#idk if anyone has noticed my tags all being skills but :sobs: Selena bow knight means so much to me im so normal

[cutestrival]

How Selena’s classes mirror her character development (meta)

I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile, ever since I found out that Selena’s canon class in FE Fates is Bow Knight instead of Hero! Hero has always been the natural promotion branch of the Mercenary class. In FE8 however, the sole playable mercenary, Gerik gets new access to choose between it and the bow knight (or Ranger as it’s called in this entry). This quirk is pretty much ignored until Awakening, when branching class promotions return; but, even in Awakening, most units’ canon classes are treated as their natural promotion. For the purpose of this meta, I’ll be referring to Selena as Severa for her Awakening appearance/relevance, and Selena for details tied to Fates.

You might be confused at how a unit that always starts in her base class can have a canon promoted class. This judgment is due to the DLC chapters from Awakening and Fates, that both feature every Awakening gen 2 unit and every Fates retainer with promotions, respectively. The FE13 Gen 2 units appear as NPCs, and the FE14 retainers appear as map-specific playable units. Additionally, in Fire Emblem Cipher, a unique set of cards for Odin, Laslow, and Selena where the characters are shown alongside their Awakening appearances, bear the same promoted classes as those set in the FE14 DLC, further cementing the idea of these classes being “canon” to their incarnations in FE14 specifically.

Furthermore, Selena’s pretty unique in having access at base, regardless of her father or player input, to three different class sets, resulting in 7 different classes across FE13 and FE14: - Mercenary (Hero, Bow Knight) - Pegasus Knight (Falco Knight, Dark Flier, Kinshi Knight) - Dark Mage (Sorcerer, Dark Knight) [Though, this won’t be relevant for this meta.]

Anyway, this is relevant because of course not only is Severa of Awakening, but she is actually one of two child characters to receive the same starting class. In this case, it’s Inigo of Laslow fame. As per the Future Past DLC xenologues, Severa and Inigo were also given the exact same promotion: hero. So in this case, it’s clear that Severa’s promoted class was intended to be identical to Inigo. It could also have been chosen due to Severa’s paralogue chapter being tied to her drive to save a local villager from serving a bandit, as she begrudgingly becomes a hero in name. (However, it fits Inigo’s paralogue a lot better, since he goes out of his way to defend an entire village from bandits, though for the prospect of a date.) In Fates, the two appear again as mercenaries, and show up as playable units in the Beach Brawl DLC map. Every retainer from both Hoshido and Nohr (excluding Corrin’s) is playable in promoted class form, so we can clearly see both Laslow and Selena’s promoted classes: Hero and Bow Knight respectively. 

I used to think this was a strange decision, though most likely an arbitrary distinction, but it got me thinking: using a bow is a pretty relevant weapon choice for the daughter of a pegasus knight. Her exclusionary bias towards the mercenary class line goes relatively unexplored in Awakening, but it can be discerned that the disdain was mostly in association with her mother. As a child, Severa wanted nothing more than her mother’s affection, but remembers being repeatedly and consistently ignored due to her mother’s duties to the Shepherds. When Cordelia is eventually killed in the future timeline, Severa blames her absence on her obsession with Chrom, and her mother’s image, once revered, becomes an object of hatred. Having been not just a prodigy but a respected officer of Ylisse, Severa could come to grow jealous, bitter and angry at any comparison of her mother to herself. The reverence to which Cordelia was treated even postmortem continued to fuel Severa’s flames to the point of complete detachment, which is somewhat what her paralogue dialogue with Cordelia is supposed to evoke. (Though, just like every Gen 2 unit, she’s an optimist at heart.) Despite this, she does admit that Cordelia was an extremely attentive mother, revealing that perhaps most of her attitude towards her pre-death was more likely due to the feelings of frustration and isolation after the fact.  

Also being a soldier, it would make sense that Severa should resume her mother’s role, learning to fly pegasi herself. But unlike Kjelle, who never got the chance to learn, Severa specifically refused. In their support, she claims it was all due to being unable to live up to her mother’s image, but she admits later that these feelings were definitely exacerbated by grief and abandonment after Cordelia’s death. All this to say, there’s an explanation given in-game (or logically extrapolated from) that shows her commitment to being apart from her mother as best she can.

So, back to her classes. By becoming a mercenary (and hero), Severa remains a foot-locked class. Her two learned weapons in the hero class, swords and axes, cannot be learned by either Dark Fliers or Falco Knights, the two pegasus knight promotions. (Since Cordelia is a Gen 1 unit, she was not assigned a canon class in any Awakening DLC.) Even if she should become a bow knight, bows aren’t usable by those classes either. The only similarity the classes share, if any, is starting with a range 1 physical weapon, swords and lances respectively. Weapon usage-wise, this is the only strong similarity that Severa has with her mother.

