#seteth fe16

[onyxedskies]

you know three houses is fantasy because seteth is a guidance counselor who a) isn’t creepy and b) genuinely has his students best interest at heart

[braincell-art]

First time I played this game I thought he was intimidating, but he's just such a kind old man, even if he's a bit stern 💖

[ncfan-1]

Snippet of a fic that will be written, uhh, sometime. It’s been a while since I last played Three Houses, and I need to play it again to brush up on characterization and diction and other things.

--

“And the river, you said, is that way?”

Bernadetta nodded tremulously, mumbling “That’s… that’s right,” before hurrying back off towards whatever hiding place it was that she had found for herself out here.

As Seteth neared the shadowy eaves of the dense forest of pines and cedars and myriad other trees too stripped of their leaves by the mild winter for him to have a hope of determining type, he nevertheless found his gaze drawn back towards the tall dark house behind him. It loomed up out of the earth, silent and empty, but there was an intent in that silence, in that emptiness, something raw like hunger, as if calling out in answer to all that cried out in the heart of the only person on this earth who might properly be called its master. It was not a hunger that could be sated. There was only one thing that could have sated it, and now that was out of reach forever.

Neither the time, nor the place, and yet, Seteth found himself troubled anew by all of the pieces of the puzzle that was Melusine’s past, troubled by how none of them ever seemed to fit together properly, no matter how he attempted to arrange them.

There was her father, of course, Jeralt Eisner, whose service in the Knights of Seiros, if one was able to construct anything resembling a coherent narrative from the patchy record-keeping more than fifty years back, went so very, very far back that it was plain to Seteth what Rhea must have done, even if she would not say anything. Jeralt was the one consistency in this story, the one piece of it all that did not have any rogue elements to bedevil him as he tried to put it all together.

Then, there was Sitri, Jeralt’s first wife. So very, brutally young. So loved by those who knew her in life, but so quickly forgotten after her death that by the time that Jeralt returned to the monastery Seteth would have been hard-pressed to find anyone in Garreg Mach who remembered her at all. Dead before her time.

Sitri’s child, consumed in flame, dead so young that she did not even have a name.

Melusine, born in the wide world and unknown to all until she was a young woman.

Melusine’s mother, Jeralt’s second wife, a stranger cast in shadow, shadow so deep and so thick that she was totally obscured from sight and scrutiny. Dead so long ago that her daughter had no memory of her at all.

Had this been her home, to start with? Had it been she who lived in this remote house in this dense forest in a part of the Kingdom where scarcely anyone had lived even before the plague that had ravaged it years ago? Had Jeralt fled the smoldering ruins of the life he had built for himself at Garreg Mach, just run as far away from it as he could, and had he come riding up the road seeking shelter for the night, and had this woman been standing in the doorway, waiting to beckon him in?

It all sounded so very much like one of the old romances, if Seteth was being generous in his assessment. Tastefully done, it was like one of the old romances, one of the stories Flayn had devoured eagerly with stars shining in her eyes when she had been a little girl. But Seteth had been nearby from time to time when Flayn was listening to those stories being told round a campfire or before an assembled crowd of children in a church or the hall of whatever noble their contingent had happened to be staying with at the time, and he knew that this story did not end the way Flayn’s favorites all would. When last he had occasion to listen to one of the stories Flayn loved so dearly, he remembered quite clearly the hero and heroine both living long enough lives to really enjoy their lives together. None of those stories had detailed the hero losing his first wife, happening upon love again unlooked-for, and then losing his second wife nearly as quickly as he had lost his first.

This site of desolation, this old, abandoned house, eaten to its core with rot, had it, too, been the site of love which had come to nothing in the end?

But that could not be right, either. Melusine had been so oddly insistent that, for all that her earliest memories were of this place, of the dark, quiet house in the dark, quiet woods, she had not been born here. She had been equally insistent that her mother’s grave was not to be found here. How she could even know that, unless Jeralt had told her so…

So many fluid elements, still taking shape, and taking on shapes that Seteth was not certain that he liked. So many elements that did not meld together at all, that did not seem like pieces of the same story, for all that they must be, for all that they must be proven to be separate sections of the same narrative, if only he could find the common thread to tug upon that would make all of it fall in line and all of it make sense. For now, he was just left with these fragments.

