Foreword
Let me begin by saying I am not fond of the convention of including an author's note at the beginning or end of each chapter. I know I personally scroll past them, since I feel it messes with immersion, and the teasers that some authors love including, or the conversations with commenters and reviewers feel a bit tacky to me. Still, each to his or her own. Some authors also use their notes to indicate when updates can be expected, but I don't believe that will be necessary. This entire story has already been written, and I'm simply editing it as I post it. Feel free to skip through this foreword, as it's not necessary to the story at all. It's more or less just an extended author's note.
This story is essentially a retelling of the events of Fire Emblem: Awakening. The story, like the game, is divided into three primary arcs, each of will be posted separately. Because it is meant to be a retelling, practically every key point in Fire Emblem: Awakening will be spoiled. Also, as the lore from FE:A ties into other games in the series, minor plot points from other games in the series may be spoiled as well.
I have tried to remain true to the main story itself. However, to help the story's cohesion, and to expand upon certain elements that I felt weren't really fleshed out properly by the game, there will be some deviations. In particular, there is some emphasis on re-characterization. Unfortunately, with a cast as large as the game had, it's not easy to make characters memorable, and in many cases, the game did so by making the characters extra quirky. It gives the entire game a lighthearted feel despite the otherwise darker story, which I feel contrasts kind of poorly. It also makes some of the characters seem utterly one dimensional. I will go into further detail on this later for those who have played FE:A, but for those who haven't, the important thing to note is that the characters will not be portrayed exactly as they are in the game.
Nor is this a self-insert story. In the game, Robin himself is practically a self-insert, as he is made rather generic intentionally, and the player can customize his appearance, or even elect to play as a female character. He does have some glimpses of character, and several more instances in the optional support conversations, but it's not always consistent. Since so much of the story revolves around him, I have tried to give him his own personality, although it is not meant to be overblown. He's a fairly normal young adult with a few exceptional gifts, a strong work ethic, and a stronger sense of loyalty to those he cares about. I've used his default appearance with only a few minor adjustments.
Because of the slight changes in personality (mostly to tone down some of the extremely over exaggerated characters), and for the aforementioned sense of cohesion, not all the events will happen exactly the same way. So if you are reading this before playing the game, please do not expect the game to play out the same way as this story even if most of the primary events and story elements are included. For those of you who have played the game, I hope that you find the changes did both the original story and the characters justice.
By the time you are reading this note, I will have already finished editing the first few chapters, which I intend to post together. I've noticed that several other people have started their own retellings, and I know that the introductory chapters are designed to draw in the readers' attentions. Unfortunately, as someone who's seen the first part of the game countless times, and read it countless more, I've found that the first chapter alone is rarely enough to really captivate my attention. After that, I hope to maintain a fairly steady schedule of updates as I edit my way through the rest of the story.
I'm really not sure what genre I'll post this story as, although I suspect it will probably be Adventure/Friendship. Still, because the story focuses around a war, there will be many other themes: some tragedy, some angst, plenty of fantasy (I mean, it's a world with dragons, gods, and sorcery both good and evil), some emphasis on family, and a hint of romance here and there.
I do not own Fire Emblem. I do not own Intelligent Systems. I do not own any of the characters used in this story. I do not own the cover images, as they are from the official artwork. Also, a trigger warning – there are elements of self-sacrifice and suicide. Rating it T primarily for themes of war, mostly violence and murder, though I'm not into graphic stomach-turning gore. If that's your cup of tea I'm afraid you will have to search elsewhere. Some alcohol use. A few minor sexual references (but generally family-friendly. It's not any more risqué than what was in the game already).
For those of you who have not played FE:A, I recommend skipping ahead to the beginning of the story now, as the remainder of this note will make very little sense to you. If you have played FE:A, which I suspect will be true for most readers, it's your choice whether you wish to read on. Mostly it concerns the writing decisions I made in transposing the story to a new medium.
On to why I'm writing this. I've heard a lot of people complain that FE:A has a rather weak story. I would agree that in some aspects, the story does fall short of some of the other games of the franchise. However, I personally feel it has little to do with the story itself. Mostly, it has to do with writing and presentation.
