Heroes: When in the timeline do they come from?

[Lightchao42]

Heroes lets us summon our favorite characters from every Fire Emblem game and that's great, isn't it? But as I am prone to overthinking things, there's something I've been wondering about...

When in time do our heroes come from? Granted, we don't know the exact technicalities of how summoned heroes work, but maybe we can infer something from everyone's dialogue. We can also assume that everyone comes from during the events of, or shortly after, their own game.

Let's use Hector as an example. He discusses his axe Armads and how he once met its wielder, and he also mentions that Uther is the current marquess when he's summoned. From this, we can infer that Hector comes from between Chapter 30 of his story (when he obtains Armads and meets Durban) and the final chapter (when he learns that Uther is dead). Though I haven't finished FE7 so I might be mistaken.

But most other characters don't give such clear hints, and some cases can get rather confusing. Eliwood is based on eyes aside his appearance in Blazing Blade, but unlike Hector he acknowledges the existence of his Binding Blade era child, even in the World of Blazing where Roy shouldn't have been born yet! Maybe he just met Roy in Zenith offscreen at some point. And the Fates characters can't go into much detail for obvious reasons, though Azura goes out of her way to avoid mentioning Valla so she, at least, probably doesn't come from after the events of Revelation.

Lachesis and Eldigan are noted as being from two different points in Genealogy's timeline. Eldigan is alive (obviously), and mentions that he was "prepared to face death" before he was summoned, so he was either preparing to face Sigurd's army in Chapter 3 or he was returning to Chagall after talking to Lachesis in the same chapter. But Lachesis talks about him in the past tense and makes it clear that he's dead where she came from.

So now that I've given some examples, what are your thoughts? Just try not to question why Robin and Corrin are the only characters with differently gendered versions.

[Ryu Yuki]

From what I can tell, each and every character comes from a random point in time that the developers arbitrarily decided is convenient for their purposes. It's pretty clear by this point that even different characters from the same 'world' are unlikely to come from the exact same point in time, although like you mentioned, more often than not they are from somewhere during or close to the events of their respective games. 

Then there's Spring Chrom/Lucina/Camilla/Xander, who all come from god knows where in some parallel bunny dimension where Ylisse and the Kingdom of Nohr are neighbours or something.

[King Marth 64]

9 minutes ago, Ryu Yuki said:

Then there's Spring Chrom/Lucina/Camilla/Xander, who all come from god knows where in some parallel bunny dimension where Ylisse and the Kingdom of Nohr are neighbours or something.

I did saw Corrin asked Chrom in Fire Emblem Fates in the Before Awakening DLC that he did asked Chrom if he ever heard of Nohr and Hoshido since Corrin doesn't seem to find those two countries in the map since Chrom does have good knowledge with the past Fire Emblem characters such as Arvis, Ike and the Goddess Ashera, Marth, and so much more and Chrom did told Corrin that did recalled that he heard that the kingdom of Nohr and Hoshido were mythological kingdoms that did shocked Corrin believing what he had heard from Chrom. But, I don't see that was mentioned in the Spring Festival map about Ylisse and the continent that have Nohr and Hoshido are neighbors.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

The easy one is Abel

 

Abel is clearly the one from after Shadow Dragon. Otherwise his dialogue wont be happy as all hell

[Jave]

Sanaki is definitely post-RD since she acknowledges Micaiah as being her sister. 

[Vaximillian]

7 minutes ago, JSND said:

The easy one is Abel

Abel is clearly the one from after Shadow Dragon. Otherwise his dialogue wont be happy as all hell

Not that easy, I think. Doesn't he mention betraying Marth and abandoning his country?

[maybe]

one interesting one I think is ninian

she doesn't mention or acknowledge anything from her game, which I think might've been intentional

since in heroes she has her dragonstone whereas in blazing sword she lost it before the beginning of the game

1 minute ago, Vaximillian said:

Not that easy, I think. Doesn't he mention betraying Marth and abandoning his country?

yeah he does actually

[Ryu Yuki]

9 minutes ago, unique said:

one interesting one I think is ninian

she doesn't mention or acknowledge anything from her game, which I think might've been intentional

since in heroes she has her dragonstone whereas in blazing sword she lost it before the beginning of the game

yeah he does actually

Ninian does mention she needs to return to Eliwood during the Blazing Shadows paralogue, even though she has a dragonstone there. She's also generally far less withdrawn than her pre-story Blazing Sword counterpart, who barely spoke at all and whose life revolved around Nils more or less. The fact that she regularly uses her dragonstone here, doesn't say anything about Nils at all, and acts far more social indicates it might be a post-story version of her that chose to stay behind.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Ryu Yuki

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 minute ago, Ryu Yuki said:

Ninian does mention she needs to return to Eliwood in her Paralogue, even though she has a Dragonstone there. She's also generally far less withdrawn than her pre-story Blazing Sword counterpart, who barely spoke at all and whose life revolved around Nils more or less. The fact that she regularly uses her dragonstone here, doesn't say anything about Nils at all, and acts far more social indicates it might be a post-story version of her that chose to stay behind.