The Crest of Flames, manifesting in Melusine Eisner.

(Nemesis’s bloodline is gone. She told me that it was gone, assured me that she had hunted down everyone who even might be kin to him and effaced them from the earth. They could not be allowed to persist; we all knew that. The children of his inner circle might be spared if they were willing to swear fealty, but not any kin of his. It was too dangerous. We had no way of knowing just how much he had told them, and she— No, she would never have allowed them to live, even if they knew nothing. If I had been with her then, neither would I have spared them. There should be no one living now who bears that Crest.)

Seteth still could not make sense of that point, not at all. When he had pressed the point with Rhea, she had been so stubbornly vague about what she thought this could mean, how it could even be possible. She had danced around the questions he asked of her with the skill she had spent more than a millennium cultivating. At length, she had professed a belief that it was the will of the Goddess, which was not… was not especially enlightening. And it was not likely. It was not likely at all, and Rhea knew that just as well as he did.

No, no, that could not be it. This power was passed down in the blood. Perhaps it was not just Nemesis who had drunk of Sothis’s blood, perhaps that other person had simply remained hidden, and had successfully slipped the dragnets and vanished out of history. Ah, but was that even likely? Surely, one depraved enough to commit such an act would not simply have gone to live in obscurity? No, Seteth could scarcely believe it possible. It was Nemesis’s bloodline, or nothing.

But either way, then it could not be Jeralt that Melusine had come to this power. No one could bear more than one Crest in their blood. For Rhea to have successfully imparted her own crest upon Jeralt, his blood must have been clear of all others before.

It was not impossible that it had come from Jeralt, Seteth supposed. If he had profited from listening to Hanneman expound on such matters in no other way, he had at least learned there could be several generations between humans of the same bloodline who bore the same Crest. But though it might be possible, it did not seem probable. For Jeralt not to have borne the Crest at all, and then for Melusine to manifest it so strongly…

It must come to her through her mother.

So. On the one hand, we have this nameless figure, most likely to be found living alone in the woods, away from most people—except Melusine insisted without saying so directly that that had not been the case. This woman whose name and whose bloodline was totally unknown.

On the other hand…

On the other hand, we have Sitri. Sitri, a foundling brought to Garreg Mach as a newborn, her origins a complete mystery.

On the one hand, we have a simple truth: Rhea could never possibly warm to one of a bloodline who had drunk of Sothis’s blood. Never could she possibly look upon them with favor. But then, on the other hand, there was the favor she so plainly showed to Melusine, Melusine who bore all the hallmarks of descending from such a bloodline. A bloodline that could not possibly exist.

Surely, she would not have doted upon Sitri as Seteth had heard tell of her doing if she had thought her to be of such a bloodline, but for her to have taken this frail girl under her wing at all, she must have seen something in her…

Jeralt was so cagey about the subject of his two wives, his two daughters. As cagey as Rhea was about the subject of the partiality she had shown for Melusine from the moment she laid eyes upon her.

Sitri and Melusine…

No, that was another dead end. Melusine could not be Sitri’s child. Seteth might not know the year of her birth, but he knew the day, and the moon, and neither corresponded to the day and the moon of Sitri’s death, Sitri who had died giving birth to her short-lived daughter.

They never found the baby’s body.

No, no, no. To suggest that Melusine was Sitri’s child was to suggest that Jeralt had concealed her survival and fabricated her death, and why would he even do such a thing? If he wished to flee the ruins of the life he had hoped for with Sitri, why would he need to fabricate his daughter’s death to do so? Why could he not simply scoop the baby up in his arms and flee with her in tow? No, that poor child must be dead, dead so young that she had not even been given a name. The fire that had consumed the knight’s hall of the time had been so terrible; its blackened ruins had still cast cursing fingers into the sky when Seteth had first come to Garreg Mach at Rhea’s pleading, months later. The fire had been so terrible that perhaps it had simply swallowed the baby’s body whole, and left nothing behind.

There was a danger, still, in not being able to make sense of all of these clashing fragments of the narrative. There were pieces missing from it. Sometimes, Seteth thought he was close to understanding, but then understanding slipped from his grasp, and he was left to flounder once again. There was danger here. He no longer thought it was Melusine who posed the danger. But still, his heart was uneasy, and he could not say why. He felt as if something was moving, just beyond the limits of what he could discern. It was moving, and he could not say for what purpose.

