#which probably works with the whole princess/witch dichotomy

[anonymous-gambito]

Saw a comic where the Prince's bride falls in love with the Little Mermaid and decides to run away with her and realized that's kinda what happens in rgu

[argetcross]

Here a Witch, There a Witch

Witchhood, Celica’s Act 5 arc, and Treatment of Women in Echoes (aka several thousand words of musings. Coherency not guaranteed. Spoilers of course.)

I find the narrative choice of turning Celica into a witch who is then saved by the intervention of Mother Mila a really weirdly interesting one? 

First off, I skimmed the Gaiden script and this doesn't happen. This is probably the weakest part of the whole story for me in Echoes, and, in Gaiden, it's even more confusing.

Jedah: Alm's trapped in Dragon Mountain. You must want to save him.           If that's so, then follow after me.           If you offer yourselves as sacrifices to Lord Doma, Alm's path shall           also open up once more!

Witchhood, the soul of a Branded child, Duma needing both Alm and Celica, all of that isn't spoken about, so it's not certain what exactly Jedah is doing all that time. So it's literally a game device to force you onto a linear Alm path. At the very least, turning Celica into a witch makes a bit more sense if you assume that there's some equal power exchange, which Jedah hints at. Celica's soul, her Brand, her magic, all are things valued by Duma, namely strength. Taking both Celica and Alm’s soul would restore Duma to a sanity and power he’s been lacking for ages. Okay, sure.

The idea of sacrificing your humanity for a love one is supposed to foil to Rinea and Berkut (and to a smaller extent, Jedah and his daughters, probably).  The idea of witchhood is so interesting because you get many different 'witches' in the game. You have those that chose the contract of their own accord (Nuibaba) and kind of exists outside of Jedah's faction. You have the witch sisters, which Sonya says it was Jedah's sacrifice to Duma that turned them to witches, but Jedah counters her, saying they offered up their souls willingly. You have Delthea who for all intents and purposes gets witch like powers when controlled by Tartarah. Finally you have Celica who, even after having her soul offered up to Duma unwillingly, is controlled but also is mentally present enough to tell Alm to kill her.

The idea of men sacrificing women for power is one that happens a lot in this game. The villains, Fernand, Berkut, Jedah, all destroy their relationships with women in their lives and women who reject notably megalomaniac men survive (Sonya, Mathilda). The masculine and feminine dichotomy of Duma and Mila is pretty slanted towards the Father who destroys and the Mother who gives life. This is echoed in the paternal relationships in Echoes (Rudolf + Alm, Lima + Celica) all being quite toxic ones while the maternal ones (Liprica + Celica is the most significant, Mother Mila being redeemed is another example) having positive connotations.

(Side Note: Given the eternal sleep of Duma, Sonya, no matter what her ending suggests, could not have become a witch by offering up her soul to Duma. The ending therefore, one could argue, is simply trying to demonstrate the futility of retrieving souls already sold, and Sonya could have easily taken up residence in Nuibaba's manor with ill rumors abound.)

(Second side note: The time when Alm is saved by Celica's pendant, notably that comes from Celica's mother as one of the gifts. Was it meant to protect Celica against the influence of witches? Lady Liprica did not want Celica to stand in front of Mila - did she fear Celica to lose her soul to not a god but a goddess? Was Celica's giving nature what allowed Alm to succeed even when he wasn't prepared for Duma's true might, possibly crippling her own protection in the self-sacrificial nature she had? The last one is almost certainly a yes.)

You also have quite a bit of 'liberation' through the protagonist's part (Delthea, Mathilda, Celica) in contrast to the hordes of witches that you can't save due to their lost souls to Duma. So why can you save who you can save?

Berkut and Rinea are easily understood. Berkut volunteered himself up to Duma, Rinea, being sacrificed but also unwilling to leave Berkut's side, is unable to be redeemed. Simple enough.

Delthea is controlled not by Duma but by Tartarah and notably against her will. Upon killing Tartarah, she's freed - so attempts to create witches can be thwarted through destroying the arcanist controller. Also- the soul didn't actually get to Duma in this case. Nuibaba did not actually sell her soul to Duma. Her contract was with Medusa and she's referred to as an arcanist despite her witch class.

Marla and Hestia - it's hard to tell if you can believe either Sonya or Jedah's story as the total truth. They were almost certainly coerced on some level, but Hestia mentions that she should have lived her life freely like Sonya. Again, a scrap of her own personality and some hint at a decision she made? It's hard to tell, but it's likely we couldn't save them because again, there was something in their process of becoming a witch they couldn't recover from. Did they make that decision out of their own lust for power? It’s likely.

Now to Celica, the strangest of the potential witches, not only does she get her soul returned to her- it's through stabbing her with the Kingsfang/the Falchion. She gets her soul returned to her despite Jedah being convinced her soul is already devoured. How on earth does Mila have Celica’s soul if Duma has taken it?

