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gascon-en-exil · 5 years

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Sailing, i.e. Building, the Good Ship Diarmuid/Tristan: A Surprisingly Plausible Jugdral Crack Pairing

Link to Part I

Part II

Because Miletos Needs Love Too

After weathering Arion and Thracia’s elite wyvern squadrons claiming Perlukos as a forward outpost into Miletos is a walk in the park for Seliph’s forces, and now they prepare to break through the Loptyrian ranks to reach their destiny in Grannvale. Many among them lament the desolation of Miletos’s world-famous markets, and it’s all they can do to use their rare moments of free time to peruse the stalls of the few towns left intact by the ravages of the Empire. It’s around this time that the army, composed like all those in Fire Emblem primarily of adventurous adolescents newly exploring their libidos under some of the most unorthodox circumstances imaginable, finds many of its members concerning themselves for the first time with life after the war and with whom they might share that life. Nanna can’t help but boast a bit to her brother that Prince Leif has vowed to take her shopping in Miletos after the fighting is over, and when Diarmuid shares this news with Tristan the two of them playfully toast the new king and queen of Thracia and joke about fitting wedding gifts. One conversation topic leads into another, and soon Diarmuid asks Tristan if he’s been thinking of courting any of the ladies in their army. Tristan, still thrown off by his accidental confession to Sir Finn, replies that he’s had little time to think of girls except for on occasion the well-being of his sister, and he turns the question around. Perhaps at one time in his younger days, Diarmuid says, he’d imagined himself settling down with a sweet, gentle girl like Lana, or a humble and devout village girl like Muirne, but these days all he wants to focus on is the war in front of him - and the welcome company of his family and friends.

Sensing his opportunity, Tristan complains that it would be completely unfair to them if they were the only ones who didn’t get to take in the local sights on their campaign just because neither of them has a sweetheart, and he suggests that the two of them do so together. And so Diarmuid and Tristan end up on a date that neither of them quite acknowledges as such, on which Tristan sacrifices most of his recent arena winnings in an attempt to prove that he is capable of (as he thinks of it) wooing a prince. Diarmuid may not have the genuinely regal tastes of his sister or cousin, but he can’t pass up a snappy new jacket or a flowing blue scarf that, he says, reminds him of the color of Tristan’s rigorously polished armor. Diarmuid laughs that the knightly look isn’t for him, but he’ll leave that life to his good friend who is already such a handsome member of Nordion’s finest. Both of them privately admit that they are flirting with each other, and to Tristan it seems that though Diarmuid is nothing like Prince Ares or what Lord Quan must have been to Sir Finn he is nevertheless a great nobleman indeed.

Several weeks later, after Arvis has met his end and the army is settling into Chalphy castle for the final push of the war, Tristan returns to his room one evening to discover a small and very weathered book slipped under his door. He nearly chokes when he opens it to find it filled with stories of impassioned romances between men, complete with illustrations that leave very little to the imagination. The previous owner had taken the trouble to scribble notes here and there in the margins, all in homage to a single unnamed man: little observations on his excellent demeanor and carriage; praise for his considerable generosity; haunting and amateurishly poetic reminiscences on the touch of his fingers, the taste of his lips, the firmness of his grip in the heat of passion; and even a few simple sketches imitating those in the book that, Tristan believes, must surely have involved some artistic liberties.

Tristan gets very little sleep that night, particularly when he comes to some extensively-amended passages on the recreational uses of weapon oil. As he is finally nodding off near dawn, utterly spent several times over, he wonders if the owner of this book would like it back…but concludes that he’d never have the courage to ask.

