#zephia fe

[yanderefairyangel]

4 Hounds deep dive

Alright, so basically after hearing so many times and too many times that the Hound are failed sympathetic villains, I decided to take matters in hands, and to clear up the big misunderstanding about those characters. That’s right, they are misunderstood characters BECAUSE... they aren’t supposed to be sympathetic villains, who on earth gave you the idea you were supposed to feel sympathy for those twisted puppies ?! I mean, aside from Marni and obviously Mauvier, Zephia and Griss are irreedeming villains : their backstory isn’t there to make them more sympathetic but to explain their motivations...look, I know that with 3H we got used to villains never explaining why exactly they want revenge and all, but that’s literaly all there is to it.

As for them being a “family “I feel like there is also a misunderstanding on how they works because if Engage is a tale about new found family, there is actually nothing surprising that the bad guys have a relationship that drastically differs from the postive message our characters on the good side are trying to tell. 

I won’t surprise you if I tell you that what were are shown of the Hounds are a group that has family only the title and barely deserves it seeing how Zephia is an abusive feminine figure in pretty much everyway however, there is indeed one way to say that they are family. If you compare them to Sombron’s family that is, because it turns out to be EXACTLY that, the Hounds are an abusive family, disconnected in pretty much everyway and what is actually tragic about them is that they were all so deluded they didn’t even noticed that they weren’t a true family and yet left us with one scarred invidual : Mauvier. And by that token, I think it actually make sense that we don’t have the sentiment they were family since... they actually weren’t. At all. They were just a bunch of inviduals with all toxic and distorted view on love anf family. In fact, I think that the fact that their counterparts from a reverse universe where Timerra is vegeterian, the 4 Winds, have an actual family relationship and feels like one SPEAKS WORDS. But before that, I just give my thoughts on Sombron’s army in general cause I think people are really weird againts them;

Sombron’s army are excellent villains, they are doing an amazing job at being thorns in Alear’s path. They managed to kill Lumera in chapter 3, they lead succeful attacks on many villages, they manage to steal ALL of Alear’s ring in chapter 10, and when they fail, they got consquences and choosing to make this particularly cruel characters a “family” works with the whole commentary about abusive relationships. It is obvious that those people aren’t the one to believe in comradery, frienship, love, caring for one another etc... the EXTREME opposite of a familial environement !!  

I mean, what better way was there to portray Zephia as an evul lady then having her killing her subordinated for failing in their tasks (cough, cough Nelluce) and beats the sheet out of everyone when they fails or get in her way ?This obviously come at the cost of depicting her as a loving mother figure.. which the game don’t really try to nor wants to do anyway, the developpement of Zephia being that the more she appears on screen, the more violent and cruel she gets which makes up for a developpement as an abusive mother figure and that’s where you see how twisted the Hounds relationships is : they aren’t a family, they are a regular group of co workers for the Evul Papabad guy who are all incredibly egoistical and entitled indivuals that won’t hesitate to back stab each others for the sake of their plans and to kill their comarades as a punishement for messing up, a scenario that makes up for an average evil team but that is made 1000% more messed up by the fact the game creates an analogy with family, making that Engage compare abusive family environement to an evil subordinate/evil general dynamic. What they are doing is horrible, but it’s made worse by the fact that those inviduals are all more or less broken and yearning for a family which leads them to fall into a deluded mindest of them “being a family” and it’s what makes their leader, Zephia, a monstruous villain since her idea of family corresponds to THIS. 

Now from what I noticed, there is no debate in understanding how their character’s work, pretty much every Engage player could be able to sum up all the long dive I made for them in a few sentences, but despite all of that you somehow will still find fans thinking the game wants us to sympathetize with them even though their main victims literaly says THAT :

And no, I think that the support Mauvier and Veyle has with the Winds aren’t there for humanizing them, nor making them sympathetic. 

In short, I have broken down every member of the Hounds to show exactly why some aren’t reedemed nor should whereas others are and could have been. I also went aboard to explain that they aren’t “yes they were evul but they were just a luving family that could have stayed together if it weren’t for different convictions uwu” but “they weren’t a true family, just a bunch of broken individulas clining into that word without understanding the meaning of it and acting as a cruel abusive family because being the bad guys means back stabbing each others”

So it will goes in that order : Mauvier, Marni, Griss and Zephia.

