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mark_asphodel OK. Since a lot of the f-list is riled up about Monshou, here is Mark's Current Take on the whole weirdness surrounding Princess Nyna and her awful love life, in light of the remakes. This has all been stated here, there, and elsewhere in fragments, but laying it out end to end can't hurt.
1) Nyna fell in love with Camus. You can argue about how real and healthy a love for the dude who, uh, helped slaughter your family actually is, but she thinks it's love and we're running with that.
2) Hardin fell in love with Nyna after she turned up in Aurelis and fainted in his arms. He's already fallen for her by the time Marth turns up in Aurelis.
3) Marth arrives on the scene and hits it off with Hardin. Nyna throws a spanner into things by giving Marth the Fire Emblem, which doesn't make Hardin happy. (Mere jealousy over being subordinate to a teenager, or is Hardin reading subtext into the scene?)
4) Nyna and Marth spend the entire War of Darkness having "intimate talks" that any newcomer for the series might easily mistake for some incipient romance. Marth's actual love interest doesn't get a word in edgewise. [Note: I didn't see it that way, but I knew about Caeda to start with. Also, it kind of seemed to me like Marth was annoyed with Nyna a lot of the time.]
5) Nyna's mentor Bishop Boah comes up with the bright idea to marry Nyna to a foreigner (either Marth or Hardin). He has this brainwave shortly after being rescued, as it can potentially come up as early as Chapter 13 of FE11. [Talking to Astram triggers this dialogue.]
6) Camus recruitment debacle (Chapter 20 of FE11). Camus ends up sorta dead, maybe. Either way, Marth can't deliver on his very grudging non-promise to reunite Nyna with her lover. Nyna explains about the curse of the Fire Emblem, making it clear that this whole fiasco is the follow-up to some FUBAR love lives a century before.
8) In my opinion, at this point Nyna not only knows that Boah wants her married off (and soon!) but is leaning towards Marth as her marriage pick (x-ref FE3). And Marth, out of guilt or duty or the sense that he's basically fate's plaything and doesn't have a say in the matter, has also figured it out (this would be a retcon) and is completely resigned to it. I do not think he loves her, not even a little bit. I do not think she loves him, or at least whatever she feels for Marth is nothing compared to what she felt for Camus. But Camus is not an option, and Nyna is willing to deal with Marth.
9) After the war, Marth gives Caeda the brush-off, not just because he's being weird but because of the way the whole Nyna thing is about to play out. Caeda, instead of being a good little soldier, bursts into tears. This is not like Caeda; she's demonstrated several times over that she's a tough nut to crack. Nyna sees Caeda bawling and confronts Marth about the whole thing, and changes her mind about marrying him-- not as a considered decision, but on impulse in that moment over seeing the depth of Caeda's distress. Nyna plays matchmaker, sets Marth up with Caeda, and then proceeds to marry Hardin... the only other option for her on the table.
10) Hardin thinks his dreams have come true... until he realizes that Nyna doesn't love him. Hardin does not know about the extent of Nyna's feelings for Camus, but he looks back over the past couple of years and does the math in his head. The Fire Emblem. Command of the Archanean League. All those intimate talks. Everything that is wrong in his life can be traced back to one person-- Marth.
Enter Gharnef, the Darksphere, and one massive and elaborate ploy to Destroy the Hypotenuse. Mind you, Hardin's geometry is fundamentally flawed. But Gharnef, who was quite serious when he told Marth "see you in hell" after their showdown in Thabes, is perfectly happy to make use of Hardin's misplaced rage.
I dunno. Unless there's some bomb lurking in the FE12 script or some untranslated fragment of designer's notes, this strikes me as the most plausible explanation of events, particularly with the way the Marth/Nyna angle is SO played up in the remakes. The big change would be from FE3, wherein Marth apparently doesn't know Nyna was even considering him until Boah explains the whole mess with his dying breaths. But if Boah got his not-so-bright idea midway through the war, Nyna was clued into the plan and had already decided on Marth in the aftermath of Camus's "death," and Marth has figured it out by the war's end, then a lot of the strangeness between them in FE11 (including the undercurrents of hostility) isn't so strange. And Marth's attempt to send Caeda packing is less a bizarre act of self-denial and more a calculated way to clear the field before he and Nyna make the "happy" news official.
1) Nyna fell in love with Camus. You can argue about how real and healthy a love for the dude who, uh, helped slaughter your family actually is, but she thinks it's love and we're running with that.
2) Hardin fell in love with Nyna after she turned up in Aurelis and fainted in his arms. He's already fallen for her by the time Marth turns up in Aurelis.
3) Marth arrives on the scene and hits it off with Hardin. Nyna throws a spanner into things by giving Marth the Fire Emblem, which doesn't make Hardin happy. (Mere jealousy over being subordinate to a teenager, or is Hardin reading subtext into the scene?)
4) Nyna and Marth spend the entire War of Darkness having "intimate talks" that any newcomer for the series might easily mistake for some incipient romance. Marth's actual love interest doesn't get a word in edgewise. [Note: I didn't see it that way, but I knew about Caeda to start with. Also, it kind of seemed to me like Marth was annoyed with Nyna a lot of the time.]
5) Nyna's mentor Bishop Boah comes up with the bright idea to marry Nyna to a foreigner (either Marth or Hardin). He has this brainwave shortly after being rescued, as it can potentially come up as early as Chapter 13 of FE11. [Talking to Astram triggers this dialogue.]
6) Camus recruitment debacle (Chapter 20 of FE11). Camus ends up sorta dead, maybe. Either way, Marth can't deliver on his very grudging non-promise to reunite Nyna with her lover. Nyna explains about the curse of the Fire Emblem, making it clear that this whole fiasco is the follow-up to some FUBAR love lives a century before.
