Historical Lore 9.5 / 10
Once I read that timeline it was pretty easy to determine that Archanea’s lore is one of the best out of all the games in the series. Archanea’s timeline spans over one thousand years and that’s before Awakening showed up. It chronicles the rule of the Divine Dragons and their wars, how the Binding Shield came to be and the creation of the Falchion. Archanea gives some very detailed explanations for how its kingdoms came to be. I’ll go over that more in detail in the “Nation Development” section but I will say that Archanea is exceptional in this category.
We then get the “War of Liberation” which for a war set in the past its actually pretty well detailed as to how it began and what the major events of that war are. We know who all the major players were and the timeline does an excellent job at explaining the aftermath and consequences of that war. Every nation of relevance to the Archanea games is born here and we know why. You could also say that everything that happens in Awakening counts as Archanea’s lore too since Ylisse is just Archanea 2,000 years later.
Politics 7.5 / 10
On the one hand Archanea’s politics is a notch above the rest of the series but the on the other you could theoretically sum it all up with “Marth steamrolls over everyone twice”. Archanea does a pretty darn good job at spelling out alliances and giving its rulers reasons for doing what they do. For example, we know why Medeus hates humans. According to the aforementioned lore humans in Archanea were rising to power as dragons were becoming weak. During this rise to power humans starting mistreating and abusing manaketes. Medeus got pissed off so much that he united the manaketes together and created the Dohlr Empire. Then the War of Liberation happened. I don’t know about you but that sounds very fascinating. Medeus has a legitimate motive. In the hands of a better writer he might have even been a sympathetic villain.
We also know why Altea got crushed, we learn why Macedon turned coat and we also...okay you get the point. Virtually every type of allegiance in Archanea gets some kind of an explanation and it works too. I find the beginning of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 / the earlier chapters of the main campaign in Fire Emblem 12 to contain the best moments of politics in Archanea. Hardin orders Marth to suppress an insurrection by Lorentz. Marth is suspicious about the situation but does it anyway. He also winds up crushing a revolt in Macedon against Minerva. Here the politics is a little more complicated as Marth is being sent to do Hardin’s bidding while being suspicious of the true nature behind these orders.
Unfortunately it doesn’t last very long and while we do get Marth and co escaping Hardin’s clutches it eventually turns into a steamroller campaign. Like I mentioned before you could basically sum up most of the politics in Shadow Dragon with “Marth steamrolls over everyone”. Obviously there’s more than that, but not terribly much more. Marth near endless stream of victories doesn’t make for the complex politics that other games were capable of showing. Granted this is still light years ahead of Fates and Awakening’s politics but it’s also not quite as good as Elibe’s, Tellius’s or Jugdral’s.
Family Tree / Relationships 5.5 / 10
Click on that link. It’s a well developed lineage. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about most of the characters in Archanea. The cast in Archanea is huge. When you have a big cast of characters it can be very difficult sometimes to develop relationships between them. Characters like Norne for example don’t have as much of a relationship with the cast. Horace is another example of a character like this. This isn’t to say that there aren’t pockets of relationships between characters. For example we have the Whitewing Sisters, Gotoh’s relationship with Gharnef, Nyna also has a connection with Sirius and later on marries Hardin (the latter of which plays a huge role in Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 and its remake) and there’s Wendell’s relationship with Arlen and Merric. So while relationships do exist there isn’t as much of an interconnectedness between characters as there is in other games.
Nation Development 9 / 10
Here is another category that Archanea excels at. The majority of the nations in Archanea have a specific time at which they were founded. Here are a few examples:
- Aurelis: “Aurelis was founded in the year 499 after the first downfall of Medeus, when the newly coronated King Cartas of Archanea conquered the plains to the north; he formed the conquered land into the Kingdom of Aurelis and installed his brother Marlon as its king, and the two countries remained close allies.” (Source: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Aurelis)
- Nation of Archanea: “Millennia after the collapse of the dragonkin civilization which once dominated the continent, the territory which would become the Kingdom of Archanea was little more than assortment of isolated city-states set among the dragon's ruins. This changed when the thief Adrah stole the Binding Shield from the Fane of Raman and used the funds from selling the five spheres to raise an army of his own. Wielding three stolen weapons which would later become the regalia of his kingdom, within ten years he had conquered the entire region and unified the city-states under his rule, declaring himself king. This was the birth of the holy kingdom of Archanea. The orbless remains of the Binding Shield became the crest of the kingdom, now known as the Fire Emblem. Such was the new nation's power that its foundation became the central point of the calendar of Archanea, with the years counted relative to the kingdom's foundation in year 0.” (Source: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Archanea_(nation))
Yeah, you don’t see fleshed out backstories behind the founding of nations like that in every continent. Most of this stuff sounds like something that you’d read in a textbook or in Lord of the Rings, not in a video game. This is what I’m looking for when it comes to nation development. If Archanea managed to do this with all of its nations it would easily have won first place. Sadly though Archanea doesn’t give this much attention to detail for other nations like Grust, Khadein or Pyrathi. There is one other continent that I can think of where the nation development is more consistent, but the fact that I can only think of one means that Archanea is doing something right, hence the second place score.
