My Top Ten Female Fire Emblem Awakening Characters

**NOTE: This is an older post I made on the blog that is now Project Angelus. Since I'm seperating my other stuff from my writing project, I have copied this blog post here.**

There are many awesome female video game characters out there from all walks of life. Some are normal people living life day to day, while others get out there and kick some ass! Recently, after playing through most of Fire Emblem Awakening, I’ve come to really enjoy many of the characters in the game, with many of my favorites being from the overall great female cast. From cute and funny to endearing and inspiring, these women have been some of the most memorable female characters from any RPG I’ve played. With International Women’s Day having passed not that long ago, I’d figure I’d share my appreciation for some of these lovely and awesome Fire Emblem Awakening ladies! Therefore, I present...

My Top Ten Female Fire Emblem Awakening Characters

I’ve opened my consideration on all the female characters in Awakening, judging them on their character and personality as well as their capability as a unit on the battlefield. There are only a few restrictions on this list:

• There are no NPCs. While there have been some notable female NPC characters, like Phila, we don’t learn much about them.
• The character is not one that is added by DLC, including Einherjar characters and former NPC characters recruited from the additional Spotpass paralogues, so no Emmeryn or Aversa.
• No female Avatar. While the Avatar plays a major role in the story and is a good character, I’ve left her out for two reasons. One, she shares many of the same characteristics as a male Avatar, and two, it’s more or less inserting yourself as a Fire Emblem character, which I feel is cheating a bit.

There may be spoilers on this list, so be warned! With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

#10 – Libra

 … oh, right, Libra’s a man. Oops. Ok, joking aside, let’s get into the list for real!

#10 – Lissa

Starting off, we have Lissa, who is the sister of Chrom and Emmeryn, and a princess of the Halidom of Ylisse. But regardless of her position as royalty, she joins her brother as part of the Shepherds, being the group’s primary healer. I rather like her decision to do this, as she plays a more active role among Ylisse’s army, rather than take a seat beside her sister.

She has a rather tomboyish personality, and enjoys pulling harmless pranks, as seen with support conversations with the Avatar. She also has a more common manner of speaking, as her unusual crudeness for a princess allows her to befriend and communicate with other people. However, Lissa’s character is something she feels is unbecoming of a woman of royalty, making her rather insecure of herself at times, as she wishes she could be more like her sister. Despite this, she’s very optimistic, which gives a great morale boost to the Ylissian army, something that Chrom assures her of. She’s also a very compassionate person, with her eagerness to help anyone in need allowing her to build trust with others quite easy, as seen with her close friendship with Maribelle, as well as with the Avatar at the beginning of the game. Lissa’s compassion and optimism was endearing to me, and I enjoy her prankster attitude, which pretty much made her feel like she was a little sister. I also like how she wants to become someone like Emmeryn, wanting to mature as a person and be a princess that people will look up to after her sister’s death (or “death” after being a recruitable character via DLC).

As a unit, Lissa starts out as a Cleric, which is a healing class… which means she can’t attack. And she’s rather squishy, as I’ve learned the hard way that she can’t take much punishment at all. But put in the time and effort to level her up and she can become a fairly potent fighter. I’ve upgraded her to the Sage class, and she’s fairly powerful, especially when paired with another unit, thanks to her very good Magic stat, and boosted even further with the Tomefaire skill. Lissa is pretty cute, but also a very capable magic caster and healer!

#9 – Cynthia

While the female 2nd generation characters are all pretty powerful units, there are two in particular that stick out for me. We’ll get to the other one later, but for now, we have Sumia’s daughter, Cynthia! In her time, she was a rather girly and hated violence, but loved hearing the stories of her parents and friends, or as it was told to her the “Generation of Heroes”, even if the truth was stretched a bit. While Cynthia and Sumia were planning to make a spear together, Sumia was killed in a battle before the project could begin, with only her pegasus returning to Cynthia, thus becoming her mount. She also received her mother’s wedding ring and has worn it since that day. Sumia’s death was a great burden to her, so she decided to change herself completely, hanging out with boys more often than girls, and training to become a hero and become a part of the Pegasus Knight squad. She eventually travels back in time alongside the other 2nd generation characters.

