Electivire likes cake

Heartwarming tearjerker of a Zerith reunion? Zerith fighting together side by side? Possible Zerith syngeries? I’m so pumped because we haven’t really seen these things before (outside of EC stuff) and I just 🥹 🥹 🥹 at the thought, even if they’re only playable for a battle or two.

(Oh so just pure concentrated fluff injected into your veins? Got it)

The best part of your daughter being born (aside from getting to have a daughter with your beloved husband), was the fact that you could finally rest.

After the Plegian war came to an end, the marriage and coronation followed swiftly after. It was just one thing after another. Chrom seemed used to it given his experience as a royal, but for you it was a bit more difficult to adapt to all the expectations of being queen.

But shortly after discovering you were pregnant, many of your newfound duties were relaxed so you could focus on the baby.

And now that she was here, you were currently on the second week of maternity, resting in the royal chambers and cooing over the beautiful little girl in your arms, who was the spitting image of her father.

*Genesis is actively using his entire body weight to restrain Angeal, while Cloud has Zack in a chokehold to keep him from sprinting into the ocean as the hypnotic siren song echoes across the shore*

Sephiroth: I genuinely fail to see why this is an issue. We’re all highly trained operatives, more than ready for warfare. Succumbing to the sirens cannot be that bad.

Genesis: Have you completely lost your mind?? You absolute fool, sirens are historically documented to lure men to the depths to be devoured! It’s a classic metaphor for succumbing to base desires!

Sephiroth: So? A bit of attempted drowning wouldn’t be enough to sway us. Besides, I frequently hear a disembodied, extraterrestrial voice whispering ancient prophecies in my mind, telling me to return to Nibelheim, eliminate Cloud’s mother, use his fragile psyche like a puppet on a string, and burn the village down in a fit of rage to honor my true purpose. This is actually a pleasant alternative. Listen, it has a lovely rhythm.

Genesis: Well, this is entirely different! The sirens use an auditory enchantment that—

Cloud: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY GOING TO IGNORE WHAT HE JUST SAID!?

Wow, two weeks in a row?? I'm on a roll here. The chapter is now up to about 7.000 words and I have at least started the draft for each of its scenes, so we're defintiely getting somewhere! Choosing these passages is always such a struggle in that I want them to have fun hints for what's to come, but I also don't want to show my whole hand. Gotta hold onto some surprises for the chapter itself, ya know? Admittedly this one is mostly self-indulgent scenery descriptions, but hopefully there are a few nuggets of interest to be mined from it as well!

Ylisse’s countryside sprawls outside Robin’s carriage, emerald hills ribboned with gurgling streams. She long ago gave into temptation and lowered the pollen-filmed window pane for a closer look, each breath she takes now sodden with the metallic taste of impending rain. Robin shakes her head. It’s not as if she’s never been to Ylisse before—but it was only the once, and close to the border where the Halidom’s greens are still tinged with the golds of her homeland. What’s more, those memories are as muddy as all her others from before the attack—impressions visible only as if through breath-fogged glass. They cannot hold a candle to the lush moss teeming from the gaps in the stone fences lining the road; or the bursts of bright-capped mushrooms that ring the ancient stumps of fallen trees; each one making her wish ever more desperately that she’d thought to pack her field guide. Needless to say, Ylisse is proving itself a distraction that she cannot afford. They are just a day’s ride from the capital now, and she needs to put what time she has left towards memorizing her notes on the prince—especially if there’s a chance that Gaius’s final report will have as little of substance as those before it. The carriage lurches around a poorly paved bend in the road. Robin throws out an arm to steady Puss’s cage, leaving the papers on the coach desk to fling themselves to the floor. She sighs as she bends to collect them; it's almost as if the Halidom’s roads themselves are protesting her plans. Of course it just happens to be the letter that she grabs first. Robin memorized its contents several dozen passes ago, but one glimpse of Prince Chrom's looping script compels her eyes to re-read it.

It such a classic Chad move, that despite being world champion boxer he chose to ride a train instead of drive a car because he can reduce pollution and save money from gas price.

