synergetic | Prince of Fire Emblem: Gray Waves

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prince of fire emblem

Prince of Fire Emblem: Gray Waves

A princess with a poker face, Yukimura thought, as Yanagi took away the tea cups and retreated to where the rest of his entourage waited near the doorway.

He had open across the small negotiating table a letter from Princess Azura's stepfather, promising him that he would make her marriage as valuable to him as if she were his own flesh and blood. King Garon had a reputation that his own children shrank from, even as they bowed to his every whim. Azura didn't have the same fawning, wincing air as Garon's own children, from what Yukimura remembered of the spy reports. She looked placidly into his eyes.

"You pushed for this?" he asked, bluntly.

"No, milord," said the princess calmly. "Having just returned to Nohr after a long stay in Hoshido, I was as surprised as you."

Was she lying to him? She'd appeared at the gates of his castle alongside a delivery of flowers and wine for the ball celebrating Marui and Lissa's engagement, accompanied by her stepfather's offer of her hand and a ne'er-do-well with an axe as large as his body.

"He's this eager to get rid of you?"

"Or to gain your goodwill," she answered delicately.

Was she lying to him? The timing angered him immensely.

"By sending you here? Customarily, the pleasure of the bride's company is withheld until the marriage has been satisfactorily arranged."

"Your refusal is noted," she said, not without a certain heaviness.

His eyes narrowed. An outright refusal, in front of the man with the axe... his head burned. Could he afford to refuse Garon's offer without at least the pretense of consideration? Was she simply manipulating him into making a mistake?

"I said no such thing," he answered tightly. She inclined her head apologetically. "But my concern is with the engagement of my own princess, which you're interfering with."

She didn't contest his choice of verb, and his blood boiled.

"Like your princess, I am at the mercy of kings," she said. "I mean no disrespect to Lady Lissa."

But do you mean her harm? he wondered. Did Azura mean to displace her? The king's wife was necessarily given more authority than the king's sister. Yukimura didn't want that. He didn't want a wife for his own sake, there was nothing left within him that could love or cherish the princess before him nor any other, and he certainly didn't want a queen, who'd expect to see her own child on his throne in due time.

A queen would displace Lissa in the hierarchy of the court, and an heir would do the same in the line of succession. A perfect sabotage of his failsafe. A waste of Marui's and Lissa's sacrifices both-- not to mention the hints he'd tried to give them during their dance practice for tonight.

He had to play this intelligently-- even if he was starting late. He swallowed back the venom and vitriol he felt for this interloper and, hating himself for the debasement, stood, only to bow to her gallantly.

"Enjoy with us the festivities already planned," he said, more instructing than inviting. "We can talk more when I've discharged the business already in front of me."

"Yes, milord," she said, opaque as an iron wall.

Felicia -- delighted to be visited by a princess of her native land -- quickly escorted Azura and Hans, the axe man, to their lodgings, and Yukimura turned to his friends, pale and glowing with displeasure.

"I want to know why Nohr chose now to do this," he said, "but I will settle for what I should do to them in retaliation."

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"It's not that kind of 'next!'" she protested. "He's gonna get married and have lots of perfect little nieces and nephews for me to spoil, and everybody'll forget about little old me! I'm like, when your dress rips and you can't sew, so you pin it together and hope nobody notices."

"Oh, you can see the future so well! Do mine next."

She stepped on his foot, briefly, though she made sure it wasn't with the heel.

"Where's the fun in that?" she asked sweetly.

But she got serious again, or at least worried.

"Do they think you're gonna kill him as soon as you actually marry me or something? Would one of them do that?"

His expression barely falters with the step; anyone not watching for it would miss it.

"Well, even if you're right about never seeing the throne yourself, don't you think it's a big jump in wealth, status, and power for someone to become your spouse?"

"Seiichi's already paying you to be his friend," she said, a bit too meanly because she didn't want to let on how bothered she was by him being right.

"You'd think they'd be happy for you," she muttered. "If they were as kind to Seiichi as you are... and as tolerant of how weird he is... he'd give them good jobs, too."

"That's an adorable dream, Lissa-chan," Niou cut in with from a few feet away where he danced with Yagyuu, his expression like a cat's with a canary. "Now try thinking about what really makes the world go round."

Yagyuu's expression turned to one of disapproval. "Niou-kun, we mustn't eavesdrop on others' conversations. Still less insert ourselves into them."

"Don't pretend you weren't listening in, too." He chided right back, though with far more amusement and pleasure.

Yagyuu could only fluster and sputter in indignation, so Niou turned his attention back to Lissa with his usual lively eyes and secret-keeper's grin. "Dance with me next if you want the truth. I'll give you all the tea."

Marui had still only told her half the story, after all.

She bit her lip, then: "Next song, promise!"

The easy way out was tempting, but... at the same time, she didn't want to let Bunta down. If he thought she could figure it out.

She'd just use Masaharu-kun to check her work, she reasoned.

Lissa looked back at Bunta, thoughtful.

"Okay, okay, whatever, but you're Seiichi's friend. If he was gonna marry me off to somebody, of course it'd be someone he knows. They shouldn't be surprised if it's you or Masaharu-kun."

She waved at him, just then, because she'd want a dance from him even without the enticement of secrets.

Pretty sneaky, Niou. Well, it's probably for the best this way. No one can pop a balloon quite like that guy. He'll certainly enjoy opening her eyes more than Bunta.

"Absolutely. He won't allow anyone he doesn't know will treat you well, because his priority is you."

