With the game still fresh on my mind, I decided to write how I take this pairing because I find them interesting to talk about. I cut it until Act 2 because it gets long and might do it for the next acts but we’ll see.
Under the read more because of spoilers for the whole game.
First of all, let’s talk about their first meeting in Ram Village 7 years prior the main game started. Celica, who was around 10 if I got her age right, came to Ram Village after Mycen rescued her from Slyde and Desaix’s attempt to kill her and Conrad. She was trapped in a house fire with no one else and knowing that her brother, who was the closest person she had, was not seen anywhere. Not to mention she heard in the house fire that Slyde wanted to kill her, she knew she was hunted. So when she arrived in Ram Village, all the fear and sadness took a toll on her and made her close herself. This is where Alm’s attempt helped her tremendously. Alm was patient with her, he didn’t leave her when she snapped at him, and the most important thing, she could feel that all of Alm’s actions were sincere.
You may ask how do I know Alm was sincere. The answer is because Alm did all that because he has a selfish reason. Alm grew up in Ram Village all of his life and was never allowed to go out by Mycen under any circumstances. Now, if I know one thing about children is that they will either do or be curious about what the adults say they can’t do and in Alm’s case, he became extremely curious of the outside world. Then one day Celica came, Mycen wouldn’t tell him where she was from, but he didn’t care. Celica was someone from outside of Ram Village, he probably thought that she had seen, done, experienced things he could only dream of. For Alm, Celica was his window to the outside world and there was no way he would let her to stay silent while she was in Ram.
Their friendship when they were little was important for them as they were exactly what each other needed and something they cherished that when Celica had to move to Novis after Slyde found her, both of them were heartbroken. Not in a romantic way mind you, but it hurt them nonetheless.
Fast forward to the main game timeline, Alm was getting more impatient each day for wanting to leave the village and then Lukas came. It was his chance to answer to the calling he had been feeling when he was grew up and also to see Celica again. He fought his way to the Deliverance HQ to get an offer to lead the group by Clive. Suddenly, he had a lot of responsibilities, more than he thought he could handle, judging from Alm wanting Clive to keep his expectation low, but he didn’t back down. He had seen the outside world and it wasn’t something that he liked, so he wanted to change it for the better and if that means he had to be the leader of the Deliverance then he’d try to do it.
In Novis, Celica had a dream about Alm and King Rudolf having a duel. Knowing it was a sight given by the turnwheel and timed with The King’s death, she knew the sight was something that would likely happen. So to prevent that, she decided to go Mila’s Temple to ask for The Mother’s help (keep in mind that the Zofians were thought to be dependent of Mila’s blessings and help) to prevent that from happening. She wanted to resolve the conflict in peace. It’s a naive thought from her, but it’s all because of Mila’s teaching. Mae’s “let’s go see Mila so she could clean this mess” attitude she showed from time to time is probably the most obvious proof of it. I didn’t think Celica was as naive as that, but she clung to it because that was the only way to achieve peace that she knew of.
That’s why she was shocked when she heard about the Deliverance overtaking Zofia’s Castle and Alm was its leader. At this point Celica had started to see what’s going to happen, Alm leading the Deliverance and drove off the Rigelans to its border and him crossing the border to have a duel with Rudolf, making her dream came true, but she kept it down because she wanted to hear it from Alm himself.
Then the reunion happened. Both of them were happy to see each other and had their happy moment together (the hug scene is super cute btw). Then it’s time for Celica to confront Alm about her worries and they were true. Alm would fight the Rigelians, making him one step closer to Rudolf and brought Valentia in flames of war. Then Alm blamed King Lima IV (which is funny for me because Lima means five in my language) for being a bad ruler. Celica did say that she didn’t think of Lima as her father and she knew that he wasn’t a good ruler, but on the other hand, she also knew that being a blue blood wasn’t easy and that it came with a price, which she almost payed. So she got angry. Her emotion made her accusing Alm for wanting to be the king and then Alm mentioned about the missing princess and that he’d happily give the throne to the princess to fix what’s happening so he could go back to Ram with Celica. Now this didn’t sit well with Celica at all. Hearing that Alm wanted to give her ALL of the responsibility to fix everything while he was the one who made it into a bigger mess was infuriating for her. Like Boey said in the start of Act 3, if Celica announced herself as the missing princess then it means she had to lead the Deliverance and the war itself, something that she wanted to stop at the first place.
I like this exchange because it shows that even though these two were important people, aka the leader of the Deliverance and a princess, they were still teenagers who said the wrong things and had a lot of emotions. Alm didn’t know who Celica truly was and was only trying to be honest to her. Sadly, his honesty wasn’t something that Celica needed at that time. Celica herself was in a difficult position. She couldn’t reveal herself, for reasons I have stated, and also because now she was once again hunted, this time by the Duma Faithful, though she didn’t know about it at this point. Either way, I don’t think she wanted Zofia and everyone in it to be involved by the hunt, so she couldn’t say anything about it and along with what Alm’s said, the premonition, and everything else in between, made her exploded to Alm and even more determined to see Mila.
As for Alm, Fernand was Alm’s big example on how people could change so he knew when Celica stormed out of the castle that she had changed too. So he decided to focus back on the Deliverance and carry out his missions.
Someone PM'd me asking for a more detailed pic on the Alm × Celica figure/stand/whachamacallit. Since I'm stuck at the bank I can't get a more recent one, but luckily I had a picture on my phone. I know that it's backwards, but I still love these two kids. Probably one of the few ships that I genuinely like, much of that thanks to @kylemccarleyvo and @ericalindbeck phenomenal work. So yeah! Ask and ye shall receive! (Hopefully I can soon get the author of the OG drawing for their etsy store) #celicalm #almxcelica #alm #celica #fe15 #fireemblemechoes #fireemblem #kylemccarley #ericalindbeck https://www.instagram.com/p/B340fs8hHEa/?igshid=1cljpoqskc1k0
