On Holy Blood
Mar. 8th, 2012 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelSo, now that we have Holy King Emelina (no, really) and her brother Krom both sporting markings that resemble the decorative headgear used by Tiki and Nagi, it appears the Holy Blood concept from FE4/5 is back in business. (Tellius fans-- it's kind of like the Branded, except instead of being hated, you're the most specialest people alive.) That's the assumption, anyway-- Krom is gonna be one of the warriors "marked by the dragons," and that thing on his arm is the mark.
Time for a trip down memory lane...
1) Archanea. Actually, unless they retconned it into FE12, there's nothing about Marth having any sort of physical mark that guarantees he's the designated Falchion user. Everybody from Elice on down just knows-- or assumes that he is. Super-weapons kind of work along contractual lines in Archanea-- fathers pass the weapons down to their sons, mentors can gift them to prized pupils. There's comparatively little hocus-pocus involved. Gotoh's rigging it all somehow, but we don't know the details (see Q3).
2) Valencia. This may be the first glimmer of the entire holy blood concept. Alm has a cross-shaped mark on his arm that identifies him as the heir to Rigel. It's not stated if this is a birthmark, something Rudolf cut into the kid's arm before giving him away, or a genuine holy blood marking. Since we don't know, we can't make assumptions about what it means. Also, Alm's title is "Holy King," something forgotten in all the frothing over Marth of late.
3) Jugdral. Whoo. And here the Holy Blood concept is front and center, and boy is it ever confusing.
1) Holy bloodlines are what happens when dragons make a pact with human champions via some ritual. Don't ask. And don't ask why big badass Naga changed into a pretty chick for the ritual.
2) The inheritance of the "major" holy blood follows no known rules of genetics. The major carrier can be the eldest son, elder daughter, younger son, younger daughter, or one out of a pair of identical twins.
2a) If a major line of inheritance goes extinct, it can be reconstituted through the mating of two minor carriers. You can use cousins for this, but pairing half-siblings definitely does the trick.[*]
3) The major carrier is identified by a marking on their body. This can occur at any time in life, which sure must be aggravating to parents who want to know which of the little darlings has the god-powers.
4) If a "major" holy warrior's powers are suppressed for some reason (see: Briggid), then the mark on their body vanishes.
5) More than one major carrier can be alive at one time-- Shanan and Mareeta both have major Odo blood, for instance. [So, Krom and Emelina might both be equal carriers, while Liz has "minor" blood or whatever.]
5a) And the same set of parents can produce major carriers of two different bloodlines-- see Julia and Julius.
6) Major carriers can apparently also be identified by a visible aura, which is a really cool concept. Except it's mentioned all of once in FE4, never in FE5 that I recall, and its existence opens up too many plotholes to count. Either aura perception is incredibly rare in the general population or the majority of characters, playable and otherwise, are really, really, REALLY dense and not capable of adding 2 and 2 and getting 4.[**]
7) With god-powers come really bizarre consequences. Especially in the Naga, Loptos, Holsety and Ulir bloodlines. Memory loss comes up a lot, even more than is typical in FE.
* So, even if, say, Altenna had died, the Nova bloodline could've been resurrected by cross-breeding Leaf's grandkids. It's what they'll have to do to resurrect a couple of the bloodlines (like Tordo) anyway if they ever want to use those weapons again.
** Not kidding. Given the number of mistaken identities, incognito royals, and impersonations, a method of spotting a holy warrior at a hundred yards raises more questions than it answers. And my first question would be, "Why are these characters so clueless?"
So, what does this say about Krom and Emelina? Maybe nothing. But if FE13 is indeed taking place on the same planet as FE1/2/3/4/5, and evidence is mounting that this is the case, then perhaps the implementation of this "dragon mark" will echo earlier games.
Time for a trip down memory lane...
1) Archanea. Actually, unless they retconned it into FE12, there's nothing about Marth having any sort of physical mark that guarantees he's the designated Falchion user. Everybody from Elice on down just knows-- or assumes that he is. Super-weapons kind of work along contractual lines in Archanea-- fathers pass the weapons down to their sons, mentors can gift them to prized pupils. There's comparatively little hocus-pocus involved. Gotoh's rigging it all somehow, but we don't know the details (see Q3).
