Video Game / Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

The crusade that spans generations.

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (Seisen no Keifu in Japanese) is the fourth game of the Fire Emblem series, only released in Japan on the Super Famicom in 1996. It takes place on the continent of Jugdral roughly 900 years before Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light.

Genealogy of the Holy War is a game that spans decades and generations — after several chapters with one party, the game continues with the children of the original characters. It starts off following Sigurd of Chalphy, of the Kingdom of Grannvale, as he fights a war against opportunistic marauders from the nearby kingdom of Verdane - an incident that spirals into a conflict that takes him across much of the breadth of Jugdral. Then, after a 17 year Time Skip, the game switches over to his son Seliph and his quest to liberate the entire continent of Jugdral from what has become the Empire of Grannvale.

The game is noted for its unusual gameplay elements: enormous chapters that require the capture of multiple castles, characters being unable to freely share their money or inventories, and letting players use every unit at once without an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. However, Genealogy of the Holy War is also effectively the foundation upon which "modern" Fire Emblem was built, as it introduced the Weapon Triangle system (swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords) that became a series mainstay, created the Skill system used by many later titles, was the first game to include the Relationship Values that would be eventually refined into its modern incarnation by Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, and the marriage and children mechanics would later help define Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. Story-wise, the academic background of Sigurd, Quan, and Eldigan and the bipartite plot structure would later serve as primary inspirations for the story of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

There are also two prominent manga adaptations of Genealogy, one by Mitsuki Oosawa and one by Nuts Fujimori. Both offer rather different interpretations on the events of the game, and both contribute to filling out the backstories and characterizations of numerous characters.

Genealogy of the Holy War was followed by Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, an interquel of the former that takes place during the Time Skip.

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Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War provides examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: The Loptous Bloodline is the 13th Major Bloodline in the story, and is the major source of conflict thanks to the villains.
• '80s Hair: The artstyle of this game's character portraits was angled rather strangely and in particular fluffed up the front parts of everyone's hair to absurd degrees, giving almost everyone this look. Thracia 776 stopped doing this and any characters who returned from Genealogy were all redrawn with relatively normal-looking hair for the time period. And sprites notwithstanding, there are a few characters who have actual mullets, like Eldigan.
• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Most of the First Generation females are clearly very young with most of them being stated to be around 15 when they join. Although the first five chapters span two years, that's still a lot of teen moms.

• Adaptation Expansion: The Oosawa manga gives a lot of characterization for the side characters, and goes into more detail on what happens within the countries where the battles happen. For instance, it creates a rather big subplot on the...unique situation between Eldigan and Lachesis... though at the cost of making Eldigan's wife a jealous bitch.
• Adapted Out: Although said manga also 'decreases' a possible expansion as it wrote out Chulainn and Beowolf from the story. And Hilda as well.
• Alternate Show Interpretation: Depending on which version of the manga you may read. Mitsuki Oosawa's is more dark, tragic and character-driven (and somewhat sexually-explicit); Nuts Fujimori's is more gag-based, wacky, and lighthearted.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Loptr faithful that at least descended from Galle is a deconstruction of this: Out of fear of the dark age returning again, the Granvalle Empire persecuted them with extreme prejudice that they were forced into hiding and only had Loptous worship as their comfort and in turn left no room for good virtues in their upbringing, and by the time the game begins, everyone that descended from Galle are cackling maniacs and Manipulative Bastards that wanted to plunge the world into darkness provided by Loptous, and partially as a revenge for their persecution. Those that descended from Maera fared better, but chose to just hide from public.
• Ambiguous Situation: The aftermath of Chapter 5 gives out the impression that everyone died in that battle, even though the second generation eventually revealed that most of them (especially the women) survived and some of them died from other causes. Even disregarding side materials, some of the survivors are mentioned by their children or other characters. In fact the only confirmed fatalities are Sigurd, Claud and Lewyn.
• Ambition Is Evil:
  • Reptor and Lombard are secretly hostile to Prince Kurth and Lord Byron and want to get rid of them to keep their positions in the Grannvale Royal Court.
  • Elliot, Boldo, MacBeth, and Chagall are among the nobility of Agustria who are hostile to the peasantry and to Grannvale and are conspiring to gain more wealth and power.
  • Duke Daccar plots to take over Silesse, and ropes his brother Maios and Duke André of Grannvale in as pawns in this scheme.
  • Apparently, Arvis became so tired of being largely exempted from governmental affairs as Commander of the Royal Guard that he gladly jumped at the chance to claim the Grannvale throne which was offered to him by Manfroy. A decision he would come to regret.
• Ancestral Weapon: Descendants of the Twelve Crusaders with major Holy Blood are able to wield their ancestor's Holy Weapon. In the first generation, there are specific scenes in which Quan, Brigid, Lewyn, and Sigurd receive theirs from a family member. In the second generation, most of the children of those characters have inherited them into their inventories.
• And Your Reward Is Parenthood: The Second Generation is made up of the children of the first generation characters, whom you're encouraged to pair together. If you don't have certain characters romance each other, the units you get in the Second Generation won't be the children of your original units, and will be weaker.
• ...And That Would Be Wrong: One villager tells you that the union of two people carrying minor Holy Blood will always produce a child with major Holy Blood and all its attendant benefits... which is of course a disgusting taboo. So just ignore the fact that you have four characters who you can very easily pair off to stack your army with numerous such children in the next generation.
• Anti-Air: Bows and the Wing Clipper sword double their user's attack power against flying enemies.
• Anti-Armor: The Armorslayer sword doubles the user's attack power against armored foes.
• Anti-Cavalry: The Ridersbane lance doubles attack against horse riders.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Genealogy allows the player to save the game in the middle of a chapter (once per turn as long as no commands are given to the playable characters yet) unlike in most titles (and in Classic Mode for games with Casual Mode) where they are deleted upon resuming the save file. Due to how massive the maps are in this game, it is very helpful.
• Anyone Can Die: Nobody in the cast is safe from dying. Most of the First Generation get killed in Chapter 5.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Averted. Unlike other Fire Emblem games, you are always able to deploy every unit you have in the party.
• Aristocrat Team: If everyone in Sigurd's army lived to marry ^note All of the ladies in Sigurd's army except for Erinys have Blue Blood whether they know it or not, and Erinys becomes queen without it, Seliph's army will be composed entirely of nobility or royalty, even if every single one is an Impoverished Patrician.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The sword skill Luna has a chance to negate a foe's Defense while attacking.
• Artificial Brilliance: Some enemy commanders will retreat to their own allied castle if they lose too many units and/or take too much damage. The next turn after they enter their castle, reinforcements will spawn from it, and the commander will emerge with their health fully restored.
• Attract Mode: After the introduction cutscene, the game goes into this mode showing short scenes of the game, some of it gameplay, some Spoiler Opening bits, and last but not least, beating the game adds short cutscenes showing story elements only hinted or alluded to in the game itself. Some of these are unlocked only after multiple playthroughs.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Lands Sword gives HP to the wielder equal to the amount of damage dealt and negates Pavise, but its low durability and expensive repair costs renders it difficult to utilize properly.
• Back from the Dead: The Valkyrie staff can revive a single player unit who died during gameplay. It has only one usage, after which it needs 30,000 gold to be repaired. It's also only usable by staff users with major Bragi blood.
• Bag of Sharing: Averted. Each character has their own separate inventory that cannot be shared, and everybody has their own money reserve. The only way to trade items between units is to sell something to the pawn shop and then buy it back with another unit. Thieves can give their money to any unit, but otherwise only lovers can trade money with each other.

• BFG: You will encounter Castles that are defended by enemy-exclusive Ballista Turrets. All of them require only one man to operate and have unlimited ammo and extreme range.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Not many of the families are friendly with each other and many of them took different sides. The most screwed up of the families is the Friege family, as you have as many allies within the family like Tailtiu and her children Arthur and Tine, and Ethnia and her children Amid and Linda, you have many enemies like Reptor, Bloom, and Hilda. Though Ishtore and Ishtar are Anti Villains, they are clearly siding with The Empire.
• Bittersweet Ending: Sure, you killed the vessel of a deadly dragon, ended the oppression of an empire and have had your leader crowned as a benevolent Emperor. But no fewer than 2 holy weapons will be unable to be used for at least one generation in the process, one of them probably longer.^* Assuming Saias will inherit Valflame, neither Thrud nor Nál will have a living character with Major Holy Blood, but if Iuchar/Iucharba was paired up with Lex's daughter, Helswath could easily be back in action just one generation down the line.
