On Aira and Marita

[mark_asphodel]

This is probably something none of you have ever lost sleep over, but I considered it worthwhile: is Aira "really" Marita's mother?

Several FE games appear to have a convoluted path to release-- witness FE6's development out of Ankoku no Miko. But the Jugdral games seem to have emerged from particular level of development hell, with FE4 only featuring two of its three planned storyarcs and FE5 being half the length it was allegedly intended to be. Some time back an informant named Memento Mori leaked many unconfirmed details of the FE4 and FE5 beta versions to FE Universe; some of that information is also archived at Serenes Forest. According to this FE5 went through changes both minor (could Master Seals give a third-tier promotion to Peg Knights?) and major (was there going to be a battle with Julius and Ishtar?); we have here a list of character changes, plot changes, and mechanical changes, some of which we have evidence for in the game itself, as in the unused portraits and weapon data.

Some of these plot ideas are quite frankly terrible and should have been axed-- we didn't need Arion murdering Dean for his relationship with Linoan. It doesn't help Arion's characterization and we already have Julius getting pissy over Ishtar's closeness to Reinhardt. Some of these ideas seem good-- frankly after all the set-up involving Lachesis, it might've been nice to unpetrify her in-game instead of just leaving that a big unresolved mystery. And then there's the claim that Aira (the long-haired sword-wielding beauty from Isaac) was supposed to be revealed as the birth mother of Evayle's daughter Marita.

OK. So how does that work? The beta page at FE universe helpfully notes that since Marita's (dead) birth mother is not identified, having Aira be said birth mother is still a possibilty in the release version of FE5. Does that hold up, and does this claim even really seem plausible for the beta, much less the finished game?

1) Aira's involvement changes nothing about Marita.

You don't need Aira's minor Odo blood to explain Marita because Galzus is stated to be a major blood carrier with the holy mark on his back. So this isn't an Aira/Holyn situation where you need to combine the minor carriers to produce a little sword goddess. Unless Galzus also started off as a minor carrier in the beta, having Aira there is just... for funsies?

 

2) Aira is not accounted for in the final version of FE5.

 

We have both of Lachy's kids as playable characters. We have Sety onscreen and Fee mentioned in conversation. Corple exists as an NPC and Tinny is referred to as an enemy. Briggid's kids are referenced in Evayle's character ending. So that's five of the seven pairing-optional FE4 ladies confirmed to have paired up and produced kids. IIRC, FE5 is silent on the existence of Aideen!kids or Aira!kids. But clearly the prevailing trend is for the ladies to have paired up with someone and borne the children we see in FE4, not to have them hook up with random other people and have kids we've never heard of before[*]. FE5 might be deemed AU to FE4, but not that AU.

 

* Though we also have Beowulf hooking up some random princess and producing a kid we've never heard of before. And Alvis hooking up with Aida and producing a kid we've never... hmm. But they're guys and it's easier for them to pull that off-- see #5 below.

3) But the beta version featured subkiddies, not the FE4 eugenics babies.

Janne replaced Nanna, Femina allegedly replaced Karin, Hawk replaced Sety, and Daisy and Asaello were playable. So Aira might've had AU kids the way that Miranda almost seems like an AU replacement for Amid and Linda (a sub for a sub?). Also, one wonders why we should be invested in saving Lachesis in the beta if Nanna didn't even exist...

3b) But Arthur was in the beta version too.

And we have no idea what he was doing there, either. It sounds like a LOT of ideas got thrown into the pot and then strained out again. However-- again, our informant says originally FE5 was supposed to be a much longer game, of which only half could be played in one run. Was there a subkids route and a parallel eugenics babies route?

4) How likely is this, anyway?

As crazy as some of the ideas Kaga has admitted to were, there doesn't really seem to be a functional way of administering a BS test on Jugdral developmental fragments. I think that whole idea with Arion murdering Dean is OOC garbage but I think some of Kaga's own notes seem pretty trashy, too. So, I think we can't rule it out just based on "stupid" or "lolwhut?"

5) So does any of this work with the game we've got?