She loves being a hero, making dramatic entrances and strongly believing in justice. However, like Sumia, she’s quite clumsy, which makes her entrances go quite differently than planned, and her sense of justice can be misguided at times. Despite this, she strives to do the right thing, and maintains her cheery disposition even after all she’s gone through. I really like her optimism, which is a nice change from most of the characters in general, and her conversations with other characters are often very funny, usually playing off of her heroic antics. Speaking of heroism, some of her mannerisms remind me of classic Kamen Riders, and even her portrait seen above is a pose straight from one of these shows! Being a fan of Kamen Rider, I found this to be a delightful aspect of her character.

Cynthia is a Pegasus Knight unit starting off, and can grow to be incredibly powerful as either a Falcon Knight or Dark Flyer, despite her low defenses. As a Falcon Knight, she’s a great mobile combatant and healer, and as a Dark Flyer, she’s a great kill-and-run unit when she has Galeforce. With that being said, Cynthia is a very enjoyable and funny character, as well as potentially being a very powerful mounted unit.

#8 – Nowi

Nowi is the first of three Manakete characters you can recruit in the story, encountered in Chapter 8. Nowi is from an unknown tribe of Manaketes from a continent from the west, and is around 1,000 years old despite looking very young. At some point in the past, Nowi was captured by humans and sold off to numerous men many times, forced to entertain them with her transformation abilities. However, she escaped her latest owners and was found by Gregor, and later both run into Chrom and the Shepherds joining their ranks.

Her parents are revealed to have died at some point in her supports with Tharja, though she says she does have friends in the land where she came from. In her supports with her daughter, Nah, it is revealed that Nowi deliberately acts childish and playful in order to cheer up other people. Her playing around serves as her training regimen, as using dragonstones is too powerful to train with. Despite her childishness, Nowi is aware that she’s a full-blooded Manakete, and is afraid of being alone as she lives on for thousands of years while her human friends will pass away. Regardless, she really enjoys her time with her friends in Chrom’s army, and her upbeat nature, much like Lissa, is a great boost to troop morale. She also has her moments of maturity, especially with her children, as she uses mature language and is very caring towards them. Being the first Manakete character I encountered, I was quite curious to learn about her and her kind. She’s a very cute character, but doesn’t go overboard with the childishness. In fact, her childishness masks a certain degree of sadness, as her time with her human friends is limited, making her playful nature more understandable.

Being a Manakete, she is initially a pretty strong unit, but must be sparingly used until you’re able to buy dragonstones. She becomes a great anti-Wyvern unit after learning Wyrmsbane, and becomes very powerful with some grinding. Though reclassing can be good to give Nowi more abilities, she’s generally best to keep as a Manakete. Overall, Nowi is adorable, but quite deadly!

#7 – Cherche

This beauty is the first unit acquired after the two-year time skip after defeating Gangrel, joining Chrom’s army when Walhart’s army crosses the ocean to begin to attempt an invasion on Ferox. Cherche is a former vassal of House Virion from Rosanne, making her Virion’s aide. She’s the first Wyvern Rider unit acquired, her beloved mount being named Minerva. Despite being a domestic woman, she’s very strong as she gained Minerva by defeating her and surviving her fire breath, leaving a scar on her shoulder – all when she was only nine years old! With her supports with Vaike, Cherche tells him how after taming Minerva, she trained as a Cleric with a heavy staff, disciplining Minerva with it when she misbehaved. Cherche detests fighting, as seen in her supports with Gaius, but only does so she could live to see her family again when the war is over.

In terms of personality, she’s a domestic woman raised with simple values and is good at cooking and sewing. Unusually, she finds strange creatures like monsters and bugs cute, which is why she considers wyverns beautiful creatures. She has a close bond with Minerva and developed the ability to understand how she feels or what she says through her shrieks and roars. However, Cherche can be quite intimidating, as upsetting her will have her threaten to have Minerva eat you, all while having a smile on her face. Yikes! As long as you don’t get on her bad side, Cherche is actually a pretty nice character, and her relationship with Minerva is quite interesting and pretty developed with a nice backstory, and was enough reason why I avoided upgrading her into a Griffon Rider; I didn’t want to separate Cherche from her beloved wyvern!