I also saw critiscim about their backstory being kind of dumpt here and not explored further but I think it keeps in line with the idea of “yes they were once victims but now they are abusers and no ammount of sad backstory can justify this” and the fews line we got still managed to explain the whole psychology of an indivdual. Realistically speaking, Alear and Veyle were not there for the whole unpackage. Zephia just alluded to the idea before them without explaining it further, they leaved before Griss could speak of his for little he shares, and the main detail are in the supports between Mauvier and the Winds which both Alear and Veyle remains unaware of. So while I don’t disagree with it, I feel like it was not necessary to expand unto it this much since it already explains reasonably enough their motivations and purposes, and it aligns with what we are shown of them. Moreover, it aligns also with the fact that at least 2 of the Hounds, Zephia and Griss, had a somehow genuine bound and that’s only when it’s the 2 of them that they are able to be true to themselves compared to character like Marni and Mauvier being unable to read into them. Much like I think that way about Sombron himself since the villains in Engage are motivates by the EXACT same things as our heroes. 

But regardless here I start and I will be linking this post to the one I will make in the future

Part 1 : Mauvier

Part 2 : Marni

Part 3 : Griss

Part 4 : Zephia

By the way, from now on I am calling this game Fire emblem emotional Damage. You’ll see why.

Edit : something I though I could add but if you ever listen to the 4 hounds theme song it’s very unsettling and a bit cacophonic and disharmonious which i think not only illustrates that they are actually threatining and scarry individuals but also emprison their inner twisted minds as well as showing their disharmonious and twisted relationship

[telamont]

so. four hounds redemption

[fire-emblem-engage-portraits]

zephia

[yanderefairyangel]

4 Hounds deep dive part 4 : Zephia

In the Hound family, I demand : the mother/older sister. Let’s break down evul momy lizard. 

So of course SPOILERS AHEAD and no, whatever postive things I migt say about this piece of lizard meat, I don’t like her nor do I justify any of the things she has done but if I have to be critical, I’ll have to put my biais aside (I'll do the same thing as for Marni, reblog and add)

So Zephia, or if you prefer as I like to call her, Aversa 2.0 is basically a mix between Aversa and Nyx : she was some sort of genius talented baby mage dragon since according to both her and Mauvier, she had stronger dragonic impluse, far stronger then average Mage dragon so I guess dragonic impulse are linked to genetics in the Engage world ? Cause she says it’s “a gift” so it’s innate, not as if she spend hours practicing, ... in others words like Aversa and Nyx but because she is too OP, she ended up blowing up her home town, killing her own family in the process

That’s what we know of her backstory. A woman so OP she could have been the Fell Dragon if Sombron wasn’t there. This events tooks place when she was young but at some point, she ended up working for Sombron. Since Sombron is over 3 000 and arrived 1 000 years ago in Elyos after his family got killed, coupled with the fact that Zephia is over 2 500, this means that Zephia’s rampage tooks place at least 1 000 years after Sombron’s arrival in Elyos since he and Lumera since they are of the same age where child. As a loyal servant of Sombron, when he was sealed away, she immediately worked in order to bring him back, watched over sleeping Veyle in her temple and eventually took over Griss, Marnie and Mauvier and forms the Hounds, a “group whose goal is to serve Sombron and protect Veyle”. Once Veyle awoke, seeing her gentle personality, Zephia began her manipulation to “fix” her and if she is very manipulative with Veyle, she is actually incredibly loyal to the Fell Princess (that’s how i call Evil Veyle) since this version of Veyle is the perfect version. She is so devoted to Sombron that she puts every of his needs and desire before everything to the point of becoming blind and... not very bright cause she is incredibly dumb sometimes... eh, but basically she is the perfect pawn for Sombron because she is driven by a desire, a specific desire ; that Sombron would be the father of her own children. So now, here we go. 

