On Beowulf (addendum)
Nov. 20th, 2012 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelStill sick. Here's the follow-up comment I promised solmedes .
solmedes .So as I was working on this meta yesterday, something else fell into place. Some time ago, when I was pondering the oh-so-controversial Ch 5 conversation between Beo and Lachesis, amielleon provided a new reading of the text. As Ammie sees it, the conversation is NOT a means of hooking Lachesis up with her alleged dorky paramour but instead is a request from Beowulf that Lachesis give assistance to Cuan's children. Which, of course, raises the new question of why devil-may-care mercenary Beowulf, er, cares about what happens with Cuan's kids.
amielleon provided a new reading of the text. As Ammie sees it, the conversation is NOT a means of hooking Lachesis up with her alleged dorky paramour but instead is a request from Beowulf that Lachesis give assistance to Cuan's children. Which, of course, raises the new question of why devil-may-care mercenary Beowulf, er, cares about what happens with Cuan's kids.So, in FE5 we meet Fergus, a 22-year-old mercenary with a rogue's demeanor and a blond ponytail. The game script implies that Fergus is both Beowulf's bastard son and the long-lost prince of Conote, one of the four ruined kingdoms of the Manster District. Gameplay mechanics back up the "Beowulf's kid" claim and also imply that Fergus has some holy blood, which he didn't get from Beowulf[*]. So, yeah, looks like our pal Fergus is the offspring of Beo's tryst with a holy-blooded Conote princess. (He was probably assigned to guard her virtue or whatever. We know how well that always works in FE-land.)
One can imagine there was a bit of scandal. Maybe more than a bit. Given this occured three-to-four years prior to the start of FE4's Prologue, it's entirely possible that young Prince Cuan-- dead-set on becoming the regional power broker-- inserted himself into the scandal to sort it out. Maybe Cuan got Beowulf safely out of the Manster District and on his way to Agustria. Maybe Cuan also ensured that baby Fergus, though apparently disinherited, didn't end up in the FE4 equivalent of a back-alley dumpster[**].
At any rate, Beo would owe Cuan, bigtime, a debt that extends to Cuan's progeny once Cuan gets whacked. So he sends Lachesis off on his behalf to help take care of baby Leaf, which-- in the context of the Ch5 conversation-- results in Leaf getting an A++ sister-lover/life companion out of the deal. Cosmic debt repaid, and everyone's happy.
* He can both use the Beo Sword and the Bragi Sword.
** I will point out again that Cuan, with his "All your Thracia are belong to ME" intentions, has an actual stake in whether or not the male heir of a neighboring kingdom is scratched off the family tree... and Jugdral is pretty loosey-goosey about accepting bloodline heirs even if their parents weren't married or a princess was makin' with a no-name lowlife. So there just might've been some shenanigans taking place here.
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Date: 2012-11-21 03:38 am (UTC)....
Maybe that Beowulf isn't so far removed from the elder tactical series, after all?
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Date: 2012-11-21 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-21 05:51 pm (UTC)FFT really is a wonderful game. :-) Especially the PSP retranslation. I'd only rate Tactics Ogre more highly, really (same development team, only an even darker story).
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Date: 2012-11-21 08:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-21 11:32 am (UTC)My initial assumption on whatever went down in Conote was that Cuan would view the whole thing as pretty sketchy and Do Not Want. It only now occurred to me that Beo might feel loyalty to Cuan because Cuan helped him out of that particular jam. It's not like Cuan has his geographical allies' best interests at heart anyway...
The Fergus backstory is one of those moments wherein it feels like the FE5 design crew are trolling the player.