Ooh, another Monday Fire Emblem Engage official Twitter post. Are they starting to settle on a schedule?
It seems we’re moving onto Alear’s early allies, from the verdant Kingdom of Firene, starting with Prince Alfred.
Alfred (VA: Ryōhei Kimura) is the first prince of the Firenese Kingdom, a brisk young man who battles alongside the Divine Dragon. He’s a kind, disciplined and flower-loving pursuer of happiness.
If you’re observant, you may have seen “Firenese” mentioned in Citrinne’s costume description. From the name, I guessed it could be the name of the fire/rocky nation to the north-west. However, turns out I was off the mark. Instead, it appears to be the name of the south-west nation instead.
In the background of the text box, you can see the insignia of Firene, which somewhat resembles a love heart with three five-petal flowers. There’s another place we’ve seen a five-petal flower (or a five-sided star), which is on the flags at the indoor battle during sunset. These flags are also blue, like Alfred’s profile box, suggesting the battle occurs within Firenese territory.
Next, a battle scene:
This seemingly takes place in a new verdant kingdom map. You can tell from the mini-map at the bottom-right. This map features a row of hedges around the north-east section.
For a change, the player is using a slightly rotated camera view, kind of like an isometric tactics RPG. It also reminds me a lot of Path of Radiance, haha.
From what I can tell, the party is generally unchanged from the previous verdant kingdom map: I spot Chloé, Alear (engaged with Marth), Cramme or Vander? (engaged with Sigurd), Alfred, Céline (engaged with Celica), Etie and I think Framme along the bottom. Presumably the roster size is 7, like the previous map.
Alfred is also Level 7, which is higher than Alear’s 4 from the previous map. While Alfred is moving, whenever he’s within 3 spaces of Céline, her skill triggers.
Along the top are 6 NPC units, which I’m guessing are the objective of this map. Some of them can fight with Gauntlets and Staves, but a few are also unarmed. So civilians?
As the player selects an enemy to attack, we see Alfred’s inventory. He has an Iron Lance, Javelin, Vulnerary and Poleax. During the battle forecast, Alfred can trigger a Break. Strangely, his foe has 100% critical rate, but I have a feeling this is rigged.
Finally, we have Alfred’s introduction:
First of all, I believe there’s a UI error. Whenever Alfred speaks, Alear appears in the dialogue box instead. This is probably a very easily made mistake, by inputting the incorrect character ID. Actually, this is the first time we’ve seen the portraits in the dialogue box itself.
Otherwise, there’s a fair amount to unpack. Firstly, Alfred apparently visits the sleeping Alear on occasions. This suggests his kingdom has a very friendly relationship with the Divine Dragon. Hmm, did the other nations also visit Alear in the past?
This also explains how we move from the Land of Lythos to the verdant kingdom maps. In the Vander posts, it can be inferred that Lythos was attacked by the Corrupted after Alear awakens. From there, it’s likely that Alfred and company visit, then offer to take Alear to their kingdom.
Alongside Alfred, we see two characters: Etie and a brown-haired male who’s likely the axe wielder in the first verdant kingdom map, next to Etie. I’m wondering: are these two Alfred’s retainers? We know that Citrinne is a retainer of Prince Alcryst.
Are they retreading FE Fates where each royal has 2 retainers or so? In fact, if we consider Vander, Framme and Cramme as Alear’s retainers, it mirrors Gunther, Felicia and Flora. …Oops, sorry Jakob fans, almost forgot about him. In which case, uh, maybe replace Flora with Jakob (although Felicia and Flora are twins like Framme and Cramme).
Let’s pretend each royal has 2 retainers. In which case, I wonder if Chloé and Louis are Céline’s retainers? In the first verdant kingdom map, they seem to be stuck near the centre of the map (in the above screenshot, you can see two lance users near the top-right). Perhaps Céline is en route to rendezvousing with her retainers? That said, I feel like Chloé would be an Elusian, unless she defected earlier.
Extending this hypothesis, let’s look back at the rocky kingdom defense map from the reveal trailer.
Here, we see 4 unknown characters, including the red-haired prince(?). One of the characters, to the far right, appears to be Citrinne. In which case, it’s highly likely one of the other characters is Alcryst, her liege (redhead maybe?). Then, just a guess, one (or both?) of the remaining characters could be another retainer of Alcryst.
