#annotated timeline

780: Leif is crowned King of New Thracia with Nanna as his queen.

And so, twenty-three years after he set out on a light-hearted rescue mission alongside Quan and Ethlyn, Finn sees the realization of their, and his, dream. Every missed meal and desperate flight out of town, every broken relationship and burning village actually led to the thing he was trying to do. He won. And now Thracia belongs to the children. His children.

How does Finn respond to victory? Well, he's a bit strange about it, actually. He does not become a general. He doesn't take a post advising King Leif. He doesn't offer to train any apprentices. He just up and leaves the kingdom that he's dedicated every waking moment of his adult life to creating.

What.

780-783: The Lost Years.

Finn apparently wanders the Yied desert. He may be trying to find closure on the loss of Quan and Ethlyn, find evidence of Raquesis, or both. Presumably he comes home empty-handed rather than bringing home a live Raquesis or repatriating anyone's remains because then his whereabouts and actions wouldn't be much of a mystery. Plenty of Fire Emblem characters up and vanish without a trace after their part in the war; but Finn’s actions are doubly odd in that we neither know precisely why he left nor what calls him home.

78???:

Game canon closes with Finn "showing his face again" after the vanishing act. The reaction of everyone else to said vanishing act is left unrecorded. But Shouzou Kaga did have an idea of what Finn would be doing afterward-- an idea that, apparently, was part of Kaga's overall grand plan for the character.

…[Finn] had a part waiting for him, asking how the people living in this era got caught up in the tides of history. Perhaps, some ten years later, he’s an old man leaving behind a history of how the old days were. Maybe you’d call them war records, or perhaps he’d be a historical storyteller.

So he writes, and perhaps this is the payoff of all the little clues-- the knack for perception noticed by his teachers, the silence he kept while Dorias and August argued it out, the mixture of open reverence for Quan's dream and apparent backhanded swipes at Quan's reckless actions that Finn displays for Leif's benefit. He was watching, and waiting, and processing, and holding it all in until he was ready to tell the whole story for everyone's benefit. Or maybe it’s just a happy accident that some of the little bits of this constantly revised stream of Fire Emblem canon do align in the end.

Ten years after the war, Finn would be about forty-six, maybe forty-seven-- that's Gwen Stefani age to us, but by Jugdrali standards that's apparently old. Then again, he's been through a lot. One hell of a lot.

And this is where we can leave him, more than thirty years after he trotted into destiny somewhere between Chalphy and Jungby. Three thousand years later, young knights in a foreign land remember his name and a lance said to be his prized weapon is somehow still in use among them. Not bad for the kid whose classmates didn't much care for him.

Note on "canon" ages: FE5's official website gives Finn's age as 34 circa Year 776 and then goes to say the ages it gives aren't exact. Whatever, IS. You gave it, I'm using it.

Part I: Early Days & Sigurd's War

742: Finn is born into one of the pre-eminent noble families of Leonster

The Oosawa manga gives him a different backstory as a commoner plucked out of the gutter by Quan. It matters that gameverse!Finn is a noble and not a common boy made good; in FE5, the noble class of Northern Thracia is singled out as a pack of greedy bastards. Maybe Finn's parents weren't like that, but he comes from a class that is part of the problem in Thracia's overall socio-economic picture.

(This is my first of two references to the manga adaptations.)

???: Finn's parents both die and he is sent to Leonster Castle.

We know from Treasure he was orphaned at an young age, but we don't know how young-- six? Nine? Eleven? Did his parents leave him any estates or fortune, or was he a younger child who got nothing? Or were his parents bankrupt and the estates dissolved like House Cornwell in FE7? He seems to have become a ward of the Crown, but it's unclear to what direct degree King Calf and Queen Alfiona may've been involved in his care. It might've been a more hands-off sort of institutional life at the castle than a cozy domestic one, the sort of upbringing that values quiet and obedient children who are seldom seen and rarely heard.

Also, Finn is devout, with a reverence for Leonster's own Crusader Nova whom he calls the "earth goddess." Treasure mentions his piety in both his Gen1 and Gen2 profiles, so it's a core part of his character.

Mid 750s: Finn is training with other apprentices at Leonster Castle.

He is not terribly popular and has only one friend, Glade, but his talents-- specifically his perceptive/tactical abilities-- are noticed by his instructors and by Crown Prince Quan. He seems to be the kind of child who ingratiates themselves to adults far better than they get on with their peers.

The other manga to cover Gen1 of FE4, the Fujimori adaptation, paints Finn as an unlikely soldier because of extreme physical fragility, someone who took on a task he wasn't suited for through sheer persistence. The persistence-- or stubbornness-- is another core trait of Finn's throughout various forms of canon even if that particular bit of backstory is unique to the manga.

757: Finn accompanies Quan and Crown Princess Ethlyn on their journey to meet Lord Sigurd in his defense of Jungby, which soon takes them into Verdane.

Finn already occupies a spot in Quan's affections; their opening snippet of dialogue indicates Finn is comfortable correcting his lord and lady-- politely, yes, but without any apology purely for speaking up like you might expect for a mere servant. Quan starts paying Finn special attention during the Verdane excursion, praising him as the most promising apprentice in his cohort. Finn for whatever reason doesn't hit it off with Sigurd's apprentice Oifey (still not good at the 'making friends' thing?) but does meet some pretty ladies he can "hit it off" with. We only see him talking to Quan, though.

758: As the conflict expands from Verdane into southern Agustria, Quan continues to mentor Finn, presenting him with the splendid "Lance of the Hero" aka Brave Lance, which becomes his personal weapon and is indelibly associated with him. (Geoffrey from the Tellius games is a call-back, at least as far as the lance goes.)

During this campaign Finn meets Princess Raquesis, younger sister of Quan's friend King Eldigan of Nordion. She is, at that time, much enamored of her brother.

The first conflict in Agustria resolves with a year-long occupation before hostilities break out again. Finn has the opportunity during this time to promote from Lance Knight to Duke Knight and to become lovers with one of the eligible ladies in Sigurd's army. Finn has three "predestined" romances with noble ladies, none of which feature any actual dialogue, and two of which appear to be more like one-night stands that produce children Finn doesn't even know about until long years after. The third option, with Raquesis of Nordion, entails an essay in itself but we won't cover all its nuances here.

759: King Eldigan comes to grief and Sigurd's army flee to Silesse, where they live as exiles for a time. Quan and Ethlyn return to Leonster, promising Sigurd they'll collect reinforcements and return to support him. Finn leaves with them, and he has a brief scene with Sigurd that arguably shows his increased confidence since the outset of the war, as he's giving the commander something of a pep talk and expressing faith that Sigurd's name will be cleared of false charges of treason.

Well, he's not wrong, at least not on a grand scale of time.

If Finn has taken a lover, he has no parting words for her. Just saying.