Sigurd of Chalphy, the protagonist of the first half of the game, deconstructs the typical Action Hero archetype of the series' Lords. He's the typical noble hero holding fast to his beliefs, but his optimism and noble nature become a double-edged sword in the grand scheme of things, as his Black-and-White Morality leads him to solve his problems by just defeating his enemies. This gives the corrupt Grannvale nobles the chance to take advantage of him to conquer the entire continent, and his trust in Arvis blinds him to the point he doesn't see the latter's betrayal coming until it's too late, ultimately paying the price with his life.
Arden, an Armor Knight in service to Sigurd, deconstructs the Mighty Glacier unit concept. A lot of his characterization stems from the fact that he's a heavy infantry unit in a game whose design strongly favors cavalry, and his slowness means he can't get to the front lines in time to do anything important and is thus always stuck on castle defense duty. It's reconstructed in Heroes where the battles take place in much closer quarters that play to his strengths a lot better, and he notes in a piece of dialogue that he does a lot better in the Order of Heroes than he normally does.
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: Reinhardt deconstructs the Camus archetype (an Anti-Villain and Noble Top Enforcer) that shows up in most games. Rather than being played as sympathetic due to his tragic adherence to honor and patriotism, Reinhardt's refusal to defect like his sister Olwen is portrayed as moral cowardice and a waste of his potential as the "next coming of Thrud." Unlike Lachesis, who mourns deeply for her "Camus" brother Eldigan, Olwen loses all respect for Reinhardt when he refuses to stand against the Child Hunts and insists on helping his country run itself further into the ground with its corrupt actions.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Elincia deconstructs the idea of a Hidden Backup Princess. In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, she became a rallying point for the people of Crimea when all seems lost for the ruling family, and in the end, she became queen when the war ended. In Radiant Dawn though, the fact she was basically raised in isolation means she isn't quite ready to lead her country, and many people see her as a poor ruler on account of her not initially knowing what to do. Worse, her legitimacy is called into question because she was hidden away and suddenly appeared, with the only people vouching for her seeming shady (despite being good people) and it seeming like she is a mere puppet for them. While those who fought with her in the war believe and support her unquestionably, the common person and many of the influential people in the nation have no faith in her. The result is a minor noble leads a nearly successful revolt against her by merely calling her legitimacy into question, and showing enough charisma and leadership skills to seem more qualified for the position. It isn't until Elincia actually proves herself in fighting back the revolt that people come to think she isn't as weak as she seemed, and she only truly settles the issue when her uncle, the rightful heir, recovers from being Brainwashed and Crazy to abdicate and confirm her legitimacy.
Gangrel deconstructs the "Mad King" archetype made famous by Ashnard. Gangrel may be crazy, but his warmongering and crusade of vengeance against Ylisse has left his country in a poor state, the vast majority of his troops are only loyal out of fear and those who aren't were never loyal to him at all. Because of this, Emmeryn's Heroic Suicide causes his soldiers to desert en-masse, completely derailing his war and leaving him a sitting duck. When found in the Spotpass sidequest, he's basically a depressed loser who has fallen so far from his heights, that Chrom can't even bring himself to want to kill him, because he's become that pathetic.
Excellus deconstructs Smug Snake. Not only is he so obviously slimy that he's The Friend Nobody Likes to his own side, but his boss Walhart knew he was duplicitous all along, but left him alone because he found his antics amusing, and because he knew Excellus was too pathetic to ever threaten him.
Emmeryn, when recruited via Spotpass, deconstructs No One Could Survive That! It turns out she survived her Heroic Suicide off a cliff... with amnesia. And not just Easy Amnesia, but heavily-implied brain damage, to the point where she can barely speak coherently, and trying to think about her past actively hurts. Chrom and Lissa have to contend with, essentially, the return of their sibling in body but not in mind, which is perhaps even more traumatic than her simply dying. Her memories only return if she suffers Permadeath on Classic Mode, otherwise the epilogue states she never fully recovers, but lives a quiet life in a village.
Garon is everything that can go wrong with The Casanova archetype. Like many Casanovas, he was a massive flirt with many women but could never let go of a woman he had relations with and quickly amassed a harem of concubines. These concubines eventually proceeded to kill each other and their children until only a few children remained. The whole situation left him very bitter and cruel, though how much it was truly genuine and how much of it was becoming a puppet of Anankos and simply used as a cover for his behavior change is debatable.