Well, given FE4's Aira is the one female we can confidently place at Barhara thanks to her Ch5 conversation with Sigurd, and her activities in Sigurd's army are, shall we say, documented, any involvement with Galzus would have to take place after Barhara. Let's look at the ages of Marita and her foster siblings, shall we? All the FE5 crew has canon ages posted on the website, so that helps a lot.

Leaf-- 15 (going on sixteen) in 776. All extant timelines place his birth in 760.

Marita-- 15 in 776. Birth year unknown, but let's say she was born in 761 and just turned fifteen before the game started.

Nanna-- 14 in 776 and timelines confirm she was born in 762.

And then we fall into another discrepancy courtesy of development hell, because various sources (Lenster's Fall and the early version of the FE5 website[**] among them) indicate that Beowulf was supposed to be Nanna's father. You cannot have Aira taking up with Galzus post-Barhara (never mind how that even happens) and birthing Marita AND have Beowulf siring Nanna before Barhara if Marita is the elder of the girls. Nope. Not unless major-blood babies have a shorter gestation than normal humans.

** This link now gets you a 302 error. It used to work and I've seen it myself.

But the Beowulf thing got expunged from True Canon, so I guess we can ignore it if we really want to accomodate Aira as Marita's mother. (Recap: we're gonna ignore something some of the developers blatantly wanted and then backtracked on in favor of something the developers allegedly wanted and then left unmentioned. That's what we're here for, people.) So that's that; Aira is Marita's birth mother-- maybe Galzus rescued her when she was crawling northward after Barhara-- and Finn is Nanna's biological father and the ages of all the kids make sense.

6) This means Aira died from complications of childbirth.

Yep. Galzus said that Marita's mother died shortly after Marita was born. If you want to embrace the cheese of this this particular fanon trope, have at it; all you have to do is snap Piece A and Piece B together to make your story. I think I'd rather have Aira go down swinging, myself, and I'm not even especially fond of her. As I said, it doesn't really explain anything about Marita or make her any better or more complete as a character, or complete Aira's character arc, or do anything for Aira's other two kids. It feels kind of fanficcy, in the sense that raphiael was complaining about when FE7 is rammed into FE6 'fic-- "Let's make Marita an AiraKid! Wouldn't that be awesome? Wouldn't that just kick all kinds of ass?"

 

Er, not especially? Marita is Evayle's daughter and surely that's kickass enough.

Comments

[samuraiter]

only featuring two of its three planned storyarcs and FE5 being half the length it was allegedly intended to be

Good gravy! Just how ambitious was Kaga trying to be? o_O Color me impressed.

[mark_asphodel]

The man's reach did exceed his grasp, la.

[knmc]

That was the SNES explosion post 1993, after that date, in japan the programmer were figthing to make more and better game to diffenciate of others, after the sucess of DKC and Tales of Phantasia, when bigger games made with extensive programmer tricks show the power of SNES.

Maybe Intelligent Systems, who was ridding high with FE3 sucess, was to plane even bigger games taking advantage of bigger cartidge and the compression chips(like S-DD1, SA-1 or SPC7110) but some plans were scracthed when other issues were find(and when the PS1 was released, the SNES was put in backburn for the N64), That make more wonder about why trully Kaga resigned of IS(or was trully with shadow practices?)

Did you know Ironically that with FE5 i think Aira was the Husband of Finn(again, there is not canon evidence who say against, and the same Lester fall take Lachesis as a friend more a lover, and the time goes similar),and them Finn goes to Yield Desert, were only two females were know to goes to Thracia, Lachesis and.... Aira.

As a mention, the canon evidence(both in games AND sidematerials, i count both) doesn't refute that, and is easy to be applied.

For that Oosawa make a great work with his manga, scraped characthers aside(and you mention good reason for those, those were almost bonus unit in gameplay sense)

[mark_asphodel]

As a mention, the canon evidence(both in games AND sidematerials, i count both) doesn't refute that, and is easy to be applied.

Well, he does have that conversation with Lakche in FE4. Finn/Aira has a small but dedicated following in Japan, from what I've seen of the doujinshi and fanart. I'm not really into it personally-- I kind of like to pair him with Briggid, since he calls her beautiful twice in FE5 and they have those crazy-high love point growths in FE4 and become lovers automatically if the player isn't keeping an eye on their turn count!