"You're so close but so far it's killing me, Lissa-chan," Niou playfully bemoaned.

Bunta ignored him and smiled. "You understand your brother's point of view on this matter well. Try theirs."

"Well, he's the king, they should be trying to see it from his point of view," Lissa said quickly, although she knew well enough that life wasn't as simple as that.

She thought back to the meeting announcing the set up. Genichirou had been really passionate about it. She'd never believed it was from any kind of feelings for her, and he wasn't the type to be jealous of Marui-- plus he knew it was a set up from the beginning. So, why?

She almost squirmed with discomfort, trying not to actually realize what she was realizing.

"Genichirou-kun thought he could do this whole thing better than you," she said, almost thinking out loud.

She has it backwards, he notices. It's the king's job to understand his people's point of view, because the king is the one with the power to impact lives. Much less frequently do the decisions of a king's people impact him-- and when they do, it tends to be a backlash against decisions the king made that his people hated.

Bunta doesn't comment on that part, since can see she's still mulling over the real question. Of course, when she does continue her reasoning, he has to fight back a snicker. As Niou just said: so close, but so far.

"Well, Sanada has a strong sense of duty. He has his own reasons for not wanting anyone but himself in my position."

"He'd be like this with any job that needed to be done, right?"

She glanced around the ballroom, looking for him, nooot exactly wanting to get caught talking about him.

"Yep. But especially this one."

This is actually a pretty good segue.

"Do you remember what Yukimura-kun said that made him so adamant it should be him?"

"I kinda stopped hearing after he said the really important part," she admitted.

But she tried to think back.

"That it's not lucky," she said, slowly. "But what's not lucky about it? If everybody wants it because I'm rich and my brother is the king... that's what makes it not lucky, is everybody else wanting it? But it's not going to make a difference; what Seiichi says goes, and..."

She frowned. And shot her brother an incredulous look that he may or may not have noticed, from where he still sat on the dais.

The music comes to a stop and shifts to something quicker-paced. Niou steps behind and across Marui. In one smooth, swift motion, he takes Lissa's hand from Marui's and guides it in a turn towards her back so that she pivots away from him. Niou glides right in to take his place and sticks his tip of his tongue out at Marui.

"First dance is over. Time to share."

Turning his attention to Lissa as he leads, he sends her a mysterious smile.

"Try to keep up now."

Lissa guiltily glances from left to right, before focusing all her attention on Masaharu-kun.

"I'm really trying, okay? I promise, I don't want to end up with another St. Rudolph incident!"

"Relax," he tells her. "This becomes a lot simpler if you think about it through the lens of power. That's the blood that pulses through all of politics and society more broadly."

The dance let her scoot a little closer to him, and her hands tightened a little on his suit.

Relaxing is easy to tell someone to do!

"I don't have any, though," she said. "It's just a misconception if people think I do."

Niou is not about to get caught up in one of these debates around her insecurities and misconceptions about herself.

"Let's come back to the question of whether what you lack is power or the experience to wield it effectively. If nothing else, access to the king through you is a form of power. That connection creates influence. Just as it did when he was choosing your fiancé and relied on, what? Strangers from the court? Or his personal friendships?"

"That says more about all of you than it does about anyone else, I think," she stammered. She appreciated his directness, but it was a shock all the same. Like medicine that worked, but was still a trial to take.

"It puts Bunta-kun above even the rest of you, doesn't it? Or-or at least that's the perception... I don't think it's the real truth of the matter."

She's damn right it doesn't put Marui over the rest of them, but the clarity on that point can wait just for a moment.

"Don't misunderstand. That's one small example to illustrate the point: power exists everywhere. In countless forms. It ebbs and flows and changes shape every day, like a force of nature. Understanding who has it, who they have it over, and what they want to use it for, is how you avoid a repeat of St. Rudolph. That's Lesson 1. Following so far?"

Lissa nods, shying away from trying to parrot anything back to him as a show of understanding just yet.

She thinks about Maribelle and her servants, and her father, the magistrate. And Maribelle's servants can decide who they give Maribelle's money to, can't they?

Thinking of Mizuki... she feels a lot more anger than she did at the time. And Seiichi's comment, that few people had the stomach to back him into a corner twice... but he'd done it, first by taking advantage of her sick and helpless brother, then by taking advantage of her... Didn't he have enough power to do what he needed to do as it was?!

"...Please keep going," she said.

He sort of likes the fierce flicker in her eyes. That's good to see, it means she's starting to understand. Power imbalances themselves weren't good or evil, but there certainly was a lot of evil that could be done through them. She needs open eyes about the undercurrents that both keep society functioning and threaten the things she holds dear.

"Lesson 2: power is a zero sum game. Power someone else has is power you don't have. The only way for one person to gain power is for another person to lose it. People don't like losing things."

"Okay, but who's the loser in the Bunta-marrying-me scenario? No one else was going to marry, certainly not anybody out there!"

But that was something else Seiichi said... thinking their futures were taken away from them...

"You're not seriously telling me they were ALL planning to marry me?!"

Lissa is great when she gets fired up like this. Niou's eyes dance with amusement listening to her puzzle her way through it.

"Well, maybe not directly. But there's one more piece to the power puzzle. Puri."

That was absolutely tacked on purely for the alliteration.

"Pop quiz: what's Marui's social status?"

She blinked owlishly.

"I really don't want to--" she huffed, but she grit her teeth and tried not to gloss it up.

"He's not that kind of thief," she finally grouses. "But he's common and not even a little bit noble and ugh!"

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