• Bling of War: Many of the combatants in the first generation do battle in fine clothing that is fully decked out with embroidered brocade, gold trim, and in some cases epaulettes. This is more prevalent in the first generation, when the army is made up primarily of heirs to prosperous noble houses. Their kids' status as a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits results in most of them being in significantly less opulent gear, but some of them still manage to look fancy.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The Nuts Fujimori manga ends before Sigurd's army marches to Phinora to meet up with Quan's reinforcements from Leonster. Being a gag manga, this is a perfect spot to end it, because everything goes to hell after this, starting with the Yied Massacre and Quan's death.
• Book Ends: Both the Prologue and Epilogue begin with you in Chalphy. This is also reflected musically: The stage music for the Epilogue is a remix of the stage music for the Prologue (the start of Generation 1) and Chapter 6 (the start of Generation 2) respectively.
• Boss Bonanza: Many chapters have multiple bosses per section, but the final chapter takes the cake. The four sections have, in order, 3 bosses, 4 bosses, 2 bosses, and 20 bosses.
• Boss Rush: An optional one, comprised of optional "bosses", but the arena enemies in the game's final chapter are a selection of "final enemies" from previous chapters' arenas, culminating in a battle against an all-new opponent; an Emperor named Zeus, who shares the personal class of major antagonist Arvis.
• Brainwashed Bride: Midway through the first act, Big Bad Manfroy abducts The Hero Sigurd's wife Deirdre and brainwashes her into marrying Arvis, The Heavy for the villains' plot (and her maternal half-brother). Unusually for the trope, it works, and Arvis makes sure to flaunt it in Sigurd's face before murdering him and his entire squad in the game's Wham Episode. They spend about nine years together before their son Julius is possessed by the Greater-Scope Villain and kills her.
• Break the Cutie: The (seemingly) unbreakably cheerful Tailtiu watches almost all of her comrades (and likely her Love Interest, depending on who she's paired with) get slaughtered during Arvis's betrayal. She is then forcibly separated from her son, and spends the late years of her life enduring brutal mental/physical abuse by the hand of her own family, partially to protect her young daughter and partially because she secretly blamed herself for disgracing her house's name and her own family will never let her forget it. It's hinted that in her final days, she simply lost the will to live.
• Brother–Sister Incest:
  • Deirdre and Arvis are half-siblings who get married and have a child, though they don't know it at the time and only one of them finds out after the fact.
  • One villager in Agustria gossips that something "isn't right" between Eldigan and Lachesis, while Lachesis herself declares that she won't marry because no man could outshine Eldigan. The letter Nanna shows Ares confirms that Lachesis was in love with Eldigan; whether he returned her feelings isn't made clear in the game.
• Burn the Witch!: One villager in Agustria reveals that some cities, like Agusty and Mackily, host witch hunts against rumored descendants of Loptous, which led to hundred of people being burned at the stake. This is most concerning for Arvis, because he is the descendant of Loptous through Maera, which is why he took Manfroy's blackmail seriously and plotted to create a world where discrimination is nonexistent. In the Oosawa manga, Manfroy himself was a victim of the burning that murdered his family, which he conceals his scars with his cloak.
• Cain and Abel: If a party member is stated to have a sibling and that sibling doesn't eventually join your team, they will show up as an enemy.
• Cap:
  • This is the first Fire Emblem game to have class specific stat caps rather than an universal 20 (or 40, in the case of Fire Emblem Gaiden) stat caps in previous games.
  • The maximum amount of money each character can hold at one time is 50,000 gold.
  • Inverted with battlefield deployment. In most games you have to pick a handful out of your army to send into battle, but here you can (and should) deploy everyone into the field.
• Cavalry Betrayal: Arvis's plan in Chapter 5. After saving them from Reptor's forces, Velthomer turns on Sigurd and his group once they've let their guard down.
• Cherry Tapping: Any attacks will always deal a minimum of 1 damage, even if the enemy's defense is higher than your attack. This is hilarious when you use dancers attack because they have terrible attack power to deal meaningful damage and fighting in the arena takes almost hours (realtime) to finish.
• Children Forced to Kill: The "child hunts". A horrifying project in which boys and girls from all over the Jugdral continent are kidnapped, brought to different cities, and then are forced to fight until they die. The few who survive will end up as nobles of the empire. This "privilege" means they are little more than puppets for the Loptr Church. The parents are more often than not killed when they try to oppose this. The heroes, several of them being very young teenagers not much older than these kids, have to fight themselves to save these poor kids (and in Thracia 776, more than one character who joins the troupe actually does so specifically either to thank them for saving the children, or to make up for having been in the side of the Empire). Meanwhile, more than one villain in the game is troubled by the existence of such deals, and those who aren't are, well... exactly the sorts of people who wouldn't be.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The knights brigades of the Grannvale Empire are all named after colors representing the duchy and the lineage they hail from. Also the Schwarze Rosen (Black Rose), the mage brigade of the Loptr Empire.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Enemy weapons don't break, including the long range nasties like status staves and ballistae (in contrast to later games where you can have agile units try to draw all five shots). Also, enemies will automatically equip whatever weapon gives them the correct attack range to counter—so if an enemy general uses a bow, he will automatically have a sword back in his hand when you send a melee unit. (Of course, this trick does not apply to your own units; if Quan wasn't holding a javelin when that archer attacked, that's too bad for Quan.)
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted! The bosses in the game are just as vulnerable to Status Effects as every other enemy in the game. This means that using the Silence staff in particular is a legitimate strategy for many of the magical bosses in the game as long as you have a staff user with sufficient magic.
• Crapsack World: The entirety of Jugdral is a nearly Westeros-level cesspool of corrupt nobles and familial infighting in Generation 1. It gets to the point where one noble aims to conquer the whole continent to rule as a benevolent empire, but it only leads to an oppressive, tyrannical regime in Generation 2.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Most types of Holy Blood give a person a 20% growth increase in HP and a 30% growth increase in exactly one other stat. Coupled with the generally low growth rates for first generation characters in this game this generally means that most units with Holy Blood tend to be very strong in that particular stat and decidedly subpar everywhere else. Chulainn for example has extremely high HP (110%) and skill (80%) growth rates, but is rather mediocre in everything else, a trait he tends to pass onto his children if he has any. Ditto Lachesis, whose children with their Hoðr Blood usually have a strength growth in the range of 70-80%, but rather lowish growth rates in skill, speed and defense, and single-digit growth rates in magic.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Prince Munnir of Verdane gets one in the Prologue, where he defeats Midayle in a single hit with a Critical attack despite having less than a 50% chance to hit. When you have to fight him on the following map, he will naturally not be nearly as dangerous, and in particular won't be able to land any critical hits due to lacking any of the relevant skills.
• Cutscene Incompetence: You simply cannot prevent Deirdre from being mind-wiped and abducted by Manfroy. Even if you leave a few units at the exact area where the incident occurs, it won't do anything except make for a rather amusing sight.
• Cycle of Revenge: Touched on the game, and expanded in the Oosawa manga: The reason why Manfroy and his kinsmen struck against the world was because the Crusaders and their descendants decided that they would wipe out all traces of Loptous to prevent the horrors of Galle's reign ever being repeated and largely ignoring the heroic deeds of Maera. The game, thanks to limited storage, couldn't convey it well since all on-screen Loptr members turned out to be horribly evil and the tenets of Loptous leave no room for goodness, so the persecutions looked justified. The manga expands on this by having Erinys be the disgusted Audience Surrogate to a public hanging of suspected Loptr. Seliph also prevents a similar lynching later on when the townspeople of the newly-liberated Aed drag out some harmless Loptr faithful to get revent. Manfroy himself is given a Freudian Excuse, having almost been lynched as a child because he snuck out of the Aed Shrine just once out of curiosity.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Genealogy is considered the darkest Fire Emblem game. First-act protagonist Sigurd's home country is actually The Empire, with much of its leadership conspiring against him or using him as an Unwitting Pawn. The descendents of the setting's legendary heroes are every bit as capable of pettiness, corruption and evil as anyone else, and for all his efforts, Sigurd is branded a traitor and executed along with most of his friends. To top that off, the game's second act gives us the evil cult abducting children to sacrifice to their god.
  • The Oosawa manga, which has lots of Melodrama and plot twists.