Funny how Ninian never brings up Eliwood in her regular dialogue though... s t o l e n

[Ryu Yuki]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Funny how Ninian never brings up Eliwood in her regular dialogue though... s t o l e n

To be honest, I think that's just IS being wary about the Lyn/Eliwood shippers, since Lyn is the unanimous most popular female character in the franchise.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

1 minute ago, Ryu Yuki said:

To be honest, I think that's just IS being wary about the Lyn/Eliwood shippers, since Lyn is the unanimous most popular female character in the franchise.

With how many Lyn x Hector hints they dropped in the their own game, I don't think they'd care that much. Hector's also really popular.

Edited April 1, 2017 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[BANRYU]

Y'all are thinking way too hard about this, it's highly unlikely that the writers were giving it this much thought when they were making the game and there's probably no point in such conjecture.

Count me in! =D

I do think it definitely varies from character to character, as a lot of people have said; Abel's is actually really confusing since his is clearly post-betrayal but presumably before Est abandons him or whatever lol.

Eliwood's is probably a bit of a paradox being as he looks young, but he already talks about Roy lol. Clearly he's post-scripted promotion in Blazing Sword given as he's mounted, but he doesn't look at an advanced enough age to know the things he's talking about with Roy, unless we're assuming that Heroes-Eliwood is seeing summoned-Roy and seeing how his son grows from the point in the timeline he's from. 

There's also the matter of the units' individual strength; COULD be entirely meaningless and purely correlating to gameplay, but I can't help but wonder if star count correlates to their relative level of strength in their respective games (possibly indicating progress through the story?). 

[bethany81707]

Just now, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

With how many Lyn x Hector hints they dropped in the their own game, I don't think they'd care that much.

I think the difference is Eliwood/Ninian has much more in-story support. The same can be said about Lyn/Hector.

 

As for my personal idea... well, call me crazy, but I'm going to place Florina as pre-Lyn's story.

[maybe]

9 minutes ago, Ryu Yuki said:

Ninian does mention she needs to return to Eliwood in her Paralogue, even though she has a Dragonstone there. She's also generally far less withdrawn than her pre-story Blazing Sword counterpart, who barely spoke at all and whose life revolved around Nils more or less. The fact that she regularly uses her dragonstone here, doesn't say anything about Nils at all, and acts far more social indicates it might be a post-story version of her that chose to stay behind.

huh

well I guess in this world she just got her stone back from nergal after they killed him

7 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

Funny how Ninian never brings up Eliwood in her regular dialogue though... s t o l e n

yeah I thought this was kinda weird

like outside of her dialogue in the paralogue, ninian doesn't mention anything or anyone from her game

at first I thought that was to imply that it was before the game but I guess that's not the case so ??????

Edited April 1, 2017 by unique

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

5 minutes ago, phineas81707 said:

I think the difference is Eliwood/Ninian has much more in-story support. The same can be said about Lyn/Hector.

 

As for my personal idea... well, call me crazy, but I'm going to place Florina as pre-Lyn's story.

Yeah, that's the other side of the coin.

 

I'm pretty sure all of the Archanea characters were pulled right in the middle of Mystery of the Emblem. Abel had already betrayed Marth but is still with Est. I guess Camus and Michalis come from the first game instead.

Edited April 1, 2017 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[Lightchao42]

As for the Spring thing, I assume that those special versions were already summoned to Zenith and they just happened to return to the World of Awakening and dressed up for the spring festivities, during which Kiran ends up summoning them again. Maybe Veronica gave Xander the week off?

Ninian seems less somber and more open about her draconic heritage, so I assume, as Ryu Yuki said, that she comes from after Blazing Blade and that she stayed with Eliwood. Nowadays IS tends to avoid canon pairings but Eliwood/Ninian seems most logical and Hector/Lyn is also logical and you can't tell me otherwise.

3 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I'm pretty sure all of the Archanea characters were pulled right in the middle of Mystery of the Emblem. Abel had already betrayed Marth but is still with Est. I guess Camus and Michalis come from the first game instead.

I agree with this, but Michalis also seems to be from Mystery because he recalls Minerva "killing" him previously.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Lightchao42

[Kaden]

Matthew's probably during or before the events of Blazing Sword. If you talk to him when he's in the castle, he mentions Leila and for those who've played the game, we know what happens to her. It's going to be awkward if he and Jaffar ever meet since Jaffar is probably post-Blazing Sword considering his interactions with Nino. Now, if only we can have uncle Legault in the game.

