So what's Naesala's deal, then? It's clear there's something going on behind the scenes, but how much of that coloured his actions, and how much of it is on Naesala's head? Well, we're going to have to look through Naesala's actions across both games to get a grip on that.
Let's start a little earlier than his introduction: The piracy. Unlike Tibarn, who pirates because he wants to get his revenge on Begnion for the Serenes Massacre, Naesala is after cargo and will attack ships flying any flag. Honestly, I think this is symbolic of Naesala's main defence against the Blood Pact from both sides- he hides behind these ambitions and "untargeted deeds", and whenever he does something that Begnion forced him to, he can use this an explanation.
And it also lets him pull this. I think Naesala does steal from Begnion nobles for the benefit of other Begnion nobles, which allows him to hide rebellions in plain sight whenever he gets the chance. Naesala being old unreliable for Daein here may seem like establishing his villain credit in the moment, but it turns out to work out very well for him. Well, in theory. If he actually managed to get Sanaki killed, things wouldn't have ended up well for him in the end.
In the Chapter 14 colloquy, Naesala mentions he regularly does business with beorc, and has been trading with Daein behind his brothers' backs for gold. Aside from the obvious "he's hiding his dealings with Begnion in plain sight", I'm really not sure what he intends to get out of Daein here. Is he draining their coffers with his exhorbitant prices? Considering he offers to help Ike later, perhaps he's producing an alibi with which he can use to get out of assisting Begnion if the opportunity arises. Fat lot of good that suggestion does, though.
When Reyson confronts Naesala about his actions, Naesala insists that he must continue his dealings with humans, which sours their already rocky relationship. An important thing to note here, though, is that these two lines are really close together, and separated almost entirely by Reyson's rejection of Naesala for his belief. With the benefit of hindsight, this one seems to be an intentional hint of foreshadowing, and one of the most introspective lines Naesala drops... well, ever, honestly.
Naesala and the ravens are openly after cargo, and this line here really makes one think about why that's the case. How much of their thievery is pure opportunism and how much of it is targeted attacks paid for by the Begnion Senate? Oliver honestly strikes me as someone that isn't fully aware of Naesala's situation, and he pays Naesala what I assume are fair prices (without knowing the figure or the economy of Tellius, I have no grounds to come to any conclusions on my own), but Naesala certainly doesn't have a lot of ground to refuse here...
Naesala even gets to take a few sideswipes at the beorc while he's at it. Remember that the bird tribe characters in general haven't met many beorc other than the Begnion Senate kind- Ike, Sanaki, and the other good people come in this game- and Naesala isn't really hiding his true feelings about his situation as well as he's hiding the situation in general.
And now we get to this bit. Naesala selling Reyson. Little hard to put a positive spin on this one- Naesala does claim intentions of freeing Reyson later when the dust settles, and I feel like the main thing going in his favour here is that this would probably work on Oliver. Only probably, though. If Oliver complains to Lekain and Lekain listens to him (long odds), Naesala loses. I think Naesala was confident enough in his escape plan that he did this as opposed to letting Oliver think Naesala stiffed him outright. At least with the escape plan, there are ways of doing that with plausible deniability.
Not telling Reyson ahead of time loses a ton of points, but there was zero arguing that he could do without bringing up the Pact outright- and even then, I'm not sure pre-development Reyson would go along with this crazy scheme Pact or no Pact.
And I thought the "selling Reyson into slavery" thing was hard to explain. What's the deal with Naesala working for Daein for gold? I have no idea what's going on here, probably some attempt to hide his work with Begnion in a haystack of working for beorc. He doesn't seem entirely attached to fighting this battle the whole way through. Even without Reyson, he flies away never to fight for Daein again after this.
Also, this line is talking around the Blood Pact so closely you can almost hear him confess outright.
He also came in right at the end to help us out against Daein. Since Begnion was working for us too, this doesn't bite him in the butt in any way, and it lets him start atoning for his misdeeds. Naesala does know what he's doing is wrong and is prepared to pay the price after the fact, but he's gotta solve the problem or there's just going to be another guy making all the same mistakes after him.
