Intelligent Systems and Nintendo made me very happy last week with the announcement of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. It only made me happier when I realized that the game would also be connected, in some way or other, to Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
It’s a decision that makes sense once you consider the overwhelming popularity of the Three Houses era, so much so that it even has its own spin-off, as well as the pages and pages of world-building and lore established in the two games. With so much to pick through, who wouldn’t want to delve back into that world again?
And it looks like that’s the case, based on the appearance of crests, demonic beasts, and a fella known as The Divine Sovereign who suspiciously looks like a Nabatean – a member of an ancient civilization that can transform into dragons and often have pointed ears and blonde or green hair. But it’s still unclear whether Fortune’s Weave will take place in the past, future, or an alternative mirror universe, much like the dual Alears from Fire Emblem: Engage. (You can never tell with Fire Emblem.)
My gut, however, is telling me that we’ll be heading back to the past, and not just a couple of years before Three Houses starts. Oh, no. I’m thinking at least a millennium, if not more.
One of the first things that’s established in Fortune’s Weave trailer is The Heroic Games, which is known as The Dagsion Heroic Games in Japanese. Dagsion sounds an awful lot like Dagda, a land in Three Houses where a few characters, like Shamir, are from. We spent the majority of our time in Fodlan in the previous Three Houses games, but there are plenty of other locations (Brigid, Almyra, etc) left to explore. If we’re going to have ties to Three Houses, another country would still let us link to that world while exploring new areas.
Say we are in Dagda, why does it necessarily mean that we’ll be working with a prequel and not a sequel? The main reason is the appearance of Dietrich, a young man who carries a twitching sword with a Crest Stone. Three Houses fans will remember that Crest Stones are made up of the bones of Nabateans. Their enemies, the Agarthans, manipulated a human bandit called Nemesis to sneak inside and destroy the progenitor god, Sothis. Nemesis then went on to slaughter other Nabateans to create more stones and give them to his strongest warriors. This would eventually lead to the War of Heroes, where Seiros (also known as Rhea) fought Nemesis and his warriors and won, before rewriting history to ensure the worship of the Nabateans continued. At the time of Three Houses, Rhea is biding her time to use the protagonist Byleth as a vessel to restore her mother, Sothis, back to life.
With that in mind, if Dietrich has a Crest Stone in his sword, that begs a question: does Fortune’s Weave take place after Sothis’ death? Or was Nemesis not the first person to kill a Nabatean and use their heart, bones and blood to create Hero Relics? If the latter is true, does that mean Dietrich is working with the Agarthans? It’s established that the Nabateans existed across the world and were worshipped by all, even in other countries like Brigid. If that’s the case, if the Divine Sovereign is a Nabatean who lives in another country, would they know that their fellows are being slaughtered?
The kicker here is that we all saw Sothis at the end of the trailer. No longer a young girl, Sothis seems to recognize whoever she’s speaking to and laments about how the years have been long, and how she has been forgotten so soon. It’s hard to tell whether this is Sothis talking to the protagonist or the player, but it throws a spanner into the theory that this could be a prequel, right? Well, no. Sothis was always an adult woman and it is only due to her slow reincarnation in Three Houses that she appears as a young girl who doesn’t remember she is a God at all. In the trailer, Sothis seems far more aware of her status and, more importantly, awake. This is relevant because it may lead to a date where we can pinpoint Fortune’s Weave taking place.
The Agarthans were previously friendly with the Nabateans, but eventually moved away from their teachings. They used the gifts bestowed on them to create weaponry that they would use to eventually turn on the Nabateans and then on each other. Sothis eventually manages to solve this squabble and sends the Agarthans packing. Unfortunately, this uses up all her power and she has no choice but to sleep and recover. The downside is this leaves her vulnerable and she and the other Nabateans, save from Seiros, are then murdered by Nemesis — all eventually leading to the start of Three Houses a millennium later.
Bearing in mind that there seems to be four different lords shown in the Fortune’s Weave trailer, and all are brought together by the promise of a wish being granted by the Divine Sovereign, it wouldn’t surprise me if the game ends up exploring the events that led to Sothis’s long sleep. After all, war is inevitable in this series. The big question is whose side are we on, and which war it is.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, why can’t Fortune’s Weave be a sequel? The answer mostly lies in the fact that Three Houses is a game with four routes. You have Crimson Flower, Azure Moon, Verdant Wind and Silver Snow — all meant to represent the four seasons. While there are similarities between all of them, particularly Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, there are also some very key differences, too. In Crimson Flower, the Church of Seiros is no more. In Azure Moon, things return to business as usual, and so on and so forth. With so many differences, and so many players really attached to their routes and endings, I just don’t see Intelligent Systems going down the path of making this game set in the future. There’s too many different endings to build upon.
It’s easier to keep things in the past. While this may mean loreheads who enjoy Three Houses’ world-building may already know much more than they might want to, there’s a huge chance that there will be enough surprises to keep us on our toes. After all, history is written by the victors. Truth, as argued in Three Houses’ various routes, is easy to conceal.