So what overarching themes are there in Tellius to talk about? What else is there woven between the depths of the pages? Let's start off, perhaps surprisingly, with Ike and Ashnard.
One man's glory
All throughout Radiant Dawn, and a little bit in Path of Radiance, there
are many characters who expound that Ike is the hero of the Mad King's
War. However, if you were to ask Ike himself, he would tell you that's
rubbish, and the only reason he got so far was thanks to the people
supporting him: Titania, Soren, Elincia, Sanaki, etc. No one man can do what is often attributed to him, and Ike is rather insistent you give credit where credit is due. No more than he deserves, and no less than his allies do.
As for how Ashnard fits in? He believes he put in the work (he did take lots of Begnion land for Daein while serving the Daein army) and wants the glory as well, defining that as being King. Perhaps his father was weak, or maybe he just didn't prioritise the things Ashnard liked. Whatever it is, Ashnard usurped him and established his meritocracy, where he put the people he believed to be the best in the positions of power, where "best" was defined as "strongest". So he's got all these powerful generals... and he's beat because Ike has Soren,
You want more on that? Well, this is partially the fault of no Dawn Brigade exposition and relies on the artbook, but if you consider the backstories of the Dawn Brigade, you'll notice that Edward is the only one who was trying to advance in Ashnard's society before it fell. And if you look at the three, you'll quickly notice that he is probably the least qualified to be a general. Moreover, Nolan, the most qualified, actively decided that it wasn't in his interest to pursue power in Ashnard's society and lay low for the time being. That's why Ashnard failed.
Meritocracy is a promising societal model, but the key problem putting it in practice is the difficulty in defining and enforcing "the strongest rulers". Ashnard believed that the strongest on the battlefield should be in power, while Ike (quite correctly) understood that the best ruler needed to also be clever, and that war heroes like himself were not fitting choices. While he is the right person for the job when battle is the matter at hand, he is the first to delegate the matter of more delicate matters to less strong but more skilled hands.
Diplomacy and racism
Tellius is not just about racism- it is about talking to people you don't understand and discussing how you can come to mutual benefits. It is about ending conflicts through diplomacy and analysing the root cause of the problem and taking steps to address it.
Because nothing says a plot about racism quite like that plot ending with "beorc and laguz interbreeding kills the laguz gene in both spouse and child" and "Brandeds are the future of evolution"! As stories about overcoming racism go, Tellius is very by-the-book on the subject- you won't find anything standing out here. Many of Tellius's critics also point out the very damning-to-a-modern-reader issue of hiding behind a fantasy race. And, to be quite honest, if they were merely hiding, they played their cards poorly- laguz and beorc are wired differently, these biological propensities are highlighted and plot-relevant. If this was supposed to be directly about racism, they could've done way better.
But a lot of the conflict resolution around beorc-laguz conflicts, whether it succeeds or fails, is in how much effort each side puts in. Starting with Deghinsea, way back 150 years after the Covenant started, with him deciding not to do anything about laguz slavery but call it bad out loud. Nothing happened about it. Although laguz escaped from Begnion in the years following to establish Gallia, Phoenicis and Kilvas as countries, laguz slavery would not be solved until Misaha came along, decided it was wrong, noticed she had the power to right that wrong, and actually implemented something. And it was only (hopefully) eradicated when Sanaki followed her up by rooting out the rulebreakers.
When the time comes for the Serenes Apology in PoR, Sanaki is more than willing to say the words, but she needs Ike's help in order to engineer a situation in which she will be listened to. As much as the hawks and Reyson have been wronged by Begnion and (rightfully) lash out in response, this dooms them to solving the conflict exclusively through violence. It is with Ike genuinely and selflessly aiding the heron Leanne that the birds are made to enter a conversation with the beorc, and with Sanaki leading with the Apology, the birds realise that Sanaki is an ally and with her, they can solve their problem rather than flailing in revenge.
Micaiah's army in Part 3 is the opposite extreme- with her keeping a tight lid on her secret, the two armies are forced into bull-headedly slamming in to one another recklessly until one of them gives, with increasingly miraculous methods of making sure Micaiah and the Daein Playables don't die a brutal, painful death under the Ike murderball. Not that her talking would've been good for her situation (as far as we are led to assume), but there is a clear statement to be made here about how the refusal for a peace talk to be made (that is returned to multiple times) is making the situation worse.
