Fire Emblem and the Westermarck Effect

[mark_asphodel]

Fire Emblem: it's got incest.  I don't know about you, but I'd heard about that one long before playing a single game.

I'm not going to wonder why this is so prominently featured, to the point where FE4 was allegedly toned down prior to release yet still contains it as a plot point.  But, let's explore it a bit, and not in the kink meme way.

Humans appear to have a mechanism, or mechanisms, to avoid boinking their siblings.  Have you ever seen a romantic couple where they looked, and even maybe acted, like siblings and yet weren't?  They're pretty common.  In fact, there appears to be a phenomenon known as genetic sexual attraction where people do indeed click in every possible way with close blood relatives-- provided they've been strangers for the early part of their lives.  The Westermarck effect is thought to have developed to defuse that attraction; basically, if kids are raised together, they end up not being interested in one another in that way.  Even if they're not blood relations.  There's a critical period for this reverse imprinting, though-- the kids need to get desensitized to one another before the age of six or seven.  

That actually meshes pretty well with some of the FE Incest (TM) that we see.  Alvis and Dierdre met as adults.  Yuria didn't encounter Celice until they were teenagers.  In the Oosawa manga, where the Eltoshan/Lachesis relationship is played to the very hilt of an Earth Sword, they also meet in adolescence.  And genetic sexual attraction is off and running...

Some obvious counterexamples come to mind straight off, though.  If you interpret Priscilla's interest in Raven/Raymond as incestuous, it's a bit harder to explain because they were together as kids.  Ephraim and Eirika have been together since conception, and the game script points to their forever-togetherness as rooted in twinship, Westermarck effect be damned.

And then there's the incest fandom doesn't talk about nearly as much.  The relationships between siblings not, as the SKU phrases it, "bound by blood."  Well, you say, then it's not incest.  Oh yeah?  

1) Leaf and Nanna.  So cute.  So sweet.  So... wait, how many times in the Thracia script does he call her his sister before they decide to make couplehood official?  They've been raised together since infancy.  The sexual-attraction thing should not be happening here.  Even if you throw evo psych out the window, it surprises me that I've never seen one person saying that Leaf/Nanna squicks them.  Yeah, we know they're not related.  They know they're not related.  But, stiil... the script pounds down repeatedly on the siblinghood business, right up to and including his proposal of marriage. 

2) Altenna and Arione.  Even weirder than the above, because Altenna does think he's her biological brother.  Arione doesn't, or at least not by the time of the Big Reveal (how can he, with Trabant kvetching about Ethlin's ghost while Arione stands right there?), but they're still into one another.  Totally, completely, canonical OTP into one another.  And the Big Reveal just gives them permission to get it on without breaking any taboos. 

3) Sothe and Micaiah.  Which does squick me out, a little.  Their relationship seems to be a little more complicated than a straight out sibling dynamic, though, and I think that's where the squick lies.  

(Cellica and Alm were not, as far as I can tell, raised in the same household, and so I do not think they fall into this category.  And there is no, repeat NO evidence that Marth and Caeda knew one another as very young children.  All the kiddie refugees in Tirnanogue potentially fall into this category, though.)  

On a final note, the Westermarck effect is supposedly depressed in younger siblings who are quite a bit (eight or more years) younger than their elder siblings.  FE case in point, Maria and Michalis.  But the elder sibling is NOT supposed to reciprocate the attraction to a sibling they remember as a squalling newborn. 

More examples and counterexamples are welcome.

ETA 1/5/13: there are a few fans in Japanese fandom squicked by Leaf/Nanna.  So there is that.

Comments

[amielleon]

3) Westermarck isn't in effect here, though. Although we aren't given a canon age, Sothe's apparently old enough to be a street rat and alive when he meets Micaiah. I'd put him at 6~7, in parallel to Soren (since the game wants to parallel them all the fucking time).

Personally I find psychological incest weirder than blood incest, even though the taboo is logically for genetic reasons....

Priscilla/Raven - Wow, I thought she'd left when she was younger, but it's six on the head.
Priscilla: I left House Cornwell when I was only six years old... And how long were you in service to Cornwell? - Supports with Lucius.

Also, let's add the Isaacian resistance to that list. Celice/Rana being one rather prominent example of that. Shanan/Lakche is like the Michalis and Maria example you cited.

[mark_asphodel]

Personally I find psychological incest weirder than blood incest, even though the taboo is logically for genetic reasons....

I'd agree. That's part of what dumbfounds me about easy acceptance of the Lenster/Thracian/Nodion brood.

Also, let's add the Isaacian resistance to that list.

That's what I meant by "kiddie refugees in Tirnanogue."

Shanan/Lakche is like the Michalis and Maria example you cited.

Good catch!