Though she is a former vassal, she is a very capable fighter and is pretty much a flying tank thanks to her HP growing every time she levels up as well as her great defence. Upgrading into the Wyvern Lord class makes her even more tanky, as well as giving her the ability to use lances, allowing her to cover two of the three weapon advantages in the weapon triangle, as well as learning the useful Swordbreaker skill as protection against sword users, particularly units equipped with Wyrmslayers. A powerful unit and a lovely lady with some interesting personality quirks… just don’t make her angry. She and Minerva wouldn’t like that.

#6 – Cordelia

The second Pegasus Knight class unit on the list, Cordelia is one of Ylisse’s Pegasus Knights, and is a childhood friend of Sumia. She acts as a guide for Sumia when she’s in trouble, and is tasked with protecting the royal family. She and her squad of Pegasus Knights were fighting Plegian forces in the Ylissian capital, but when things were turning bad for the Knights, Cordelia was ordered to run away in order to warn the Shepards, as well as preserve their legacy. Because of this, Cordelia was the only one from her squad to survive. When Emmeryn decides to return to Ylisse to negotiate with Gangrel, Cordelia volunteers to join her as a bodyguard. However, she is ordered by Philia to stay with Chrom and his army, something she reluctantly agrees to.

In supports with the Avatar, Cordelia is very remorseful over the deaths of her squad mates, but finds the resolve to live on and fight in their memory. Her supports with Stahl reveal that she plays the harp, and hopes to someday be as good as Philia once was. Cordelia is incredibly smart, and is capable of doing things flawlessly, something she is aware of. Seeing as being “average” was not acceptable, she strives to excel in all of her skills. This perfectionism, however, made her former Pegasus Knight comrades dislike her, feeling as though she looked down on them. She has feelings for Chrom, but hides them as she feels a relationship with him would be impossible; this is reflected in the game as she is completely unable to have supports with Chrom, something which I feel is a little bit cruel in a way. I really wish I could have paired her up with Chrom! I feel that Cordelia’s goals for excellence in her skills are something I can identify with, as I tend to push myself to achieve excellence in what I do. But in being great at whatever she does, I feel she’s someone that can be depended on in times of need, which is also something I wish to attain.

As a Pegasus Knight unit, she is quite mobile and is very well rounded in terms of stat growth. She can do well as either a Falcon Knight or Dark Flier, much like her other Pegasus Knight counterparts. I made Cordelia a Dark Flyer, making her a multirole fighter with both lances and spells, as well as using the incredibly useful Galeforce ability to move again after killing an enemy. An excellent unit to have on the field, and a lovely character, Cordelia takes the #6 spot… not quite perfect, but still quite a lady!

#5 – Olivia

Olivia is a dancer who travelled with a theatre troupe until a nobleman became smitten with her and plotted to kidnap and force her to marry him. However, Basilio saved her, and she’s been grateful to him ever since. She joins Chrom’s army after Chapter 10, volunteering to aid the troops in battle by dancing for them. As Basilio says, her dancing invigorates the spirits of soldiers, making them work twice as hard in battle.

What’s interesting is that even though she is a dancer, Olivia is extremely shy and withdrawn. She tells Chrom that the only thing she’s good at is dancing, which even then she feels inadequate at due to stage fright. However, she’s known throughout the lands as a fantastic dancer, and actually has quite a lot of fans. While she has stage fright when she dances for entertainment, this isn’t the case in battle, as she feels her comrades rely on her skills to survive, allowing her to shrug off her shyness for the sake of protecting her friends. As seen in the Avatar’s supports, she dreams of someday opening a theater. Olivia is someone I enjoy because of her shyness, as I can be quite shy in social situations; both of us tend to be shrinking violets in a way. But when things get serious, she’s not afraid to summon up the strength for the sake of others, which, in the face of war, is something I really admire. I also like how she dreams of opening her own theater, as she aspires to show people from all walks of life the joys of dancing.

Olivia is the game’s only Dancer unit, and has high Speed, Skill, and Luck growths. While fragile when you first use her, she can hold her own in combat when levelled up enough. She has a special command, Dance, which allows one adjacent unit who has used his or her move already to move again, which can be useful for getting units to move across the map, attack twice, heal allies twice, and many other utilities. She’s a good support character to have, and while not being the strongest unit, I find Olivia’s character to be very charming.

