Sunderin' Wights Since 1867

Okay so back when Fire Emblem: Fates released I couldn't afford to actually get it, so even though I liked Fire Emblem games I was only sort of half paying attention to what it was about because my desire was to avoid spoilers until I could get it, but also I was very curious because wow new Fire Emblem game.

Anyway this resulted in my getting scraps of information that led me to some hilariously wrong conclusions about the game's story, which to this day I'm kind of disappointed weren't actually correct.

Like:

Spoiler -- The player character is biologically related (well, seems to be at first anyway) to one royal family but has been raised by a different royal family in another country, now a war has broken out between these countries and the player must choose which nation and family to fight alongside.

My Misconception -- Ohhh so this is using the feudal fostering system! The main character was probably sent on purpose to be raised alongside the heirs of a neighboring kingdom in hopes of strengthening a political alliance, or possibly as a kind of hostage to hold against war breaking out some years ago. This doubtless happened after some conflict quite a few years prior to the start of the story, a peace treaty was probably signed, but now some new development as thrown those contracts out of the window in order to create this situation.

Actual Story -- Crazy evil king kidnapped you after your murdering your dad and decided, for ??? reasons, to pretend you were one of his kids.

Spoiler -- You can romance any of your siblings, and the king who seemed to be your bio dad at first isn't actually your father, he just adopted you.

My Misconception -- Ah yes, presumably your mother was a cousin of the Bio Royal Family, so you're still related to them just more distantly. Meanwhile you are of course not actually related to your foster siblings despite being raised alongside them. Depending on the political situations, there could even have been an intention of you eventually marrying one of your foster siblings as part of the overall plan for a long-term peace contract, which contributed to your being adopted as an official member of the direct royal family of the other nation. It could have even been a deliberate obfuscation on the part of your bio family to get around having to send one of their actual children to grow up in a semi-hostile country. Presumably though your mother does belong to a political faction of strong standing in order to be taken as spouse by a king in the first place, and there's every chance that in the intervening years, your adopted siblings/cousins have developed a need to pacify or further ingratiate this faction in order to increase stability within the realm and better present a united front for the war. This could provide a lot of story tension to both branches, with the bio family having to reveal at some point that you were selected as a sacrificial lamb to spare one of them, or the foster family speculating that your lesser connections make you a weaker tactical piece on the political board than you should have been.

Actual Story -- This is mostly just a thing to make the incest technically not incest.

Spoiler -- The game lets you get married and have children, but you have to send the children away and don't get to raise them. They eventually come back as adult units.

My Misconception -- Oh I see, the story probably takes place over a few decades. Like a lot of historic nobility, it's impractical for you to actually raise your kids during an intensely fraught political situation. Since the succession would pass through them, having the entire royal family live in the same place would be akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. If the enemy takes the particular fortress or palace where you're at, they'd get control of all of your heirs as well and potentially wipe you out on the spot. But obviously given the fantastical elements of mages and such and the mechanical constraints of a game making all your siblings into battlefield units, the solution here would be to keep the adult members of the royal family mostly together for tactical/warfare utility reasons, while sending the kids off to be raised in secret locations by loyal subjects, until the timeline reaches the point where they're active political players in their own right. Depending on how this is structured, the whole back half of the story could involve your player character kid as your new player character, contrasting and comparing the complex themes of found family, loyalty, abandonment, separation, etc from the opposite angle of whatever you chose at the outset. For instance, if you sided with your bio family, this might mean that your child will end up captured by the enemy faction and will choose to prioritize the people who raised them instead of siding with you, whereas if you sided with your foster family, your child will prioritize the bonds of blood even after being stockholm'd and return to your side.

Actual Story -- Baby Dimension.

Another fun thing about FE3H polycule houses is that they would just end up making the most politically or logistically expedient "legal" marriages (except maybe the Blue Lions because they've got that whole lying-is-bad honor culture bs thing growing in their walls) (but actually probably still them too because I don't know what else they COULD do if they also got around to actually establishing that polycule they all clearly want so bad).

Anyway this is probably the most fun to imagine for either the Blue Lions (because they would be pausing every fifteen minutes to have arguments about what qualifies as romantic betrayal in this context and Annette's making spreadsheets and Felix keeps interjecting to Disapprove) or the Black Eagles (because you know Edelgard would put Hubert or Byleth in charge of assigning everyone their designated Official Spouse like they're picking adjutants for combat scenarios).

Golden Deer it's just like. Well the head of the church is traditionally unmarried. Houses Riegan and Goneril would provide strong leadership for the Alliance. Lorenz and Marianne can bolster one another's political status. Everyone else can do whatever they want. Let's have a big party!

One of the things I like about the FE3H houses as polycules concept is how much chaos would be added into the lingering concepts of dynastic succession laws prevalent in all three nations by having representatives of the most important noble houses all sleeping with each other (and a smattering of commoners with unique political/military accomplishments) pretty indiscriminately. Not to mention how it would simply not gel with any of the societies' attitudes towards sex and reproduction.

Like every time a war hero gets pregnant the entire nation is holding it's breath, wondering if they're going to be able to politely pretend this kid is unquestionably the offspring of both their legally married parents or if it's gonna be another case of everyone sweating their way through comments about how funny genetics can be. Nobody wants to ask King Dimitri why his eldest child is Black. Definitely no one wants to ask Empress Edelgard who got her wife pregnant. Politically they could try and weaponize this situation of course but that would also dramatically increase their odds of them taking a spear through the throat in a "hunting accident" and everyone knows that, too.

I think Claude would have the most fun with this, though. Somebody tries to tell him they suspect Hilda is cheating on him and he's just like, nah, purple hair is just a common recessive gene! What do you mean my kid shares a shocking resemblance with my righthand man and former classmate? Hmm... nope I don't see it. Claude Jr clearly takes after me.

playing Fire Emblem Engage and Alear is so stupid, I love them

"but if the fell dragon is my father, why would Lumera claim to be my mother?" Alear sweetie most people have one father and one mother. that's often how it works