8) In my opinion, at this point Nyna not only knows that Boah wants her married off (and soon!) but is leaning towards Marth as her marriage pick (x-ref FE3). And Marth, out of guilt or duty or the sense that he's basically fate's plaything and doesn't have a say in the matter, has also figured it out (this would be a retcon) and is completely resigned to it. I do not think he loves her, not even a little bit. I do not think she loves him, or at least whatever she feels for Marth is nothing compared to what she felt for Camus. But Camus is not an option, and Nyna is willing to deal with Marth.
9) After the war, Marth gives Caeda the brush-off, not just because he's being weird but because of the way the whole Nyna thing is about to play out. Caeda, instead of being a good little soldier, bursts into tears. This is not like Caeda; she's demonstrated several times over that she's a tough nut to crack. Nyna sees Caeda bawling and confronts Marth about the whole thing, and changes her mind about marrying him-- not as a considered decision, but on impulse in that moment over seeing the depth of Caeda's distress. Nyna plays matchmaker, sets Marth up with Caeda, and then proceeds to marry Hardin... the only other option for her on the table.
10) Hardin thinks his dreams have come true... until he realizes that Nyna doesn't love him. Hardin does not know about the extent of Nyna's feelings for Camus, but he looks back over the past couple of years and does the math in his head. The Fire Emblem. Command of the Archanean League. All those intimate talks. Everything that is wrong in his life can be traced back to one person-- Marth.
Enter Gharnef, the Darksphere, and one massive and elaborate ploy to Destroy the Hypotenuse. Mind you, Hardin's geometry is fundamentally flawed. But Gharnef, who was quite serious when he told Marth "see you in hell" after their showdown in Thabes, is perfectly happy to make use of Hardin's misplaced rage.
I dunno. Unless there's some bomb lurking in the FE12 script or some untranslated fragment of designer's notes, this strikes me as the most plausible explanation of events, particularly with the way the Marth/Nyna angle is SO played up in the remakes. The big change would be from FE3, wherein Marth apparently doesn't know Nyna was even considering him until Boah explains the whole mess with his dying breaths. But if Boah got his not-so-bright idea midway through the war, Nyna was clued into the plan and had already decided on Marth in the aftermath of Camus's "death," and Marth has figured it out by the war's end, then a lot of the strangeness between them in FE11 (including the undercurrents of hostility) isn't so strange. And Marth's attempt to send Caeda packing is less a bizarre act of self-denial and more a calculated way to clear the field before he and Nyna make the "happy" news official.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 01:45 am (UTC)You weren't kidding about Turban-Lyon, were you? XD
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Date: 2011-02-11 01:47 am (UTC)Yes. To the Nth degree.
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:56 am (UTC)As much as I know Lyon is technically Turbanless Hardin, Turban Lyon is just so much catchier.
(If I go from Shadow Dragon to FE3's second part, am I gonna be totally confused, or do they kinda make sense together?)
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Date: 2011-02-11 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 02:38 am (UTC)point 9 explains Marth's fail better than "oh he's just afraid to confess his love".
Yeah. I don't know. On one level, he is being dorky and weird, but so many of his conversations with Nyna revolve around duty vs personal feelings that I have to think that's a major factor in his treatment of Caeda. His personal desires can't come into it. Everything's already been decided, and he has to man up and deal the same way he's dealt with everything else.
Now, an alliance between Talys and Altea isn't the most strategic thing in the world to start with (unless the end goal actually is ruling the archipelago), and there are other little practical objections one could raise against a marriage to Caeda, but one big reason just feels better than a slew of little ones.
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:01 am (UTC)I didn't think of it that way, but yeah. He loves Sheeda, that much is clear, but he's also resigned himself to the fact that he's in this for the world's sake, and his own feelings don't matter. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking if Sheeda dies.
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Date: 2011-02-11 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-11 10:52 pm (UTC)I mean, OK, so they wouldn't end up with the people they had feelings for when they were teenagers. Join the club, y'know?
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Date: 2011-02-11 02:15 am (UTC)When did love enter the equation of political marriages, anyway? It sounds like Archanea has a long history of people marrying other people they don't particularly care for, which isn't such a far-fetched idea when you look at reality. Hardin sounds like such a free-spirit - he has the guts and the charisma to do as he pleases at home, so I might be able to picture him with certain expectations, but is love a reality any of Archanea's royals would've had a chance to consider seriously? For marriage, I mean. I'm sure history is hiding plenty of mistresses and affairs. When does it not?
This just makes Nyna's obsession with Camus more face-palmy.
I've probably said all of this before, but you made me think about it again.
Point #4 is 100% true for me. I frankly still don't see Marth pining for Caeda when I look at the script and nothing else. Now that I know all the extra stuff, though, it's easier to imagine.
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Date: 2011-02-11 02:31 am (UTC)Excellent point.
but is love a reality any of Archanea's royals would've had a chance to consider seriously?
We don't really know what a "normal" Archanean marriage is, 'cause we don't ever see one. But all the indications we do get point to love being a secondary concern. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Nyna "played pretend" to convince herself and it backfired?
I frankly still don't see Marth pining for Caeda when I look at the script and nothing else
Well, given that they have ZERO conversations between the opening of Chapter One and the ending, he has nothing to say to her when he dies and he has no reaction to her death until MONTHS after the fact... but he's willing to talk to Nyna about his feelings every third chapter...
Yeah. It's all really odd, to say the least.
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Date: 2011-02-11 03:06 am (UTC)