My Queen: Nephenee
I don't have any fascinating revelations about Nephenee, because right from the start I was determined to make her amazing following my experience with Amelia. What I didn't know was that I didn't have to try - Nephenee is by far one of the best units in Radiant Dawn, and my absolute favourite unit and character across the entire franchise. Ever. It would be remiss of me not to mention her, however brief. My lance queen dominates every situation pitted against her and always comes out on top. Ike who? Please. Nephenee is the real hero here.

Using Nephenee is a dance of dodging and skillful hits, and she takes the stereotype of the meager, nondescript and useless soldier and tears it down. She's a country bumpkin here to show you that villagers mean business and absolutely is the best (step aside, Donnel), and has no admirations of being a great fighter because she knows she's plenty capable. She s invited to join the army and just goes home to look after her family? Girl. Nephenee picks up a lance and defends her village successfully countless times before the narrative begins, gets thrown in jail because she has no chill and Brom can't talk her out of doing the right thing, and takes the role of a lord in one of Radiant Dawn's chapters and marches right down to the capital to inform Queen Elincia that she should act because bad things are a'comin'. Girl.

I love Nephenee to bits. Raising her is a pleasure; using her is wonder. Wrath is the perfect failsafe if anything does touch her. She can act alone, cover your mages, work side by side with your swordmasters – she's incredibly versatile. And this is no fluke. We're talking countless runs in two different games for Nephenee to climb up to her well deserved pedestal. On four of five occasions where I've finished a Tellius game, she's placed first in the unit rankings - only outdone by a surprise Boyd who had ten chapters to rack up a deathcount before she entered the picture.

Nephenee is the unit you should train, the one I would pick every time, and this is an unabashed excuse to gush about her prowess. Feel free to move along, but do me a favour and use her and tell me all about it.

No Damage: Oscar
Oscar is the story of a Cavalier that defied the odds of his class and managed not only to break himself, but to surprise me. Unlike its predecessor, no lord whips out a horse at promotion in either Tellius game - unless we're talking Mist picking up swords instead of tomes when she becomes a Troubadour which limits her offensively, or Elincia producing a pegasus when she dismantles her role of damsel princess - you're going to stay on whatever you brought with you. What mounts do get is the Canto skill, which actually utilises the mount in question by allowing them to use up the rest of their movement in a turn if they do not fight - you might wonder what use this has. There's a few, but the most important is allowing a unit to rescue others effectively. I could feasibly have flier A rescue say, Ike, and have flier B collect him and approach mount C, for C to take him and then move on upwards to mount D, and pass him around the entire map. In one turn.

Finally, I whispered. As it should have always been. This quickly became something I utilised a lot. In a way it's encouraged if you dig deep enough to spot it - it's far easier to sneak your way around and take out an optional boss and still have the movement to head on back to protect your base defenders.

Cavaliers gain a further boost in Tellius by having their weapon use restricted. Oscar, for instance, specialises in lances, and only lances - in his third tier Radiant Dawn promotion, he also gains a bow. Back up, I said. A bow? Suddenly Oscar's use soared, and on my second and later runs, I bonded him with Nephenee and he proved not only an excellent buff to her stats, but useful for that extra bit of damage. Sure he couldn't realistically take on Ashera's tower, but he could take a hit, and that's why he went. I'd tried using other Cavaliers in Tellius without much success, but Oscar changed my mind. I had such a good run with Oscar in that Radiant Dawn file that on my next two-game run, I decided to stop ignoring him in the earlier Path of Radiance chapters for a hoot.

The joke was on me. Before we even left for Gallia, before I even started getting the opportunity to recruit half the cast, where you break Nephenee out of her dungeon in chapter 10, less than a third into the game - Oscar was stuck in a doorway facing off some half decent enemy soldiers. Each level up, he had consistently raised defense, but that was when it happened.

No damage. Oscar had already capped his defense.

For the rest of the game, nothing could touch him.

Oscar placed second in that run of Path of Radiance, with Nephenee in third. Boyd, to my shock, placed first. I reasoned Boyd in that I used him instead of benching him and you get him ten chapters earlier than my lance goddess, but for Oscar, it was without a doubt his undamagability, his sudden reliability to be the Cavalier that should have always been: and he has mediocre defence growths. I guess the RNG felt like throwing me an unexpected blessing that run, and I enjoyed it immensely. Thanks for the laughs, Oscar.

Backstory: Jill
Prior to Jill and Haar, I neglected Wyvern Riders. A lot of them showed up with axes, pitiful res, and lacking the speed of a Pegasus Knight, so I just passed them over. Spoilers: one of these was the sword fighter of the air and it wasn't the Wyvern Rider. But not only was I missing out on what is now one of my favourite classes, I was missing out on perhaps the most interesting of all the characters in a specific game - outside of the lords, these men and women were the ones with development and history, inevitably tied into the plot itself, because they defected. Being defectors from the enemy nation, they had to be endearing - they had to have a reason for fighting against you, and a reason for changing their mind. As Fire Emblem was certain to contain a squabbling pair of red and green Cavaliers, pre-promotes and late bloomers, I suddenly realised that upon every wyvern I had ever benched sat a rider with a treasure trove of backstory and motivation just begging to be explored. In any and all games post-Tellius, replay or not, a spot has always been reserved in my roster for a wyvern.

Jill, however, is special, because she made me realise this. Jill also happens to be one of my favourite characters in any media because she admits she is wrong - her words are not merely an empty apology, as she actively changes herself.

