Fire Emblem Fans Just Cracked Fortune’s Weave’s Biggest Mystery (Maybe)
Who are you?
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave's protagonist, Eshmel (or whatever you call them), is a lot like Three Houses' Byleth. They say little, someone else's soul inhabits their body, and despite ostensibly having no personality, they're the most important person (well, construct) in the empire. You never learn who Eshmel is outright, but some folks are pretty sure they know the protagonist's real identity. And I'm inclined to believe them.
This piece contains spoilers for Parts 2 and 3 of Fortune's Weave.
When Fortune's Weave starts, you're literally creating Eshmel. Fortuna and the leader of Kunlun village use ancient space technology to create a Mediator, a theoretically perfect being designed to shepherd the villagers. I have no idea where Mediator souls come from or if they even have souls. (We need DLC with Anatolia's route!) But for Eshmel, Fortuna plucks one out of the aether and says it's fitting for this soul to make amends and restore light to Dagda. The words mean little at the time, and over the course of altering the Flame Lords' fate, you run into a lot of people who really, really need to make amends for one thing or another.
And in the end, Fortune's Weave never directly tells you who Eshmel is, or used to be. They're just the Herald of the Pale Raven, a being of prophecy leading the ruined populace of Dagda in its fight against Balor and the underworld. However, there's a convincing theory circulating around Reddit and GameFAQs about who Eshmel was in their previous life. If you played Cai's route or completed Anna's paralogue, you might've noticed some of these similarities yourself.
In Anna's paralogue, she fights alongside you as an elephant rider. Joining her is Solel, a Trident. It's a divine class that seems unique to Solel's family. The only other god in Dagda's pantheon who's a Trident is Aurora, Solel's daughter. The only other being in Dagda who starts life as a Trident is Eshmel. If you use Solel in battle during Anna's paralogue, you'll notice a couple more similarities. One is his stance, which is almost identical to Eshmel's. That's a slightly iffy piece of evidence, admittedly. Fortune's Weave uses similar animations and stances for most classes, though Solel's are completely different from Aurora's.
A stronger piece of evidence is Eshmel's spear. If you take the bandages off it and spruce it up, it's the same as Solel's spear. And in Part 3, you can have Credna remove those bandages, after which he remarks on how familiar the spear looks.
Then we have the lore reasons. Fortuna says Nabatean souls don't get sucked back into the cycle of death and rebirth. (Nabateans are the children of Sothis and their descendants, the green-haired folks.) They're drawn back to Sothis, and as Three Houses shows, Sothis and her children are very good at sticking old souls in unexpected places. As for what Solel did that requires redemption, well. What is the story of each Flame Lord if not an account of Solel's various failures and shortcomings? We see his stumbles with his family in Cai's route, his nation in Dietrich's, ethically in general in Theodora's, and as a just ruler in Leda's.
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I outlined some of this in a piece about Fortune's Weave's politics, but the (not)man didn't care when his father murdered 100,000 people and only took action after his wife came under fire. He refuses to upset the status quo. He lets the Order of Mithras run rampant, despite its shady origins and its role in Dagda's mental decline. I haven't seen any theories mention this, but Solel being Eshmel would make Anna's paralogue make sense. It seemed odd to me that you can't recruit her, and then I thought about the ending of that sequence again. Solel realizes the Order of Mithras is untrustworthy, at last, but also that their influence runs deeper than he could've known. Doom approaches, and because of his neglect and his failures, there's nothing he can do to stop it anymore. If that is the case, I have to say: Damn. What a fantastic storytelling device.
Maybe we'll get an expansion that outright says yes, Eshmel is Solel reborn. I'm still torn on whether I want the game's lingering mysteries explained or if they should remain unknown. But either way, until Nintendo says otherwise, I'm convinced they're the same person.