What do we know about... Cesario (Chezario)
For those who keep up with the fic; last we were somewhere around the country of Cesario (otherwise known as Chezario, which is closer to how itās pronounced in the original). Letās scour the artbooks and all for info about this Gaean country!
Previously in the WDWK series: Basram, Egzardia
Canon information
1. Cesario is the country that asks Van to lead their decimated vanguard to āboost the troop morale.ā
The situation is, Van comes back after retrieving Hitomi (episode 24), and lands at a Cesarian military camp, in an unspecified area close(r) to the Zaibach border. The soldiers say they were humiliated as they were overwhelmed by Zaibachās military might. The state of the camp is pitiful with many dead and many destroyed melefs.Ā
By the way, there are Cesario troops and leviships in Palas at the same time, so the defeated camp is definitely not all of the countryās army.
Next time we see Van, the main Alliance army is arrived but he is still with this Cesario force and separate from Allen and the others, so it seems there was a bit of camaraderie present at that point if they stayed together instead of Van joining the Asturians as usual.
The filmbook has a note saying they āvalue knighthoodā and ātake it upon themselves to spearhead the attack against Zaibachā. From this, I sort of always had a headcanon that people would know and like Van in Cesario. Like, if they like honor and chivalry, and they appreciate the young boy and his legendary guymelef enough to ask him to lead them, you just sort of know they have a fondness for a story like that and see magic in it.
2. The design of the soldiers/guymelefs
The design of the Cesarian characters looks like medieval European knights,Ā I would even go as far as to say, actual Crusaders (not to be confused with the Crusade crew).
The settei gives us, as usual, an image of an ordinary soldier and of a general, plus the generalās name. This time, itās Ferme (Ferume) or its variations. Easter egg, Escaflowne Compendium had a mention ofĀ āVermeerā in the code on the subpage about characters (it was something that was not visible on the website itself), I believe it could be one of the many possible transcriptions of this guyās name from Japanese (I donāt think there is a source for that or any other romanization though and thatās probably the reason why it was hidden from view).
By the way, the names of these generals are pretty solidly confirmed; I have found three artbook sources for them already although they are never used in the series and the whole role of the alliance generals is practically to order their troops to turn on each other. Here is the Ferme guy calling for Cesario to āuse the chance to rise to lead Gaea,ā please note the color scheme looks a bit different in episode 26 (pale blue instead of dark).
Anyway, back to the design. The chainmail, the cross-quartered overshirt... where does it lead? I think the answer is pretty clear this time...
First of all, it has to be said Crusades are WAY older stuff than what I found before, showing the inspiration for the designs of soldiers of Basram or Egzardia that seems to be the 17th-19th century Europe, which is coincidentally also the level of development of Gaea according to the official materials. Crusades are hundreds of years before that! Plus, there were several of them, spanning centuries.
So, finding a drawing of a Crusader that would be authentic, non-fictional, and from the same period, is way harder. Many of the illustrations from which we form the image of a crusader come from later period, especially around the romantism movement in 19th century. And these representations, especially the most common image of templars, fit our Cesarians quite well.Ā
With the way their head gear is constructed, I think the reference may have been some encyclopaedia depiction of knights templar. These are some of the closest examples I could find (obviously, the variation is too great and probably also was with the real people).
But just out of curiosity I took a look:at the contemporary art (14th/15th century and older), it seems way harder to detect that typical image of the crusader with that huge cross across his chest, but yeah, you can obviously often see the motif of a cross and the chain mail.
And these two are prominent even in the design of our Cesarians. The same shape is visible even on their guymelefs (title picture), and yep, on their flag.
4. The flag/coat of arms
The cross on Cesarians seems to match the design of their flag, and to me, it looks nothing more like than the sword handle/crossguard.Ā
This time again, we donāt have the official Sunrise image for ants but we have plenty sources of how it should look in color so I spent 3000 hours in MS Paint and there you go.
Anyway, the sword hilt would obviously match it being such a heroic and militaristic country, although itās quite simple imagery, I like the decorative detail put in there. Any other ideas?
5. Cesario is a neighboring country to Asturia and possibly to Zaibach
I repeat myself once again, this is because we know Asturia formed an alliance with its neighboring countries (episode 23) and Cesario came to their help. But actually, this is also confirmed in the text of the Roman Artbook.Ā
It also strongly looks like they may share a border also with Zaibach, although the filmbooks just say they are in the vanguard in the attack against them.Ā That was my idea without looking at the books anyway since they are attacked by them in that camp and once the main force arrives to the same place and then they practically fight to invade Zaibach already!Ā
There is a bit of a mystery of Zaibach general Adelphos, too, who is impatiently waiting for the orders to attack āthe alliance filthā that he believes can be easily defeated. After this scene, we are shown Allen and the alliance main force still in Asturia, so it seems Adelphos could have meant these Cesarians?Ā
So, from all this, it would seem to me the main forces of Zaibach and the Alliance have gathered on the border between Cesario and Zaibach although it does not say explicitly that in the canon.