#4 – Sumia

Yea, as you can tell, aside from Cherche my favorite mounted units are Pegasus Knights, but Sumia is the one I like the most out of the three. She makes her establishing character moment in Chapter 2, where she promptly slips and falls on her face in front of Chrom and the others, leaving her embarrassed over her clumsiness. Sumia is hesitant to fight at first, as she feels she isn’t quite ready for a real battle yet. But after taming an injured pegasus that scares Chrom, she ends up saving him from an attack in the next chapter riding that same pegasus, inspiring the Avatar to create the Pair Up strategy. She also helps Chrom snap out of his internal conflict over Emmeryn’s fate in Plegia’s hands by slapping him out of it… with a closed fist. Possibly one of the most unintentionally funny scenes in any game I’ve played!

Sumia is a klutzy woman, prone to little accidents and often trips over absolutely nothing, much to her embarrassment. Because of this, she feels that she’s unsuitable as a soldier but still does her best where she can. However, she does have a talent for interacting with animals, and is able to read their feelings unlike any other. She also loves reading books, often collecting discarded ones and recommending books to read to others, like the Avatar. She reads as a form of escapism, where she can leave her flaws behind, and often roleplays characters in hopes of boosting her confidence. She also enjoys flower fortunes, plucking many petals at one time. She does this to make her more confident in upcoming battles; bad fortunes motivates her to change it for the better, while good ones encourages her to make sure that they stay true. Sumia is close friends with Cordelia, who is always there to help her out, and admires her flawless demeanor. Still, despite her perceived flaws, she is courageous and compassionate, and is willing to fight for Ylisse. Her klutziness can make for some really funny moments, such as the aforementioned punch she gives Chrom, and has some of the funniest support conversations, especially with Gaius. But I can really identify with her escapism and lack of self-confidence, as I often turn to video games to forget about my personal inadequacies and become someone else. However, she does overcome this in the S-rank support with a male Avatar, admitting that escapism wasn’t healthy for her and that it was time to stop before becoming hopeless, which is a great bit of character development.

As the first flying unit you get, Sumia is very useful early on, and becomes quite a powerful unit later in the game if you take the time to level her up, like the other Pegasus Knights. Sumia has a better Magic growth rate and Magic stat cap than Cordelia, which makes her a better caster and healer whether you choose the Falcon Knight or Dark Flier. And thanks to her high growth in Skill and Speed, she can often get double attacks on enemies. For being a great unit and a great character, Sumia flies in at my #4 spot.

#3 – Tiki

Appearing late in the game, and usually the third Manakete character you can recruit if you’ve gotten Nah, Tiki is both fascinating and tragic as she’s a legacy character from the Hero-King Marth’s era! In Awakening, she is a priestess of Naga in Valm, and regarded as the “Voice of the Divine Dragon”, a being believed that could channel Naga’s energy and convey her blessings onto the Valmese people. Tiki resides in the huge Mila Tree, where she safeguards one of the Fire Emblem’s gems. She first appears in Chapter 16, and upon seeing Lucina, mistakes her for the long-departed Marth, affectionately calling her “Mar-Mar”. She stands corrected after Lucina clarifies her identity, as Tiki reminisces of her old friend. She decides to stay in the Mila Tree until Paralogue 17, where she performs a ritual to awaken the powers of Naga residing within her. With the aid of Chrom and his Shepards, she completes the ritual and joins the party, resolving to help defeat Grima.

Tiki only has a handful of characters to do support conversations with. However, many of the conversations had a big impact on me, and really sunk in how the long lives of Manaketes can be rather tragic. She calls the male Avatar “Mar-Mar” in her supports with him, as his kind and gentle demeanor reminded her of Marth. With a female Avatar, while in her slumber, she recalls painful memories of desolation in the Ice Dragon Temple before calming down when she remembers Marth rescuing her. In her supports with Lucina, Tiki fondly tells her about the person Marth was back many years ago, and after witnessing her around camp, felt that Lucina was worthy of assuming her former identity as Marth due to her uncanny ability to bring people together and build a rapport with them, much like the Hero-King did. With Nah, Tiki tells her that as a Manakete, she will have a cruel fate of outliving all the human friends she loves and cares about, much like how Tiki did with Marth. Nah accepts this hesitantly, but ends up befriending Tiki as she wants to live as long as her fellow Manakete does, which makes Tiki happy.

