mark_asphodel | On Kyle and Seth

What it says on the tin.

Alright. General Seth of Renais, aka the "Silver Knight," appears at first glance to fit neatly into an archetype box. Older sources will assure you that Seth is "an Oifaye," aka "a Jagen that stays good," but these are now classified as fictions based on a misunderstanding of Jagen's usefulness in FE1 and an inflated sense of what Oifaye can do in FE4. Stats aside, though, he's definitely appears of a sort with Oifaye, not to mention FE3's Cain, FE5's Finn, and Seth's successors Titania and Frederick in FE9/10 and FE13. All of 'em are veteran fighters who fall somewhere in their mid 20s to mid 30s-- definitely with an edge of age and experience on the teenaged main cast, but not, you know, Jagen-Mycen-Marcus levels of old.

Seth is definitely top dog among the knights of Renais-- here he is with the resident red/greens, Forde and Kyle, plus Forde's little bro Franz, the requisite n00blet knight. One would assume Seth to be the eldest of the four by some years.

Except there seemed to be some textual evidence suggesting that Seth might actually be younger than Kyle (and presumably Forde) and must be one hell of a prodigy. This hypothesis was advanced by korsriddare back on the old magvel comm, and I'll let his evidence speak for itself.

Now, FE8 never gave us concrete ages for anyone but Myrrh and Dozla, so this could certainly be true. Seth arguably looks older than Kyle'n'Forde, but art can be misleading. Also, Seth-- unlike all the rest of the Jagens/Oifayes/whatever you wanna call 'em, can get with his leading lady, which might imply he's actually rather close in age to Eirika. Wouldn't hang my hat on that one, though-- FE doesn't shy away from May/September kinda relationships. (Oifaye has a game-endorsed pairing with a lil' pegasus knight who's probably twenty years younger than he is, and let's not even get into what Frederick can do.)

So really, it's down to sifting through these little clues from the support conversations. Does the death of Forde'n'Franz's father ten years ago really imply Seth was a mere apprentice at that time? And was Kyle truly a fully-fledged knight, possibly Seth's senior, at that same ten-year timeframe?

Well, I ran the Kyle/Syrene supports by the friendly local FE Japan translation tumblr, and it looks like NoA look a few minor liberties with the text. Nothing earth-shattering to the meaning of the conversation, but the original text just doesn't state that Kyle was a knight ten years before the start of the game. He was a horseman, yes. Running errands, yes. Being very brave, yes. A knight, not necessarily (and Syrene apparently wasn't either but that's not clear). Kyle could just as likely have been an overly-conscientious n00blet himself at the time. He was delivering a letter, fercryingout loud. Even in "peaceful" Magvel I'd hope they weren't wasting the time of a fully qualified knight with the royal mail service-- there's brigands and pirates and whoever the hell keeps hiring Jehannan mercenaries to worry about. But an apprentice of, say, thirteen or fourteen who knew which end of the lance to hold and wasn't inclined to get into trouble might well have been entrusted to deliver a letter by himself. Same goes for Syrene, who could've been a Florina/Shanna/Karin type at the time, able to fly and fight but not properly a knight.

[It was Kyle's statement about "I had no idea you'd become a knight!" to Syrene that got me on this track again. This Frelian chick bailed him out of trouble... and wasn't a knight. Just some random teenager with weapons and a flying pony? It made me wonder if Kyle himself weren't exactly a proper knight in shining armor at the time of this bandit encounter... and, per NoJ, he may not have been.]

In conclusion... d00d, this is Magvel. At the end of the day we still don't know anything! We don't know whether or not Seth was still a "mere apprentice" when Forde'n'Franz's father died. We don't know whether or not Kyle was a qualified knight during that same time period. We don't know how old they are in relationship to one another or to anyone else beyond that yes, they're both clearly younger than Dozla and Myrrh.

Unless Seth's not fully human and is actually, like, sixty or something. At this point I'd believe almost anything.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I kinda put Eirika in that 17-19 age range, with Seth in his late 20s. (27-28)

Simply because, why not.

My headcanon age for Seth is generally 28. Again, why not?

Eirika I waver on depending on what kind of story it is, but 18-22 is my usual range. I need her to be slightly older for AUs sometimes.

Seth: "Valid point." *turns into a bat and flies away*

Man, Fire Emblem needs a Vampire AU. Don't all the hip fandoms have those kind of AUs? Are we not hip and cool and snazzy?

See the problem is that none of us can write those kind of AUs with any semblance of a straight face.

Smash Bros has plenty of vampire AUs using FE characters. They're likely about as good at what this fandom would come up with, and by "this fandom" I do mean "people who write FE 'fic" and not "the twelve people I talk to."

Hell, I bet A Dash of Insanity could write one well enough.

Damn, if I didn't dislike Vampires so much (now, not when I was younger), I would view that as a challenge. But it would be pretty horrible >>

8D

Yeah, Seth doesn't look or read the same age as the twins to me. Kyle and Forde seem a bit older than them (but not so much older that Franz is the same age as the twins), and Seth seems older than Kyle and Forde. Outside the vague squishy timeline bits, I didn't see any reason to doubt that, so now I guess that's kaput.

I've pretty much given up on numbered ages and just roll with "x is older than y" here though. It does get easier in AUs.

Part of the trouble is that we don't know what marks the boundary between "child" and "adult"! With Archanea, there was a definite sense that fourteen equaled "child" and sixteen equaled "old enough to pass, I guess." Jugdral skewed even younger than that, with multiple pieces of evidence that 14/15 is the boundary[*]. But in Magvel, we really don't know what it means when Amelia's age shocks people because OMG Grado is using child soldiers! Is she twelve? Thirteen? Fourteen? We assume Franz is older because he's a knight of Renais and not a "child soldier," but is he eighteen while she's fifteen? Sixteen to Amelia's fourteen years? Then how old was Kyle when he delivered that @#$%ing letter?

[I'm guessing Kyle was in the 13/14 range when he was playing mailman with Syrene and that he's 23/24 now, but that's all it is-- a shot in the dark.]

* And in both Archanea and Jugdral you get the sense that girls become women at an earlier age than boys become men. Marth's a child at fourteen, but HOW old is Est when she and Abel shack up? Fourteen is blatantly the age at which Homeros is willing to take on a female as his client!

Yeah, it's easy enough to lump in Ewan, Amelia, and Ross as "kids", but then Franz throws a wrench into things. And it's not like Magvel has hard numbers on anything useful. I mean we can all probably agree that the twins are probably somewhere between 10 and 30, but outside that it's a magical land of just ur headcanon that gets frustrating quickly.

I think the gender gap is a really interesting point! Especially since I feel like there's a shift post-Kaga into the opposite - Lilina has more responsibilities than Roy, but after that there seem to be a number of cases where women come off a lot more childish than their contemporaries. (Or they're older and shoved into mother roles.)

On Kyle and Seth

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wow late to the party

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