Well game logic suggests that by killing Celica, Duma loses her soul. You see this with Berkut and Rinea, in death, they are freed from Duma’s control. Suddenly, Hestia’s last words make sense. Duma’s not all-powerful. 

In the same vein, Mila finally gets over her fear of selling out her brother. Of note, Duma never used the Kingsfang on Mila and Mila never took an advantage to kill her brother. They fought bitterly but they also, like overgrown siblings, never wanted to kill each other. They were, in some ways, too proud and far more concerned with their own interests rather than those of humans’. 

So maybe from this viewpoint, it makes sense how Celica’s self-sacrifice spurs Mila into finally releasing her seal on Falchion and entrusting her brother’s fate to someone who was able to do something she could never bring herself to do - trust in her opposite and sacrifice each other for the greater good. 

Of note, in Gaiden, instead of the witch dialogue, you get this:

Cellica:   It won't work. Judah possesses some mysterious power that's           obstructing all our attacks.           Besides, countless Bigles keep coming to entangle us. We can't even           move anymore.           We're probably already done for...           Sorry, Alm.           I wasn't able to do anything for you after all.           I've had a strange premonition...           A feeling that something terrible will happen to you...           That's why I came this far on a quest to rescue Mila...           That's why, until then, I didn't want you to fight.           Because of that... I acted so cold. I'm sorry... The truth is, I've           always...

This is after the crypt. I mean logically, this is because the game wants you to play as Alm as the hero and Celica now steps into a role similar to Zelda in TP - both a maiden to be saved as well as the wise queenly character to aid the hero. What's interesting is Echoes actually plays up Celica's self-sacrificial nature and her inherent importance, because of the part about giving up her soul. Gaiden's Celica actually makes less sense - she has no plan, she is just feeling defeated and like she failed Alm. Even if Echoes Celica makes a bad decision, she's takes action that makes a lot of sense for Celica at this moment - that is, a Celica abandoned by her goddess and used to bearing a lot of survivor guilt about her existence as princess.

For comparison, the Echoes dialogue goes:

Celica: Back on the island, I had a dream. A dream where something terrible happened to you. So I decided to petition Mila for the strength to protect you. Yet for all my travels, you’ve still faced terrible danger. And you were even forced to end your own father’s life. …I’d seen it all. I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t change a thing. I failed to keep you safe, Alm! Alm: That’s not… Celica, none of what’s happened is your fault. You’re not to blame for any of it! Celica: But I won’t lose you… I won’t let any of you die! I don’t want you to fight Duma. I don’t want anyone to be hurt or killed. That’s my only desire in this life.

Why did Celica believe Jedah? A lot of people kind of groaned when she bargained with Jedah, but I think, stepping back for a moment, looking at how Celica views the gods is important. Even if she doesn't agree with Duma, she still reveres him. Her ending dialogue with Duma is pretty much that. She recognizes what he did for Valentia but seeks to free him from his madness. However, at the beginning, she believed if the gods were lost, the land would become barren and humankind would surely die. She's not at Duma tower to kill gods, she's at Duma tower to retrieve a god and restate the natural order of Valentia. Celica, who was looking for Mila in order to circumvent the sufferings and the destruction of humanity, of course would turn herself into the problem. It's not that she trusted Jedah, but I think Celica at this point had been coping with a vast body of knowledge and pressure about the gods and their effect on the world that Alm never really considered. She makes a hard decision in absence of her own faith and confidence, in her eyes, a choice that would protect everyone.

The problem is Rudolf, in moving against the Duma Faithful, has already broken the Accord and set in motion events that means Celica's mission is a failure. The gods HAVE forsaken her. Mila notably doesn't come to her senses until the two branded children are about to kill each other in front of her. (Honestly, I think the Fire Emblem team has a small fetish for stabbing your loved ones, especially under possession. Awakening flashbacks anyone?)

Celica upon seeing Mila in stone, has a crisis of faith essentially stalls her entire arc. Is this weak writing? Yeah, it really is. Celica’s arc lacks its personal climax. Alm has his Rigelian heritage and Berkut on top of this. Celica’s arc gets absorbed into Alm’s. Celica needed something else to restore her faith in herself, especially after her mental surrender. 

Is the answer faith in loved ones? Partially. That part is already in the game though.

Celica: I do. It’s as Mila said… We’ve had the strength to live and fight for our world this whole time. I lost faith in that somewhere along the way… But right now, it seems the most obvious thing in the world. I trust in mankind like I trust in you, Alm. Absolutely, and without hesitation.

The issue I think that would resolve this best would be actually in how they handle Mila. What would have strengthened Celica's final decision would be Mila reaching out to Celica rather than Alm, acknowledging how it was Celica that uncovered the mystery of where she was, came all the way to save her with her own, very human powers. That her journey to Mila gave her a greater wisdom and understanding of the relationships between gods and men that Alm couldn’t have known. 

Isn't that a kind of strength even the gods couldn't predict?