Something in the quality of his scrutiny of the dark, quiet house shifted as he gave it one last look before plunging into the forest. A mystery was a mystery, but this was, though a part of it, a site of grief. Nostalgia riven with bitterness, all that could have been crying out for what could never now be. Seteth sighed long and hard, scrubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and his forefinger as he began to back away from the clearing. Somehow, it was fitting that they should stumble upon the wreckage of her past life as they journeyed ever westward towards the wreckage of his. There was a certain symmetry to it, and the matching pieces did howl in much the same voice.

[mightygwima]

so like. Seteth should have been a pegasus knight is what i’m getting at

[ephemeralblitz]

Another Koyasu character, Seteth, joins the ranks of Fire Emblem. He's the Frederick to Rhea's Chrom, essentially, but he's the one with the little sister, whose name is Flayn (we saw her for a split-second during the Nintendo Treehouse showcase). He's a doting older brother and is a cautious aide to Rhea.

[mightygwima]

I will not surrender, this life is mine.

[mightygwima]

do you think he’s messing around? do you think this is a joke? foolish

[ncfan-1]

Seteth and Flayn for the character meme please :3c

Seteth:

How I feel about this character: He frustrates me a fair bit for reasons that will be elaborated on below, but overall, I do like him.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t particularly ship anyone with this character.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Rhea, probably

My unpopular opinion about this character: Seteth’s role in Fodlan’s affairs by the time the game starts can be succinctly summed up as “the good man who does nothing, and by his inaction allows tyranny and injustice to triumph.” It is not enough for him to merely be uncomfortable with the damage wrought by the Crest System. If he wants to do better, he needs to actually do something about it.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: Among my many other wishes for Silver Snow (that Rhea hadn’t been captured and had been the Lord of the route, that draconic degeneration was foreshadowed better in this game, that Rhea’s twelve children appeared as minibosses in the final battle to cap off how apocalyptic Silver Snow is as a route), I wish that Silver Snow had had a real character arc for Seteth. As you can imagine, my ideal Silver Snow arc for him would have involved forcing him to come to grips with the role he’s played in propped up an oppressive government and societal structure that’s screwed over every last person he cares about whose names aren’t Rhea or Flayn, and having a moment when he finally does something with his discomfort regarding Rhea’s actions and the societal structure she’s propped up and resolves to reform Fodlan into something kinder and healthier, even if that means having to go against Rhea to do it.

my OTP: Don’t have one.

my cross over ship: Again, don’t have one.

a headcanon fact: Seteth was, before everything went to hell in Zanado, pretty laid-back and easygoing, and had a drastic personality shift after the murder of his mother and the vast majority of his brothers and sisters, and another dramatic personality shift after his wife was killed and his daughter was nearly killed and spent the better part of a thousand years in a magical coma. I mean, if anything’s gonna change your personality...

Flayn:

How I feel about this character: Precious, must be allowed to live her own life and experience the world on her own terms.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Hmm. I do like her with Ferdinand

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Byleth. I noticed the fact that Byleth gets a boost to might from a grand total of five supports in this game. There’s the three house leaders, which is what you’d expect, along with Yuri, and the fifth is Flayn. This little gameplay mechanic has always seemed to me a signal that they have a bond that goes deeper than what the game always willing to tell us. And I like the idea of the only two human-Nabatean hybrids in the world sticking together.

My unpopular opinion about this character: While she may look younger than she actually is and her lack of experience of the world makes her naive, she definitely has the wisdom and maturity of an adult, and anyone who seriously looks at her and thinks “that’s a child” probably sees Seteth’s face when they look in the mirror.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I really wish there was a way for Flayn to join us on Crimson Flower. I don’t think it should be easy to meet the requirements for that, and I don’t think she’d be happy with every last thing that goes down (definitely not killing Rhea, that’s for damn sure), but she’s such a compassionate and caring person, and I wonder exactly what Flayn thought of the world her aunt had wrought while she was sleeping for nearly a thousand years.

my OTP: Ferdinand, by virtue of being the only person I really ship with her.

my cross over ship: Nobody.

a headcanon fact: Flayn does embroidery. She finds it soothing and it helps her think.