World Analysis / Discussion : Manaketes
Welcome to the first in hopefully a series of various world lore discussion and analysis! The aim being to help roleplayers better understand the characters they play and the world around them.
The first topic I want to tackle is that of the Manakete: A humanoid class that turns into a dragon in combat!
Manaketes (Mamkutes in Japan) are as old as the franchise itself, seen in every Fire Emblem game in the Akaneia series as well as in Elibe and Magvel.
For the sake of simplicity and my lack of expressed knowledge on the Elibe and Magvel manaketes I will be focusing only on the manaketes seen in the Akaneia series of games (FE 1, 3, 11, 12, 13) If anyone would like to add information on those found in Binding Blade and Sacred stones, please feel free to!
A Brief History of Dragons
In order to properly understand Manaketes, first we must understand the dragons of the world.
Dragons are beings with extraordinary lifespans and because of it, often great wisdom. Originally, Dragons did not use Dragonstones and spent most of their lives in their natural dragon forms. Dragons were plentiful and existed in several tribes ( Fire, Ice, Earth, Mage, Flying (wyvern) and Divine ) and it is said that their empire ruled the continent.
The necessary use of Dragonstones happened when the great decay began. The Dragon Tribes began to degenerate - first, the tribes were swept with infertility and it became incredibly difficult to bear children. Soon after they began to loose their sentience and many places became known as ‘dragon graveyards’ - places where the dragon tribes once lived, filled with only the feral beasts that used to be dragons.
Warned that this was an unavoidable fate by the elders many dragons began to seal their dragon form and powers within stones and live their lives mostly as humans.
Many dragons did not accept this and stuck to their dragon forms out of pride, refusing to become Manaketes. These are the dragons that filled the ‘dragon graveyards’ and the reason the dragon tribes are so few in number by Awakening’s era.
It is said it was dragons who taught magic to humankind.
A dragonstone is the sealed form of the individual dragon. Lore-wise it is mentioned in Shadow Dragon (I believe) that the breaking of a dragonstone can cause the death of the dragon. This indicates that breaking stones is really only a game mechanic and not actually a thing that happens often.
Can a Manakete use another dragon’s dragonstone? Initially this was a no, but this mechanic was added in to FE3 and FE12 if the other tribe’s dragonstone was purhased from the secret shop.
That said, because a dragonstone is the sealed dragon form of the Manakete who created it I personally do not believe dragonstones to be interchangeable and this to only be a gameplay mechanic -- though there is nothing in the lore to indicate either way.
Much of the lore points to one Dragonstone per Manakete - the one made from their own dragon form.
Xane and Gotoh are two Divine dragons who discarded their dragonstones after creating them, choosing to live their lives as humans instead. This doesn’t explain where Xane’s chameleon magic comes from - nothing seems to explain this ability of his!
So are Wyverns actually Dragons?
Yes. In the Japanese titles and some translations, wyverns are known instead as dragons. Wyverns are feral dragons of the Flying Dragon tribe. It is unknown why they are more prosperous in numbers or why they do not seem to suffer the same infertility issues, but it is perhaps because of their smaller size and willingness to cooperate with humans.
This is further supported by Japanese versions of the Wyvern classes being referred to as Dragon Rider, Dragon Knight, etc.
Flying Tribe dragonstones have been seen in FE3 and FE12, as well as generic Flying Tribe/Wyvern Manaketes existing in the original TCG.
Unfortunately I have to go for now, but if there are any questions or if you have anything to add, please ask or do so! After all, there are many contradictions in the Fire Emblem series lore so trying to figure this out can be quite confusing!
I’ll do my best to answer everything, and perhaps cover some information of what little we know of Dark Dragons in the future!
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