Characters / Fire Emblem - Heroic Archetypes - Others

Heroic Archetype Index | Main Characters | Availability Vs Growth | Teams | Physical Units | Magic Units | Mid-Late Game Units | Personalities | Others

Others

• The Past Legends: Backstory characters, a group of legendary heroes that fought in the past war and founded nations or weapons that would shape the present day stories.
• The Paragon: Backstory character, a god-like being who empowered the heroes in ancient history.

The Past Legends

The Past Legends are a group of elite heroes that have already passed away, but had a hand in the game's world-building. In the distant past before the current events of the Fire Emblem series, there was a big chaos, initiated most likely by the Medeus archetype (and perhaps even Naga or her derivatives had a hand in it), but then heroes rose and quelled the chaos, being the one who would first wield the legendary weapons and even found the nations that shaped the land. Their time has passed and their names only appeared in history books, but their presence is still vital to how the world was shaped.

Characters of this archetype: Archanea's founders^note Anri, Cartas, Marlon, Iote, Ordwin, Gotoh, Artemis (Shadow Dragon); Twelve Crusaders^note Heim, Baldr, Hoðr, Od, Njörun, Dáinn, Nál, Ulir, Fjalar, Thrud, Ced, Bragi (Genealogy of the Holy War); Eight Legends^note Hartmut, Roland, Durban, Athos, St. Elimine, Barigan, Hanon, Bramimond(The Binding Blade and The Blazing Blade); Five Heroes^note Grado, Latona and three unnamed heroes (The Sacred Stones); Ashera's Three Heroes^note Altina, Soan, Dheginsea (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn); Marth and the First Exalt (Awakening); Four Saints^note Macuil, Indech, Cichol, Cethleann , the Ten Elites^note Blaiddyd, Riegan, Lamine, Goneril, Charon, Fraldarius, Gloucester, Dominic, Gautier, and Daphnel, and the Four Apostles ^note Noa, Chevalier, Timotheos, and Aubin (Three Houses and Warriors: Three Hopes); Twelve Emblem Rings^note Marth, Celica, Sigurd, Leif, Roy, Lyn, Eirika, Ike, Micaiah, Lucina, Corrin, and Byleth and Seven Emblem Bracelets^note Tiki, Hector, Soren, Chrom and Robin, Camilla, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude, and Veronica; Fell Xenologue only(Engage)

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• Ascended Extra: Engage's past legends, the Emblem Rings and Bracelets, are part of the game's core mechanic as opposed to just being part of the game's backstory unlike most previous past legends.
• Badass Crew: In the past, these guys banded together and quelled the past chaos instigated by the Medeus archetype character.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • The Twelve Crusaders, to the point of being an Unbuilt Trope. They were heroes through and through, but it's shown that their more unscrupulous descendants can and will use their lineage to commit heinous actions (Reptor, Lombard, Andrey, and Hilda, just to name a few examples).
  • In a similar way, Elibe's Eight Legends. Being descended from Roland and Hartmut didn't stop Lundgren and Desmond respectively from being utter bastards.
  • Tellius's Three Champions. The identities of their descendants already implies some dirty secrets about Tellius's history, but repeat playthroughs of Radiant Dawn reveal just how much of the modern world's problems stem directly from the Champions' well-meaning mistakes.
  • The Ten Elites. They were only propagated as heroes to hide the fact that they're accomplices of Nemesis and advance Seiros' own personal agenda since they already had the adoration of the people, and they were at best ignorant of the depths of the evils their leader and his benefactors sank to for their powers.
• The Ghost: They're already dead, so you rarely ever meet them in person. Only a few are alive (most notably Athos in The Blazing Blade and all of the Emblems in Engage), more likely taking the Gotoh archetype above and are probably not long for this world anyway. And then comes Three Houses where two of the Four Saints (Cichol/Seteth and Cethleann/Flayn) are playable (and available early too unlike Gotoh), the other two are bonus bosses, their leader Seiros is the Nyna, and one of the Elites who was written out of history (Maurice) is also a bonus boss.
• Heroic Lineage: The originators. A lot of your heroes might have descended from them and inherited their virtues except the Ten Elites. That said, merely being descended from them does not guarantee that you will be a virtuous person; just look at some of the nastier characters in Genealogy of the Holy War, the Elibe duology (Blazing Blade and Binding Blade, the descendant of the main hero of the legend (Hartmut) is the Big Bad of Binding Blade) and Three Houses (which turns out to be an inversion: Merely being descended from the Ten Elites does not guarantee that you will be a 100% nasty bastard.).
• Living Legend: Those who lived might be considered as such. And boy, what a long life they lived.
• Precursor Heroes: Their defining trope. They are groups of ancient heroes who banded together to seal away the ultimate evil.