I'm not an author by trade, so I can't promise my writing will be significantly better. I've used a good portion of the actual dialogue from the game, but I've also added quite a bit of my own. Hopefully, the parts that I've added are to your liking. I think part of my inspiration for writing this was the inclusion of Robin and Lucina in Super Smash Brothers. I've tried to write it in a way that people who aren't Fire Emblem fans, or who haven't played FE:A can read it as well, just in case. I'll let you be the judge of whether I succeeded or failed in that regard.
One advantage I do feel that I have is in presentation. I mentioned earlier that the character, Robin, is basically designed as a self-insert. That was part of IS's effort to reach out to a wider audience with this game. Another part of it is the support system. Of the main cast, there are ten regular female characters that can support with any of the twelve regular male characters, and potentially end up married, with children that can also take part in the story. While that adds quite a bit in terms of gameplay, and gives a lot of material to the fan base to play with, it also means a lot of "forced" supports, interactions that make absolutely no sense or only add comedic value. On top of that, since the second generation characters are tied to their mothers, it means you have a lot of extremely generic supports between the children and their fathers.
So, with regards to characters and the pairings, I've tried to impose a limit of my own. I don't think I used any support conversation in entirety as it was in the game, but there are plenty of conversations that I personally feel add a lot to a character's background, or to the relationship between two characters that are partially used or referenced. I'm not interested in getting into a huge "shipping" war either, so I haven't obsessively paired off all the characters. I feel that if I did, it would either take way too much time focusing on family relationships (which would eventually feel stale and redundant), or would completely fail to attribute any meaning to those relationships. These pairings aren't necessarily the same as the ones I used in-game, nor are they the ones I recommend to players. Instead, they're pairings that I feel add to the story in some meaningful fashion, either because the supports unveil a lot of relevant background information, or just because the characters and their relationships fit particularly well with some other element of the story. There is also at least one case where I referenced an S-rank support conversation (which in the game symbolizes a marriage between two characters), but kept the relationship between those characters platonic. There will only be five pairings throughout the story, and the only one I will spoil outright is Chrom and Sumia.
Chrom and Sumia is as close to a canonical pairing as the game gives us, with Sumia's limited marriage options, the opening cut scene with Sumia holding their baby, and the various references that happen in the normal cut scenes. It's also, in my opinion, one of the weakest supports in the game. This time, it's not because it was forced, but because of what I feel is a weakness in translation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who found the endless mentions of pie to be more than a little bit annoying. I know in Japanese culture, particularly in the era upon which the world of Fire Emblem is based, cooking for someone unrelated of the opposite gender is a pretty meaningful act, but it doesn't translate well at all. What you end up with is two characters that seem overly obsessed with pie, so for that reason, I've redone all of their supports.
Robin will also be paired, but it will not be to a second generation character. I thoroughly considered pairing Robin with Lucina. Even in the game that causes at least scene to become significantly more powerful emotionally, and there really is a lot of potential with that. I finally decided against it though, as it's a little bit awkward in terms of growing the other family relationships. I'm still not entirely sure the choice I went with is the best choice, for the final pairing is to a kind of love-or-hate character, but I think I've done a good job at minimizing the more objectionable qualities of the character while still remaining true to her design.
Because I only elected to use five pairings, not every character that appears in the game will appear in this story. Mostly this applies to the children characters. Also, the spot pass bonus characters (Emmeryn, Gangrel, Aversa, Walhart, Yen'fay, and Priam) will not appear as part of the Shepherds. Priam won't appear at all in the story.
Panne won't be appearing in the story. This is one of those things I deliberated for some time while envisioning the story, before finally deciding it wasn't worth it. Her character is just so irrelevant to the story, and so inconsistent in terms of support conversations. I was half-tempted to add a genuine Laguz character in her place, but decided the lore wouldn't be worth the investment. However, Panne did have a couple meaningful support conversations… which I have no idea why the game assigned to her to begin with. Part of those conversations have been re-used, but between different characters.
Speaking of which, there aren't really any original characters. I've given some more dialogue and a more prominent role to some of the characters (Emmeryn and the Hierarch, in particular), since I felt the game didn't quite do those characters justice in its writing. I've also named a couple previously unnamed characters, though out of loyalty to the game I've followed the naming convention that the game already uses for similar characters.
I hope you enjoy reading this work as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any feedback would be appreciated. Even though the story is already fully written, I'm still editing as I post and can make some adjustments if needed. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I won't be responding to comments at the beginning of each chapter, but if I do receive meaningful feedback, since each arc has been broken out into a separate story, I can address it in the foreword at some point.