The main thing with Zephia much like the other villains in this game, she is driven by the desire of love and family

1 - Zephia la Mélusine

Melusine is a unique class that debuted in Engage, and is reserved to the only 2 mage dragon (or rather Full Mage dragon) that can join our party or is an ennemy in Engage, Zelestia and Zephia. Described as “an alluring magic knight who rides an evil dragon”, it’s name is based on a creature from European folklore, la fée Mélusine, a Nixie.

There is a lot of version of her story, but most famous as her being cursed by her mother to turn into a a dragon half woman each Saturday and that her only salvation would be to find a man who would accept to marry her, to have her children and to respect the oath of never seeing her bathing each Saturday. At some point, Melusine meets a man called Raymondin, a young lord who accidentally killed his uncle and helps him in return, he accepts to marry her and promise her to never spy on her as she bath in secret every Saturday. They have children most of them having monstruous feature according to foklore, but they are of the number of ten. However, Raymondin’s brother, the count of Forez encourages his brother to spy on her by saying she might be up to something bad * cough, cough cheating * and of course, being the jealous husband type Raymondin eventually ends up spying on her and discover her dragon tail. The version varies from there but all ends the same : Mélusine, desesperate as her husband’s action condamned her to endless damnation, she screams out of despair, and fly out of the window (yes cause she is a dragon/fairy so she had wings with her tails... don’t ask me ok, it’s a mythological figure) but she returns at night to caress her kids, and legends as it that at night when she can’t enter the place to take care or see her children, she spent the entire night crying out of despair and that when someone of the family dies or that her family’s good pass onto someone else, she screams and laments. Her names in breton means “La Mielleuse” = the Sweet/The Smooth

Now bear with me : Mélusine was a dragon-woman yearning for family and whose salvation relied on founding this family but she was robbed of it because of an invidual’s toxic behaviour... reminds you of someone ? It’s pretty obvious that not only her design, her class and story macthes with this story, that’s preety much why the dev decided to name her class that. Zephia’s story aligns pretty much with that of Mélusine, she too seeks salvation in family only for it to ends tragically but their fate is rather different however.

2 - Zephia and the meaning of family

When exactly did she started to be obssessed by it ? Well...

After this conversation... very weird conversation if you ask me. I mean, Zephia associate the words “children” with “subordinate. To which Sombron answer by “If you require some of those [loyal subordinnates], then just do what I do. Make children”. Sombron’s answer make sense with how he is. Cause look at the definition Sombron gives of family 

(NB to me, I gotta make a post about the meaning of family cause the more this goes, the more complex it gets)

Regardless by Sombron’s definition, children are synonynoms of subordinates but the interesting bits about Zephia is that what seems to have drawn her attention was this part

She comments that it’s a “revelation” and this comments obviously shows that Sombron put something knew in her mind. 

What Zephia however doesn’t seems to realize is that Sombron doesn’t care about his children love and that his children most definetely did  not loved him, but rather feared him with the sole exception of Veyle but Veyle was too young at the time and overall remained ignorant of a lot of things but Veyle is another topic. 

Upon this thoughts, Zephia tries to remember her family. She obviously doesn’t because of several reason : other then the fact that she was young when her rampage occured, it’s well established that because of their lifespan being longer than human’s, dragons often forgets a lot of things the more time passes, but even more than an average human brain. 

Basically, Zephia’s definition of family aligns with the one given by Sombron but the difference is that Sombron makes kids because “power” whereas Zephia wants kids because she want Luv... and that’s where it gets interesting

3 - Zephia break down : a woman who yearned for love

This is the parts where you see that Zephia isn’t a comically evil lady but a character with actual motivations. Just like the character her class is named after, Zephia seeked for the love of someone, that someone be her child. 

That’s how Mauvier describe Zephia to Zelestia, but note that he mentions how above all her negative traits, she is lonely. In the full convo, he said the last part of the sentence with a sad look and a sad tone which are notable speaking of Mauvier, a character that emotes very little and most importantly who resent Zephia for killing Marnie. What I like about this support is that Mauvier begins by saying it’s his point of view and perspectivism is going to be important about the Hounds in general, but even though what he saw and knew of Zephia was her harsh and destructive side, he was also able to sense her loneliness. 