He doesn't seem all that interested in romance in FE5, though.

[amielleon]

Sometimes I suspect the scriptwriters and editors were all very exasperated with Kaga. Perhaps such an atmosphere contributed to his departure?

[mark_asphodel]

No doubt! Imagine working on any of those development teams-- scope creep every day of the week, I'm sure!

[knmc]

The main problem was the Fire Emblem become popular very late in the cycle of life of the SNES, 1994, when the PlayStation was released, and them Nintendo put the SNES very in second place to make way to the Nintendo 64, and that make some rage among programmers(R&D#1 who IS was a collaborator) and prodducers in Nintendo, remeber, EAD won a lot of power with the N64(for that was not weird that was miyamoto who propose metroid 3D who later become Metroid Prime), Them HAL and Rare as Second Parties.

I recall something, that Miyamoto in a E3 mention Fire Emblem(The first time i mention the name, even if translated to spanish as 'Emblema de Fuego') as a upcoming game for the N64, and them, i think the IS Emblem Team, refuse or was unable to adapt to 3D, and maybe the project was scrapped and was remplaced in favor of Super MARIO RPG 2(Paper Mario).

And remember... when Gunpei Yokoi retired and later die, Intelligent Systems lose his biggest benefactor, the man who proposal to yamauchi the franchise(after being denied two times as two different games)

But the rumors who i knew, Kaga have something similar to RARE, think so high of Himself and goes directly agaisnt Nintendo, IIRC, the Emblem Saga lawsuit was something make by Intelligent Systems, specially Tohru Narahiro, who for that, loss his chance of becoming a member of the board of managers.

[mark_asphodel]

FE64, for me, is the big mystery I'd love to know more about, particularly since it was supposed to be another game in Marth's world and the idea of "men who go to war" sounds more serious and political in the vein of Thracia 776 and less of a simple adventure story.

I think part of me will be forever sorry that we got FE6 for the GBA instead, and part of me realizes that FE64 would likely have been a disaster.

[knmc]

Yes, FE64 was the biggest 'what would have been' for the whole franchise, i hear a lot of rumors of 'Maiden of Darkness'(Yami no Miko) during the fe10 released time, who for some people, have some storylines who were latter reused for FE Tellius(specially 10 with michaia) and was to be pretty interesting in 3D(some people mention similar to Shining Force III in Saturn). But them, the things are unclear, the whole project was scrapped, and was them voted in favor for a pseudo remake of the FE1 as FE6, who share some common element with FE1 AND the scrapped FE64.

For me FE64 was a very big lose chance, yes the game would have looks pretty ugly right now an would have been a little more short thank to N64 cartige, but them again, that was during the RPG boom and Nintendo was needed in releasing games... maybe the game would have a chance here in the americas(as mention before, the same miyamoto mention the game in a E3 in late nineties, for the N64DD and later as regular one).

Some ideas for you about how would have been the game? that was maybe the worst cancellation-retool since Earthbound 64/Mother 3 BETA

[raphiael]

"Marita" is so much nicer to look at and so much more logical to me than "Mareeta". Why did the latter take hold? (But then I could ask the same of "Siglud", so, Jugdral names, I guess.

I agree with the idea that it seems fanfic-y - the whole idea that the character is somehow enhanced because they're now connected to this other character you like!!! Yeah, no. Even if she does have some visual/class similarity, it just seems like a needless tie-in to me. (Much, as you mentioned, like a lot of the 6 to 7 connections. No, not every character is the child of an FE7 couple. Stop trying to shove that into every situation.)

[mark_asphodel]

You just wait. It'll be localized as "Mahryta" or something along those lines.

Even if she does have some visual/class similarity, it just seems like a needless tie-in to me.

From the first time I came across that it struck me as totally pointless wtf-ery. I mean, even if you work out all the logistical kinks, somebody needs to explain to me what Aira is doing with Galzus, given the people from Rivough and the people from Issac proper have some rather serious issues between them. Unless Galzus himself only came into being once the Aira angle was dropped; I guess I could see that.