I made a comment about this line when it came up in the blog, so it's fair I at least address it while I'm going through the Naesala stuff. Naesala is putting everything on the line for the people of Kilvas, the victims of the Blood Pact. As suggested during 3-E by a few Daein characters, it is likely that abandoning your national ties does allow you to escape the Blood Pact's curse. With this as a factor, Naesala's decision to wash his hands of them can seem even more callous... or perhaps not risking them being affected again.
Coming into Radiant Dawn, and... yeah, how did that happen? This line heavily suggests that Naesala's rise to power occurred shortly after the story that was told to Pelleas- with all the people getting in his way to the throne suffering a mysterious death. Fitting the event that made Kilvas sign the Pact, how old Naesala is and how long other characters around him are into a single timeline is a little too complicated for my blood, although I have seen people who do try.
Also, "first in line to succeed the throne" implies Kilvas is not a meritocracy but a monarchy. I think it's possible to explain this line in a way that lets the ravens still come off as choosing their leaders based on (physical) strength, but the game clearly cares less about it than I do.
And now for the genocide of the hawks. Naesala of all people pulling this is weird as hell, to boot. With the addition in the Extended script about the elderly, women and children making an escape rather than being spared, I wonder if, perhaps, the Senate sent a dracoknight division to do the killing and Naesala, under the guise of helping, lent a hand to these populations to ensure the hawks would get a better ending than the ravens fear. There is nothing supporting that interpretation in canon (except the fact that Tibarn ultimately decides not to remove Naesala's limbs), but there's nothing necessarily contradicting it, either, and this is the sort of action Naesala needs to have taken to come off as sympathetic for this moment.
This is seriously the next place he pops up? Considering what he did to Tibarn, I would be in the places he isn't too. Sometime between his last appearance and now, Sanaki and Sigrun have found him, learned about his Pact (apparently Sephiran had a hand here), exploited the loophole, and enlisted his services. The question of how Sanaki escaped Lekain's imprisonment and made her way to Crimea to save the day is also an unanswered one, and both Tormod and Naesala are well positioned to be the person who did the job. I personally like to think it was Tormod, but I'm also a huge Tormod/Sanaki shipper. Plus, since Sephiran is apparently the one who brought the loophole to Naesala and Sephiran was released from prison after Sanaki was freed, there seems to be a bit of an open question of when Naesala joined Sanaki's side. Sephiran does say he helped Naesala to save Sanaki, but I don't see any reason that this need necessarily about her "imprisonment" issue.
気にしなくてかまいませんよ。
私は、サナキ様をお救いするため……
あなたに動いて欲しかった。
利害が一致しただけのこと。
恩義に縛られる必要はありません。
(The relevant wording, in case you can spot it.)
Naesala, without the threat of the Blood Pact causing potential impending doom no matter what he does (to an extent, but Sanaki is never going to invoke the Pact no matter how much Naesala irritates her), shows a bit more of his true colours- a cunning king who earned his reputation as someone who'll steal your jewelry while he's talking to you, but one openly willing to repent for his crimes by any means necessary... except for having Nealuchi and Leanne give their lives for his cause. When you think about it, a Blood Pact offers very little consequence for the ruler themselves- just the knowledge that their actions have caused the deaths of their people. Naesala, like Pelleas, cares enough about the common man that this is a meaningful consequence, but his reputation does a good job of hiding that trait. Naesala hasn't really changed- just his situation.
He even refuses to use the Blood Pact as a shield for his actions. He knows what he's done is wrong, and while it was what was necessary, he's not proud of it and as long as he can bear the blame alone and release Kilvas from its curse, he will accept whatever punishment is deemed necessary.
The game does actually bring up the connection to the other canonical sufferers of a Blood Pact, the Daein Army. As I alluded to at the time, the fact we don't know Kilvas had a Pact at this point in the story means we can't appreciate it when Micaiah and Naesala have their conversation, and I'm not even sure if Naesala knows the parallel (Micaiah certainly doesn't). Daein in general pulls a lot of desperate gambits to try and fulfill the Senate's orders outright, but Naesala pulls a lot more cunning gambits to try and make himself appear to be unreliable rather than compromised, allowing him to join conflicts on sides he likes without arousing suspicion- people can't "get" suspicious of you if they're permanently suspicious of you! Naesala being so much more clever about how he avoided the curse really helps the Blood Pact come off as less of a plot device and more of something that exists in the setting that also has the ability to teleport and summon space rocks.
