerless non-royals feel.

(also given people mostly emotionally got attached to the royals.... in the other two routes they were probably willing to wait a little longer for their blorbo to appear and assuaged by many cutscenes of them.)

also tangent, but gameplay wise: i also kind of want to push back at the redditor in the thread above who mentioned rev as a sandbox experience of Fates; I can see why they would say that as it's perceived as the neutral route, when personally it's better framed as the valla-specific route with a very tight cast focus (ie the characters that actually impact the plot); having almost the whole cast being playable was just a type of newgame+ bonus. like i wouldn't expect a nohrian character to get much limelight in birthright in favor of the hoshidans, so too would I not expect a non valla-related character to get as much focus and decent treatment in rev.

very petty add on: if i can make mister zero stats grandpa OHKO ryoma in rev on my second run, git gud shrub

the story

so here's the thing.

i'm objectively biased by being head over heels for gunter as a character and his outsized impact on lategame rev - but i don't think i'm wrong with saying that people were looking for the wrong thematic beats regarding revelation's story with how it was framed beyond itself.

if you focus on the adults - mikoto, arete, gunter, garon, and the unaffiliated characters that didn't get a chance to shine in the other two nation-specific routes (azura, lilith, anankos, corrin's backstory in the northern fortress) - revelation will blow your socks off with how nuanced and interwoven between the characters mentioned above the story is.

you just need to give it a fair chance.

gimmick maps

this is honestly where i laugh a little and simply gesture to three houses' objectively terrible same-y maps. TH had other strengths; its maps are not one of them. i'd rather take a memorable gimmick in a heartbeat than 4/5ths of a game i straight up do not remember the levels (a criticism that could also go for FE11/12/most of the series pre FE7).

the snow shoveling map in particular draws the most ire (fair lol), but let's take that map out, and.... honestly none of the others feel egregarious? FE's done 'only three characters deployed" before (the cave chapter which is pretty short and not too unbalanced). the moving platforms have been done in FE7. the traps in anankos' lair were honestly pretty fun for instilling more of the horror/claustrophobic vibe and didn't have total buzzkills like powerful ranged magic bosses to ruin your day (FE6/7/16 lookin' at you).

of fates' routes, conquest's maps age a little bit better by being generally emotionally married to the story beats more, but personally i find they're a little overtuned at times. honestly the worst i can say is that conquest's maps overshine the other two routes when the other two routes had pretty decent-to-good map design that age well by their own right.

the babyrealms

sure, and.............? honestly i feel like every FE game has its completely anime whack-ass mechanic from space.

the best part is the children mechanic in fates is completely optional and segregated from the story - if you hate it that much it doesn't even have to exist. god knows i wish the My Unit/time travel of Awakening onwards didn't exist, or the kids of FE13 didn't exist, or the whole "secret space technology" of FE16 didn't exist, or the toothpaste hair of Engage, or the fucking gameplay of FE4/6, and frankly the laguz can be a bit tough to swallow as an idea if you didn't grow up with the anime tropes of cat girls or shapeshifters at the time (and the anvilicious anti-racism themes) -- all of which are way more plot relevant to their respective games.

'just fighting zombies for the latter half'

ironically i'm usually the first person to absolutely despise the 'fighting non-characters/nameless zombies' trope. so i do sympathize.

one: honestly that critique isn't that much different than the FE-bog-standard 'fight twenty maps packed with samey soldiers of the Bad Evil Country' (FE9 with daein alas) - if anything, like FE8, zombies are a nice change of pace and rev even one-ups sacred stones by giving the possessed vallites an extra bit of fridge horror if you give one temporary shit about the vallites.

a better defense though, is much like how i think viewing Final Fantasy 7 as anything but a massive homage to sci-fi horror would be a miss to its story, visual, and emotional beats - i also think it'd be a miss to not recognize that revelation is the cosmic horror of fire emblem.

the slowly-revealed possession of someone very precious to corrin. the needless deaths of named cast members. anankos' entire freaking design. the last four-five chapters of fighting your own parents/parental figures who both plead with you to kill them while also trying to convince you to let them kill you, holy fuck. peak psychological horror here too, and i feel like fates is in a uniquely better position with its focus on incestual family dynamics to drive home the emotional impact to the player (if you've married some specific characters like azura and gunter) as well as pull from classic gothic horror - especially brilliant with the nohrian's constant linkage to vampires, another staple of gothic horror.

oh gunter, gunter gunter.

I can't get around this point since I have heard him specifically mentioned (lol) as a failing of revelation. oh zero stats granpda. what are we going to do with you.

(keep in mind i'm not going to be able to tackle all of these sub-points since this would literally be a 20k essay by itself which this blog kinda frankly covers in various degrees; this is a summary).

but let's start with the more objective bits.

ultimately, i ... think a lot of people were really skeeved the fuck out by gunter's possession plotline in the sense it was a huge bet that the series had never done. there were a handful of gunter fans from conquest who would normally be all over his expanded spotlight that fall into this bucket, in addition to the folks that just did not jive with his type of arc/character and who were never gonna like rev. (that's fine, y'all got two whole other games to play in).

giving its jeigan character actual teeth, actual cold-blooded motivations and hatreds and a betrayal that worked entirely at odds with the royal-simping game (and series) didn't help. he never apologized for it either.

giving its jeigan a spotlight role when youth is valorized, and old age demonized to a questionable degree didn't help. (ya notice the ages of all the heroes and villains? the really squicky visual character consistency of beauty equals goodness in anime / that FE is no better at?) his story almost lowkey requires a little maturity to get, higher than the average age of a fates player.

giving its jeigan a nuanced personality that could be caring and protective as much as deeply manipulative (even and especially to corrin) didn't help. locking behind half of their relationship to CQ supports and half his backstory/chats with the rest of the cast being unlocalized likewise didn't help.

giving its jeigan actual sexual menace didn't help. ( in an already sexually-charged game, there are a few very specific lategame possession scenes where that also bleeds over to his role, nevermind his CQ S-support. and crucially, when that slipping mask jarred directly against the father role that people project on him with corrin).

.... and all of those points is exactly why i think his arc is some of the most brilliant writing in the series.

Fates was especially good with taking tired tropes and twisting them just enough in a fucky/power-tilt-y way that it left the player off kilter while giving the games, ultimately, a bittersweet resolution.

some folks don't like that feeling; but i think it was an injection of real charisma and balls in a series that always draws from its specific time-period in history.

thank you for reading ~