That’s not that surprising because Mauvier is Veyle’s knight, and who was the most lonely person Mauvier ever met ? Veyle. And who also wanted a family and love ? Veyle. Basically, Zephia shares a lot of common things with Veyle (excuse me, i have to wash my mouth for saying this I hope it’s the last time) : that is to say 

1 ) they both are terrible lonely

2) they both yearns for the love of family

3) they both yearned for Sombron’s attention + got contaminated by him (to some extent) 

Zephia was after all resposible for the death of her own family even if she could not control it  and who knows how many years she spent all alone until she met Sombron and entered his service ? 

She even express the wish to see her parents once again but that’s not all

It’s revealed that the reason why Zephia never allows herself to get attached to any of Sombron’s children is to protect herself from sadness* since she knows he will dispose of them sooner or later. A kind of “ your goldfish is gonna die within 2 days, why bother getting attached ?” mentality. Or if you prefer this

This also explain her entire relationship towards Veyle.

Regardless, Zephia’s relationship to love is actually quite complicated because when she dies, we have this whole conversation with Griss

And when say that, guess what ? I’ll believe her. Zephia really though of the Hounds as her family, no matter how toxic she was towards them... because of her complicated story with love. Even Veyle mentions that Zephia showed kindess towards her (though we all know why eh) but she was shown to be capable of acting both as a loving mother and an abuser because Zephia remained lonely during such a long time that she forgot how it feels to be love and a family, but most importantly because the only model of a family she saw during all these years was : Sombron’s. A toxic environnement where violence was required to have what you wanted, those kids had to kill in order to survive themselves and she also saw those children being killed in awful ways. Sombron literaly tasked her with getting care of the corpse... yeah. Basically, Zephia’s  problem is that she yearns for the love of her children but she doesn’t know HOW to love them nor even express it, mainly because the only familial environement she remember is a... no actually toxic is an understatement when it comes to describing the experience that is being Sombron’s children. Zephia’s love manifest itself through her attitude of being harsh and destructive despite her motherly attitude and before someone acts like “toxicisty isn’t love” yes, I know that. 

HOWEVER, toxicity can be a result of love, or rather love can create a toxic behaviour. All feelings are like medicine, medicine is somthing that can cure you or poison you depending on how you use it. Anger can be the fuel of toxic behavior but we sometimes need it, same thing for sadness. Love may be what we all yearn for, but there is no denying that it can also be what freed the worst in all of us. I think the movie that shows that best is Luis Bunel’s masterpiece, El. 

But I digress, what is important is that Zephia is incapable of being a loving mother because the only “love” she witnessed was the one given by Sombron to his children.. so yeah any family she could have based on this influence was bound to be ducked up. She wanted to and to be loved, but because of Sombron’s influence, she was incapable of understanding the real meaning of family even though she still had one thing over Sombron and that was to understand that a family can bring you the love you desire which Sombron never even consider since he seems to consider his children to be like the humans that believes in him. She was still able to praise her “children” when needed but still gave them violent punishement when she judge it necessary. if Zephia is Melusine, then Sombron is at the same time Raymondin and the one who cursed her. By uttering the cursed words that made her want to have a child, he actually doomed Zephia to crave for something she is incapable of having and that would dommed her. My personal commentary on Mélusine’s story was precisely that she needed love to be saved, but not just her husband, but her loving family and that it’s precisely the inner toxicity of her husbanf, his jealousy that doomed her to remain a monster who would still love her children but unable to remain by their side. Sombron’s influence is like a curse (and don’t worry Rafal, one day I’ll talk about what he did to you) and he also cursed Zephia, corrupted her with his toxic view on family. In that regard, that makes the ressemblances between Veyle and Zephia ever more barrant; she too after all, was a tragic woman who yearned for the love of someone, her child.

She also bears strinking similarities with Sombron : Sombron seeks 0 Emblem, his Elys, his ideal. Zephia has eyes only for him.