When coming into a theme like this, of course the message touches on racism and race-adjacent rhetoric: that's the perfect example of conflict of this type, and the most applicable situation for this lesson. But that's the thing- touches on. The nature of the beorc and laguz divide- with the inclusion of the Zunanma, the Branded, and how the two factions stood during the time of the goddess- doesn't lend itself well to continuing the race analogy. If you're thinking about laguz as a stand-in for racial minorities, these later plot points are going to ruin the message. And there's a solid argument to be said that including rhetoric that sets the player up to draw these conclusions is irresponsible if that's going to be the outcome. But I think Radiant Dawn bears less blame for that than the general trope of "Fantastic Racism" doing half the work setting these expectations. There were better ideas, but this one worked in a vacuum. And at the time, probably.
Pacifism and Just War
So the ending revelations (and the actions of several major players on the world stage) hinge around the existence of the Thousand Year Covenant, a promise to the goddess that there would not be a world-shaking war for a thousand years. Obviously, for the plot to happen, this promise has to be broken, but there's a certain element there that most people kinda accept implicitly: War is Bad. Why would people do this anyway?
Enter "just war theory". To begin a war, the aggressor (usually) specifies an action with which they take offense to on the defender's part, and then the violence happens. For a war to be just, the action at issue needs to be something harmful to the welfare of humanity, and the war must be fought only within the scope of correcting that wrong. It is not my place to count wars, real or fictional, that meet this definition, but it is a helpful one to understand the major counterargument to a strict "no war" policy- what do you do in the case of laguz slavery?
Deghinsea claimed that there was no further action he would take, and to an extent, he has a point. He did do everything short of sending in some dragons to back up his rhetoric with force. The problem being, that didn't work. The act of emancipation was met with backlash, and is often considered to be the reason Misaha was assassinated before it came out that was for other reasons, and that was just the stuff Misaha had the power to enforce- for the nobles, Tormod had to engage in what nobles can get away with calling banditry to get them to part ways.
When Ashnard attacked Crimea and brutally took over the capital before Crimea fully realised they were being invaded, Gallia and Begnion concluded there was no other action than to kick Daein back out the way they came in. When Begnion exercised cruel, tyrannical "precautions" against Daein, Micaiah concluded there was no other action than to fight back. When Rafiel revealed the Senate was responsible for the Serenes Massacre, Tibarn, Caineghis and Naesala all agreed that there was really no way they could bear to see the Senate stand unpunished for this- and if Sanaki got openly captured looking into this before they declared war, well, then there'd be no way to put a stop to their madness until one side was completely obliterated. With each conflict, no character questions whether they're better served stopping the fighting, merely concerned with the scope creep that risks breaking the Covenant. Because to them, the wars are just, and no peaceful action that was an option to them would satisfy them.
And then we have the matter of the Part 2 conflict. Elincia stands in the opposite position- when people declare war on her, she is slow to meet them on the battlefield, ensuring that all diplomatic options are exhausted. Ludveck and Valtome both prove to be the kinds of opponents that ensure she is doomed to failure on this front. It is only when Ludveck himself argues his position that Elincia "grows" and becomes a Queen for whom violence is an option. It is clear, from the framing and from a solid discussion on the topic, that Elincia making this shift was her transition to becoming a good Queen, and yet when you really ask yourself what it was, it was becoming more open to violence, something many would simultaneously agree is bad. Her dialogue with Tibarn in 4-2 continues this thought: that a society that may function perfectly with only diplomacy is a utopia. Ashera's error in enforcing the Covenant was ignoring this.
Overall, Tellius's themes challenge Fire Emblem's preconceptions and enhance its usual themes of building trust with people different from you and fighting a great evil in the cause of defending humanity. If you wanted to look into what it means to be a Fire Emblem story, these are natural directions to take. The themes of Three Houses take these same themes and choose new angles to approach the same questions- "a single decision may change the world in disproportionate ways", "each person is not necessarily the mask they show the world" and "no one has all the information to make a perfect answer" can be made to respectively map onto the three themes highlighted here. The environment and goals of Three Houses made those choices a suitable way to tell a story that also explores the meaning of being a Fire Emblem setting while not directly stepping on Tellius's toes in doing so. Exploring what it means to be a Fire Emblem story is something that the writers are very interested in when the time comes to write a story they intend to be pondered at great length, and seeing what approaches they take is a good way to see what the writers' true beliefs are on the archetypes they otherwise sell completely straight.
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