#swordjanne

Click here for the list of ships by popularity. 

A note on terminology:

I will be using terms “sister ship” and “related ship” instead of “rival ship”, because I don’t like to see ships from the perspective of rivalry. Many people are perfectly capable of multi-shipping the same character in multiple ships.

I will often refer to Rayllum, Janay and Ruthari and “the trio” or “the top trio”.

I will often refer to Rayllum, Janay, Ruthari, Harrai, Laidrin and Anneha as “the canon six”.

If you aren’t familiar with any of the ship names, please refer to the ship list.

I have to say, I was very surprised by the results. I knew Rayllum, Janaya and Ruthari are the top three most popular ships, but I didn’t know there was such a huge difference between. If the difference doesn’t seem big looking at the table, check out this graph instead 

(click here for enlarged version)

Rayllum is the absolute biggest ship, followed by Janaya, Ruthari and Harrai, all of which tower over the rest of the ships. Not only that, but Harrai being so high up on the list is also surprising.

The fans of Rayllum, Janaya or Ruthari are also very likely to like all three. The big trio is part of what many fans refer to as the “Canon Six” (Rayllum, Janaya, Ruthari, Harrai, Laidrin and Anneha) and I noticed that fans of any of those ships generally like the other five as well. I will discuss this further in a future post.

I would like to focus on the Top 11 ships first

At first, I found the ones colored yellow surprising because of how little content fans produce of them compare to some ships that scored lower on popularity, with an exception of Anneha - being the first canon lesbian couple they got a lot of tribute posts in the beginning of the show.  Sabos and Swordjanne are the most surprising of the bunch, I’d say.

The reason these ships score so high is most likely because they involve characters generally liked by the fandom and they don’t “interfere” with the main trio. I also wonder if they’d score this high if I hadn’t included them in my initial list. Would people care enough to include them on their own? None of these ships were particularly popular in the “favorite ship” category. Corpeli was selected by 6 people, Harrai and Laidrin - by 3 people, Sabos - by 1, Anneha and Swordjanne - by none.

Here, the fault is entirely my own, since my question was very general: “Which of these ships do you ship?” That opens a whole new discussion on what it means to ship something:

is this a ship that doesn’t bother you?

do you like that ship, enjoy seeing content of it?

do you actively seek out content of this ship?

do you produce your own content for it?

is this a ship you love?

All of these are valid reasons to say you “ship” something, I think. Although it does skew my results a bit, it still shows that the show is full of ships that are generally liked by many fans.

What about Viravos and Gremaya?

These two happen to be the most popular non-canon ships with active fans. Although Viravos does not clash with any of the ships in the Canon Six, it features characters, which are generally liked more by older fans of the show. Gremaya, on the other hand, is a sister ship to Janaya, which is the only Canon Six related ship to get this high.

Think about other shows you know. Think about the most popular ships. Very often, there is some sort of “love triangle” on top, isn’t there? In Naruto, there was Naruto x Sasuke vs Sasuke x Sakura. In Bleach there was Ichigo x Rukia vs Ichigo x Renji, in Avatar there was the infamous war between Zuko x Katara and Katara x Aang. You know what I mean, right? But here, the top eight ships just run side-by-side and only the ninth ship is related to one of the main ones.

The closest sister ship to Rayllum (rank #1) is at #16.

The closest sister ship to Janaya (rank #2) is at #9.

The closest sister ship to Ruthari (rank #3) is at #25.

The closest sister ship to Harrai (rank #4) is at #12.

Both Viravos and Harrai are sister ships to Virrow.

So what conclusions can we draw here? To be honest - I’m not sure. Here are some questions I’ve been pondering on:

What does this result say about Rayllum, Janaya, Ruthari and Harrai? Does it mean these ships are somehow “stronger” or more “developed” than the ships in other shows?

What influence does being canon have on the popularity of these ships? For instance, Runaan x Soren was fairly popular before we learned of Ethari’s existence and his his relationship to Runaan.

Why is Janaya’s sister ship so much closer in rank than Rayllum or Ruthari’s? Is it because Amaya has a strong bond with more characters her age than Raylla, Callum, Runaan or Ethari?

The last one made me think about the interpersonal relationships of various characters. I will make a post in a future comparing different sister ships and discussing character interactions on-screen.

It’s because they have a cute lil budding rmoance in the end credits. I think I missed one but here are two that I could find.