A bunch of Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave leaks hit the internet over the past 48 hours, thanks to AI-assisted jailbreaking. I worry for the naive person responsible for the leak, given Nintendo’s track record of hunting down leakers and pirates. But I’m also a bit worried about some of these endings as a fan of the game. A bunch of them are good! But more than a few really aren’t, and that’s before getting into how depressingly straight they all are. Whether they’re fated for the game’s upcoming DLC expansion is another matter, though.
[Ed note: This piece contains major spoilers for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.]
You can read them all for yourself, but the questionable endings getting the most attention from Fortune’s Weave folks involve Theodora and Leda. Theodora gets a paired ending with Bonaventure, where the two usher in a new age of writing and educational glory for Saramis. That’s nice! And they get married and have two kids. That’s… something? Considering Bonaventure fills more of a father-type role as her advisor and is also quite a lot older than her. Intelligent Systems has deployed the trope a few times in the past. But in the case of Frederick and Lissa in Awakening, as an example, you can kinda see the two of them sharing a deeper bond based on their backgrounds and everything that happens. At no point in Fortune’s Weave does the relationship between Theo and Bona come across as romantic.
Another contentious leaked ending is also a romantic one, this time between Bertrand and Leda. That one I’m slightly less hostile towards, but only slightly. Leda herself comments on the love-like nature of her hatred for Bertrand multiple times already, and it’s not unlikely the two of them could have a weird, unhealthy sort of trauma bond that brings them together. This one’s biggest crime, however, is its blandness. The text basically just says she knew he was the only one for her and did her best for him forever. I guess there’s an element of “actions, meet consequences” here in keeping with the game’s themes about fate’s variations. Fate (you) can bring these two together under certain circumstances, but just because it can happen doesn’t mean it should happen. But making her a supportive wife and not leaning into the toxic trauma bond here is a choice and not a great one.
Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
On the other hand, you’ve also got some quite good Talimun endings, including one where he ends up with Mikaela, and some other strong Bertrand endings, like a touching one between him and Goliath. All of Orchel’s endings are nice, and some of the non-lord companion characters like Ludia and Fianna get their relationships expanded. One of my favorites is between Nezha and Sha Lan, where she opens a restaurant, then he wanders in aimlessly, helps for a while, and decides to spend the rest of his dwindling time with her. Sha Lan created a special dish for him that remained a permanent part of the menu after he died. It’s incredibly sweet given the crap hand life dealt Nezha, and it’s not necessarily romantic either.
There’s also a Theodora/Anatolia pairing where the two have a child together. That one is, obviously, romantic and a very good one. But it does underscore another issue with the other endings: How straight most of them are. Fortune’s Weave feels so conflicted with its queerness, despite Dagda supposedly being the more progressive and free nation. The men have Dietrich and Fabio, a lot of subtext with other characters, and that’s it. Yes, male Eshmel gets a few paired endings, like a particularly sweet one with Buccar, but they aren’t gender-specific. Women don’t even get outright confirmation that Leda and Olympia became a romantic item, even though the paired ending text certainly suggests it. At least there’s the lesbian pegasus knight in Part 2 for comfort, I guess.
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Aside from the Anadora ending, the other leaked pairings continue that trend. You can read a lot into Bertrand and Goliath’s relationship, but even when Bertrand wants to be buried next to the big guy, the text won’t call them an item the way it explicitly says (for example) Dante becomes Bertrand’s wife. It’s frustratingly reticent for no good reason.
Despite how the internet is reacting to these leaked endings, though, the information only comes from datamined files currently in the game. They could be planned for the DLC, but it could just as easily mean they were cut at an earlier stage in development and will never appear in the game. The latter happened with Three Houses, and you can get an idea from the other Fortune’s Weave datamined info that not everything in the leak is something that’s being held back for the DLC. Among other things, there’s character info for Lyrah that simultaneously conflates her with Eshmel and has her as a separate, axe-wielding magic specialist with character select voice lines. Even if she is playable at some point, those two things naturally can’t exist at the same time.
So, who knows. In the final version, maybe Leda and Bertrand can’t get together. Maybe Bonaventure comes to his senses and doesn’t marry the girl he helped raise. And maybe, hopefully, the heroes of Dagda get to follow their natures a bit more freely and don’t have to stay compulsorily heterosexual just for the sake of it. We’ll find out when Fortune’s Weave‘s DLC Wave 3 launches sometime in 2027.