Zephia confirms she had no romantic feelings for Sombron and that she wasn’t exaclty looking for his affection unlike what Mauvier claimed even though you could say that maybe Zephia did not wanted to admit it, but seeing how things are presented I believe Zephia more. What is important is that she pushed everyone away for Sombron, but not really for him, but for what she wanted him to be : the father of her child. Just like how Sombron become obsessed by 0 Emblem to the point of not seeing anyone, Zephia became blinded by her desire to have a child. When Veyle fights against her, she says “ You don’t see me, do you, Zephia ? You see me and you think of Papa.” Sombron’s influence on someone just as lonely as he was is obvious : he was a lonely dragon seeking for the love of only one person to the point of making everyone suffer and not caring, and Zephia repeated the same schema on the Hounds, with the difference that she did care about them to some extent.

Proof ? Well, she still leaves Mauvier and Marnie chances to get back on her side, when she fight Mauvier, Mauvier still talks about how he truly believed they were family but in his support with Zelestia he will take this back, though for Zephia they were indeed family because to her, that’s how family is like. Even as they are fighting in chapter 23, Zephia still offers Mauvier to return to her side. Zephia’s attitude definetely was shaped by Sombron’s influence since she became almost like him and guess what ?

Mauvier may be talking about magic powers here, but I am not (especially seeing the allegory there can be within Sombron’s magical power), what I am saying is that Zephia could have been an equal to Sombron’s toxicity in family if it weren’t for 2 different things : one, she is aware that family mean love. 2, she ends up realizing herself how blind she was and love did deliver her (and death too, incidentally).

[yanderefairyangel]

I noticed that a lot of people are surprised that Zephia consider Mauvier as being one of her kid but when you think about it it makes sense.

When it comes to the Hounds, we don't have a father right ? In fact, it's echoed with the Wings, when Greg ask Zely "who's the dad' since she told him she view him, Maddie and Mauvier as her kids.

It's the same for Zephia. Even though she wants to have a family, she never, ever longed for romantic love nor a husband.

Why ? Well, think about what she wants. What she wants is to have someone who will love her, but her and her only, without sharing that love with anyone else, a love directed at her only. That's something created by her terrible loneliness after she lost her family in her rampage. And that's where Sombron comes in. She is lonely and wants to be loved, even if she feels like she doesn't deserves it and that no one will offer her what she wants because of what she did to her own family. And then Sombron tells her the only way to have that is to make a child.

He explain how blood is what owes her this child's love and ultimate devotion and paints her a picture of how his own children owes him everything, making her envious. But Zephia simply wants to have a child after that. Not a husband.

That's why she goes after Sombron and him only. She knew Sombron will never want to become part of this child's life. He doesn't care about his own kids and only uses them as tool. However, if he gives her a child once his goal is fufilled, not only is the child safe from being mistreated by Sombron, but he will leave her this kid and she will be the only thing in this kid's life. No father, just her. This child's mother, right here under her complete control, forced to love no one but her. She will have this love without having to share it with a "husband", " a "father". She will be alone the one who have the control, who is a position of power.

Her relationship with her fellows Hounds reflect that since she doesn't consider either Griss nor Mauvier to be "the father". It doesn't exist. She doesn't want any. She wants to monopolize her "children"s' affection and therefore, a "father" is an hindrance. She need the Hounds more then they need her but that's because they have nowhere else to go that they stay with her. And this include a dad. She needs to be the only thing in their life and needs to share her "children" with no one else.

Zephia's conception of family rejects the definition of "father" as someone who cares for his children, raising them, loving them. The only thing she need is what Sombron is to his children : a progenitor. And when you think about it it makes sense. She is obsessed with having a child because of what Sombron told her and is persuaded that her child will have a reason to love her only because of their blood link. That's the thing. All the people surrounding Zephia aren't her relatives so to her, nothing bounds them to love her, she thinks they don't have a reason to love her because she doesn't deserves it. But if she has a child, it doesn't matter whether she is worthy of it or not, because of their blood link this child will be forced to love her. That's why she doesn't want a man around her and only need someone to give her a child : if the man who helped her birthed that child isn't around, the whole dedication offered through the blood link will be for her and her only

So yeah, she is even more twisted then I though.

[zappobrien]

❛ you look good with my hands around your throat. ❜ Zephia x Griss

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