Geography 9 / 10
Yep Archanea gets third place in this category. I’ll first start with the northern locations. Anri’s Way is arguably the most distinctive location that Archanea has going for it in terms of distinct locations. It involves the Desert of Death complete with an ancient city buried beneath the sand. It also has a volcanic region, which is something we don’t see often in Fire Emblem. The last element of Anri’s Way is the Ice Dragon Temple. The Ice Dragon Temple is a frozen wasteland. So within Anri’s Way alone we have a desert, a volcano and a frozen wasteland. That’s incredible.
There’s also a bunch of island nations in Archanea like Chiasmir, Pyrathi, Talys, Gra and Altea. Island nation naturally screams geography. Aurelis is described as “plains” or grasslands above the nation of Archanea. Grust occupies a peninsula and Khadein is a desert country. So basically every country has some type of distinctive geography. Also the continent of Archanea itself is a well drawn landmass. The world map also looks very detailed and intricate.
Magic Critters 5 / 10
Archanea has a lot of manaketes and it does a good job of explaining why they’re there. Xane and Gotoh are also considered manaketes albeit without their ability to transform into manaketes but they’re still manaketes nonetheless. Archanea has the highest variety of manaketes too. There are fire, ice, flying and earth dragons. The Archanea games also have the highest number of manakete bosses in the series too. While it has these things going for it manaketes aren’t as common as the monsters were in Magvel or Valentia and the Risen seemed to be a lot more common in Awakening than manaketes are here. If we saw more manaketes throughout the games this continent have a higher score in this category.
BONUS CATEGORIES
Connections to Other Worlds + 4.5 points
Archanea is second best in this category. It exists in the same world as Valentia and Jugdral and the entire continent of Ylisse is the future version of it. Chrom’s family are descendants of Marth and Lucina is a canon Marth cosplayer. Jugdral’s lore also intertwines with Archanea’s which gives Archanea that much more of an edge in this category.
Women Rulers 0.5 point
Most female rulers only have the title, but rarely do anything. There are a few here and there that manage to stand out:
- Sheema: Ruler of Gra after her father’s death.
- Minerva: Starts the order of the Whitewings (the same order that Palla and Catria are a part of) and becomes Macedon’s main general. She goes on to rule Macedon during the beginning of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 / Fire Emblem 12.
- Caeda?: She fights alongside Marth and recruits a lot of characters, but when does she actually lead anyone? Maybe I’m missing something here?
- Naga?: I think Naga was considered a guy in the Marth games and a girl in Awakening. Is Naga transgender?
The vast majority of the princesses here are damsels in distress. They may hold the title, but they don’t do much with it. Sheema and Minerva are the only ones I can think of that actually rule or do something other than wait for Marth to show up and save them.
Non Monarchies or Empires: + 1 point
According to Fire Emblem Wiki Khadein counts as a country. Granted, Khadein reminds me of Ilia in the sense where there’s no king, but there’s also no detail on how it works as a functioning country. If Ilia counts then so does Khadein. I guess it’s Archanea’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Maybe that’s where everybody’s Hogwarts letters went.
OVERALL SCORE: 51.5 / 60. Archanea’s worldbuilding is pretty underrated. It has some of the best lore in the series and it does a pretty darn good job at nation development too. Its worst 10 point categories are simply “meh” rather than outright bad and it’s good categories are really good. I came pretty close to actually giving Archanea first place in lore and nation development but upon further inspection it turns out that Tellius had the edge over Archanea in both of those categories. I was going back and forth between Archanea and Jugdral but in the end I do think that the huge backstory behind so many elements in its world gives Archanea the slightest advantage.
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