I think Raven is both before and after; Paralogue 3-1 Raven is seething with rage and hatred against Ostia which would put him before or during Blazing Sword while summonable Raven seems to be post-Blazing Sword since he doesn't show that anger or directly mention it -- he does let it slip, but it seems like he's treating it as a "this is just something in my past I don't want to talk about".

And I think Gaius might be during or post-Awakening. He talks about gaining some standards after joining the Shepherds.

I never played Binding Blade, but is Bartre during its events? I've read that he's looking for his daughter Fir and one of the castle dialogue you get from him is him screaming Fir's name to see if she's here.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Kaden

[eclipse]

It seems that Awakening's DLC is semi-canon, if we go by Stahl's comment regarding his hair and vegetables.  Minerva is sometime during FE12, since she mentions events that have already happened in the game.  Michalis is WEIRD.  He wants to be addressed as king of Macedon (FE11), yet he mentions his defeat (post-FE11).

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, eclipse said:

It seems that Awakening's DLC is semi-canon, if we go by Stahl's comment regarding his hair and vegetables.  Minerva is sometime during FE12, since she mentions events that have already happened in the game.  Michalis is WEIRD.  He wants to be addressed as king of Macedon (FE11), yet he mentions his defeat (post-FE11).

Maybe it's just Michalis' pride talking.

[maybe]

2 minutes ago, Kaden said:

Matthew's probably during or before the events of Blazing Sword. If you talk to him when he's in the castle, he mentions Leila and for those who've played the game, we know what happens to her. 

while he does mention her, the line in particular is

"The way this strange world works… I wonder… Could I ever be reunited with my dear Leila again?"

so actually you can take that as the opposite

Edited April 1, 2017 by unique

[Ryu Yuki]

2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

It seems that Awakening's DLC is semi-canon, if we go by Stahl's comment regarding his hair and vegetables.  Minerva is sometime during FE12, since she mentions events that have already happened in the game.  Michalis is WEIRD.  He wants to be addressed as king of Macedon (FE11), yet he mentions his defeat (post-FE11).

I don't exactly know what happened in those games, but doesn't he quite literally say he was brought back from the dead here? I found that kind of weird, did that actually happen in FE11 or something?

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

It seems that Awakening's DLC is semi-canon, if we go by Stahl's comment regarding his hair and vegetables.  Minerva is sometime during FE12, since she mentions events that have already happened in the game.  Michalis is WEIRD.  He wants to be addressed as king of Macedon (FE11), yet he mentions his defeat (post-FE11).

FE12 Michalis isnt exactly redeeming himself though. One of his dialogue had him openly admits after the war he WILL challenge Minerva for the claim to the throne again

And then the trainwreck of an ending happened

So it could just be FE12 version

Edited April 1, 2017 by JSND

[maybe]

Just now, Ryu Yuki said:

I don't exactly know what happened in those games, but doesn't he quite literally say he was brought back from the dead here? I found that kind of weird, did that actually happen in FE11 or something?

i don't think he literally means it when he says "I died once"

someone (canonically minerva I suppose) did beat the shit out of him to the point that he shouldn't have survived, but due to *certain circumstances*, he managed to live

[eclipse]

Just now, Ryu Yuki said:

I don't exactly know what happened in those games, but doesn't he quite literally say he was brought back from the dead here? I found that kind of weird, did that actually happen in FE11 or something?

A very quick summary of FE 1/11:

Spoiler

1. Michalis shanks daddy and becomes King of Macedon.
2. Marth gets Maria out of jail, and Minerva joins up
3. Michalis is defeated in Chapter 22
4. Minerva didn't have the heart to kill her brother, and Maria dragged him off to the side and brought him back from the brink of death.
5. Michalis re-appears in Chapter 21 of FE 3/12 with Starlight.
5a. In FE12, Michalis can also be recruited, and he is just as much of a jerk as he is in Heroes.
5b. In FE3, it's implied that he drops dead shortly afterwards, because he'd fought a mage beforehand, and we all know how well he takes to magic attacks.
6. Regardless, Maria is freed again (which is why Michalis helps Marth out).

 

[bethany81707]

I'm going to put Eirika and Ephraim as both post-FE8, but Ephraim more so. 

Ephraim's confession quote includes: "I mean that strength isn’t always enough to protect us. Yes, it helps force a foe to submit. But strength can also blind one to others’ feelings. That is exactly how I once lost a good friend."

One of Eirika's lines when poked: "My brother and I, and our friend, Lyon… We once had grand ideas about the future."

Eirika's is less certain, but I think she'd actually be more inclined to speak in past tense about Lyon after he died. Also, I think some description jabs with her gullibility again, which is Chapter 18.