• Death of a Child: In a "protect the Civilians for free levels" event, the civilians are little children of the "child" class (same as Civilian, except, justifiably, even weaker). The villains also explicitly kill children in the plot.
• Dead All Along: Lewyn in the second half of the story is heavily implied to be dead, with the dragon Forseti inhabiting his body.
• Death Equals Redemption: The more sympathetic villains are generally shown to regret some of their worse acts, and usually predict their own demise before the engagement that confirms it.
• Decapitated Army:
  • It's unclear exactly how many members of your army actually DIE in the Battle of Belhalla; in fact, it’s quite possible that the vast majority of them somehow survived even when the cutscene indicates otherwise. Yet, with Sigurd dead, they scatter to the four winds rather than try to renew the fight, claim their inheritances, or clear their names, and even a few who survived the event itself still don't make it to the second generation.
  • This is also a minor gameplay mechanic. A number of minibosses (named and generic) will continue to spawn reinforcements from their home castle until they are killed. A few will attempt to flee back and return with a fresh squadron if you kill too many before eliminating the leader.
• Decoy Protagonist: The game starts by following the story of Lord Sigurd of Grannvale fighting a war against the kingdom of Verdane which devolves into fighting most of the continent. Then he gets killed in Chapter 5 and his son Seliph becomes the protagonist after a Time Skip.
• Deconstruction:
  • The game takes apart a lot of tropes from previous games. The Big Bad is very bad and the heroes are good people, but a lot of the in-between bosses are just trying to defend their sovereignty after Grannvale, Sigurd's home country, invades Isaach and makes the other countries edgy. Sigurd's personal mission to rescue Edain snowballs into fighting every other country on the continent, while the not-so-noble nobles back home take full advantage of the chaos he leaves to lay groundwork for The Empire. Viewed in an independent light their actions aren't any different from those of their enemies. No matter how peaceful or well-intentioned Seliph might be, he (once victorious) parcels up sections of the now-conquered empire amongst his supporters, which is exactly the same thing Arvis did when he took the throne. And if any of the heirs to the various thrones have died in battle, that country remains annexed to Grannvale—under better management, maybe, but still not under their own rule. Depending on how one's playthrough goes, Seliph may well end up just another Emperor.
  • "Dark dragon" Big Bads in Fire Emblem somehow always have their share of supporters in trying to crush humanity beneath their claw. Genealogy of the Holy War shows exactly what kind of background one would need to come from to get behind such a goal. Anyone who is a "Loptr", whether a descendant carrying his blood or a worshipper, have to live in hiding in the Aed Desert or the Spirit Forest. Exposure means certain death, even if you are a high-ranking and highly respected nobleman, and if you are suspected of being Loptous descendant you'll probably be killed whether you are one or not. With the enmity of the entire continent for something one has no control over, it's less difficult to understand why they might prefer the evil dragon.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Age of majority clearly hews to pre-modern standards. Several of the marriageable characters are stated to be as young as 15 and 16 in supplemental materials, and Ethlyn is a mother at just 18 at the start of the game. Although there are two one-year Time Skips in the first generation, that's still a lot of teen parenthood.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The game spends the first few chapters developing the First Generation before killing them off. By the end of Chapter 5, only four of Sigurd's army are known to have survived;
  • Edain never actually shows up again and is mentioned only once by their children,
  • Finn is essentially a Guest-Star Party Member in the first generation and is absent from Chapters 4 through 6,
  • Oifey didn't do any fighting before Chapter 6 anyway,
  • and Lewyn, the one you see the most of, is pretty different from how they once were.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you hack Gungir into your inventory, the item description asks how you got it.
  • The Final Boss is supposed to be beatable by only either Julia with the Naga tome, or Seliph with the Tyrfing via Cherry Tapping, and there is a different quote depending on whose hand the Final Boss died to. But there is a quote programmed for literally anyone else but the mentioned two - if for some reason you manage to get someone like Ced to do it.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Sigurd gets the powerful Silver Sword halfway through the prologue, and serves as his best weapon until he gets Tyrfing a quarter of the way through the last chapter before he dies.
  • Lex's Brave Axe is by far his best weapon, weighing far less than other axes and letting him attack twice in a row. It's obtained halfway through Chapter 1.
  • If you went with the Tailtiu / Lewyn pairing and passed Forseti down, Arthur will join with it halfway through the first chapter of the Second Generation. While he'll never quite be as powerful as Ced with Forseti, he can and will thoroughly annihilate any enemy for the first half of Gen 2, and continue nuking the opposition clean through the end of the game.
  • Chapter 7 (The second chapter of the second generation) gives you two of the best units in of the game extremely quickly: Shannan, a swordmaster so absurdly powerful that he can theoretically solo everything save the final boss with his Infinity -1 Sword and base stats (assuming he gets lucky with his skill procs), and Ares, a cavalier carrying Mystletainn who quickly becomes a Master of All.
• Dragon Ancestry: Dragon blood is synonymous with Royal Blood, with the twelve main noble bloodlines of the setting being descended from a group of heroes who were each infused with the blood of a different dragon. Those in whom the blood flows strong bear a distinctive Brand on their bodies, granting them increased combat prowess and the ability to wield the holy weapons that contain some of that dragon's power. The same goes for those descended from the line of Galle, who blood bonded with the evil Earth Dragon Loptous.
• Dramatic Irony: There's a bit throughout the first generation for players who are good at putting the pieces together, but it really comes to a head at the beginning of chapter 5. Arvis, whose allegiance has been unclear up to this point, fully reveals through a conversation with King Azmur that he's working with Reptor and Lombard. In addition to that, his wife, mentioned at the beginning of chapter 4, is revealed to be none other than Deirdre. But because this conversation occurs in Belhalla, Sigurd doesn't learn any of it until the end of the chapter. By then, it's already too late.
• Dragons Are Divine: The beings that gave the Crusaders their power were dragons who gave their blood to counter the Loptr Empire, in particular dragons of the Divine Dragon tribe, including Naga and Forseti, the latter being known as the Wind God of Silesse. On the opposite side, Loptous himself was revered as a deity by the Loptr Empire.
• Driven to Villainy: Thracia. After a civil war split it and Munster, it was left with unfarmable mountains. This drove most of the men to hire out as mercenaries in foreign lands so that they could keep the country fed, but this led their foreign employers to sneer at Thracia as bloodthirsty sellswords. The Thracians worship Travant for his dedication to improving their lot in life, regardless of his ruthless tactics. Seliph laments having to continue battle with them, but he has to do it so that Travant, allied with Grannvale, won't rip the rebel army apart.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Genealogy of the Holy War gives Fire Emblem Gaiden a run for its money in terms of bold mechanical shake-ups, especially when taken in the context of when it was released.
  • The Weapon Triangle originates in this game. Unlike most of its later implementations, this one doesn't affect damage at all.
  • There is a Trinity of Magic that the Tellius games use later on. In this case, however, Light Magic and Dark Magic are equal to one another and have an inherent advantage over the three Anima Magic types.
  • This is the first game where Weapon Ranks replace the Weapon Level Stat from Marth's games. In this case, the lowest rank is C and the highest is A, with a special star ranking being reserved for units with Major Holy Blood. The ranks are also fixed and dependent on character classes and promotions.
  • Skills debuted in this game. These ones are generally fixed and otherwise only attainable either via promotion or by putting on special skill rings.
  • Interestingly, Sigurd is currently the only pre-promoted Lord in the entire franchise, making him similar to Marth, except the latter started off weak (7 movement aside) and couldn't promote at all.
  • This is the first game to utilize an extensive allied NPC phase. Unlike later games, however, the Allied Phase would happen after the player's phase and before the enemy's phase, whereas all games after have them move after the enemy phase. This is also the first game to utilize a "neutral," yellow-colored phase (which *does* occur after all enemy phases). While later games that utilize yellow units offer some variety in their alignment and actions, this game's yellow units tend to act more as roadblocks, although the Orgahill Pirates in Chapter 3 will plunder and destroy villages. Yellow units could also not be touched by the player unless they become red units (which happens to the aforementioned pirates).
  • As a consequence of the game's setup and structure, the phases of this game are named after factions, as opposed to just "Player," "Enemy," "Ally", and "Other." The "Player" phases are named after Sigurd or Seliph, "Enemy" phases are named after factions you are currently fighting against, and so on and so forth.