[amielleon]

Oh whoops, not a very careful reader right now. :B

I suppose we'd also be able to put Lehran/Sanaki under that Michalis/Maria umbrella, although that one's a very interpretive pairing.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the incest is mostly concentrated in Jugdral.

Oh, yeah: ambiguously blood incest -- Claude/Sylvia?

[mark_asphodel]

I suppose we'd also be able to put Lehran/Sanaki under that Michalis/Maria umbrella, although that one's a very interpretive pairing.

With some deep complicating factors!

Oh, yeah: ambiguously blood incest -- Claude/Sylvia?

I forgot about them. I prefer to forget about them.

[kyusil]

Interesting analysis. I can't really say much more, since like Ammie said, it is mostly concentrated in Jugdral which I know little to nothing about (probably because almost everything I've heard about it up until recently has pretty much been that there's incest and it's super-difficult, neither of which I took as recommendations). It might be worth looking at the sibling pairs who don't give off incestuous vibes? I think Rebecca and Dart is an interesting case-- they could have done, erm, a lot with the whole amnesia issue, but they left their relationship thankfully platonic.

I'm not going to wonder why this is so prominently featured

I'm surprised I haven't really seen it brought up in a more official capacity. I wondered before if this was why Nintendo of America, bent on being completely non-controversial in the 90's, didn't initially release Fire Emblem, but it doesn't seem like it would have been a problem until FE4. And then when they did release FE7, they kept the implications with Priscilla and Raven startlingly intact, and under an E rating to boot (of course, post-Jugdral implications have been all there were). Perhaps even more bizarrely, the Jugdral games were the only ones not mentioned in any capacity in SSBB-- this might seem insignificant, but considering the sheer amount of references in that game, as well as the lasting popularity of FE4 and 5, it might be worth noting.

[amielleon]

I would describe FE4 as more finnicky than outright difficult.

(That's not a recommendation either.)

I think Jugdral has some redeeming qualities but overall I wouldn't recommend it on the sheer basis of anything.

[mark_asphodel]

everything I've heard about it up until recently has pretty much been that there's incest and it's super-difficult, neither of which I took as recommendations

Thracia is the one that's supposed to be hellishly difficult. IIRC they introduce Fog of War on Chapter Three, and that doesn't begin to express the things it throws at the player.

I think Rebecca and Dart is an interesting case-- they could have done, erm, a lot with the whole amnesia issue, but they left their relationship thankfully platonic.

Oh, very true. Well, I see no incest anything in Ike and Mist, other than that I agree with Ammie's hypothesis that Boyd is essentially an Ike surrogate. Likewise, while Marth and Elice have a somewhat odd relationship, it's clear IMO that she's his substitute mother figure. Innes and Tana seem to act like fairly ordinary siblings. Ditto Sigurd and Ethlin. Various Jugdral 2nd-gen characters were raised apart and show no desire to get with one another. And if anyone's made allegations against Ewan and Tethys, I don't even want to know. Lena & Matthis are creepy in a way I can't pin down, though.

Nonetheless, the "banging your sibling" thing is awfully prominent, especially when one takes the non-biological siblings into account. (Let's see, Leaf and Altenna both get with their 'siblings,' and Nanna's own mother was hot for her half-brother... wow, family reunions would be awfully interesting if half the characters weren't already deceased.) The incest definitely crested with 4/5...

Perhaps even more bizarrely, the Jugdral games were the only ones not mentioned in any capacity in SSBB-- this might seem insignificant

I find it highly significant, all the more so when Stateside fanboys insist that Sigurd HAS to be in the next installment of SSB. If Sigurd's so necessary, why are the SSB people blacklisting his entire gameverse?

[raphiael]

Micaiah's sort of got this mother-sister-girlfriend all at once thing going on with Sothe, yeah. I like there interactions a lot, but I don't even know what category I'd say she best fits in. It. . .still kind of throws me to remember that they can get married and everything, even though I do like their interactions a lot.

There's also Clarine with Klein - not at all mutual, but given that she compares nearly every man she meets to her brother (unfavorably), it's akin to Priscilla's feelings for Raven, if not more sketchy, I think. (I always took it as hero worship more than anything, but I can see where people would see it as less innocent.)

[scarletmorning]

*Ahaha, posting here also because coincidence led me here as I remembered something*

Elincia/Geoffrey is also a possible incest couple. We don't know when they met and "became" siblings, though. Depends on headcanon in this case, actually. Still, interesting to see that Lucia seems to have fully accepted Elincia as a sister, but Geoffrey not. Makes me actually think that they were all old enough to know the difference between blood relative and non-blood relative.

[samuraiter]

I tend to file incest in JRPGs under the "Japan is odd" header, since there seems to be no incest taboo in that culture where first cousins, stepfamily, etc. are concerned.