In Fates, several changes were made not just to the classes’ promotions, but also to their skills. Pegasus Knights, now called Sky Knights, can be promoted into the Kinshi Knight class instead of dark flier. Instead of learning Armsthrift at Lvl.1 and Patience at Lvl.10, the mercenary class now learns Good Fortune and Strong Riposte. 

These changes are significant in bridging the gap between the two extremely different class sets. Just like the Lvl. 10 sky knight skill (both Relief in FE13, and Camaraderie in FE14), Good Fortune gives a small HP recovery effect. Sharing a specific effect is quite a coincidence, and lends itself well to Selena’s altered characterization in Fates.

Taking place some time after Awakening, ambiguously indicative of time post-Grima and amount of time spent in Fatesland, Selena’s grown to accept her mother’s point of view. Though still bitter at times towards her upbringing, she’s no longer frustrated with living within Cordelia’s shadow, perhaps in large part due to no one of Fates knowing her. (It’s for this reasoning that I portray Selena as enjoying her life in Nohr far better than with her friends and family of Ylisse.) Regardless, she’s taken a new similarity from her mother’s classes at the same time as she’s begun accepting her position as her daughter. There’s no more contempt hidden behind her actions, and she’s much less prickly overall to the Fates cast. 

The other significant change to the classes is of course Selena’s assignment to bow knight. I was confused about this at first, because archery seems so far removed from her conception as an infantry melee class to contrast Cordelia. The actual answer could lie in differentiating Laslow and Selena within the context of the game’s retainers, as once again they are the only two units to share a class among them, but that’s boring so I’m ignoring it. Instead, it’s far more interesting to look at the fact that Selena’s chosen a class that is effective against fliers. She’s grown, she’s matured, she no longer harbors her resentment to Cordelia, it’s true, but even still, wielding bows feels like a flashing sign saying, “Hey, don’t think we’re close just because I’ve forgiven you!” Selena’s tsundere tendencies are still kept up in Fates, where though as mentioned before she is overall less mean, she’s still got a temper, and she’s still susceptible to her emotions bubbling into pointed words. Her arrows are still pointed, and can still tear through her mother’s wings or image at the slightest opportunity. Even still, she continues to wield a sword on horseback, keeping her initial weapon choice ever still in a back pocket. Every promoted class maintains their weapon from their base class, but keeping her sword even while trying something new in the bow, it’s almost as if she’s keeping the part of her that set off on the path of the sword and shunned the path of the skies. Finally, finding herself on a mount after coming from a foot-locked base class could also be an indication of admitting that her reasons for contempt were not all rational; she accepts her own misguided emotions enough to admit that maybe horseback riding is pretty useful, or that she likes it, or whatever, though she’s not ready to move on to flying. For these reasons, the choice of bow knight has become an important part of my characterization of Selena.

In Fates, Gen 1 units only have access to one heart seal class set, instead of 2 like in Awakening. Laslow, Odin, and Selena are given their first class sets from FE13, with ninja replacing the thief class line for Laslow, Selena getting sky knight in place of pegasus knight, and Odin simply getting his base class of myrmidon back as the samurai class line. In Conquest specifically, by and large one of the trio’s greatest attributes in the complex pool of A+/S support class changing is their access to these classes, which are all Hoshidan classes having extremely low accessibility. It makes sense that these classes were chosen, and in my mind I do view it as a coincidence that these classes are all now Hoshidan, but it is interesting to note that they stand apart for these unique class set access. It’s small, but it is fun to point at Selena specifically being known for her mother’s class in this game where she’s tried her best to class change as far away as possible. 

As Selena’s changed as a person between Awakening and Fates, she’s subtly given changes in her characterization and interaction that suit her new, different self. It’s a person whose life she’s much happier to live, and though she still finds herself occasionallly homesick and wanting, she’s become content with her life in Nohr, in a far different way than she could be living in any proximity of her mother or her mother’s impact. So too do her classes indicate this, with the initial choice of the foot-locked mercenary and hero classes eventually being succeeded by the mounted bow knight class, as if understanding that she cannot keep hating forever. Her time away from Ylisse gives her an impression of enjoying herself far more than just with material pleasures (though, those aren’t forgotten), and she’s accepted her place in the world; and so, bow knight class is the epitome of her self-acceptance and growth.