  • This was the first game to have an affection system, and it does have a forerunner of the Support system - lovers near each other will gain stat bonuses, and there are optional conversations between certain folks to increase affection. However, there's no set system for these convos yet - you'll likely miss a whole bunch of them, even, if you don't know they're there ahead of time. It wasn't until Binding Blade that the system would get more properly codified and transparent in the UI.
• The Empire: The prologue scroll describes the horrific crimes committed by the Loptr Empire, which included purges, slavery, and child sacrifice. As the game progresses through the first five chapters, it becomes clear in hindsight that Sigurd was—unintentionally—turning Grannvale into the empire of the modern age by invading Verdane and Agustria to help his friends, which allowed unscrupulous Grannvalian nobles to move in as occupiers once he was gone.
• End-Game Results Screen: The first game in the whole franchise to do this. The player is graded on four factors: Tactics, Experience, Survival, and Combat.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Lombard is disgusted by Andrey killing his father without remorse.
  • Bloom is pretty okay with letting Hilda torture Tailtiu (or Ethnia) to death, but he doesn't support the child-hunting whole-heartedly, and is somewhat kinder to Tailtiu/Ethnia's daughter, Tine/Linda.
  • Arvis himself hates the child hunts. So much that he deploys a small Batman Gambit to stop them, with some help from Julius's girlfriend Ishtar.
• Everyone Is Related: Many members of the first-generation party are either nobility or royalty, and these nobles and royals end up breeding with one another to create a second-generation rebel army whose members are related not only everyone else on their own side but are also related to everyone on the other side, too. It's like one huge family feud. Here's the family tree.
• Evolving Weapon: Kill 50 units with the same weapon, even if it's a Holy Weapon, and the weapon will gain the Critical skill, with the critical chance increasing by 1% with each additional kill up to a maximum kill count of 100 (a +50% critical bonus).
• Face Death with Dignity: In Chapter 5, it is obvious from the conversations that most of your characters can sense their impending doom. Claud outright states that he knows they are going to lose the war. Yet, they all go to Belhalla anyway.
• Fantastic Racism: The protagonists speak of Verdane in a highly derisive manner, calling them savages and barbarians who should be easy to defeat. Admittedly, there's a troubled history between Verdane and Grannvale (it's only in the past few decades that Batur managed to stop his people from raiding on the borders), but there's also a subtext of Verdane being looked down on because its royal family doesn't have any Holy Blood.
• Final Boss Preview: Julius appears on a map before the final one and will attack you until he kills someone... or if he is defeated in combat. Then he will say "Playtime is over. I'm going home."
• Filler: Confronting the Orgahill Pirates in the last part of Chapter 3 is completely irrelevant to the plot, as it has no bearing in the story after disposing Chagall's tyranny in Agustria and before Grannvalian troops come to arrest Sigurd. It does give Brigid a reason to join the group, however, along with trapping Sigurd's army so their only option is to be flown out to Silesse.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Right after the prologue chapter, Eldigan visits Evans Castle to ask Sigurd why the hell he's invading another country. Although Sigurd's explanation is reasonable enough, his impulsive actions combined with the tension stoked by the Loptr priests are the first domino towards the disaster in chapter 5.
  • Filat's conversation after the capture of Anphony indicates exactly what Grannvale's intentions are, but Sigurd only notices the news about his father's political enemies and the backstory about Cigyun. He doesn't realize the implications about his officially-approved defense of the Nordion family's transformation into a full-scale war, nor Filat's parting hopes that Sigurd will soon make a triumphal return to the fatherland.
• Four Is Death: Fourth game of the Fire Emblem series. Highest named death count in the series, including the first main Lord and most of his party.
• Game-Favored Gender: The general rule of inheritance is that sons inherit their father's traits, while daughters inherit their mother's traits. The only two female units with Major Holy Blood in the first generation are Deirdre and Brigid, and their children have set traits that cannot be changed. For Deirdre, she is Sigurd's canon lover and will always have Seliph and Julia, with the former having Major Baldur/Minor Naga and the latter having Major Naga/Minor Fjalar). Meanwhile, Brigid's son Febail will always inherit her Major Ulir blood. Generally, the sons will be the ones who inherit any major Holy Blood from a father who has it (Lewyn and Claud being your two allies that have it; once again, Brigid giving her son Holy Blood is an exception), even if the inheritor has a class that conflicts with it. For example, while Lana, a Priest, seems to be a phenomenal option for either Lewyn's Forseti blood or Claud's Bragi, she'll never inherit it, with the major blood going to her older brother Lester (an Arch Knight) instead. On the other hand, only one of the potential mothers from the first generation has no Holy Blood (Erinys), yet she's superior in growths compared to many of the holy blood-free men, and she's the mother of a male sage who is considered to be one of the game's most overpowered units, especially if Lewyn is his father.
  • There are two instances where both children for a pairing can inherit major blood: Ayra's children can inherit major Odo blood if their father is her distant cousin Chulainn, and Silvia's children can inherit major Bragi blood if their father is Claud, also a cousin of hers according to Word of God. Scáthach and Larcei cannot use the Balmung, however; despite the Balmung being available during the second half of the game (Major Odo holder Shannan now being a part of your army instead of an NPC), it is locked to him, as the Holy Weapons cannot be sold and pawned off. The only way either Scáthach or Larcei can use it is via a glitch. Meanwhile, Silvia's daughter Lene is a Dancer like her, hence she gains no real benefit from Major Bragi Blood, and while her son Coirpre, a Priest, is an ideal choice for using the Valkyrie Staff, he doesn't join your army until Chapter 9 and is extremely underleveled at that point.
  • There are two mothers in the army (the aforementioned Brigid and Ethlyn) that have gender-swapped inheritance, but their resulting children still play this trope straight. Ethlyn is married to Quan and their children are always Altena and Leif (Altena inherits Quan's Major Njörun blood in this case), and while Brigid's daughter Patty can inherit traits from her father, Patty's a thief, meaning that she's completely incapable of putting potential Major Forseti or Major Bragi blood to use.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Finn has a higher starting Love Point and accelerated Love Growth towards Brigid or Tailtiu to accommodate the 'everyone can be paired' system because in the next chapter, Finn will leave the 1st generation. Never mind that storywise, Finn, someone who lived his life in Leonster rather than Grannvale, would be a complete stranger to Brigid or Tailtiu with very little time to build up romantic relations.
  • Lene and Coirpre (or Laylea and Charlot) don't know who their parents are and don't even know that they're siblings, despite there being a Fortuneteller in every castle who could give them that exact information.
• Genki Girl: Tailtiu, Silvia, Fee, and Patty are all super cheery girls.
• Generational Saga: The story covers the struggles of 2 generations as they fight wars and Save the World.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Like his father, Seliph meets a white haired shaman in his first chapter and crushes on her.
  • Like her father, Julia had a crush on her half-sibling. This doesn't last.
  • Cigyun's affair with Prince Kurth initially only began with him feeling sympathetic toward her for being the wife of a known philanderer and rapist. Arvis initially feels sympathy toward the amnesiac Deirdre, but it soon turns into love.
• Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: Axes are the weapon of choice for the Kingdom of Verdane and House Dozel of Grannvale, and they are some of the more heinous enemies in the series, going into Rape, Pillage, and Burn territory for those they invaded.
• Golden Ending: If a complete A rank is achieved, an extra scene can be viewed in the epilogue, where the formerly arid Dahna is shown to be forested while the Crusaders' pedestal stands tall in the middle of it.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Deirdre, Julia, Tailtiu, Tine, and Ishtar are from noble houses and are usually associated with the color purple. Do note that Deirdre and Julia are from a different house then Tailtiu, Tine, and Ishtar. Tailtiu downplays this, while obviously she knows how to act graceful, being the daughter of a noble house, she doesn't show it; she instead acts more excitable and childish.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Deirdre could be considered one, given that she is effectively playable for only one chapter. She has her own signature weapon usable by nobody else and only has an offensive Silence staff, meaning if you want to use her as a healer you have to strip one of your other staff users of theirs, and also can't be promoted despite there being little logical reason for this. On top of this, the first half of said chapter usually involves a mad cavalry rush, so overall the odds are staked highly against her gaining a lot of experience.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Even though the word "genealogy" is in the title, it isn't obvious what you're supposed to do in terms of pairing people up. Without prior knowledge one is more than likely to only have half of their possible moms produce kids, the other half dying childless, and the entire process can look remarkably scripted unless you're lucky enough to have been placing your units so an unusual pairing brews. Some of the villagers do give hints about how the mechanics work, but they make absolutely no sense unless you are already aware of the mechanics in the first place. “Sons tend to inherit characteristics from their fathers, and daughters tend to inherit traits from their mothers” sounds like meaningless gibberish unless you know what’s coming.