Nyx is this for the Older Than They LookReally 700 Years Old character trope seen with characters like Tiki and Nowi. Nyx is a young-looking girl who is actually much older than she appears and is one of the oldest characters in the cast. However, unlike past examples, Nyx is bitter about still looking like a child and having not aged in years, because she used to age like a normal person, but due to an incident in her past was cursed to remain in the body of a child forever, causing her to shut herself off from others out of shame for both her past and her appearance. She expresses disdain for how she'll never be able to grow up again, and will be seen by everyone as a child despite being old enough in reality to be some of the cast's grandmother, and her supports all struggle with her opening up to people out of shame for her appearance. It takes a lot for her to accept friendship between people, and in order for one to romance her, they essentially have to invoke Just the Way You Are for her to accept them into her life by stressing they love her for who she is, not what she looks like.
Charlotte is this for The Tease, Gold Digger, and The Fake Cutie. Charlotte is a Ms. Fanservice who flirts and dresses scantly as a way to seduce people, and she loves trying to attempt to woo upper-class people, out of a desire for money. Just about all her supports involve her being called out for her fake seduction attempts, such as Xander who points out her already well-known reputation as a sign of her sketchy behavior. Her supports reveal why she acts the way she does; she used to have less traditionally feminine hobbies, leading other kids to bully her for not being "normal". In response, she became cynical and decided to invoke The Tease to get back at people, since from her perspective if nobody cared about who she really was, she might as well fake being what they want. However, her parents also are very poor, so she's desperate to find wealth so she can help her parents, so she hopes to find a rich husband who can help her and her family. All of these make her unhappy because she wants to be herself, but she feels nobody would like her true self, and also needs to find the ideal husband to help her parents, leading her to be stuck in a cycle she cannot escape from. Many of her supports involve her finally opening up and getting people to like her, after a lot of hard work on her part.
Edelgard is an Action Hero lord in the vein of Hector, Ephraim, and Ike gone horribly wrong. Like many such lords in the past, she has no qualms about using military force to get her way. Unlike previous lords, she is actually willing to incite a war to achieve her aims, and her actions turn her into the unquestioned Big Bad of the Azure Moon route and a major antagonist on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes. Byleth is the only thing preventing her from degenerating into a full-blown Tin Tyrant.
Dimitri is a couple of archetypes gone wrong:
The Fire Emblem series tends to base the personalities of most of its lords off of the first lord in the series, Marth — kind, noble, and wise young royals who believe that War Is Hell and cling to optimism and The Power of Friendship in the face of hardship in order to get through with their morality and optimism relatively unshaken. In Three Houses, Dimitri, crown prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, is the closest of the three main characters to this archetype. During the first part of the story, Dimitri fits the Marth mold, being the most moralistic, noble, and chivalrous of the three main lords, while having a strong distaste for killing and war. However, unlike Marth and similar lords, the emotional and mental trauma he experiences before the story beginsnote Namely, witnessing the murder of his father King Lambert, the deaths of several of his close friends, and the resulting massacre that ensued and during the story's events breaks him, turning him into a violent, self-isolating and cynical Knight in Sour Armor in the second part of the story who must be pulled out of his self-destructive behavior by his former teacher and friend, Byleth.
Post-breakdown, Dimitri deconstructs the other common Lord personality type, the Action Hero kind. Unlike Ephraim, Hector, or Ike, his love of battle isn't depicted positively, but as a sign of a dangerously unstable mental state. Pre-timeskip Dimitri is deeply ashamed of this side of himself, and post-timeskip he considers himself irredeemable. And rather than helping win the war like previous Lords, this behaviour only serves to alienate his closest allies and causes him to make terrible tactical decisions, which on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes leads to an Undignified Death at Gronder Field and dooms his kingdom to being overrun by the Empire.
Claude is The Trickster and the least lordly Lord between himself, Edelgard, and Dimitri: he is a Consummate Liar, a Schemer whose true goals are hard to discern, and will be the first one to tell you as such. He had to learn to be sly in order to survive being a Child of Two Worlds between Leicester and Almyra. In truth, however, all of his lying and scheming is for selfless causes: helping the Leicester Alliance, which lacks the raw military might of the Empire and the Kingdom, survive and thrive; and creating a world free of prejudice and hatred where people can get along and are free to believe in what they want. In this respect, he is a Reconstruction of the Lord archetype, being the most unambiguously heroic Lord of Three Houses who uses guile and cunning to win the day, as opposed to violent upheaval of the social order like Edelgard; and who maintains his mental well-being, while Dimitri struggles with, and in some routes even succumbs to, insanity.
