Flora is a fountain of lost potential, and it frustrates me.
I don’t just mean her lack of supports, though yeah, that is a not insignificant part of it. She ought to be able to talk to more people than just Corrin and her sister; at the very least, she ought to be able to talk to Gunter and Jakob. If the developers want to hammer in the fact that Jakob does not and will never reciprocate her feelings, than have their support chain stop at A support, but just… Please. The support chains are how most of the characters experience character growth and exploration. It doesn’t serve her (or any of the Corrin-sexual characters, honestly) well to be so limited in her support chains.
What I really regard as Flora’s lost potential, though, are her feelings of resentment and isolation and bitterness that wound up being channeled into an early hostility towards Corrin.
I know this is not a popular opinion, and I know that on certain parts of the Internet, saying this is tantamount to painting a bull’s-eye on my back, but I do like Corrin. I don’t think the writing for her character is the strongest, but I do like her. But for a character to outright dislike her, maybe even hate her at first, is so rare in this series. Yes, Flora disliked Corrin for reasons outside of Corrin’s control, but that just happens sometimes, and being disliked happens more for other characters (a lot more for some of them) in Fates than it does for Corrin. But once Corrin and Flora have had their showdown in Conquest and Revelation, the fact that Flora once genuinely, deeply disliked her, that she put on a face of being a loyal, friendly maid, but deep-down hated her all this time, is never brought up again.
Give us more of Flora feeling constantly frightened and isolated in the Northern Fortress when she’s first taken there, because she knows she’s there as a hostage, she knows that if her father sets one toe out of line King Garon will kill her and Felicia both, and their father spared Felicia this information and Flora can’t bear to tell her, so she’s alone. Give us Flora, whose fear dissipates somewhat over the years, but never completely, and whose sense of isolation just grows and grows and grows. Just as there’s pressure on her father to toe the line, there’s pressure on her as well to be the best possible representative of the Ice Tribe to the kingdom of Nohr, the better to keep King Garon’s wrath from falling on her tribe.
Give us Flora who fears for Felicia as much as she resents her for being their father’s favorite, because Felicia’s ignorance of just how precarious their situation is, the fact that she can’t see the executioner’s axe poised over their necks, puts her in greater danger. Give us Flora who loves her sister too much to make her live in fear the way she does. Give us Flora who finally starts catching up to her sister in terms of battle prowess, and the fact that their father isn’t there to see it makes her want to scream—but she can’t, because she can’t ever let on that there’s something wrong.
Give us the deep, bitter humiliation Flora must have felt when she learned that, having been taken hostage by King Garon, he would not even accommodate her as her rank demanded, instead making her act as a domestic servant to one of his daughters. Give us Flora who resents Corrin as a symbol of everything she’s lost, who hates her as a symbol of everything she has yet to lose, this pampered daughter of the tyrant king. Give us a Flora who hates Corrin because hating this unthreatening little girl is safer than hating King Garon.
Actually let all of this resentment and anger and bitterness mean something. And then, show us the ramifications of Flora discovering that all along, the pampered little princess she despised was a hostage, just like her. That the pampered little princess she despised was the daughter of a man Garon murdered, that he had kidnapped her and imprisoned her and robbed her of all of her memories of her first family. That all along, there had been an executioner’s axe hovering over the back of Corrin’s neck, and that just like Flora and Felicia, she only lived at the king’s pleasure.
The support chain Corrin and Flora share would have been a great place to explore the ramifications of all of this. The canonical one is… fine. It actually contains a shining example of Corrin’s kind, forgiving nature, that her wish was for Flora to live a happy life, and given how little happiness Flora has known in her life… That support chain is meaningful to me. I just think there are other paths the writers could have taken with it.
You could have Flora struggling to reconcile her past feelings of bitterness towards Corrin with the revelation that all along, Corrin’s situation had been materially no better than hers, that just as Flora could have been executed to send a message to the Ice Tribe, Corrin could have been executed to send a message to Hoshido, and that all of Flora’s resentment was directed at a girl who, honestly, didn’t deserve it at all. And Corrin, as self-effacing as she is, as constantly guilty as she must feel to say “I’m sorry” as often as she does, tries to reassure her that everything’s okay, because her unhealthy coping mechanism is to try to give everyone around her as little reason to be angry with her as possible, and the idea that someone might hate her for reasons outside her control is just the ultimate nightmare scenario. Yeah, she’s hurt that someone she thought was her friend all this time secretly hated her, but again: self-effacing to a detrimental extent, and rarely gets angry on her own behalf.
The support chain wears on, and Flora is now looking back on past events and realizing, sickly, that there were a lot of red flags to something being very wrong with Corrin’s situation that she’d ignored because she had resented her so much. A question that the game never really answers is whether any of the Northern Fortress crew were around when Silas was Corrin’s playmate. If Flora was, does she remember whatever the hell it is whatever parties involved did to Corrin to make her forget Silas so completely? Was she made to participate? Again, Corrin rushes to absolve her of any blame, pointing out that Flora wouldn’t have had any choice, but that doesn’t make Flora feel any better. Depending on whichever one it was, she either actively participated in the abuse of another hostage, or at the very least stood by and did nothing while it was happening, and even knowing she had no choice, the guilt eats at her.
Come the A Support, Flora and Corrin finally manage to have a conversation about this that doesn’t involve Corrin falling all over herself to make sure Flora won’t be angry with her anymore to assure Flora that she doesn’t blame her for hating her all this time. Corrin finally admits that, yeah, finding out that someone she had thought was her friend was only pretending to care about her all this time really hurt her, and the fact that she still cares despite that doesn’t feel great, either. But Flora tells her that, now, she does genuinely care for Corrin. Having been jarred out of her resentment has finally allowed her to care for Corrin the way Corrin cared for her, and if Corrin is willing to let her, she would like to be a friend to her, now. Corrin, as you can imagine, agrees. And if we’re playing Conquest as opposed to Revelation, there is another note hit: Flora admitting that she fears for Corrin the way she fears for Felicia, because all this time she was a hostage who didn’t know she was a hostage, and even now, doesn’t seem to grasp how precarious her position is. But Corrin reassures her that she does understand at least part of it, and asks for her help in navigating the rest, which Flora gladly grants.
I wish we could have gotten this. This is the province of fanfic, now.
