I recently watched the Eternal Filena OVA, and then started playing the SNES RPG for it, thanks to this clip going around twitter. I'm actually super curious if they really are the first sapphic marriage in anime, as I've rarely seen this series brought up in yuri history. A part of that may be down to the fact that the game is more known than the OVA, and that the OVA, while a fun watch, is not very good lol.
There isn't too much written on the English side of the things about what yuri was up to during the 80s, barring of course The Rose of Versailles, and Eternal Filena is absolutely riffing on that, down to both Filena and Oscar being blonde haired nobles who are raised to present as men and have to hide that they're women for various plot reasons. Incidentally this is how Filena is able to marry Lila in the first place, since everyone think she's a man, though she's already told Lila she's a woman when she suggest they get married (again, for various plot reasons, watch the ova or play the game!)
I wanna dive more into the proto-yuri era of the 80s and 90s at some point, as well as the evolution of marriage in yuri works but for now I'm going to get back to playing the Eternal Filena RPG to see if those girls get their happily ever after.
