Meta Month, Day Twelve: Orphan Overload

[mark_asphodel]

Let's call this "pseudo-meta."  Or whining.

Was looking over FE5 to help me with that damned Finn-in-the-desert story I've been toying with for, like, a month now.  Re-read Nanna's ending.

"After the victory at Barhara, Nanna joined leaf in the battle to liberate Agustria. Later, she married Leaf and devoted her life to helping orphans who lost their family in the war. Due to her sweetness and generosity, the citizens affectionately referred to her as "Princess Nanna" even after she became queen. Her life with Leaf is said to have ended happily."

Why is it always orphans?  Seriously!  Why can't the royal and noble women of Fire Emblem dedicate their lives to infrastructure or clean water or... reading to kids.  Or animal welfare, or planting tulips or something.  It's like U.S. First Ladies-- they all have their particular soapbox gimmick, and they try not to copy one another.

...

OK.  I know it's because war = orphans and that's likely one of the major societal problems in any postwar Fire Emblem land.  (What about wounded veterans, huh?)

I'm mostly pissy about the orphan thing because of Minerva.

Also, sounds like Nanna dies first.  Poor Leaf.  I don't imagine he'd take that well. 

Comments

[amielleon]

I don't know, but Fire Emblem has taught me that in order to become a master mage, you must lose your parents to tragic circumstances.

[myaru.livejournal.com]

This is what I like about Twelve Kingdoms! When the spoiled princess asks what exactly people expected her to do back before her father was deposed, people start ticking ideas off on their fingers: start a hospital, talk your father out of beheading people so often, study a little, fund the arts, start a university - oh, and orphans.

Of course, in Twelve Kingdoms the situation is a bit different. There shouldn't be orphans after a while, because there's technically no such thing as war, and epidemics should be few and far between in a country following the Way. But during the thirty years of her father's reign, there still would've been hungry peasants to feed. Why can't we ever hand out food instead of start orphanages?