Sanaki and Sigruns comments about Sephiran being a strange/ mysterious man in PoR got me thinking about what kind of behaviour he displayed during his time in the Senate. Here are some thoughts:
He goes on semi regular trips around tellius in a disguise of his choice. His disguises get more and more ridiculous/ creative over the years. Still disappointed in his effort in PoR though like his disguise that time was not very creative and his Senator uniform was showing through the big brown cloak. He had a flop year guys don't worry we've all been there.
People often just find him perched on some impossibly high places whether it be a building or a tree. He finds it a nifty way to avoid talking to the rest of the Senate more than he has too. Zelgius at first often worries that he will fall off but eventually he gets used to it.
He tells the worst dad jokes. All the time.
You know that one cipher artwork of Sanaki walking on the ledge/ handrail thingys while Sigrun and Tanith are trying to make sure she doesn't fall. Guess who she got that bright idea from.
He swears in the ancient tongue. So on the very very rare occasion someone in Begnion sees Duke Persis actually pissed off noone knows wtf he is saying.
He is a man of wisdom which comes with an encyclopedia of fun facts! The catch is you can never tell if these fun facts are actually facts or if he's completely made this info up to get a reaction out of you.
If I can think anything else I'll make a part 2. Stay tuned.
Instead of just having a jumbled idea of the timeline of sephiran and zelgius's relationship I decided I was going to spend my day off writing up my idea of how their timeline works based on cannon information with my own little headcannon flair because i can and you can't stop me.
*THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO @theia-eos FOR COMMENTING WITH THE RADIANT DAWN ARTBOOK TIMELINE I HAVE USED IT TO UPDATE THIS TIMELINE WITH MORE ACCURATE INFORMATION* I also had to remove some sentences because tumblr gave me a fuckin character limit while editing this for some reason
Key:
Bold = explicit canon
unbold = rough estimate canon/ guess
italics = headcanon
urple = sephzelg highlight reel (gay thoughts)
red = year
Complete timeline after the keep reading thing:
625: Misaha’s assassination and the serenes massacre → lehran villain arc. Lehran presents the medallion to ashnard and enters daeins service under the guise of a “wise man”
626: “daeins sudden change” → this is likely when the bloodpact began its effects and the deaths of the daein royal family. I THINK THIS IS WHEN SEPHIRAN AND ZELGIUS MET
Zelgius was serving in the Daein army under general Gawain for a few years. While sephiran is serving as a wise man under ashnard's father he meets zelgius and zelgius confides in him and they agree to be with each other when zelgius eventually leaves the daien army.
Later that year Gawain dips out of Daein with Elena. Zelgius despairs that his Master left him. Zelgius would then enter sephirans service.
627: Ashnard becomes the king of daein, (This was originally when I thought zelgius joins sephiran but I found out Gawain actually left BEFORE Ashnard became king according to the radiant dawn artbook).
I assume Sephiran leaves Ashnards service after Ashnard gets what he wants. Seph doesnt fuck with his bad vibes.
627~635: Sephiran and Zelgius do a bit of travelling and make plans for big evil or something. Sephiran still being a travelling sage and zelgius being a knight not connected to any army until he joins the Begnion military perhaps a decade later
During this time sephiran scaffolds information about himself and his past to zelgius. I do genuinely think that sephiran eventually opens up about everything to zelgius (and vice versa) including him being lehran and the origin of the branded.
634: assuming ike is around 7 when his mom died, this would be around the time point where Gawain touched the medallion and lehran and zelgius saw the aftermath.
The reason why I think ike is 7 years old here (*he's born in 628*) is because that is how old soren would have been too according to his own timeline (based on his support convos), and those two met the day before the gawain medallion shenanigan occurred
Idrk when seph and zel join begnion as dukes. Based off of the artbook zelgius was actually born into a begnion family before fleeing to daein so maybe he reclaimed the cador family name or something. Sephiran claimed to be from a long line of mages (Persis) and somehow become a noble through this so called mage lineage.
637: sephzelg 10 yr anniversary
635: Sanaki is born. Sephiran may or may not be a senator at this stage
Sephiran begins to rise up the senate ranks through rizz and zelgius rises up the army ranks
At some point between 635-640: sanakis parents are killed by the senate probably
640: sanaki (5 years old) becomes the empress of begnion and sephiran becomes the “senate leader” aka prime minister
the event lekain talks about when sanaki would stfu during formal proceedings and they discover sephiran has insane babysitting skills occurs right after sanaki becomes the empress i think
645: beginning of mad kings war. At this point in time sephiran and zelgius would have been together for around 18-19 years
Black knight shenanigans. Sephiran travels tellius and gathers intel
Sepiran gets captured in crimea by daein military, probably waited for zelgius to go save him hence why he wouldnt fucking move when ike rescued him lmao
Black knight scraps ranulf, sephiran steps in and tells black knight to stand down
Sephiran eventually returns to begnion, tells everyone to get their fucking shit together, sends zelgius to go help ike (black knight still be existing). Zelgius’ group stays in daein while ikes group goes to crimea. BK does multiple warcrimes in the meant
646: Nados castle falls on the black knight. Sephiran rescues him and uses is epic healing skills to get zelgius to recover before the battle between ikes team and ashnard in the final chapter
646: End mad kings war. Sephiran annoys the shit out of ike by laughing at him for no reason. The black knight is “defeated”. Sephzelg 20 year anniversary aww
646-648: new evil world ending plan just launched
648: war part 2 electric boogaloo
Summer 648: Black knight return arc, sephiran is set to go to daein and tell jarod to stop being a cunt or something but gets thrown in jail before he got the chance to????