Personality-wise, she’s mature, calm, and serene, though there have been times of her childish self from her past, particularly when seeing “Mar-Mar” through the male Avatar and Lucina. She wants to preserve the memories of her old allies, vowing to protect the future they fought so hard for. However, she’s also saddened over losing her old human friends, including the man she used to love, Marth, while she remains alive, and knows this will happen again with the Shepards. Regardless of this, Tiki wishes to befriend and interact with humans, feeling it’s better to bear the losses and treasure these precious relationships rather than not having them at all. She also dislikes her holy title and status as the “Voice of Naga”, as she perceives it to be a barrier for normal interaction with people. I really feel sympathetic to how Tiki’s long lifespan caused her to lose many friends and loved ones. But I’m glad that she still wants to make friends and treasure her friendships instead of isolating herself, which I feel is something I’m trying to do in my life. Being a legacy Fire Emblem character, she has a lot of history and backstory which can be explored in Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem, which I think is pretty awesome!

On the battlefield, she starts out as a decently capable anti-Wyvern character, being level 20 and having Wyrmsbane right off the bat. However, with training, she can become incredibly powerful! My main Avatar has a rating of 283 with most of his stats capped. Tiki has a rating of 285 with room still to grow! She can reclass into Mage and Wyvern Rider class lines, but like Nowi should reclass back to a Manakete after getting more skills to maximize her power. Overall, Tiki is an excellent unit and a character that I can really have the feels for. I wish I could just give her a hug…

#2 – Tharja

Alright, I’ll be first to admit it: she’s hot as hell, and was the character that initially made me curious about Awakening since I was interested her character. Although my first impression about her was… not that favorable, since I’m not into the yandere archetype, Tharja actually grew on me when I got to play the game and learn more about her. Tharja is a Plegian Dark Mage that appears in Chapter 9, though she actually does not care about the war between Plegia and Ylisse. When she joins the Shepards, she becomes enamoured with the Avatar, regardless of gender, to the point where it’s rather obsessive. She’ll still be in love with the Avatar even if Tharja herself is married to another character!

She is able to read fortunes using Manakete scales, as seen with her supports with Nowi, and can even divine the location of anyone or anything using one. Being a Dark Mage, she’s also skilled with curses, coming from a family of shamans and sorcerers and learning the dark arts since she was very young, as revealed in support conversations with her daughter, Noire. However, she has shown that curses can be used for purposes other than harm, like curing colds, cooling fevers, and curing Lon’qu’s gynophobia, though at the cost of his memories. As seen in supports with Gregor, Tharja can also allow people to communicate with the dead using her body as a medium, though she requires knowledge of the deceased person’s real name. She’s also able to reflect curses back to their caster, though Henry proves to be more proficient with this ability.

Her personality comes off as someone who is a stalker, due to her aforementioned obsession with the Avatar. She even values the Avatar’s life more than her own, and usually acts amorously around him or her. She’s willing to do whatever it takes to win the Avatar’s heart, even if it means changing herself to suit his or her tastes, such as her attempts to be “normal” in her B-rank support with the Avatar. Around other people, though, she is cold and dismissive, often threatening to curse hem if they stand in the way of her plans to gain the Avatar’s affection. Despite this, she is capable of loving another man, though as mentioned before, her love for the Avatar is above all else. Despite this grim personality, Tharja is surprisingly a nice person, having some compassion and sensitivity to other people’s feelings. Her A-rank support scene has her treat the Avatar after he/she succumbs to a fever, which he/she is very thankful for. Her conversations with Nowi show that she discovered her parents have died, though Tharja passed it off as them being “far away” in order to prevent her from being hurt. However, after telling the truth, she assures Nowi that she’ll survive the war and live a very happy life. In her A-rank support with Vaike, she shows remorse over people getting hurt in a battle, feeling that she could have done more. Her conversations with Kellam not only reveal that she cares and writes to her family, but she was willing to help him find out about his brother who hasn’t written back in a while. Tharja also attends to Frederick’s and Virion’s wounds in both of their A-rank conversations, and was eventually willing to teach Ricken curses in her supports with him. She also shows some sympathy for Libra after learning of his terrible past. And in her A-rank conversation with Noire, Tharja tells her that while she was uncertain about her future self, her current self loves Noire very much. Tharja has reminded me not to take people at face value, as while she has a strange personality, she is able to be a very nice person. There are people out there, much like Tharja, who appear to be abrasive, but are actually good people that might have something on their mind, or are in a situation that leaves them stressed out. I feel that learning about people and understanding them is a very important part about interacting with them, much like how I did with Tharja.