So how is Naesala overall? Naesala is a man who has forced himself to become a scheming, conniving bastard with a silver tongue in order to make sure that his people are spared from the wrath of the Senate, performing war crimes on the Senate's behalf while doing his best to not look like he's in trouble and inviting Phoenicis and Serenes to get angry on his behalf and get themselves killed trying to save him by attacking Begnion- we saw how well that goes for them in Part 3. Naesala openly considers his actions Wrong regardless of cause, but actively puts his own well-being ahead of his atonement until the problem is solved. Also unlike most instances of someone doing this, his misdeeds are not all directly as a result of the Pact. Selling Reyson into slavery and having a hand in the genocide of Phoenicis are Naesala's biggest crimes, and one of the things that hurts his case at redemption is that these crimes also don't seem to be advancing that goal. One can argue they do, and perhaps if we understood the circumstances they occurred in better, we could conclusively judge one way or the other, but with the timing of the Kilvas Pact reveal, there wasn't going to be much of that.
Before we start wrapping up the analysis part, let's talk a little bit about Naesala's Support speeds:
- Fastest: Leanne, Nealuchi
- Fast: Reyson, Vika
- Normal: Sanaki, Rafiel
- Slow: Tibarn, Ulki
- Slowest: Janaff, Oliver
Not a ton of surprises here, but Vika being in Fast is interesting. A Naesala/Vika conversation would be interesting, but Vika's opinions about Kilvas would also need... well, not just elaboration, but she also needs a position to take. Does she want to stay with Tormod's crew forever, or does she want to go back home to Kilvas one day? Naesala would definitely prefer she take the former option.
I also still find it funny that Janaff hates him most out of the hawks. It's completely in character, but still.
This last line in PoR is another major one for condensing what makes Naesala tick. For Naesala, his reputation is everything. If he doesn't come off as exactly the kind of man he is, the delicate political situation between Kilvas, Begnion and Phoenicis collapses, and Naesala can't let that happen to either bird tribe nation (Begnion can take care of itself). He doesn't want to be trusted by Tibarn, because he's only going to let him down whenever that involves attacking Begnion's ideals, but he also needs to still be capable of acting in Begnion's benefit.
Naesala fits a traditional Fire Emblem archetype of the schemer who's trying to get ahead in a world where he's at the bottom of the ladder. These guys are usually wyverns, and include Michalis, Travant and Claude among their number. Unlike them, however, Naesala is a schemer only on the outside. Wanting the expansion of Kilvas allows him to appear to be concerned about the people of Kilvas without making people ask questions about why, but when all is said and done and he has the choice to continue his ambitions or set them aside, he dumps them at the first opportunity. With his people no longer in danger, he can allow a leader who doesn't have the baggage he does to take the throne and do all the good work. Since Tibarn didn't kill him like he expected (and probably hoped, since his murder would allow the Pact to be broken for good), he focuses his time on atonement.
As someone with a similar starting point, Claude ought to be a comparison point, right? Honestly, not by much. Claude brings an important human element to the story of the schemer, making it clear why he has his ambitions and why he's so strongly attached to seeing them through, but Claude and Naesala disagree on a lot of the finer details as a result of their different character directions. Claude doesn't even get much chance to commit bad deeds to advance his ambition on-screen! He's certainly willing to do bad things, but often finds the best thing he can do to further his goals is the right thing to do, although the fact he's doing it for his own reasons makes him come off as callous enough. He does get a few nasty tricks here and there, but the narrative is also not lingering on which ones. The main thing that Claude and Naesala share is that lack of opportunity to really think on their actions and question what misdeeds they would get up to if the cards fell in a different pattern, and which ones they don't think panned out the way they envisioned.
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