Autumn 648: Sephiran captured by the senate while zelgius is at war doing war stuff
Zelgius saves sephiran from jail part 2 electric boogaloo and the two of them start a cheeky uprising in bengion.
Zelgius and sephiran made a pact to die together in the tower. I think they made this agreement way in advance and they knew that was the end goal no matter what happens.
Winter 648: zelgius vs ike gay on gay violence. Zelgius dies. Sephiran either also dies or lives. pain and suffering
~1848: Ashunera returns. Lehran may or may not be there to greet her. Hope he dies soon
Wanna hear your thoughts on the Lehran Dheginsea falling out, mainly out of curiosity since I’ve never thought about that way
I actually have many many thoughts abt lehran and dheginsea!!
I do think for a long time Lehran and Dheginsea were best friends especially after Lehran went into hiding in goldoa. After losing everything and having to fake his own death and flee to goldoa Dheginsea was all Lehran really had left and he spent many decades under Dheginsea's care. Lehran was also likely there when Dheginsea's wife died and when Dheginsea had children. They spent centuries together in Goldoa which is probably the longest time Lehran has spent in the company of another ever considering his other friends companions and loved ones are relatively short-lived in comparison.
Lehran would have also witnessed goldoa playing bystander to all the atrocities the rest of tellius was committing against one another and eventually he got tired of watching everything unfold from the sidelines and wanted goldoa to actually do something to end the conflict. I think at some point lehran thought that dheginsea was kind of missing the point of world peace and he was letting begnion get away with atrocities in the name of avoiding conflict at the cost of laguz lives. It's because of all of this that that Lehran leaving when he got fed up with Dheginsea not doing anything to help his fellow laguz is extra dramatic and had lasting impacts.
During that cutscene where lehran leaves goldoa dheginsea throwing that "you, who have lost your birthright? all you will achieve is your own destruction" back in lehran's face after everything they went through together is just. ouch?? what the fuck dude???
But what absolutely fucks me up the most and what I believe solidified the end of a friendship between lehran and dheginsea is when Goldoa did absolutely nothing after the serenes massacre. Lehran finally found a way to liberate the laguz in begnion from slavery with Misahas emancipation act (like he said he would) and a year later he loses his family and the entire heron tribe and his original home to a massacre and Dheginsea did Nothing to help or support his best friend of however many centuries now. Whatever amount of loneliness and isolation lehran was already feeling must have tripled when he realised Dheginsea would not even move after all that. I do think from that point onward Lehran held some resentment for Dheginsea but there is absolutely no confirmation of that its just a headcannon of mine. its more dramatic.
I wish there was some way for Lehran and Dheginsea to interact during one of the games to get insight into how they feel about each other during the events of PoR and RD. I think Dheginsea would be very shocked and upset to find out the reason why the goddess woke up was because Lehran has orchestrated the war and wanted to break the covenant on purpose despite all of dheginseas efforts. I think Dheginseas refusal to help his fellow laguz was part of the reason why lehran wanted to end the world too.
TLDR: I think their yaoi falling out was very messy because they're both centuries old besties and dramatic bitches.
I thought of some more dumb headcannons for Sephiran. and also was inspired by the absolute geniuses in the reblog tags of my previous post which u can read here. And also read the reblog comments and tags for more sephiran shenanigans.
WARNING: This installment has spoilers and also mentions of violence.
Sephiran is a chronic info dumper to anyone that will listen (almost always Zelgius btw). One time I doodled Sephiran rambling to Zelgius about his discovery of normal lizards and how much they resemble dragons except lizards are adorable and (relatively) harmless little guys. This guy would have a blast when he discovers the absolute creatures that reside Australia (lots of lizards and snakes lol). Becuase he is old and travels a lot he will have lots of stories to talk your ear off about.
Adding onto this he is particularly fond of talking about Sanaki and her strange behaviour to anyone that will listen and I know this because of that one feh event. The BK winter festival party thing. you know the one.