2) Valencia. This may be the first glimmer of the entire holy blood concept. Alm has a cross-shaped mark on his arm that identifies him as the heir to Rigel. It's not stated if this is a birthmark, something Rudolf cut into the kid's arm before giving him away, or a genuine holy blood marking. Since we don't know, we can't make assumptions about what it means. Also, Alm's title is "Holy King," something forgotten in all the frothing over Marth of late.
3) Jugdral. Whoo. And here the Holy Blood concept is front and center, and boy is it ever confusing.
1) Holy bloodlines are what happens when dragons make a pact with human champions via some ritual. Don't ask. And don't ask why big badass Naga changed into a pretty chick for the ritual.
2) The inheritance of the "major" holy blood follows no known rules of genetics. The major carrier can be the eldest son, elder daughter, younger son, younger daughter, or one out of a pair of identical twins.
2a) If a major line of inheritance goes extinct, it can be reconstituted through the mating of two minor carriers. You can use cousins for this, but pairing half-siblings definitely does the trick.[*]
3) The major carrier is identified by a marking on their body. This can occur at any time in life, which sure must be aggravating to parents who want to know which of the little darlings has the god-powers.
4) If a "major" holy warrior's powers are suppressed for some reason (see: Briggid), then the mark on their body vanishes.
5) More than one major carrier can be alive at one time-- Shanan and Mareeta both have major Odo blood, for instance. [So, Krom and Emelina might both be equal carriers, while Liz has "minor" blood or whatever.]
5a) And the same set of parents can produce major carriers of two different bloodlines-- see Julia and Julius.
6) Major carriers can apparently also be identified by a visible aura, which is a really cool concept. Except it's mentioned all of once in FE4, never in FE5 that I recall, and its existence opens up too many plotholes to count. Either aura perception is incredibly rare in the general population or the majority of characters, playable and otherwise, are really, really, REALLY dense and not capable of adding 2 and 2 and getting 4.[**]
7) With god-powers come really bizarre consequences. Especially in the Naga, Loptos, Holsety and Ulir bloodlines. Memory loss comes up a lot, even more than is typical in FE.
* So, even if, say, Altenna had died, the Nova bloodline could've been resurrected by cross-breeding Leaf's grandkids. It's what they'll have to do to resurrect a couple of the bloodlines (like Tordo) anyway if they ever want to use those weapons again.
** Not kidding. Given the number of mistaken identities, incognito royals, and impersonations, a method of spotting a holy warrior at a hundred yards raises more questions than it answers. And my first question would be, "Why are these characters so clueless?"
So, what does this say about Krom and Emelina? Maybe nothing. But if FE13 is indeed taking place on the same planet as FE1/2/3/4/5, and evidence is mounting that this is the case, then perhaps the implementation of this "dragon mark" will echo earlier games.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 07:01 am (UTC)The ritual had to do something with ~sharing blood~, and I must wonder if ~sharing blood~ is as idiomatic in Japanese as it is in English, and whether the war was slower than we thought and the miracle at Darna took place over the course of raising some kids for 15 years. /Tellius bias crack theory.
2) The inheritance of the "major" holy blood follows no known rules of genetics. The major carrier can be the eldest son, elder daughter, younger son, younger daughter, or one out of a pair of identical twins.
2a) If a major line of inheritance goes extinct, it can be reconstituted through the mating of two minor carriers. You can use cousins for this, but pairing half-siblings definitely does the trick.[*]
I actually think it does make some sense, for 2a's reason. It seems to resemble some sort of three-way codominance, not unlike snapdragons and the like, to which either parent can contribute up to two features. Maybe two gene positions, each codominant...
Okay, imagine we have two holy blood determiners, gene A on chromosome pair A and gene B on chromosome pair B, and in each pair of chromosomes label one of them 1 and the other 2. So say Levin has a Holsety allele on 1A and 2B (and a not-holy-allele on 1B and 2A). When he pops Sety, he gives him 1A and 2B, but when he pops Fury, he gives her either 1A and 2A, or 1B and 2B. Something like that. It also explains the way you're unable to stack too much holy blood onto one heir (including, eg, how Lopt disappears from Yuria's line and Narga disappears from Yurius's), the seeming randomness with which major blood children are made, and the way you can combine minor blood for a major blood child.
