Headscratchers / Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

As it turns out, charging into an empire with only three other people is a poor tactical decision

• In The Sacred Stones, both Eirika and Ephraim make some less than stellar choices, but only Eirika is criticized or discussed. How she was so stupid to give Lyon the stone, how naive she is, etc. Yet Ephraim attempts to take on the Grado empire with only what, three men at his side, and answers the challenge of a madman who could skewer him in seconds, and only a few people acknowledge that it was a bad idea while everyone else cheers at what a badass he was. Why is taking on an empire while dangerously unprepared = awesome genius while believing the MacGuffin can save your friend from ruin and attempting to do so = big honking dumbass? (Don't get me wrong, it was awesome that Ephraim managed to survive, but he was extremely lucky he did.)
  • I think it's because Ephraim has much more personality as a character so people are more forgiving, while the only thing that really makes Eirika stand out from other generic lords is her clingyness to her brother. Don't get me wrong, I consider Ephraim's decision very reckless (though in character), but I'm just giving a possible explanation. Personally I'm somewhat willing to forgive Eirika because of her naivety and her friendship with Lyon, though it was a pretty stupid choice.
    • True, Ephraim has a very dynamic personality. But Eirika hardly seemed "generic" to me. (Then again, I've grown to despise "generic" as a term because it implies that not having a bombastic kickass standout personality = boring and flat)
  • It's less about Ephraim's personality than it is about how Ephraim's plan was much more successful. Like, seriously, he attacks the world's most powerful military with, yes, three other people, one of whom is The Mole, yet still manages to capture Renvall castle, one of the most secure castles in Grado. He is captured shortly afterward by the aforementioned Mole, but he's still in the middle of a breakout himself when Eirika rescues him (and she seems to have taken much more time and effort to get to that point than he did). The reason there are no cries of Too Dumb to Live on Ephraim's plan is because it's shown that Ephraim, Kyle, and Forde are competent enough to actually get it done, while Eirika has been told repeatedly that Lyon's soul has been devoured, that he's a puppet of the Demon King, etc., and then gives him their only hope of salvation anyway.
    • Ephraim wasn’t even captured at Renvall - he, Kyle and Forde cut a path through Valter’s wyvern riders and vanished; Tirado spread false rumors that Ephraim was caught to lure Eirika in, and her brother abandoned his plan to assault the capital to hurry back and arrived just in time to help her... The narrative almost bends over backwards for Ephraim while Eirika struggles with arguably lesser war issues, which feeds these reputations (Ephraim’s failure is treated as being his irresponsibility as a ruler, being out adventuring when Renais fell while his sister and father were at least at the home front).
  • Another reason is what was at stake. Ephraim was hounding the Grado Military, but Renais was already lost. Ephraim was risking the three men under his command, and that's about it. (Not knowing about the bracelets at the time.) When Eirika handed over the stone, she was putting the entirety of Magvel in danger.

Ephraim forgets L'Arachel

• In FE8, when the twins reunite, Ephraim says that he sees "unfamiliar faces" and introduces himself to L'Arachel... despite having recruited L'Arachel several chapters ago on the phantom ship.
  • From looking at the game script, it seems like they just forgot to differentiate that dialogue between Ephraim and Eirika's routes. Alternatively, she's piggybacking on Ephraim's introduction to the "unfamiliar faces" of Eirika's group to introduce herself to Eirika.

Is Ephraim's route supposed to be the canonical route?

• Is it only me or that Ephraim's route in The Sacred Stones just makes a lot more sense? From a gameplay standpoint, it neatly divides the game into 3 parts. One with Eirika, one with Ephraim, and the final part with both, while in Eirika's route Ephraim only really joins in the last third of the game. From a story standpoint, we have Ephraim going to attack Grado directly while Eirika goes to warn Rausten, a much simpler (as far as they knew at the time) mission. In Ephraim's route, he gets most of the forces, which not only makes more sense in that context, it makes the part where his forces have to rescue Eirika and her forces understandable, since it's pretty obvious that she and her few escorts will not be able to survive an attack by 2 large forces on their own. Meanwhile in Eirika's route, we are supposed to believe that Ephraim and Duessel beat the Empire on their own, and that Ephraim, Duessel(who has a hard time moving in the desert) and a very squishy Knoll are somehow rescuing Eirika's far larger force.
  • I think it makes more sense for Eirika's route to be the canonical one. For one, Ephraim's has the plot hole of Saleh bringing Ewan down to Grado, then somehow turning around and beating Eirika to Caer Pelyn even though the route she's taking is the fastest route. For another, you get a lot more characterization on Eirika's route that you'd miss out on Ephraim's—specifically Joshua being the lost prince of Jehanna has build-up and a conclusion on her route, but seemingly comes out of nowhere when mentioned in the epilogue of Ephraim's. You also get Cormag and his vendetta against Valter on hers, whereas him joining Ephraim is a little too...out of the blue. Also, Ephraim was marching to Grado with Frelia's finest (yes, an army of greens isn't worth much, but he had an army), which means he can let their Ragtag Band of Misfits protect Eirika—half of them weren't even proper soldiers, so naturally they'd be assigned to the less dangerous of the two tasks. And honestly, I find the imagery of Ephraim and Duessel taking down Grado by themselves once their green army falls to be pretty damn badass.

Dragon

• Is the Great Dragon that the people of Caer Pelyn revere supposed to be Morva or Myrrh? Saleh's grandma says that the Great Dragon watches over Darkling Woods, which sounds like Morva, but also says that the dragon is out traveling, which sounds like Myrrh... Unless maybe they think that it's one dragon who has two different human forms for some reason, but then you'd think that they could just ask Myrrh and find out.
  • Consider the following: they consider the Great Dragon(s) to be like deities, these elusive and sacred beings. Most likely, it didn't occur to them to just walk up to them and ASK this type of question.
  • It seems implied that the people of the village see Myrrh as Morva's successor. They are separate entities, but are two parts of the same whole to these people. Myrrh outright states that the Morva preached about dragons being part monster and part human, thereby not fitting in anywhere. That is why they are so enigmatic, they hide themselves from humanity. Thus, they were mistaken as gods. In the ending where Myrrh decides to live in Caer Pelyn, the people kinda get used to her just being an especially long-lived and powerful child and fall out of worshipping her as an untouchable deity. In other words, they humanized her in their own minds, something that Morva thought was impossible. This does raise the question as to why it never occurred to Morva that maybe the people that worship him might just be cool with it if he had decided to live with them... but no one ever said that Manaketes in FE weren't flawed (quite the opposite in fact given the many games where they were the antagonists).