#and when i get riled i vomit 1000 words out and then collapse

[ro-botany]

@silque Hope you don't mind me pulling this into it's own post; it's a critical enough point that I really wanna expand on it.

For context for those who didn't read my recent longass post about Frederick in general: We're talking about the canonical age at which Emmeryn was crowned Exalt of Ylisse.

According to the numbers from Awakening Chapter 6, when Emm took the throne she was

NINE YEARS OLD

Maaaaaybe 10, at the most, if you stretch the meaning of "before her tenth year" a bit and play around with the exact date her dad died.

(To be clear, Frederick's age in that table is a headcanon, not canonical in any way)

You are making several excellent points and I'm Big Emotional about all of them, so naturally, I'm going to take four miles of post length to screech about this in more detail.

It is fucking wild to me that the game breezes by the war timeline and the ages of the royal kids so fast. To the point where I straight up missed it! Or forgot, I guess, in the years since my last full playthrough.

I just. I have to set the scene.

Ylisse has just been through an unfathomably bloody holy war. Almost anyone of fighting age was given a weapon and dragged to the desert to fight, leaving behind a halidom populated almost exclusively by children and the elderly, with a dwindling food supply. A country driven into desperation and chaos by its own ruler.

We don't know how the Exalt dies--if his own men turned mutiny or he was routed by Plegian forces or what--but the Exalt does die, and the war dies with him. When the news from the front finally trickles back to Ylisstol alongside what few broken men and women survived the violence, the oldest person of exalted blood is duty-bound to take his former place on the throne.

Overnight, nine-year old Emmeryn goes from playing with her baby brother and awaiting the day her baby sister is born, to being crowned Exalt of a dying country and a shattered populace that now turns all their hurt and ire onto her.

She has her council of old, withered politicians to guide her hand. She has the castle guards--all either old enough to be her grandparents or young enough to be her peers--to protect her from the worst of the violence. She has her mother, too--until one day, too soon, she doesn't.

The game certainly doesn't gloss over the tragedy of that. It neglects to emphasize the ages these kids were dealing with all this at, though. I could tangent off into another 500-1000 words about how fucked that family situation is if I chose to and the unique ways that has played into the characterization of everybody involved. That Emmeryn grew up to be as competent and well-loved a ruler as she did is a monumental feat, not only on her part, but on the parts of the people who supported and raised her.

And to bring it back to the man of the hour on this blog… At some point, Frederick became one of those people. He's been looking after Chrom and Lissa for who even knows how long; there is no doubt in my mind that, like tumblr user silque suggested, Frederick also helped look after Emmeryn. Helped her and her siblings make whatever sense of the ongoing tragedies they could, while probably dealing with a mountain of issues of his own.

He's something at the nexus between older brother, father, bodyguard to all of them. He's been by their side, a constant rock, since all four of them were arguably children. Frederick doesn't let his guard down for a second. He sees the weight on the shoulders of these kids, and he knows helping them bear it is the best thing he can do to help the people starving in his village and every other like it, or to help avert this war, or end that war swiftly. He devotes himself to this duty so utterly that he's practically killing himself from stress and overwork. Always watching for the wolf in the shadows, that Emmeryn and Chrom and Lissa might be able to avoid the fangs and continue being the beacons the halidom needs them to be.

Even when they're at peace, the eyes at the edge of the firelight are all he can see. It confuses Chrom and Lissa; and that's how he knows he's doing his job correctly.

And this relationship between Frederick and the royal siblings.

Is reduced to jokes about pebble-clearing and overzealous recruitment posters a solid 80% of the time.

I JUST.

I want to clarify that these games being goofy and silly and over the top as often as they are is one of their draws, and that I do enjoy how just, cartoonishly cautious Frederick can be. I love the jokes. I am that guy who played the Before Awakening DLC in Fates literally 128 times to max out the pebble joke weapon. In no world do I think we need to wholly kill comedy here.

But at the same time I can't help but be blown away by how often the heart in this relationship is neglected in favour of comedy. The second you start thinking about how Frederick got where he is and why he is the way he is, there is just, SO much there.

It's of dubious canonicity at best, but I want you to read the conversations that Chrom and Frederick have with Emmeryn during her recruitment paralogue. I want you to notice how Chrom, though clearly emotional, is capable of putting his emotions aside, and opts to focus on keeping her safe rather than indulging in his grief, which he knows would only confuse her.

And then I want you to notice how Frederick, stoic, icy Frederick, breaks down. A paragraph of two years of repressed grief comes tumbling out all at once to a woman who, ultimately, is only a ghost of the person he knew. He begs her forgiveness. He cannot, cannot think clearly or objectively in this moment. He hurts too deeply. He cares too much.

The so-called Cold Lieutenant of the Shepherds cares so deeply and self-sacrificingly about everyone and it can be really damn funny, or utterly heart-melting, or utterly heart-breaking depending on the situation and how you play it. AND YET. THE SIDE CHARACTER CURSE. The most genuinely they ever play this bond is in a side chapter that isn't even canon.

How do I end this post.

I am inconsolable for SEVERAL REASONS.

#fe awakening #frederick #emmeryn #chrom #lissa #long post #i continue to be allergic to brevity #like half of this is being stunned by the immense childhood trauma the ylissean royal sibs went through #and the other half is weeping over how fred's side character curse interacts with that #there's barely a coherent point to this #i made the mistake of listening to divine decree and then saw that reply and got riled #and when i get riled i vomit 1000 words out and then collapse