  • There are many hidden events in the game in which the game never tells you about in advance. For example, the event where Lex can acquire the Brave Axe requires you to go to a cliff on the lake while holding an Iron Axe in Chapter 1. In addition, many of the events are exclusive to the substitute characters so many of them are inaccessible if you paired up many of the female characters.
  • There is a specific AI quirk that is difficult to figure out without trial and error where the enemy commander retreats to their castle to bring reinforcements if most of their squad were killed. They will retreat without regard to enemies on their way, even when they were blocking the castle entrance. Hannibal in Chapter 9 is one of these types of commanders and exploiting this quirk is the only way to make him easier to recruit.
• Hammerspace: Of the standard game variety; while it technically only allows easy access to seven items for each character, only the weight of the weapon currently being equipped is taken into account during combat, and these items are completely safe from being stolen. In addition, some characters have events where they'll just pull out gifts for others from seemingly nowhere; the best example being Edain holding onto Yewfelle for her missing older sister, even during and after being captured by Verdane.
• Happily Ever Before: The Nuts Fujimori manga ends this way, with Sigurd about to march to Phinora to receive Quan's reinforcements. He is unaware that Thracian dracoknights are about to kill Quan's entire party and that he himself is about to be betrayed and murdered by Arvis.
• Hate Sink:
  • Backstory: Victor, Arvis' father, was a bonafide abusive husband and father to both Cigyun and Arvis; as well as a reputed, unrepentant womanizer. After his abuses went too far, Prince Kurth offered his sympathies to Cigyun and because of that had an affair. Victor responded by committing suicide while spurning the two. He was made with no sympathetic qualities while even Lombard and Reptor had miniscule ones, and it was by his affairs that Manfroy had all the necessary tools he needed to execute his devilish plans.
  • 1st Generation: Chagall is a horrible king that got his position by murdering his peace-loving father, treating the loyal Eldigan like crap due to sheer jealousy and eventually had him executed and for his own pride, staged an attack to take over Grannvalle, manipulating and looking down on others while doing so. The townspeople of Agustria voiced their opinions that they'd rather have Eldigan become King than Chagall, but Eldigan was too duty-bound to take that path.
  • 2nd Generation: Hilda is extremely horrible on top of torturing Tailtiu/Ethnia to death and abusing Tine/Linda, she also happily goes along with the Child Hunts and spreading terror throughout Jugdral as a show of power, while also coveting more by pressuring Ishtar, practically the ONE person that still showed her any form of respect, to go marry Julius so she could get his riches. Even normal people compared her to a devil.
• Healer Signs On Early: On the third turn of the prologue, Sigurd is joined by his sister Ethlyn who is a Troubadour — essentially a mounted support unit with short-range healing spells.
• Heel–Face Turn: Many characters start off as enemy units who can be somehow convinced to join your cause.
• Heel Realization: Arvis came to the realization that he was being used by Manfroy, but it was too late as his son was a vessel of their dark god and his scheme for peace was undone by Loptr.
• The Hero Dies: Sigurd, the main character of the First Generation, is betrayed and murdered halfway through the game.
• Heroic Lineage: As the title implies, Genealogy does more with this trope than even most Fire Emblem games, applying it to much of the cast and even making it a game mechanic.
• Hidden Backup Prince: Nobody in Grannvalian politics are aware that Kurth had a child from an affair with Sigyn, the wife of Duke Viktor of Velthomer, who ran away back to the Spirit Forest after her husband's suicide. The Loptr Church, however, are aware of Sigyn's daughter, Deirdre, through said affair and plotted an arrangement with her half-brother Arvis, so that they would birth their vessel to Loptous. However, even they weren't aware that Deirdre had a son, named Seliph, with her first husband Sigurd. Sigurd had sent Seliph away to Isaach, in case his war reaches a disastrous end, which it did. As a result, the people flock to Seliph as their savior that can save them from the tyranny of the Grannvalian Empire.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Mounted units can spend their remaining movement points after executing an action such as attacking or healing. Foot units can do this by equipping a Knight Ring.
• Holy Hand Grenade: One of the offensive magic types is Light.
• Hotter and Sexier: The Oosawa manga gets away with cranking up the sexiness in the storyline quite a bit, with several scenes involving characters having sex, in the middle of sexual afterglow, or having rather saucy fantasies about their romantic prospects. For example, the scene in which Deirdre and Sigurd confess their mutual love has Deirdre naked since she was bathing in a river before he came in, and they go through Their First Time right after their marriage ceremony.
• Hufflepuff House: The Miletos District is a mercantile country that build its fortune through trade, but was affected by the tyranny of the Loptr Empire and the Grannvale Empire. However, Miletos is the least relevant country in the story since it is completely irrelevant in Sigurd's story and take up only one chapter in Seliph's story. The fact that there are no major characters (playable nor enemy) who hail from Miletos and it's completely forgotten in the epilogue (where even Verdane gets a mention since it is possible that Jamke can die childless or not) does not help.
• Inconsistent Spelling:
  • While a number of character-specific examples are noted on their pages (there's rather a lot of them), there's also an example that applies to the setting. While sources in Japan, including the excellently rendered opening to Thracia 776, render the name of the continent "Jugdral", given how the word is pronounced, how it's spelled in katakana (ユグドラル, "yugudoraru"), and what branch of real-world mythology the game most heavily borrows its names and themes from, a lot of attentive fans have suspected over the years that the continent should more accurately be called Yggdral. Later FE works in English have stuck with Jugdral, however.
  • Fire Emblem Heroes has done this to a lot of character and location names. While most of them were finalized since the first Choose Your Legends poll, the rest weren't spared, with the game changing the spellings to either match the namesake better or just add and remove a consonant or two.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Sigurd gets one of the best generic swords in the prologue chapter, a Silver Sword (it's the only rank-A weapon you will have until at least Chapter 2). If used even sparingly over the next few chapters, this Silver Sword will probably rack up the necessary fifty-plus kills to give it Critical. Once it’s passed on to Seliph (or any sword-user) in the second generation, it's overwhelmingly powerful. If it’s given to Larcei or Scáthach, either of them can usually wipe out armies from the very beginning of chapter 6.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Forseti tome is considered the single best weapon in the game, instantly making its wielder a dodge tank who can deal ludicrous amounts of damage. Valkyrie is a holy staff that can revive dead units, thus circumventing the permadeath mechanic, although it only has one use and takes a fortune to repair. Both of them can only be used by those who posess major blood in the lineages associated with them: Lewyn for Forseti and Claude for Valkyrie, along with their male children. While Valkyrie comes with the plot and Forseti is hard to miss if you're reading the dialogue, using them in the second generation basically requires foresight into which of Claude and Lewyn's possible sons will be in a class that allows them to use tomes/staves.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • On the Holy Blood Screen, Arvis and Deirdre have a small, purple spot in the middle of the circle which isn't present with normal units, indicating their Loptous Blood without spelling it out by name.
  • Units occupy set spaces in the castle screen, usually in order of when they're acquired; if you have a visible empty space surrounded by units, you're either going to recruit someone very soon or you missed someone.
  • It's also possible to figure out Seliph and Julia are related by the same method as figuring out Deirdre's Loptous Blood.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: Due to there being no trading, you have to sell your items and then buy them back at double the price if you want to pass them around between units.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Averted, civilians that are on the map can easily be killed by enemy troops if they are not protected. The villages that all the bandits and pirates go after will only last about ten turns worth of damage, too.
• Irony: King Azmur, though aged and infirm, still knows that Heim's lineage is the only thing that can protect the continent from Loptous, and he places this responsibility on Deirdre... by begging her to have a son as soon as she can. Her son becomes Loptous incarnate. It's her daughter who inherits the power of Heim and Naga.
• Keystone Army: Seizing an enemy castle makes the soldiers affiliated with it instantly disappear/surrender.
• Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: After ambushing and slaughtering the Lance Ritter, Travant plucks Quan and Ethlyn's daughter Altena from her murdered mother's arms and decides to raise her as his own. Altena only learns her true heritage seventeen years later, at which point she's so devastated and furious that the only reason she doesn't kill him on the spot is Arion's intervention.