The Last Holy War…and Then the One After That

The road to Belhalla is long and bloody, and Tristan and Diarmuid are content to allow the bearers of the Crusaders’ divine weapons to form the vanguard against the forces of their traitorous peers. Jeanne tells her brother that Prince Leif instructed her in no uncertain terms to avoid the thick of battle, and Tristan can’t help but think that Prince Ares or even Diarmuid will command the same of him. Diarmuid however is more pragmatic, suggesting that they ride into battle together against some of the Empire’s softer targets. Each of them thinks himself selfish for agreeing to this scheme when others are throwing themselves against the likes of Freege’s Goddess of Thunder and the horrifying Deadlords - to say nothing of Prince Julius - but neither objects if it means they get to greet each other for one more morning. In any event the quasi-divine pageant of Naga and Loptous reaches its inevitable violent end, and the Scion of Light is left to claim his rightful place on the throne of Grannvale.

But the war is not truly over for some in their party, the Agustrians among them. In the game’s equivalent of the Thabes Labyrinth the battlefields of Agustria lie open again as postgame (or DLC) content, and the members of House Nordion and their allies fight to reclaim their land from the remnant of the Empire’s forces and the other unsavory elements that have overrun Agustria in the past two decades (including the pirates of Orgahill, who presumably did something to warrant assaulting during that time). Ares grows fully into his role as leader and king, Leif reaffirms his bond with Nanna and repays her for her efforts in building a united Thracia, the dancers Lene and Laylea find their place in the world - maybe one of them soon even to be a queen - in the same land where another dancer a generation earlier followed a hookup into destiny, Tristan and Jeanne return to their homeland at long last and pay tribute to the sacrifices of their departed parents, and possibly - and most incredulously of all - Diarmuid fulfills his promise to find his mother, and Lachesis is at long last reunited with the two children she once chose to leave behind. (Neither Diarmuid nor Nanna asks who fathered them, and Lachesis doesn’t offer.)

One morning, a few days after the Empire’s last holdouts surrender and the pirates and bandits that have been ravaging the countryside have all been driven back into their hideouts, Diarmuid and Tristan meet on a small overlook near Nordion castle. Diarmuid explains that the newly-coronated King Ares will be establishing his court at the capital, and with his sister returning to Thracia and a crown of her own he plans to ask his cousin to be granted stewardship of their ancestral home. He wants to make of it a quiet retreat for him and his mother, to restore it to its former glory and from there govern the affairs of their family’s former holdings. Tristan boasts that this is a perfect plan, that having seen it now as a man Agustria is without question truly the most beautiful land in Jugdral - and Nordion surely its loveliest province. Once the moment of much-belated patriotism passes though his mood turns glum, and he asks Diarmuid if the king will encourage him to take a wife. Diarmuid, laughing and blushing a little, replies that he almost certainly will not. There is no great need for the kingdom, after all, and Diarmuid has no need for a wife when he has the finest Cross Knight in all the realm at his side. Neither of them knows or especially cares who initiates the kiss, but it’s real and undeniable and exactly what they need to call this familiar new place home.

They benefit greatly from Tristan’s impromptu education in the art of manly seduction, although Diarmuid immediately regrets offering his mother the chambers adjacent to his own when he eats breakfast with her the next morning and she can barely contain her amusement - doubly so when he struggles to sit without visible discomfort.

(Tristan wakes one day with Diarmuid warm in his arms and idly thinks to show him the book, but curiously it is now nowhere to be found. This incident occurs not long after the Leonster party - with Nanna riding proudly among them - had left for home.)

The Continent Afterward

The game delivers its epilogue in a throwback to the original, detailing the fates of the playable cast in relation to Jugdral’s nations. It relates that Tristan became a founding member of the reformed order of the Cross Knights but that he declined a highly-valued position in the king’s personal guard to serve as the head of Prince Diarmuid’s retinue at Nordion. Delicately - or perhaps because a certain knight of Leonster is the one doing the recording - history says no more of the charming prince and his knight.

…And then there’s some kind of post-epilogue scene that retroactively explains some crucial bit of worldbuilding that Three Houses will inevitably forget about, how Fódlan is or is adjacent to Jugdral and how holy blood got distilled into crests or something. That’s just how (good) FE remakes roll.

#Fire Emblem #FE4 #Fire Emblem Jugdral #Genealogy of the Holy War #Diarmuid/Tristan

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