Happy birthday, Chrom!! And what better way to celebrate than by sharing a preview passage of him pining piteously? ;P

Chrom stifles another yawn and blinks at the off-focus pages of the book spread before him. The last month’s worth of fitful dreams have taken their toll, and he finds himself dozing off mid-day more and more lately. He can't afford to be napping; he’s had a hundred thousand preparations to make since returning to Ylisse. Yet here, in his softly lit office, with rain whispering against the window, it’s hard not to let the steady patter coax him closer to sleep. He blinks again, slower. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to rest his eyes, just for a mo— “Milord!” Chrom’s eyes snap open to find himself pinned by Maribelle’s glare. “I’m sure I needn’t remind you that these lessons were your idea?” she asks sourly. Chrom winces. “I know. I’m sorry, Maribelle. My mind was elsewhere.” “Elsewhere!” she huffs. “I know dozing when I see it. If you truly find my tutelage so dull—” “It’s not that. Really. I just haven’t slept well recently. Not since we returned from Plegia…” he trails off, his mind filling the silence with the scraping of the drawbar on Robin’s bedroom door. The memory of that sound has taunted him every night for more than a month now—a constant reminder that, at some point in the ten years since Chrom unwittingly abandoned her to her fate, Robin became a prisoner in her own home. She’ll have a new home soon, he reminds himself. It’s the only thought that keeps the guilt at bay. Robin will have a new home, and it’s my duty to make it a good one. “Did she ever answer your letter?” Lissa calls from where she’s sprawled on the sofa.

SO. There was a screenshot going around of a reddit thread asking about how Chrom has managed to maintain such lasting popularity as a Fire Emblem husband even 6 years after Awakening came out. Given how beloved he still is another 5+ years later, I could not resist taking the opportunity to talk about just what I think makes him so great and endears him to players.

Character Introduction:

Let’s start out the same way Awakening does—with Chrom’s in-game introduction. This is one of the immediate ways Chrom sets himself apart. The game boots up and before anything else happens, Chrom is there expressing his unshakable faith in the player character. You take down the Bad Guy™ together, he turns and gives you this wide, puppy-ish smile and then you push him out of the way to take the hit from an oncoming spell in his stead. Right away you know this is someone your player character cares about deeply—and clearly that care is returned, because he’s immediately running over to make sure Robin’s alright.

Of course, as we all know, things go south very quickly after that. But as the cinematic plays out, and you proceed to watch yourself stab him in the chest, the *first* thing he does, the very first words out of his mouth are: “this is not your fault”. Chrom has just been completely blind-sided and arguably betrayed by his best friend, possibly his spouse, and his immediate instinct is to absolve Robin of guilt. He is literally more concerned about Robin blaming themselves for what happened than about his own imminent death. That alone tells you so, SO much about the depth of their relationship. It tells you both how deeply Chrom cares and how well Chrom knows Robin too. And not only that, but his final request, the ONE and only thing he asks of Robin before dying is that they will promise him they will escape from this place. In his last moments, his single “selfish” wish is for Robin to assure him that they will do what they can to survive. Chrom’s final request is for Robin to give him the comfort and peace of mind he can only obtain through the assurance that even though he won’t get out of there himself, Robin will. He just wants to be able to die believing they’ll take care of themselves and be alright—and knows them well enough to realize that unless he makes them promise, they likely won’t.

AND THEN. And then!!!! You jump cut to Robin waking up in the field with all the sunshine and Chrom’s smiling down with the softest expression and his ridiculously blue eyes. He lifts Robin up by the hand and pulls them right up to his face (because he has no concept of personal space, apparently) and OUUuuggh.

Those scenes in direct sequence make me so insane. You get Chrom’s life ending with Robin immediately followed by Robin’s life starting anew with Chrom. Chrom’s unwavering faith in them and his eagerness to extend his hand and bridge the gap between them from the moment they meet until his last breath. The warmth and kindness and love that Chrom treats Robin with is communicated so effectively in the first few MINUTES of the game it honestly makes me feel unwell. Showing how profoundly Chrom cares for Robin immediately endears him to the player. And he only gives you more reasons to love him as the game goes on.

Personality:

There can be a tendency in some corners of fandom to simplify Chrom to just being either a generic prince charming type character or a lovable himbo. I’m not here to police how other people enjoy him, but I will say that those characterizations fail to get at some of the aspects of his personality I find most compelling.