Dorothea is not the first character to fall into The Tease and Gold Digger archetypes, but she is one of the most heartwrenching and tragic examples: she was born in poverty, but managed to go from Rags to Riches by using her natural beauty and talent for song and dance to win the favor of a wealthy patron who helped make her a top star at the opera and pay her way through her education. Since then, she has gone on to search for a wealthy spouse to marry, not out of love or even material desire, but out of fear that when her beauty gives way to age, she may find herself back on the streets again. She would like to marry someone for love, but her fear of returning to poverty is simply too great. It is to the degree that one of her listed dislikes is "herself". Come Act II, her bubbly and flirtatious nature begins to give way to what truly lies underneath: a solemn and pessimistic Broken Bird.
Sylvain is this for The Casanova. While he acts like one, and is shown to be fairly popular for it, he only does so because he feels most girls are more interested in his Crest than the man himself, something implied to have happen to him at least once. Combined with his own issues with the Crest system, and he feels bitter about relationships and the women he flirts with, as he doesn't feel they actually like him as a person, so he intentionally makes advances on other woman and sabotages existing connections to prevent himself from being taken advantage of for it. In his mind, if they only want him for his Crest, he doesn't need to have a deeper relationship with them, even if it breaks their heart, or makes him look like a terrible person. As a result, Sylvain has trouble accepting genuine interest from women, and several supports have him breaking out of The Casanova and showing his Hidden Depths, and realizing he can form real connections if he lets people. Notably, most of his supports with women stop at B rank, and the only three he can actually have a Relationship Upgrade with are his Childhood Friend Ingrid, Dorothea, whose struggles are mentioned above, and Mercedes, who has similar grievances with the crest system.
The Death Knight is an Ax-CrazyBlood Knight subordinate in the vein of Kempf, Valter, and Hans, except his psychotic actions are treated as a legitimate mental illness instead of a simple way to make him a Hate Sink. The Death Knight is Jeritza's psychotic split personality, born when his father, Baron Bartels, decided he should marry his own stepdaughter Mercedes in order to breed more Crest-bearing children while essentially disposing of his ex-wife, causing Jeritza to snap and slaughter the entire noble house without having any idea at first what happened. He also cannot control his Death Knight persona, and when his bloodlust becomes too much to control, the Death Knight is willing to harm anyone, even Mercedes to feel fulfilled. The only hope is to be The Brute for Edelgard so he can kill and keep the Death Knight suppressed, where he distances himself from others in order to keep them away from the Death Knight, and his happiest ending basically has him go into therapy for several years to help overcome his issues.
Once you learn Sothis' backstory, she is basically a divine dragon champion for humanity in the vein of Naga, Mila, and pre-degeneration Duma and Anankos gone horribly wrong. Like previous such characters, she is a powerful dragon who is worshipped by humanity and can empower humans with blood-bonding. However, Nemesis murdered her in order to take that kind of power for himself and his followers by force, and in the present Rhea deliberately cultivates her reputation as an omnipotent creator goddess to justify several actions that are morally dubious at best and flat-out tyrannical at worst.
Rhea takes several cues from the Nyna archetype, being the Big Good in Part 1, as well as motherly The High Queen figures like Mikoto, being the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros who acts gentle and kind towards Byleth. Unlike a Nyna who finds themselves undermined or even betrayed by those who see them as weak, however, Rhea is willing to resort to violence or ruthless actions towards her foes and keeps numerous secrets, showing how those types would need to act to maintain their authority and keep the peace. Her willingness to engage in such ruthless actions can unnerve those around her, and after Edelgard reveals herself as the Flame Emperor, Byleth and numerous students can turn against Rhea when she calls for Edelgard's execution. This will lead to Rhea going further off the deep end, culminating in her burning an allied city to the ground in hopes of deterring/damaging Edelgard's army during their final clash. Even outside of Crimson Flower, Rhea's ruthless streak still finds itself criticized, and if she survives the game, Rhea will always step down from her role as archbishop in place of Byleth, admitting that she felt herself unfit to lead, and forcing herself to do so caused more problems than not.