• Kissing Cousins: The game allows, nay, encourages you to pair up cousins. For possible pairings, there are: Patty and Lester & Febail and Lana (Their mothers Brigid and Edain were not only sisters, but identical twins); Chulainn and Ayra (both part of the royal house of Isaach, and so are distantly related), and by extension their children if they're not paired up; Shannan and Larcei; Ares and Nanna; Iuchar/Iucharba and Lex's daughter; Azelle's son and Julia; Claud and Silvia (who are also canonically distantly related but the game implies that they could be long-lost siblings), and by extension THEIR children if you don't pair them up.
• Lamarck Was Right: Gen 2 characters get better base stats depending on the stats of their parents.
• Lawful Stupid: Eldigan's king is obviously a thick-headed idiot and tyrant who constantly degrades him while favoring his greedy and exploitative vassals, yet Eldigan insists on being a faithful knight regardless of the circumstances. This bites him in the back when the king executes him. Meanwhile, villagers in Agustria will openly inform you that they'd willingly support Eldigan as a king.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • When you enter the castle screen, the background music becomes muffled.
  • On a successful cast of the Silence staff, the music on the battle screen stops.
• Lord British Postulate:
  • Of the "If it has health, he can be killed" variety. Julius appears in Chapter 10 and can actually fight you. If you're lucky enough to score some criticals (or activate some powerful skills, like Luna) or just Cherry Tap Julius, you can beat him. He doesn't die, though, instead opting to go home in a huff.
  • An inversion: with enough optimal tactics and RNG manipulation, you can actually make Ethlyn and Quan kill Travant and survive the Yied Massacre. What happens next is that, if left to their own devices, they will seize Phinora, blocking you from doing the same and thus rendering the chapter Unintentionally Unwinnable.
• Love at First Sight: Sigurd and Deirdre fall in love pretty much instantly and get married after Chapter 1.
• Minor Major Character: Lots of these, since much of the first generation's critical plot elements take place off-screen in Grannvale and Isaach while Sigurd is busy subduing Verdane and Agustria. The straightest example is probably Prince Kurth of Grannvale, who is at the center of the first generation's plot (being Deirdre's father and all), but never actually makes an in-game appearance before he is assassinated.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: Manfroy wants Deirdre for his plans because if she ever gave birth, there would be a high chance for her child to be a vessel for a Dark God due to her Loptous blood.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Lex and Tailtiu, the children of Langobalt and Reptor, respectively, in the first generation. Second Generation has one of Danan's kids, Iuchar/Iucharba (depends on which one you recruit, though the other isn't that bad either compared to others), and Travant's son Arion can ally with Seliph's army because of his love for Altena.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Dew the Thief starts heavily under-leveled with almost no offensive capabilities whatsoever, but he has some of the best stat growth rates of the First Generation. Once promoted he will contribute substantially to battles, and if he gets married he will pass his high growths down to a Second Generation character.
  • Princess Lachesis has piddling stating stats and stat growth, low HP, and lack of combat-related Skills makes using her to fight a losing proposition; this is not helped by the fact that, when you get her, swords are the worst weapon to be using (most enemies are using either lances or swords, making a weapon advantage impossible) and Lachesis can't use anything else. When she Classes Changes she becomes a Master Knight, which can use almost every weapon type at an A-rank, gets a massive boost to all of her stats, and gains the Skill "Pursuit" (always double attack when attack speed is higher than the opponent's) to make her a dangerous unit.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender:
  • Averted. This and its midquel would be the first, and for the longest time, only games in the series that utilize generic female Mooks outside of any gender-locked classes, with one standout case being Chapter 4's Swordmaster boss Lamia and her army of all-female Swordfighters. It would still take until the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses to regularly utilize an even amount of male and female mooks, however.
  • Played straight with the player's army, at least in the first generation. Child units in the second generation have fixed mothers, so if one of your female units dies, you'll be forced to use substitute characters, who are usually worse than the children they replace. If one of your male units dies, you can just pair his wife with another man (this might make their children worse, but they won't be nearly as bad as substitutes) and you'll still be able to use her children in the second generation. Since there are more men than women in the first generation, a few of them will be unpaired, so you don't get any downside in the second generation if they die.
  • From a narrative standpoint, most of the female cast on Sigurd's side during the Battle of Belhalla are known to have survived, with the exception of Ayra, who Larcei insists is missing, not dead. The male characters that were also present either died or are not said to have survived. What makes this especially egregious is that the battle is also known as the Belhalla Massacre.
• Morton's Fork: The whole Yied Massacre happens when King Travant attacks Ethlyn, Quan and their troops and, after killing Ethlyn, he stages a cruel choice to Quan: either he drops his powerful Gáe Bolg lance or his three year old daughter and heiress Altena dies; as a result, Quan drops the Gáe Bolg... only for Travant to kill him anyway and take both little girl and sacred weapon to his kingdom. In the second part he forces a powerful general named Hannibal to fight Seliph's group via taking his adoptive son (Silvia's son Coirpre, or his expy Sharlow if she died childless) as a hostage; either Hannibal wipes out the rebels, or his child dies. So you first have to find and release the kid, then send him out to talk to Hannibal so he can join Seliph's troops too. Otherwise, you lose two recruitable characters. (And if Coirpre's dad is either Lewyn or Claud, you will also lose a Sacred Weapon: either the Forseti tome or the Valkyrie Staff).
• Motherhood Is Superior: Gen 2 characters except Seliph and Leif are naturally bonded to their mothers, as their fathers could be anyone in Sigurd's army. While most conversations express the kids' loves and desires to find their lost mothers, they tend to avoid discussing the same about the fathers altogether, except Lewyn and Finn, if they are married.
• Musical Spoiler: Aida's assurances that Arvis is on Sigurd's side and always knew he was innocent is accompanied by the deeply ominous "Emperor Arvis" theme.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Iuchar and Iucharba can be recruited by Larcei/Creidne. However, because the two have a rivalry, only one of them can be recruited.
• Nasty Party: At the climax of the first generation, Arvis puts up one big celebration party to welcome Sigurd home. Then he reveals that it's just a trap to drop Sigurd's defenses, has his men surround him and his party with no escape, and proceeds to both roast Sigurd personally with Valflame and have his Roten Ritter squad members roast Sigurd's army with flaming meteors.
• Non-Combat EXP:
  • Thief units get EXP for giving their money to another unit.
  • Rescuing a civilian grants an instant level up to whoever did it.
• Non-Indicative Name: The "Battle" of Belhalla is less a battle and more a massacre as Sigurd's forces are surrounded and cut down virtually to a man by Arvis and the Roten Ritter.
• Non-Lethal K.O.:
  • Arena defeats don't result in character deaths; instead they reduce the character's HP to 1.
  • Every time Deirdre falls in battle, she'll come back at the end of the chapter, unscathed because the enemy merely captured her.
  • When Quan, Ethlyn, and Finn join Sigurd's army, they're protected by a special script that causes them to go back to Lenster in the event that they are defeated. The special script stops working when they leave for good at Chapter 4.
• No Ontological Inertia: The only way to rid Julia of her brainwashing is to kill Manfroy, the puppetmaster.
• No-Sell: This is the first game to introduce Pavise/Great Shield, a skill which negates any damage inflicted based on the unit's level and a skill associated with Generals and Barons.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: No matter what the player does, the statuses of several prominent bloodlines, most dating back over one-hundred years to the time of the crusaders, are drastically shifted by the end of the story:
  • The house of Chalphy loses its modern heir carrying Major Baldr blood due to Seliph instead inheriting the Grannvale royal throne, and unless he were to name any of Julia's children - assuming she's alive to have any - his heir, the royal family's direct line of inheritence would almost certainly lose the Major Naga bloodline.
  • The major bloodlines of Thrud and Nál are unavoidably cut off due to their modern heirs being enemies. While the Thrud major line could very well be doomed, the player can arrange for Nál's major line to be salvaged (off-screen) by marrying Lex's daughter to Iucharba or Iuchar. (The same would hold for Fjalar, but Saias is confirmed to have inherited Arvis' Major Fjalar blood).
  • And of course, several royal lines or major bloodlines can be extinguished if Ares, Julia, Shannan, Leif, Altena, Arion, Lewyn's children, Lachesis' children, Ayra's children, Brigid's children, Jamke's children, or Claud's children die or are never born.
  • Inverted if Ares lives to inherit the Agustrian throne, as the Major Hoðr bloodline was originally within the Agustrian royal family before marrying into the house of Nordion.