As a unit, Tharja initially performs her role as a Dark Mage quite nicely, and is able to use Dark Tomes. Compared to other spellcasters, she can take physical attacks more than Miriel, she’s stronger and faster than Ricken, and doesn’t have varied growths that the Avatar has, instead mostly focusing on Magic and Speed. When upgraded to a Sorcerer, she can become amazingly powerful with the right tomes! The Vengeance skill can activate pretty often for her despite her lower Skill stat, and Tomebreaker can make her a great anti-mage unit. While being a powerful spellcaster on the field, Tharja is a great, interesting, and complex character, and is not only my second-favorite Awakening lady, but my second-favorite character in the game in general!

#1 – Lucina

For those that know me, I suppose this isn’t much of a surprise. But Lucina is not only my favorite Fire Emblem Awakening character, but one of my overall favorite female video game characters period! She’s also the one female character who’s had the biggest impact on Awakening’s story, and is one of its driving forces. Her appearance in Super Smash Bros., alongside Robin, made me really curious about what she was like, and finally pushed me into taking the dive into the Fire Emblem franchise. Lucina is Chrom’s daughter from the future, with the mark of Naga, also known as the Brand of the Exalt, on her left eye. Much like the current timeline, Lucina was born to Chrom and his wife almost a year after the Ylisse-Plegia conflict from the timeline she came from. She was very close to her parents, especially Chrom, who taught her how to swordfight. After Grima murdered her father, Lucina inherited his sword, the Falchion (later called the Parallel Falchion) and attempted to fight the Fell Dragon herself. She was not aware of Grima’s identity, and the only clue she had was that he was someone very close to Chrom. With the world almost destroyed, Naga opened a portal to the past, allowing Lucina and the other eleven children of the Shepards to travel back in time to prevent the resurrection of Grima. Wanting to hide her identity from her parents but still save the world, Lucina disguised herself as a man, folding her hair short, donning a mask borrowed from Gerome to hide her Mark of the Exalt, and took the namesake of her ancestor, the Hero-King Marth. She arrives in the past shortly after the Avatar is recruited by Chrom and the Shepherds.

Lucina is a very strong willed and driven woman who is determined to change the fate of the world. She hates death of any sort, after seeing countless horrors in the timeline she came from. She loves her parents, especially Chrom, very much, and is very protective of them, sometimes going against her own wishes for needless death. However, she is incredibly loyal to Chrom and has unwavering trust in his judgements. As mentioned with Tiki, she bears a striking resemblance to Marth, both in appearance and in how she treats others. Being from a very dark place, Lucina is often very serious and stoic, and is most likely not to get jokes. She also tends to be a little awkward in some social situations, not being used to the more lighthearted situations in many of her support conversations. Lucina is an awesome, strong character that has great development as the story progresses, and her resolve to change the past and save the world is very admirable. She is the character that best encompasses the overall theme of the game; the conflict of predetermined destiny against being able to change fate. There have been times in my life where I felt that my fate was predetermined, but Lucina inspired me to begin making changes for the better. Some of her support conversations can be pretty amusing, highlighting her social awkwardness, something which I share in common with her. Other supports are very heartwarming, especially with Chrom, her mother, and her sibling.

On the battlefield, Lucina is arguably the strongest character in the entire game! She is a Lord class, like her father, making her an offensive unit with high Strength, Skill, and Speed. She also starts out with the Aether skill, and her Parallel Falchion is a very powerful weapon that has unlimited uses, making her a powerful unit right off the bat! Upgrading her to Great Lord will boost her stats further, let her access lances, and learn Rightful King to let her activate her skills more often… and it certainly feels like she activates her skills very often! In fact, aside from her high skill activation, she seems to have a very high critical hit rate as well! This pretty much makes her a nearly unstoppable force! As an incredibly powerful soldier, and an amazing character that inspired me to change my own fate, Lucina is by far the best character in Fire Emblem Awakening!