But of course I'm sure that wasn't the intention of the designers. It works startlingly well though.
Probably because it has a lot in common with the way holy blood was coded.(And what's eldest sons have to do with rules of genetics? Or do you mean it just doesn't follow a formal makes-magic-sense rule?)
6) Remind me who spots what aura? I'd been under the impression that it was a temporary thing when encountering your divine weapon for the first time.
Quite liked this post in any event, and curious to see how dragon marks come into play in Eris proper.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 03:33 am (UTC)I like that idea, except that we'd have to believe the creators are lying to us again. Because everything indicates that Sety, Fala, Baldo, etc were the actual warriors and not offspring of whoever the original Chosen Twelve were. Otherwise, it makes more sense than believing in some kind of blood-brother fusion.
It seems to resemble some sort of three-way codominance, not unlike snapdragons and the like, to which either parent can contribute up to two features.
That's the only way it seems remotely plausible. It absolutely cannot be a basic dominant/recessive inheritance. But the fact that identical twins Adean and Briggid have two different holy blood statuses says to me it's not really following rules of science. It's... magic. Unless we want to do some hand-waving about how they're really not identical, they just are the kind of twins who look identical but aren't. :/
Or do you mean it just doesn't follow a formal makes-magic-sense rule?
Yeah, I was trying to say it was out of step with a typical way of constructing a magical bloodline, not to mention out of step with the way things appear to work in some other FE 'verses, what with genderlocked weapons. I ended up over-editing that bit because I was about to fall asleep.
I'd been under the impression that it was a temporary thing when encountering your divine weapon for the first time.
That would make sense, but I'm talking about the moment where Finn spots Altenna as an enemy unit. If someone can ID another person as a major carrier of holy blood by their aura-- even IF we decide to qualify that by hypothesizing the aura only kicks in when they also have their holy weapon-- then there are a lot of WTF plotholes all of a sudden. It'd be awfully hard for Sety to do his Magi Squad rescue work with any kind of subtlety if he's glowing green. And that loser who pretends to be Shanan, fake Balmunk and all, is made of even more fail than he already was... and everyone who fell for it is made of yet more fail.
And if they just flat-out have some kind of detectable aura, regardless of whether they have their holy weapon, then the "revelation" of all these secret identities (Briggid, Dierdre, Julia) is seriously... hamstrung.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 04:13 am (UTC)or at least, they don't look identical to meOh, yeah, that thing with Finn.
... Uh.
Jugdral is the swiss cheese of the Fire Emblem cheese shop.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 11:53 pm (UTC)Pretty much.
Though I wonder what kind of craters Kakusei is going to blast into canon.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 07:31 am (UTC)It does seem a bit like the dragon-brand-things might be more like the Jugdral marks than anything else, though, given the language choices and execution of it we've seen thus far. Plus the existing Archanea tie-ins. It'd be really interesting if it somehow ties all those elements together - or at least gives people more meat to tie them in themselves.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 03:45 am (UTC)Yeah, we don't even have confirmation of holy blood mechanics in old-school Archanea. Marth's right to the Falchion comes through his great-grandfather, the brother of the actual hero. Holy Blood in Jugdral just doesn't work that way. If your hero brother dies without issue, you might get his throne, but you won't get his major holy blood.
It'd be really interesting if it somehow ties all those elements together - or at least gives people more meat to tie them in themselves.
Yes yes yes.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 08:06 pm (UTC)This is, as always, fascinating. FE13 is a peculiar creature.
I wonder if you have enough meta posts to make The Official Manual of Fire Emblem Speculation & Deconstruction ™?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-10 03:46 am (UTC)Right now, FE13 looks like a shiny wrapped present to the crazy-theory end of fandom. Especially ones with a raging bias for Archanea and Valencia.
I wonder if you have enough meta posts to make The Official Manual of Fire Emblem Speculation & Deconstruction ™?
Hahah. Probably. My husband actually made his (non-fandom) blog into a lovely softcover book. For personal enjoyment, of course. :D
no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 01:02 am (UTC)