Here's an example of a tragic villain who could have turned out to be a great king if a few different decisions had been made. Based on what we see in Fire Emblem 7, Zephiel started out as a pretty decent person. The reason why he became a villain is because his dad is an awful prick who tried to kill him multiple times. Some people dismiss Zephiel because he tried to destroy Elibe due to "daddy issues." The thing here is that when you remember the fact that his dad tried to assassinate him because he was jealous of how good a ruler Zephiel was, it's not hard to see how that would mess a person up.
What's interesting about Zephiel is how we the player view him. Pretend for the sake of argument that you played Fire Emblem 6 before you played Fire Emblem 7. When you get to the chapter where you have to save Zephiel's life, you know that this guy is going to grow up to declare war on the entire continent. Chances are, you probably don't want to save this guy's life, but you have to anyway in order to progress in the game. Chances are high that if you're in this scenario, you probably think that Ursula killing this guy is a positive for the greater good.
Now I'm willing to bet that most, if not all, of the people reading this post played Fire Emblem 7 before they played Fire Emblem 6. I would be in this camp. For those of us who played 7 before 6, you probably viewed this guy as a sweet, innocent kid whose dad was a total prick. You don't mind saving this guy's life because you probably didn't know what he'd eventually grow up to be. Then when you played Fire Emblem 6 for the first time it was probably a bit of a shock to find out that this kid grew up to declare war on the entire world.
To add insult to injury, the chapter in FE 7 where you have to save this dude's life is probably the most notorious chapter in the game, Battle Before Dawn. This is the chapter where Jaffar can walk face first into a horde of Swordslayer wielding enemies, or Nino can accidentally walk into Ursula's bolting range and get fried. One of the characters that saves Zephiel's life is Hector, who eventually dies in the assault on Lycia at the beginning of Fire Emblem 6. And who was it that declared war on Lycia? Oh right, it's the guy whose life Hector saved. That's just....what do you say to that? You deal with so much frustration only to have this guy return the favor by declaring war on the entire world.
Moving on, Zephiel has the coolest battle animation in the series thus far. Don't believe me? Here's a gif that should prove otherwise.
How on Earth did Cecilia survive that? She should be dead! That gif reminds me of a fun quote about Zephiel that I came across on reddit:
"I like that Zephiel just went insane and misanthropic under relatively mundane circumstances, no mystical juju involved (e.g. darksphere, dark stone, ate too much tasty quintessence, etc.). Doubly so because not having any evil macguffin means that he's also not being empowered by said evil macguffin. Most of the other main villains have something to empower them and make them final boss worthy challenges. Zephiel is just a really strong regular guy that happens to require legendary weapons to take down."
When you look at Fire Emblem 6 you realize that Zephiel's misanthropy is continually reinforced by the game. Every country in Elibe has at least one politician that's willing to betray their allies simply because they want to join the winning side. Lycia had several, and in addition to all of that, Etruria was enslaving the people of the Western Isles. You could even say that Fire Emblem 6 is mostly just Roy and co. cleaning house for the entire continent, because every country was undermined by a politician who got too ambitious for their own good. It goes to show that Zephiel was onto something when he said this to Roy:
“Jealousy. Hatred. Greed. Friends and family are driven to murder one another by these petty emotions. Such emotions spawn fathers who would even kill their own brood. As long as humans control, as long as humans dictate, as long as humans exist, this madness will never end.”
Now that I think about it, it's a wonder that Roy didn't become super jaded after witnessing everything he's seen. In the end, Zephiel became the very thing he despised about others. If it weren't for his awful dad, he probably would have grown up to be a decent person. But without Zephiel Fire Emblem 6 would not be as good as it currently is.
No comments:
Post a Comment