Along the same vein he also tells Sanaki a story that he makes up himself before she goes to sleep. The story is based off real events probably but he changes up the lore a bit to make it way cooler or less scary.
He has to come up with creative ways to get out of going to dinner with duke Tanas (Oliver is a freak but that dialogue in RD made him sound like he was trying to flirt with Sephiran and understandably Sephiran responded with "judgement cannot come soon enough"). The excuses get less and less believable and more unhinged as time goes on but Oliver is none the wiser.
A lot of people mentioned Sephiran being a vegetarian. I would like to add during group dinners (and dates) he gives his meat servings to Zelgius.
There have probably been a few attempts to assassinate the Prime Minister during his time (and probably during RD when he got kicked out of the Senate too). Everyone in the Senate is really fucking confused on how he keeps surviving these near-death experiences as if he literally revives (spoilers: he is immortal).
He also messes with his assassins too. When he wakes back up he would politely greet them and ask them how their day was and they're just standing there like. fuck. what the fuck. how.
He can play the harp and piano. This isn't peculiar behaviour but I need you all to know he plays instruments.
He can't hold in his laughter especially if he's laughing at you not with you. Not everyone can have perfect social etiquette. Yous remember the ending of PoR right...
I am not the first nor the last to mention the fact that Sephiran ended up in jail twice throughout the duology. I have a feeling the first time in PoR was not his first rodeo either.
Soren and Sephiran character design progression parallels and symbolism: unhinged rambling session.
Before you read this and are like "oh I've heard this before" this is a slightly more coherent version of a twitter thread I made like a year ago lol. Just because it's slightly more coherent doesn't guarantee this will actually BE coherent bc I can't organise my thoughts to save my life. anyway. SPOILERS FOR TELLIUS !!!!!!!
SO what character design progression am I talking about exactly? I'm mostly referring to the common costume design progression beginning with black -> purple -> grey -> white (in chronological order) costume/ theme designs that both Soren and Sephiran go through. Soren starting off wearing black garb in PoR all the way to his white archsage garn in RD, kinda parallels with Black Heron Lehran (pre-canon) all the way to clad-white garb Sephiran (RD).
Soren: clad black mage (beginning PoR) -> ourple sage (end Por) -> greyish wind sage (RD) -> white archsage (RD)
Sephiran: Black Heron (pre-canon) -> ourple and grey Lord Sage (also pre-canon, mostly based on the CG cutscenes in the tower) -> orple and white but mostly white Prime Minister Sephiran (PoR and RD)
((also note Sephrian reverts to black heron Lehran for NG+))
What I found insanely interesting about these parallels was their opposing symbolism. When Soren went through his dark to light design progression it was most likely intended to represent him slowly getting less apathetic towards mankind; whereas Lehran going through the same design progression has the exact opposite character development.
Typically when a colour theme goes from dark to light it symbolises a positive(?) change in the character. Sephiran being a complex and morally controversial antagonist had an ironic opposite colour progression. That is, as his appearance seemingly appeared more "innocent" (i was always told in literature class that white clothes was symbolic of purity and innocence), the less innocent he actually became. Soren has a support system strong enough for him to, ever so slowly, develop into someone who hated the world a little bit less; he followed the typical character and character design development progression.
These character design choices and their respective characters represent different ways of processing similar dark and hopeless attitudes towards the world. You can either accept and grow (Soren), or you can let those attitudes fester into something more destructive.
I have a hypothesis for the significance of the colour purple because for some reason that seemed to be the colour marking a sort of "halfway point" between total apathy and hope towards mankind. Although.., purple might just be symbolic for wisdom (and spirituality for Sephiran perhap) because that's the basic colour association for purple and both of them are the wisest fellas in Tellius fr,, so that could be all it is. The purple on Sephiran might just represent his higher status as a stinky politician wheras it could mean something different for Soren in PoR but I am on copium right now so I am saying purple is meant to symbolise the halfway point of hope.
The reasoning I have for this is mostly based on the context surrounding the events in which purple was their primary colour. For example, in the latter half of PoR where soren is a orpple sage, at that point he would've at leased figured out he was branded and most likely have had support conversations with Ike or Stephan which marks the beginning of him coming to terms with himself being Branded. For Sephiran, he wears ourple in pretty much any context, but that cutscene with Misaha where he is wearing purple and Misaha is wearing a lighter purple.., that was SUPPOSED to mark the beginning of hope for Lehran before,,,,, certain events occured afterwards that put the nail in the coffin in regards to his descent. Speaking of that CG I think it's kinda poggers that they contrasted Lehran's darker colour scheme with Misahas lighter. The flavour. The contrast. Possibly adds some dramatic irony about Misaha being killed by her innocence...
Okay that is all I have to say for now. I honeslty have no idea if this was even the intention by the devs or if doing ATAR literature has brainwashed me into reading into everything too deeply BUT it is fun to think about regardless. okay im done here