Byleth is a deconstruction of the Heroic Mime trope that many video games have. Like many silent protagonists, Byleth neither speaks nor emotes a lot, and if they do, it often is short sentences with a blank expression. However, Byleth has been this trope all their life, not even crying once when they were a baby. This is all due to how Rhea implanted the Crest of Flames into Byleth at their birth. While both Rhea and Byleth's mother Sitri believed it was the only way to save Byleth's life (as according to Rhea, Byleth was a stillborn birth), Jeralt found it to be completely unnatural, and he goes from loving Rhea as a person, to being outright afraid of her to the point he flees the Monastery during a fire to give Byleth a normal life. Outside of spoilers, not only do all three house leaders react in surprise when Byleth actually smiles, but after the Battle of Eagle and Lion in the Blue Lions route, Dimitri admits that Byleth's stoicism initially led him to think that Byleth didn't care about their students, and Edelgard expresses shock that Byleth can cry after Jeralt's death. It isn't until later in the first half of the game that Byleth starts showing emotions more naturally, but before many characters, like Dorothea, comment on how uncomfortable Byleth can make them feel for that.
Bernadetta deconstructs the Shrinking Violet. She's shy, skittish, and practically runs away when anyone talks to her. Her B-Support with Byleth shows why she acts so shy and is not played for cuteness or laughs: her father used to tie her to a chair for entire days as a means to "teach her to be a good submissive wife" he'd be able to marry off for profits. He would also discourage her from trying to make friends, and was especially brutal towards commoners she tried to befriend. It has gotten to the point where she doesn't want to make friends anymore due to her father's abusive behavior, and does her best to stay in her room all day because she's afraid of other people. Even after the five-year timeskip, she's still not comfortable with people.
In the Azure Moon route, Randolph deconstructs the Noble Top Enforcer antagonists often seen in Fire Emblem. While he fights for sympathetic reasons, his honor-bound tendencies end up being his downfall, and Dimitri makes a point that trying to claim the moral high ground in war doesn't make one any less of a killer.
Lysithea deconstructs the Child Prodigy trope by portraying it in a more tragic light. As the youngest of the Golden Deer, and one of the youngest character of the roster, she works hard and seems Wise Beyond Her Years. In truth though, her days are numbered: she was subjected to the same dangerous experimentations as Edelgard was at the hands of "those who slither in the dark", and those experiments, as they had done for Edelgard, have seriously shortened her lifespan. Her desire for independence is because she doesn't want her parents to agonize over her premature death, a fate she has accepted. For Lysithea to live a happy life, she has to have her Crests removed, or else she dies young, forcing her to chose between living a short but fulfilling life, or live a life as a normal person.
Alear deconstructs Unique Protagonist Asset. They're literally worshipped in Elyos as THE Divine Dragon and viewed as the only person who can save the world. But Alear is ultimately just a regular person and not some all-powerful deity, and they're very bewildered at the treatment they receive. Besides being able to awaken Emblem rings (which tend to grant more power to others than to Alear), Alear isn't especially powerful: they can't turn into a dragon, they don't have magical powers (reclasses aside) and even in gameplay they're far more useful as a support unit than an offensive one. In their first life-of-death battle, Alear's first instinct is to run. Most of their allies drop their reverential treatment after getting to know Alear as a person, instead viewing them as an equal and comrade, and this relationship is shown to be far healthier. It's later revealed that they don't even have any natural Divine Dragon powers; they're really the child of the Fell Dragon Sombron, adopted by Lumera. Alear's status as The Hero, therefore, comes from both a loving caregiver and their genuine desire to do good, as opposed to a divine bloodline.
Alear, again deconstructs Luke, I Am Your Father. This plot twist has been used many times in Fire Emblem beforehand, but Engage goes out of its way to show exactly how much it would suck to have the Big Bad as your dad. This person grew up under a horrible Abusive Parent, watching countless siblings being murdered for their failures. They're Conditioned to Accept Horror and act like an Empty Shell, as they've been conditioned to associate emotion with weakness and weakness with death. They really, reallydon't enjoy this life, but have nowhere else to go. Even after a chance encounter with Lumera, the one person to show them genuine kindness, prompts a Heel–Face Turn, they're still clearly mentally broken as they strike down their father, and only 1000 years of sleep and amnesia starts them on the road to healing. Their remaining sibling, Veyle, has it just as bad.
Mauvier deconstructs the Camus archetype in a positive way. He's the Token Good Teammate of the Four Hounds and is concerned with Veyle's wellbeing above all, and isn't resentful towards the heroes. Unlike most earlier examples, Mauvier actually doesdefect to the heroes when his allies cross the Moral Event Horizon, showing that someone that noble on the antagonists' side ultimately would do the right thing when it came down to it.