Chrom is deceptively nuanced. While there are certainly ways in which he aligns very closely with the standard jrpg protagonist, I suspect that a lot of his enduring popularity is the result of the ways he deviates from it too. He is brave and loyal and cares deeply for his friends, yes. He has profound conviction in his ideals and strives to do the right thing, as is typical for that archetype…but what makes Chrom so lovable is his determination to keep trying to be good in spite of the ways it does not come easily to him.

We see this in the Valm arc, when he’s struggling to reconcile his own beliefs about justice with his sister’s ideals for peace. We hear echoes of it when he talks about the horrors the Ylissean people endured at his father’s hand and how despite that, he has never been able to understand how Emmeryn forgave them for the cruelty they once directed her way. He has so much admiration for his older sister’s ideals despite the fact that peace is not his first instinct. 

When Emmeryn first sacrifices herself, Chrom is consumed with grief and rage, and it takes some time for him to understand why she made the decision she did. “Peace above all else” is just not how he’s programmed to operate…yet he wants it to be. If you count the drama CDs as canon, then that serves as another excellent example as well—where the message of his sister’s sacrifice is so lost on him that his first instinct is to respond to it with violence and prejudice and hatred directed at the very people she sought to reach out to. For a moment there, we see him veer from the person he wants to be towards what we as the player can only assume is the person his father left him afraid that he would become.

And yet he finds his way back. He stumbles, he lashes out, but his love for his friends and fear of losing more of those he holds dear is able to help him course correct.

I love that tug-of-war in him. I love that we get glimpses of the darker paths he could have gone down and that there are tangible consequences for his mistakes. Early in the game, we see Chrom lose control of his temper and how Gangrel and Aversa are able to take advantage of that to officially declare war on Ylisse. Chrom later tells Gangrel that were he alone, he can imagine losing himself in that need for vengeance but reiterates that it’s love that is able to keep him from succumbing to that.

And it’s not only that he’s able to stop himself from being horrible—his losses are the catalyst for him coming into his own as a leader. He’s able to pick himself up and hold himself together to see their troops through the rest of the war. And he manages that despite the fact that in the course of mere days, he lost both his home and his most important person and has been freshly saddled with the duty of ruling an entire country. That’s…a lot. And really goes a long way in demonstrating Chrom’s incredible strength of character and conviction. We get some wonderful moments of vulnerability where he confesses to being riddled with doubts about his own capabilities and worthiness, but in spite of that, he is still determined to try to be the person that Ylisse needs him to be.

All of this leads me right into another wonderful aspect of Chrom’s personality, which is that he is just…so driven by emotion. He feels DEEPLY, and while the narrative definitely uses that as a way to hurt him and force him to grow at times, something that really stands out to me about Chrom is how the story isn’t here to send a message that it’s wrong for him to be that way. Chrom’s big feelings are one of his greatest strengths in addition to his greatest weakness—they’re what saves his life and ultimately Robin’s too, if you go the sacrifice ending route.

And ya know what? I honestly think that’s such a breath of fresh air. I love how much he does NOT embody the emotional disconnectedness that you see pushed a lot of times with stereotypical masculinity. I love that he is the hero, and he's gallant, and very traditionally "manly" in a lot of senses…AND that he's also very emotional and guided by his heart. If you’re playing with f!Robin then you wind up with a really refreshing inversion of gender stereotypes from that: in which Chrom is the emotional decision maker and Robin is the more calculating and logic driven of the two.

Beyond his big heart, I can’t talk about what’s so charming about Chrom’s personality without touching on the ways he embodies a certain level of gap moe as well. Chrom is so stern and serious, as well as quite charismatic when he’s speaking from a place of passion. But on the flip side of that, we get to see him as an absolute bumbling mess when he’s out of his element. He’s easily embarrassed / flustered, self-conscious about his appearance, and often socially awkward where romance is involved. While these traits may seem of minor importance compared to the whole rant above, I think they’re really important for humanizing and rounding him out.

There are lots of other nuances to his characterization that go a long way in fleshing him out too. Despite being a prince, Chrom is blunt and completely unmindful of formalities. That, along with his impulsivity, definitely gets him into trouble sometimes. He’s melodramatic and blisteringly sincere. He’s a little bit clumsy and doesn’t know his own strength. He has a dry sense of humor and can be surprisingly funny. He’s optimistic and trusting—not due to naivete or stupidity but because he has decided that giving people chances and believing the best of them is an important value to him and one that is worth embodying in how he lives his life. 

