#thank you for this question soji! rly hit the proverbial lore nerve w this one...

[soliegis]

oak :   who would your muse consider the strongest person they know

  ☀   //    botanical headcanons.  /  @sennokao

prior to the latter half of fe8, the answer would’ve been instantaneous: his father, or — runner-up barring that — general duessel of grado. both people whose strength he looked up to and whose reputation as authoritative and peerless warriors he wanted to emulate.

after that, the answer becomes much more muddied, and today’s ephraim would think a good several seconds before probably asking back what manner of strength you’re asking about.

physically, his answer probably wouldn’t have changed much, though his perspective on his father has now shifted fairly substantially to include respect for much more than his legacy as king and warrior. he’s started to think a lot more deeply about other kinds of strength, though, after his version of it cost him just about everything he claimed to want to be stronger for. like the kind it takes to understand and touch the hearts of others, the kind it takes to heal, and the kind it takes to know what matters, and who, and when.

in c17, fomortiis!lyon accuses ephraim of having always thought of lyon as kind, gentle, and weak, which ephraim denies ( sort of; he doesn’t really, directly ), but which is probably true and just something he doesn’t want to admit, especially in front of eirika *. the kind of strength lyon had, which ephraim had always had a subconscious appreciation for — that much is not a lie when he says it — but which had also always been overshadowed in his estimation by his own visions of what it meant to be strong, is something he’s tried hard to understand in the time since, too.

i think a large part of his reason for wanting to personally be the one to go to grado and help in the aftermath of the grado quake — alongside wanting to do so to honor lyon’s wishes — was to search for and understand that kind of strength lyon had: the kind that would push a prince out of such love for country and people to be willing to sacrifice anything for them, which is something ephraim isn’t sure he can even imagine himself doing **. not that he wants to do what lyon did, but there’s something profound in the spirit of it, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with the execution.

this is getting long-winded and it’s because strength for ephraim is inextricably tied into his understanding of leadership and kingship, which is Only His Entire Character Arc ( imo ). and in broadening his horizons of what that looks like during the war of stones through witnessing lyon, eirika, innes, l’arachel, seth, duessel, gerik, syrene, so many others, he no longer has as clear-cut an answer for this question as he did when he was younger.

so... his answer now would probably be that he thinks each person has their own kind of strength, some that are more obvious than others, but all that can be learned from. and he’d probably add that he hopes one day he can come into the kind of strength he hopes for himself too, something that embodies all of those qualities in equal measure.

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* though ephraim denies it in this moment, i think this is a big underlying factor in his subconscious that leads up to the final confrontation where he asks lyon if it’s his fault that lyon has changed so much, and the continuation of that guilt post-fe8 even after lyon reassures him that’s not the case. i don’t usually pull from feh lines all that much because, since i don’t play, i miss out on a lot there LOL but ephraim there pointing to his lack of empathy as the key factor for what cost him his friend in the end is i think an indication that the demon king’s words got to him more than he’d like to admit.

**  i know this is a generous interpretation of lyon’s motivations, but it’s how i characterize ephraim as interpreting them, or wanting to interpret them. ( also bren slap me if i’ve got my head real far up my own ass here )