(i swear this is a ffxiv post. just give it a bit.)
so, for those who didn't spend several years of their life absolutely obsessed with the Fire Emblem series, there's a recurring character archetype that appears in almost every game, despite most of the games taking place in different worlds with completely different casts of characters: an avaricious, red-ponytailed, red-dressed, chin-touching merchant named Anna.
The key thing to know is that these are all completely different women, not just the same woman wearing different outfits. In fact, they exist in different universes entirely!
This wouldn't necessarily require an explanation, since Annas tend to be side characters at best, but the series started offering one anyway, in the Annas' own words: they're "sisters." It's a family made up solely of very similar-looking women who, inexplicably, exist across time and space.
It isn't a lie, either! This image from the most recent game's end credits confirms it:
That's the last three Annas, all in the same place at the same time! You can tell by their outfits! (The tiny Anna's plot in this game is about her not having contact with her family, so her being reunited with them as her ending is pretty heartwarming.)
Anyway. This, plus the presence of an Anna in the main cast of the gacha game Heroes, which is explicitly about traveling to the various universes of the series, heavily implies the Anna family has some kind of ability to travel between universes. It'd explain this, too:
This is an Anna who appears in Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, an SMT crossover game which takes place in Tokyo, thus the name. So if there can be an Anna running a secret shop on a fantasy continent with dragons as well as an Anna who works at a convenience store in Tokyo, I think it's probably fairly safe to say they have some ability to travel between universes.
The Anna mold of being pale, having red hair, and wearing red isn't entirely inflexible either. You can see that the Anna from TMS♯FE wears blue, and these Annas also break the mold in similar ways:
Anyway, all that said, getting to the FFXIV part of this post, here's a very minor character in the Firmament who's involved in Ehll Tou's Custom Deliveries quests:
And here's some of her dialogue:
Now... obviously she doesn't have red hair or a ponytail, and her skin is darker than most Annas', but she is avaricious, and she does wear red.
The other point against the idea of this woman being an Anna as opposed to just being named Anna is that she works for Rowena, and Annas typically don't like being subservient to anyone, even other Annas. But maybe she's a few generations down the line from an Anna who fell out of the Outrealms directly into Etheirys and had to make a living somehow.
Here's where it comes to my own personal motivations, by the way: When my Fire Emblem obsession was in full swing, I utilized a few gay mods and a lot of headcanoning to create THIS, in 3 parts because in 1 part it's really low-res:
This is what I like to call the "family bush." It's a somewhat obsessive chart of my personal canon for FE:Awakening, FE:Fates, three different FE:Three Houses runs, FE:Engage, FE:Heroes, and also Baldur's Gate 3 (don't ask [i'm kidding, obviously i want you to ask]).
The colorful backgrounds indicate different universes, in case you were wondering. See if you can find the woman who's from Burbank, California! I swear it makes sense in context!!!
Anyway, I'm thinking of creating a relative for Melin, either a relative of her birth family (so probably a Garlean of the Celsus family) or of her adopted family (so probably a Duskwight) and canonizing that they're dating this woman so I can connect Melin to this stupid chart. That's my whole motivation for connecting this random woman named Anna to a completely different franchise. I've been expanding this really silly chart for several years now, and anytime there's even the slightest inkling that I might be able to connect something to it, I jump at the chance. It's a funny gag! I wish I knew where the original file was, it'd make it way easier to edit...
Anyway, thanks for reading this ramble and a half. I love the Anna lore dearly, and whenever I see a character named Anna my ears perk up, even if they obviously have nothing to do with it. Is this character being named Anna a deliberate reference to Fire Emblem? Ehh... uhh... probably? Maybe? It wouldn't exactly be out of the question for a Japanese game dev to be familiar with Fire Emblem and decide to name a merchant Anna as a reference, but it isn't like Anna's a particularly uncommon name, so...
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