• No Woman's Land: Women in Jugdral do not have a happy lot. Bandits frequently Rape, Pillage, and Burn villages, and even being a noblewoman with a castle doesn't help when an enemy lord invades to abduct and forcibly marry her. Such an abduction is the touch point for Grannvale's invasion of Verdane, setting off the conflict. It gets worse in the second half, with Lana/Muirne saying that it's "scary just being a girl" and Creidne becoming unsettled when Iuchar/Iucharba stand near her for too many turns.
• Obviously Evil: The Loptr followers all wear long robes that leave a Face Framed in Shadow apart from an ever-present evil grin and use dark magic tomes named after dark figures in Norse mythology (Fenrir, Jormangund, Hel).
• Order Is Not Good: Double-subverted. Arvis tried to make a world in his order where people actually prospered and did not suffer injustices. For about 15 years, it worked. Then Manfroy gave Loptous tome to Julius, and he turned Arvis' good orderly empire into an oppressive, straight example of the trope.
• One-Man Army: The Holy Weapons are capable of making the descendant of the Crusader into one. The most extreme is the descendant of Forseti, Lewyn and his son (only either Arthur, Ced, or Coirpre since they are the only ones capable of wielding Forseti) as their avoid goes OVER 100 because it boost their speed by 20.
• Ornamental Weapon: Two obtainable Holy Weapons, Valkyrie and Forseti, can fall into this if Claud or Lewyn end up in the wrong pairings after obtaining them, which will result in the weapon being inherited by a unit who can't even make use of it. Ain't nothing like having the legendary wind tome Forseti being carried around by the Arch Knight Lester just for show.
• Overlord Jr.: Edain, Brigid, Lex and Tailtiu have not so nice older or younger brothers that took after their dads and then have villainous kids of their own. And the True Final Boss is Arvis's possessed son Julius.
  • Or antivillainous in the case of Iuchar, Iucharba, Brian, Arion, Ishtar and Ishtore. The first two can be recruited (though only one of them), and Arion can be made into an allied unit (not under your specific control, but fights for your side anyway) by Altena.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Possessors of the Holy Blood tend to overshadow those who lack it.
  • This is a recurring dialogue theme between substitute characters; commoners who got caught up with the war and fighting for their lives and good cause, and no matter how good they get, they still believe that they're still outclassed by the Holy Blood possessors. Asaello makes a good mention on it, as a point of his personal depression.
  • The members House Thrud or Nál has varying effects on this:
    • In case of Thrud, the descendants of Thrud you get (Tailtiu, Tine, Arthur, Linda and Amid) are all nice and good, and still servicable. However, they all only have minor Thrud blood, they're overshadowed with the antagonistic Ishtar who has not only great sympathetic points, but also a major Thrud blood, giving her access to the mighty Mjölnir tome, so she gets to be the one representing lightning magic amongst Jugdral (her forebearers, Reptor and Bloom, are less sympathetic, so your Thrud descendants can overshadow them just fine despite the lack of major Thrud blood).
    • In case of Nál, this is actually inverted. Those who wield the major Nál blood and the axe Helswath tend to be unsympathetic, especially Lombard and Danann (and while Brian is a little more sympathetic, he shows up too late with too little small time). Therefore, minor Nál blood characters the player get (Lex, Iuchar or Iucharba) can overshadow them instead.
• Permanently Missable Content: There are several items that can only be acquired in Generation 1, like the Knight Ring and the Barrier Sword. Miss them or don't pass them down, and you won't have them for the rest of Generation 2. The Forseti tome is also the only obtainable Holy Weapon in the first generation that is missable and can only be obtained by Lewyn. If he does not visit Castle Silesse before chapter 4 is complete, you will have missed out on a powerful Disc-One Nuke for the rest of the game.
• Properly Paranoid: Some villagers in the first half speak of periodic hunts declared by nobility to kill those accused of being of Loptous descent. You witness a major justification in the second half.
• Pseudo-Crisis: In Chapter 1, after subduing Genoa Castle, Elliot arrives from Agustria to the north leading a large squad of knights with the intent to take on Sigurd's army for daring to invade Verdane, and his knights start moving toward Evans Castle, Sigurd's home base for the chapter. At this point, the bulk of the player's forces are probably way to the south, dealing with the enemy castles down there, so it looks like you're doomed... until after the next turn's Enemy Phase, where Eldigan leads the Cross Knights from Nordion and curb stomps Elliot's forces.
• Power Nullifier: The Nihil skill nullify battle skills and critical hits. The former is not as useful since not many enemies have Astra, Luna, or Sol, but the latter is useful against enemies with Wrath or Killer weapons as well as negating weapon effectiveness (as they technically count as critical hits). Many lategame fliers and armored bosses would pack these skills.
• Random Number God: Thanks to 1 RN, you can always count on her to screw you or your enemies over whenever she feels like it. Just look at this video.
• Rape as Drama: Lene (or Laylea) is a professional dancer, and she has to deal with disgusting men who are either morally repugnant, perverted, or both. But Bramsel is even worse than this. Ares defends her from one attempt to assault her, but when he's sent out to fight she's left defenseless and Bramsel throws her in the dungeon to try again. It's ambiguous how much Bramsel did, but her words after Dahna is taken make it clear that she is not okay.
• Recurring Boss: You'll see the Mjölnir used against you more times than you'll care for, spanning three generations of users.
• Red Shirt Army: The Leonster knights that get killed along with Quan and Ethlyn. Mahnya's pegasus knight squadron that gets killed by the Beige Ritter.
  • Quite likely also the remnants of Iuchar or Iucharba's armies after you recruit one of them to your side, though the former's redshirts are more likely to get themselves killed due to their superior mobility and being closer to the enemies.
• Relationship Values: This is the first game to have a lover system that accumulates until one male and female unit become lovers.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: While a lot of it is obfuscated by Spell My Name With An S from both fan and official translators alike, most of the heroes are named after figures from Celtic Mythology, with the remainder from Norse Mythology as well. The exception is Southern Thracia and the neighboring Miletos district—Thracian names are taken from figures in Mediterranean and Near-East history (such as Hannibal) and Miletos' place names sound Greek, highlighting their separation from the rest of the continent.
• Scratch Damage: Similar to Gaiden, any damage will always have a minimal infliction of 1 HP, regardless if the unit's attack is lower than the enemy's defense or resistance. It is likely because some of your units like your thieves or dancers are so weak that entering the arena with them is completely Unwinnable without proper support.
• Self-Made Orphan:
  • Chagall and Andrey killed their fathers for power.
  • Julius killed his mother in a fit of madness (and almost kills his sister Julia, but Mom manages to save her before dying) and later leaves his father to die
  • The player can make Lex, Tailtiu, Iuchar, and Iucharba do in their fathers.
• Shades of Conflict: While the player characters are the clear good guys here, the villains are either anti-villains (Brian, Ishtar, Ishtore, Areone, pre-recruitment Altena and several minor bosses) or well- intentioned extremists (Arvis, Travant) who are mixed in with horrible people (Hilda, Manfroy, Loptous-possessed Julius).
• Shock and Awe: House of Friege is well known for their thunder magic.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Kingdom of Silesse is a land covered in snow known for its Pegasus Knights. Unfortunately, the kingdom was in a period of turmoil when Lewyn was named heir to the throne while his uncles vied for power and with Sigurd taking refuge as a fugitive to Grannvale, the kingdom erupted into a civil war.
• Spoiler Cover: Despite Sigurd being playable first, Seliph is the frontmost character on the boxart of Genealogy of the Holy War, and he isn't even playable until the second generation, which begins right after Sigurd himself dies.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: The tale of Sigurd and Deirdre is a tragic one. They get married and have a young child, but then Deirdre gets kidnapped and brainwashed into marrying her half-brother only to bear children that would have major Loptous blood. Then Sigurd gets killed.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: The way the family system works is that the mother characters are fixed, while their children look and act the same regardless of who the father is. The only thing the father determines are what skills the kids get. If the mother doesn't get married (or are killed before the end of Chapter 5), a pair of substitutes appear instead—they have the same dialogue as the 'canonical' children, but different stats. However, the substitutes also have conversations and events unique to them.
• Stealth Prequel: To Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light. Naga gave up her physical form (and either became a girl in the process or did so earlier to have Tiki) to provide Heim with the Naga tome, putting her death at the year 632 in the Jugdral calendar. For another point of reference, Loptous was an Earth Dragon who did the same thing with Galle to avoid being sealed by Naga, putting the end of the war between Divine Dragons and Earth Dragons at around the year 440 in the Jugdral calendar.
