#I love them so bad. Why do I always find queer subtext in the oddest places.

[forget-me-not-automaton]

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my bed stimming and flailing around and kicking my legs over how painfully in love my favorite blorbos are,, (It’s one of the most out of pocket ships you’ve ever seen)

[gascon-en-exil]

rank the lachesis archetype

This is going to be inherently less entertaining for everyone involved because, with one exception, all the Lachesis characters are women and as such I have no frame of reference for how they might be in bed. It’s arguably even more awkward for me than something like the Camus or Jagen archetypes because a Lachesis is defined first and foremost by what might be called aspirational incest - how deeply she desires to fuck her brother. Anyway:

Lachesis: The original might be the most audacious, but because she exists against the backdrop of Jugdral where everything is just kind of like that it’s not nearly as scandalous as one might think. I’m totally on board with more recent portrayals playing up her obsession with Eldigan, a star-crossed love undeterred by any number of one-night stands with surprise pregnancies and/or an unsatisfying and probably sexless relationship with Finn wherein they bonded over the dicks of dead men they’d never get (again). She’s not!French, her promoted class is hilariously OP, and she does her messy best to be a mother to her children even though she’s definitely not ready for it or in a situation conducive to competent parenting. 9/10, not perfect but her successors would be hard-pressed to ever surpass her or her monumental legacy of incest.

Nanna: Lachesis Gen 2, literally. Codified the valkyrie as the class most strongly associated with this archetype as well as diversified their incestuous portfolio via her two predestined pairings: with her first cousin (and son of Eldigan) Ares, and with Leif who was raised alongside her as a brother. FE5 gives the nod to the latter and Leif/Nanna does indeed make more thematic sense in the context of the unification of Thracia, but I’m docking her a point since her more canon-endorsed love interest isn’t biologically related to her and because I like Diarmuid better can he be gay in the remakes please?. 7/10.

Clarine: Meh. Haughty and obnoxious without much to recommend her unless you like characters with that sort of personality, and now that we’ve moved on from Jugdral actual incest and for the most part pseudo-incest just isn’t in the cards anymore. To her credit she doesn’t go for either Perceval or Elffin even though both of them seem like they’d be ideal husband material for her. Instead, she appears to follow Lachesis’s lead and go slumming for men noticeably beneath her when she can’t get brotherly dick. 4/10, could be helped out by a remake with FE6 being as comparatively thin on characterization as it is.

Priscilla: As with many older Western fans she was my first exposure to the archetype, and it’s the oddest thing to me that she’s garnered something of a mild hatedom. I find her inoffensive for the most part; she may attempt to come between one of the GBA era’s seminal M/M pairings but it’s not like she succeeds, and there’s a certain satisfying verisimilitude to all but one of her pairings ending badly on account of her boyfriends’ lower social statuses. Plus, a healer and strong offensive caster on a pony is always fun - and she’s the best of those from the GBA games, beating out Clarine’s bad MAG, L’Arachel’s bad availability, and Cecilia and Selena’s...everything, really. Does FE8′s meta still favor mage knight!Lute? She could be a contender I guess. 6/10, I really don’t get why she’s so disliked.

Mist: An odd case of a Lachesis who belongs to the archetype purely on a meta level, one of Tellius’s numerous examples of taking a bunch of series staples and jumbling them all up for fascinating results. In Mist’s case this jumbling takes the form of one of the many relationship fake-outs between the two games. FE9 appears to favor her cutesy prepubescent connection with Rolf, only for the sequel to pair her up with Rolf’s big brother Boyd instead. Now how does this fit the Lachesis archetype? Well, Mist’s problem is that her actual brother is gay (or some kind of not straight where he’d not much be interested in plowing his little sister, really not the point here), so she transfers all that illicit sisterly affection onto a friend of her brother who’s similarly thick in more ways than one. 3/10, not a bad character, but she’s a strange Lachesis to discuss as such and each game screws her over as a unit in a different way that makes it very hard to appreciate her as the lone valkyrie in Tellius’s roster.

Leo: The token male Lachesis, awkwardly enamored of his busty big sister. It’s a shame that his incest subtext (well, that incest subtext - he’s still totally down for banging his adoptive sister because Avatar) was largely buried in the localization, but to be fair I don’t think it would have mattered that much when the guy’s got a bunch of other stuff going on. His male harem of retainers who do a very poor job of convincing anyone of their collective heterosexuality, for example, or his drama queen tendencies contrasted against those times when it feels like he possesses the lone brain cell of the Nohrian royals. He’s not even in FE14′s unisex valkyrie equivalent class by default, although it is in his secondary class set and it gets a lot of love anyway between his Gothic lolita little sister and his gender nonconforming son. And did I mention his weird thing with tomatoes? Like I said Leo has a lot going on; being one of the millions of men in-universe and out who fap to Camilla barely even registers. 5/10, a novel concept but he’s so much more than a Lachesis. Also, it barely exists in localization.

Clair: Not a proto-Lachesis or anything of the sort in FE2, more of a very mild Catria toward Alm. The remake presented us with Faye as one of the most disturbing takes on the Catria archetype, and Clair got a fresh new design and personality most strongly reminiscent of Clarine instead. FE15′s Clair does offer up one or two interesting new takes on Lachesis, mostly in how self-aware it all is and how she one-ups every woman on this list crushing on a guy with gay subtext by existing against the backdrop of the hotbed of homoerotic longing that is the Deliverance. She and Fernand out each other’s attraction to Clive, and even once he deserts them to find a man who understands him she’s still stuck in line behind Mathilda and Clive’s loyal, fawning subordinates (and Python). It’s up for debate who comes out worse in the end. Sure, Fernand gets betrayed and killed by his rebound, but at least he gets to die in Clive’s arms. Clair marries Gray, which continues in the Lachesis tradition of massively lowered standards. 6/10, a lot less annoying than Clarine and heavily embedded in some prime queer content, but on her own she’s just a bit above average as a unit, as a character overall, and as a brother lover specifically.

Three Houses unfortunately lacks a Lachesis, unless Wave 4 surprises everyone by tossing one in somewhere. If I had to squint very hard and pick one I’d say that Flayn comes closest to the archetype, as no fewer than three of her romantic support lines (Byleth, Ferdinand, Linhardt) invoke the specter of incest though it’s usually Crest-derived rather than standard biology. I wouldn’t call her a true Lachesis, but perhaps like the game’s nod to the Christmas knight archetype it’s meant to be a more understated thing.