The Paragon

The Paragon is a god-like being who is directly responsible for empowering the Past Legends or other precursor heroes. They are typically extremely powerful dragons. Generally acting as a divine champion for humanity, they stand as the natural opposite of the Medeus, but sometimes, they are not alone. The Paragon may consist of several Gods banding together. Of note, there is a possibility that the Paragon themself might not remain a hero; the chance of falling to corruption is always ever present (the humans that worship them may unwittingly play a part in it), which may degrade them into a Medeus themselves.

Characters of this archetype: Gotoh (Shadow Dragon); Mila and Duma (Gaiden); Naga (Mystery of the Emblem and Awakening) Forseti, Salamander, Naga again, and nine other unnamed dragons (Genealogy of the Holy War); Ashera, Yune, and Ashunera (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn); The Dawn Dragon, the Dusk Dragon, and Anankos (Fates); Sothis (Three Houses and Warriors: Three Hopes); Alternate Alear (Engage); Nifl, Askr, and Embla (Heroes)

Characters that only have elements of this archetype: Gotoh (Shadow Dragon and The Blade Of Light) ^note He gave the Falchion to Anri in the War of Liberation, however this is revealed in Mystery of the Emblem and he is also of the Gotoh archetype., Alear ^{note (SPOILERS)} While they may be worshiped as the divine dragon and is the opposite of Sombron, unlike their alternate counterpart, they actually weren't like this in the first place. They were originally a fell dragon minion and Sombron's child. They only got their divine dragon powers via their adoptive mother Lumera, and they didn't become a full-on divine dragon until they were revived as an Emblem very late into the story. Even then, the transformation is only temporary, hence them not qualifying for this archetype.(Engage)

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• Became Their Own Antithesis: Many Paragon archetypes degenerate into Medeus archetypes. Most of them suffer from draconic degeneration, although Ashera genuinely lost faith in humanity's goodness.
• Big Good: They are the biggest and most powerful force of good in the setting.
• Breaking Old Trends: Nearly all of them are extremely powerful divine dragons who are worshiped as gods. Ashera and Yune, on the other hand, are Pieces of God, and their true form Ashunera is a legitimate creator deity.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Almost literally. They are often the deity worshiped in the religion of the continent, and may even be the figure depicted in the Goddess Icon stat boost. That said, this is often played up more in the localization, for example, Naga is more of a minor god than a Top God in her appearances for example.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Ashunera started out just fine, but her inability to prevent the beorc and laguz from coming into conflict caused her to accidentally cause a flood. In horror and regret, she split her logic and emotions into Ashera and Yune, but Ashera saw how flawed mankind was. This made her bitter and unleashed her own worst impulses, thus turning her into a Medeus archetype.
  • Sothis was just like these fine fellows in her backstory. Unfortunately for her, a human named Nemesis decided that he wanted the sort of power she could grant and took it by force. He murdered her, drank her blood to gain the Crest of Flames, forged her bones into a sword, and proceeded to slaughter nearly all of her descendants to grant this same power to his followers. In the present day, her surviving daughter Seiros takes advantage of her reputation to advance an agenda which is selfish at best and flat-out tyrannical at worst.
  • Embla also started out fairly well: according to Askr, she used to be a kind goddess who truly loved her people, and the two of them got along fairly well. However, after a mortal tried to kill her for her power and Elm ranted about all mortals being selfish, Embla started to believe all mortals deserve to die. Then, when her people started visiting Askr to see what it was like, she saw this as betrayal and became cruel and tyrannical. By the time of Book VI, she has only hatred for mortals.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As much as Naga is associated with the Paragon, in Shadow Dragon, the character is barely mentioned in the plot and instead Naga's right hand Sage, Gotoh is the closest thing to the Paragon archetype and even then him assisting Anri in the War of Liberation by giving him the Falchion, isn't revealed until Mystery of the Emblem.
• God Is Good: They are all worshiped as gods (or in Ashunera's case, actually are gods), and are the biggest forces of good in the setting.
• Good Counterpart: To the villainous Medeus archetype. In fact, many Paragons turn into Medeuses by the time the story starts; Duma and Anankos suffered from draconic degeneration-induced mental breakdowns, Mila was well on her way to the same fate by the time Rudolf put her down, and Ashera lost faith in humanity and ultimately decides they need to be purged.
• Good Is Not Nice: Just because they're paragons of goodness doesn't mean they're always going to be super duper nice guys, although they don't cross into Jerkass Gods territory. Sothis is known for her snarky tongue, long before the fact that she wiped out a whole nation was passed, Mila was almost degenerating, Forseti erases Lewyn's memories and turns him into an uncaring father unless he marries Tailtiu; after hearing her tragic fate, Forseti shows that Everyone Has Standards and allows Lewyn to shed a tear. Taken to the extreme and we get those who fell from grace, especially Ashera.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: When not directly present, they are still responsible for the heroes being able to combat the evil forces.
• Super-Empowering: They are all capable of granting divine power to their champions, typically through blood-bonds.