In her introduction, Jill vocally loathes laguz - her hatred for laguz ends in her allying herself with the enemy because laguz are lower than Crimeans on the "things Daein hates" list. But before her deferral, Jill is given time - we see her try to rouse Haar to fight the Crimeans, that she has a chip on her shoulder with something to prove, that she's loud and angry yet retains a moral code, and she is willing to defend her enemies from pirates. She didn't just appear - she had her reasons. And so I didn't bench her for hating laguz; instead, I wanted to know why she hated laguz, and this is how you present a fictional character with a prejudice. (Path of Radiance deals with the laguz prejudice in an extremely mature, thought-provoking manner.) Then, you must give them the chance to learn that they are wrong, to realise it for themselves, and for them to come to their own conclusions.

And Path of Radiance does. In Jill's supports, we learn that persecution of laguz is a taught thing. Though Jill is drawn back to Daein, she can't leave: now she knows laguz are different, she becomes a truthseeker - and she never uses what she was taught as an excuse for her behaviour. Actions speak far louder than words, and that is how she is forgiven. Jill matures and ends the game with some of the most steadfast, true relationships I've seen built for a minor character in the Fire Emblem universe. Heck, she even has to deal with her father's loss as her new allies fight against him, and it's after this that Haar realises he can't blindly follow Ashnard anymore and steps down to Jill's side. Jill paves the way. She acts on her words. She actively begins to defend the laguz. She becomes a better person. What more can you ask for?

And thus she and Haar both earned a hard-won spot in my Radiant Dawn roster, and there they've remained ever since.

Orchestrate: Zelgius
It's rare that I will dedicate a section to a villain. Rarer still is when it's a character that is explicitly villainous and one that I'm fond of: one that I like, one that has beautifully woven foreshadowing, twists and traps, and motivation that doesn't quite make sense until that final piece slots into place - a villain that acts outside of the true grandmaster when it suits him because he isn't entirely subservient, yet also offers him the greatest respect and trust, both ways. And better yet, a villain that's competent and wins on multiple occasions before you do get to the chance to thrash him - Ike literally has to be at his peak to even consider touching the physical might that is Zelgius, the Black Knight, and only Ike, as Ranulf almost dies to the man's blade attempting to do so. Twice.

True, Zelgius holds a boon thanks to blessed armour and the possession of the legendary sword Alondite, but the point remains. He's still unbeatable without it. I don't even mind facing down or avoiding whatever section of the map Zelgius has chosen in which to brood, given that he can and will tear my perfectly raised units to shreds, which is truly something when they themselves are a finely tuned execution squad. There is no "and he came back for another round" with Zelgius. Ike faces him alone twice, the first time mercifully interrupted by Zelgius (presumably) being crushed beneath the rubble of a falling castle - canonically, Ike wins the fight, but I use the term "win" extremely loosely as Zelgius is injured anyway, and only the second is on equal terms and strength. But it has taken Ike two whole games and several grueling years of training and multiple wars to get to Zelgius (and Greil's) level. This is the kind of dichotomy I like to see. This is the villain I want, because the fear is real.

Then Radiant Dawn throws you a curveball when the Black Knight shows up in the woods to protect Micaiah. Suddenly, he is on your side. He is protecting you. He is good... or just complicated enough to not be a blank canvas villain but to have his own wants and ends? He wants Micaiah to rise up and become great. He needs the Maiden of Dawn. And I promptly lost my mind with the possibilities, the thought that villains could be so much more than batches of samey cookies.

this is a very handsome cookie man

Ashera is the final boss of Radiant Dawn, but she isn't the one pulling the strings - Sephiran is the man behind the metaphorical curtain, and he's the one with sway over Zelgius. But Sephiran is always a little suspicious, aloof, and lies to Ike's face - Zelgius doesn't. Zelgius leads a perfect, duplicitous life as himself and the Black Knight, and he's extremely good at what he does - Sephiran might give Zelgius the order, but Zelgius executes it. He is a master at manipulating events - be it openly on a battlefield in Begnion by furthering Chaos, or by pushing Micaiah towards the Daein throne to fill the void Ashnard left. Even early on, he gives Ike the resolve to pursue him by killing Greil (this wasn't planned, but Zelgius seizes every opportunity). He is a master at moulding players into their parts, including the player - the player trusts Zelgius because he is likeable and accommodating, and manages to remain chivalrous even whilst facing off against the laguz alliance.

The hints are dropped from the start as to who the Black Knight is if you bother to go back and look, but it's not an obvious reveal - it's a conclusion the characters draw from Zelgius' slip in fighting Ranulf in both his identities, and as a tactician, of course Ranulf would notice. I certainly didn't see it coming. Ranulf drops the bombshell and it makes sense - the theory is embraced by Ike and the rest. Even then, no one is absolutely sure until the mask comes off.

And Zelgius keeps up his entire charade successfully hiding that he is a Branded. Though never explicitly stated, he has Raven laguz in his bloodline - Ravens specifically known for cunning and deceit, but not for strength. And he is considered stronger than most Beorc. That stereotype he smashes.

Does Zelgius know his desired fight with a strengthened Ike will kill him? It's possible. He's doomed to live a frightfully long time, always alone - and if Tellius is judged, that won't change. This fight is the one thing he desires, and I don't think it's merely a test of his strength against the techniques of his former master. The outcome is his want. But his secrets go with him, and Zelgius remains a villain close to my heart.

Oh, yeah, and that Wii I bought? It's named after him.