Lucina’s presence in the story and his immediate and complete acceptance of her is an extremely effective way of demonstrating what an incredible father he is too. Honestly, he just has really wonderful relationships and deep admiration for a lot of the women in his life and that absolutely earns him points in my book (and I suspect in many others’ as well). When you look at all of that together, I don’t think it’s hard to understand why he’s so beloved.

Design:

Slightly less serious note here, but I think it warrants discussion regardless because character design absolutely contributes to player’s feelings about and interpretation of a game’s cast members.

And Chrom is…well, he’s eye candy, honestly. He’s got the nice, exposed arm, the messy blue hair, the completely nonsensical outfit he somehow manages to look handsome in anyway (his questionable sense of fashion is a charm point, okay?). Add in the square jaw and the surprisingly long eyelashes and he’s just. He’s very pretty. Idk what to tell you. Bonus points for the summer scramble cg where he has the most inexplicably flat butt of all time. And I really do believe that some of the oddities of Chrom’s design lend memorability to him and go a long way in setting him apart from other lords in the series with similar design concepts. The insistent asymmetry across many of his outfits, the fact he’s showing a little skin, idk it just WORKS. Chrom is hot, I don’t make the rules.

Relationship with Robin / the Player Character:

Last but not least, I want to talk about Chrom’s relationship with Robin.

I touched on some of this in his character introduction already, but Chrom is just…the biggest Robin stan. If Robin has only one fan then that is Chrom. If Robin has no fans it’s because Chrom is bleeding out on the floor with lightning in his gut. 

He just has such deep respect and admiration for them. He values Robin’s opinion and insight and thinks so highly of them and their ideas, often serving as an enabler in many cases (setting the boats on fire, the volcano, etc.). Chrom’s faith in Robin is SO unshakable that when his daughter tells him that Robin is going to be magically controlled and forced to murder him, his response is, “That won’t happen because Robin and I love each other so much that everything will somehow be okay. No, I will not elaborate.” And ya know what? He was RIGHT. Their bond DOES wind up being so strong that it’s able to change fate. The narrative is quite literally validating his slightly ridiculous insistence that him and Robin just care about each other The Most of Anyone Ever. He is Robin’s biggest advocate from the moment they meet when he defends them from Frederick’s suspicions all the way to the game’s close when he either assures Robin that their life was worth preserving or, as in the case of the sacrifice ending, that he will spend the rest of his own life searching for them until they return.

Honestly the fact that Chrom was willing to potentially risk dooming the whole world to the fell dragon’s awakening 1,000 years down the line just so he doesn’t have to lose his comfort tactician is WILD. For the game’s hero to literally say “we don’t have to defeat this evil for good, the people of the future can figure it out” JUST so he can keep Robin is absolutely unhinged behavior and I love it. I think it’s incredibly humanizing that he’s a little bit selfish about the people who are most important to him…that despite his willingness to sacrifice himself or run headfirst into danger, he draws the line at losing Robin because he’s already lost his most important person once and he’s not going to let it happen again. Chrom and Robin absolutely come across as a little codependent and a lot obsessed with each other and personally I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And then there’s his love confession to Robin. GOd...

I think that’s the most flustered Chrom appears in any content in the entire game…and it’s because he treasures their friendship so deeply that he is petrified about messing it up or saying the wrong thing. I love that he goes into their S support dead set on NOT telling Robin what is going on but the second he realizes that Robin is under the impression he doesn’t care about them or like spending time with them anymore he is so horrified and desperate to correct that line of thinking that he blurts out the full love confession on the spot.

He’s SO earnest throughout the whole thing, but then at the end he hits you with the whole “this is the best day of my life”, and the “You are the wind at my back and the sword at my side. Together, my love, we shall build a peaceful world, just you and me” (thank you Matt Mercer for your services), and the cg image of him staring right at Robin with what are basically heart eyes and. I just. There were no survivors.

That’s not even their only proposal / love confession scene either! The fact that the game gives us an entirely separate alternate proposal that’s more serious in tone is the icing on the cake. How many ships out there can say that they get not one but TWO canon proposals that are both that good? Truly no one is doing it like chrobin.

Closing Remarks:

Got the link via @finalducc