• Storming the Castle: Every chapter involves storming and capturing multiple castles.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • A number of characters resemble their Holy Crusader◊ ancestors. Shannan looks like Od, Lewyn looks like Ced, Njörun looks like Altena, and Fjalar looks like Arvis. It's less obvious with the rest, but there are still a few traits that the main characters obviously got from their Crusader ancestors.
  • In-game portraits of some child characters are slightly edited version of their fixed parent. Larcei is essentially Ayra with short hair while Ares is Eldigan with slight facial differences.
• Suspiciously Small Army:
  • Due to hardware limits, a group of +10 units constitutes an 'army'.
  • Thracia had, at most, 87 dragon riders which were divided into 8 'battalions'. In Real Life, 87 riders is barely enough to qualify as a whole Company.
• Take Care of the Kids: Sigurd gives baby Seliph to Oifey and Shannan after capturing Luveckto keep Seliph safe.
• Temporary Party Member to Villain: Arvis briefly appears in the prologue as an AI-controlled, One-Man Army allied unit who helps Sigurd deal with the Verdane invasion and hands him the Silver Sword. He's then later encountered during the game's Wham Episode, where he's revealed to have become The Emperor and The Heavy in the process, and he kills Sigurd and wipes out his army, becoming a key antagonist in the game's second half.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Using holy weapons on non-boss enemies can be seen as this, but there's also another example. In Chapter 4, Edain can talk to her lover for one of them to get an item, depending on who her lover is. If it's Jamke, she gives him a Brave Bow, which allows him to attack twice for each instance where he would normally attack only once. Thing is, Jamke already has access to the skills Pursuit (which allows him a second attack if he's faster than his opponent), Adept (which has a chance of granting him another attack depending on his speed, and stacks with Pursuit), and Charge (which can allow for an extra round of combat, also depending on his speed, and allows him to activate Pursuit and Adept again). All of these skills will allow him an extra two attacks with the Brave Bow equipped. With all of these skills, there's a very good chance that a competently trained Jamke just shoots anything he attacks until it dies, so having the Brave Bow equipped to double his number of attacks in a single round of combat (usually four attacks per round at least, because of his high speed allowing Pursuit to activate against nearly any opponent) is almost unnecessary.
• Time Skip: After Chapter 5, the story skips ahead 17 years. Some characters that appeared on the first generation also show up later on having aged, like Oifey, Lewyn, Arvis and Finn.
• Too Awesome to Use: The Holy Weapons are very powerful, and anyone using one is granted numerous bonuses to their stats in addition to the high numbers attached to the weapon itself. It also does not take much work to wear them down until they break, as it is not unusual for a player character to attack twice or three times per exchange, and Holy Weapons are painfully expensive to repair. Using one to fight in the arena will usually involve a repair bill swallowing up at least half the prize money, and using one to fight mooks is overkill to the point of waste, especially in the case of the faster Holy Weapon users who trade harder hitting for more attacks. As such, Holy Weapons are better left off being used sparingly against strong opponents.
• Trauma Conga Line: Chapter 5 piles on the tragedies. It opens with the army coming to the rescue of Sigurd's dying father and it goes downhill from there. The first castle is guarded by Lex's father, who will disown and attempt to kill him if you move him into engagement range. After his father is dead and his castle taken, Quan and Ethlyn enter the desert in the South-East with their knights and infant daughter, pursued by Thracian wyvern knights wielding horseslayers. It is completely impossible to reach them in time, and they are killed with all their men, their daughter being kidnapped by the enemy commander. (The Thracians aren't even marked as enemies until this point, so even if you could reach them in time—and your lone flying unit might actually be able to—you can't help them.) Sigurd will learn of his sister and brother-in-law's murders as soon as he takes the next castle - which is guarded by Tailtiu's father, who will again disown and attempt to kill her, either dying at her hand or in front of her eyes. After defeating the third enemy army (not counting the wyverns), Sigurd rides up to the friendly Grannvale castle to end the mission, and he and his forces are welcomed to the capital, where they are betrayed and seized by Arvis and his army. Arvis then displays to Sigurd the fact that he has stolen Sigurd's wife, right before he slaughters Sigurd and all the troops you've kept alive for the last six chapters. Meanwhile, some survived, but for some like the aforementioned Tailtiu, it's not the end of the conga line yet: After all those, she and her infant daughter Tine gets captured by her own family, separated with her son Arthur, imprisoned at their home, treated like dirty traitors, while Tailtiu's sister-in-law relishes in abusing her and her daughter and Tailtiu takes extra abuses just to protect her daughter. All those traumas piles up that she stopped being a Genki Girl, becoming depressed and eventually losing her will to live as she dies as a sorrowful woman. And Tine witnesses almost the entirety of her mother's downward spiral.
• Troubled Teen: Emperor Arvis' teenage son, Julius, is the leader of the child hunts. In fact, the boy is actually the vessel for Loptous, and has stripped Arvis of his authority so he almost can't do anything about it.
• Unequal Pairing: Quite a theme in the first generation, where your army members have wildly different social backgrounds, ranging from wealthy aristocrats to hereditary knights to royals to complete commoners and even a lord ruling in his own name (Claud). They can all fall in love with each other regardless, but it causes some of them a little angst. It isn't much of an issue in the second generation where almost everybody grew up in poverty and menaced by imperial soldiers despite their noble backgrounds.
• The Unfought: While Sigurd's and Seliph's journeys combined have them fighting almost the entirety of the continent, there are two factions that were left unencountered. Isaach's army of swordfighters was defeated offscreen during the first generation, with House Dozel's occupation forces having set up shop in the second. The other is the allied Munster District (which includes Quan and Leif's House Leonster), which likewise has been subjugated by House Friege in the second generation.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Your actions in the first half of the story will affect what happens in the second half. Meaning that your game will be easier if you know what you're doing and harder if you don't.
• Vague Age: Apart from the ones who were definitely born before Chapter 5 (such as Seliph), it's a little unclear how old the children in the second generation are meant to be. The final lover conversations in Chapter 5 can contradict what the children say later if pairings finalized late.^note e.g., Tailtiu and Azelle talk about their children, plural, but Arthur indicates that he was a toddler when Tine was a newborn. Not all of the child pairs are twins, and certain characters are treated as being younger than the rest, such as Coirpre/Charlot. Plus, it's possible that both halves of a pairing could be ones who are said to have an unknown fate, meaning they could have conceived a child together post-Belhalla.
• Villain Ball: Manfroy has a chance to have Julia, the only person capable of wielding the Naga tome and thus the person best-equipped to defeat Julius, executed. Instead, he allows cruelty to override common sense and brainwashes her into fighting the crusaders, resulting in her reuniting with them when he dies and his spell is broken. This mistake leads to the crusaders gaining a Naga tome user, ensuring Julius' downfall, and with it, the downfall of the Empire Manfroy worked so hard to create.
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: Munster is depicted as fertile farmlands, whilst Thracia is shown as a mountainous and barren region with infertile land. In fact, Thracia is villainous because it's a badland. When the peninsula was a single nation, the mountainous south could share in the resources of the fertile lands of Munster to the north. After it split, Thracia couldn't support itself from its land and its people turned to mercenary work to escape poverty.
• Wham Episode: At the end of Chapter 5, Sigurd fights his way to his home and Arvis welcomes him with open arms... and then Sigurd and his army get massacred.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Miletos District is never mentioned again after Chapter 10, and doesn't even get mentioned in the epilogue.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The village near Orgahil in chapter 3 doesn't thank you for saving them. Instead, whoever visits gets chewed out for dragging the war that far north into a territory that had nothing to do with Agustria and Grannvale's war. (You do still get the cash, though.)
• Where It All Began: The prologue begins in Chalphy with Sigurd setting out to save Edain. In the final chapter, the last stretch of the war begins in Chalphy with Seliph setting out to end a 20-year Holy War and save Julia in the process.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: The first half of the game ends with Arvis killing all of his enemies and Unwitting Pawns and uniting Jugdral under the rule of the Grannvale Empire. For his efforts, he gets nine years of peace before Loptous possesses his son Julius and turns the Empire into a tyrannical regime that has to be deposed by Seliph.
• You Have Researched Breathing: The ability to double attack and dealing critical hits require skills (Pursuit and Critical respectively) in order to be performed, in contrast to every other game in the series, where every unit can innately perform double attacks and critical hits depending on their raw stats.

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