Lucia

"People of Crimea... Behold a true queen! YOUR queen! Long live Queen Elincia!"

- Lucia, before she was to be hanged in Radiant Dawn.

Lucia (ルキノ Rukino, Luchino in the Japanese version) is a playable character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. She is a young lady descending from the house of Count Delbray, the older sister of Geoffrey and the milk sister of Elincia. Lucia commands the Royal Guards with Geoffrey, and spearheads a clandestine network of spies to monitor the internal affairs of Crimea.

Path of Radiance
When Crimea is defeated during the Daein invasion, Lucia, alongside Geoffrey, Bastian and other Crimean retainers, continue to lurk in the shadows of the country. She makes her first appearance in Chapter 23, where she appears with a group of retainers as reinforcements to the Crimean Liberation Army.

After reuniting with Elincia, Lucia and Bastian proceed to lead the army to Delbray Castle to celebrate her return to Crimea. However, when she learns that the castle is under siege from Daein forces, she advises Elincia to abandon Geoffrey and flee to safer grounds. Ike then proceeds to step in and denounce her plans, choosing to fulfill Elincia's wishes by going to Geoffrey's aid.

Despite being shocked by Ike's impertinence and daring, this incident serves as an eye-opener to Lucia, where she learns the importance of staying alive for Elincia's sake. Taking this into mind, she proceeds to assist Ike's forces in Chapter 24, fighting to save her brother from his untimely end.

Lucia then remains with Ike's forces until the game reaches its conclusion, whereupon she serves the newly-crowned Queen Elincia as her loyal advisor.

Radiant Dawn
Lucia returns in Part 2 of this game, where she infiltrates Duke Ludveck's castle to unearth evidence of his plot to overthrow Elincia and her pacifist rule over Crimea. When her cover is later blown, Lucia is captured by Ludveck's rebels. The rebels then proceed to hack off a lock of her hair, using it as a means to blackmail Elincia to force her to give up her throne.

When Elincia refuses to abide by their demands, the rebels then sets up a gallows in front of Fort Alpea, intending to execute Lucia under the watchful eye of the Crimean public. This plan of theirs is foiled, as the Greil Mercenaries later step in to interrupt the proceedings and rescue Lucia.

Lucia will reappear in Part 4 of the game, and may be brought into the Tower of Guidance to reverse Ashera's judgment upon the continent of Tellius.

Personality
Lucia is a wise and rational individual, and treats practically everyone she meets with the utmost respect. She holds absolute loyalty to Elincia, and is more than willing to undertake any tasks on her behalf, regardless of how difficult or unreasonable they may seem.

Lucia is often the subject of long rambling love declarations from Bastian, a court official who appears to be smitten with her. She has been shown to respond to his advances with a nonchalant attitude, where he is often rejected.

Recruitment

 * Chapter 24: Automatically from the start of Turn 2.

Growth Rates

 * 70%
 * 50%
 * 30%
 * 70%
 * 65%
 * 50%
 * 40%
 * 30%
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Bond Support

 * Elincia: 10%
 * Geoffrey: 5%

Support Conversations

 * Ilyana
 * Janaff
 * Bastian

Overall
Lucia joins as a Pre-Promoted later in the game. Her stats are about the same as Mia's, except for slightly lower strength, speed, and defense, and higher magic. Lucia also joins with the Parity skill, which helps against the skills that the enemies in the final chapter tend to carry, but in exchange of the ability to use skills like Adept and Wrath herself. Her strength and defense tend to be a little lackluster, but she tends to compensate this with a high avoid and critical rate.

Lucia tends to have higher magic, luck, and resistance than Zihark, in exchange for lower stats everywhere else. Lucia has higher magic and much higher luck than Stefan, but lower stats elsewhere.

Availability
◎=Forced　○=Available　□=Available for selected　╳=Not allowed
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Growth Rates

 * 50%
 * 25%
 * 20%
 * 70%
 * 60%
 * 30%
 * 15%
 * 50%
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Bond Support

 * Elincia: 10%
 * Geoffrey: 5%

Overall
While there are several other choices for Trueblades that have more availability, and thus more room for growth, Lucia is still by no means a bad character to invest effort into. She will cap her HP, skill, speed, and resistance rather quickly, making her well suited to take on the high amount of magic that gets shot around in the endgame, and she usually gets very high magic, generally over 15, making the Imbue skill ideal to increase her longevity. This also helps patch up her subtle physical defense, which can be a bit of a liability if Lucia gets hit. However, Lucia's biggest flaw is not defense, but strength: by the time she is re-usable in Part 4, she will have difficulties one-rounding durable opponents, though a high critical rate rate will help compensate for this, as well as the ability Astra once she promotes to a Trueblade. Pairing her up with offensive support affinities, such as Brom, Calill, and Reyson (should they be well-leveled) is also very helpful to boost her lackluster power.

In contrast to her fellow female Swordmaster, Mia, Lucia has higher magic and resistance, but lower strength, defense, and luck. The same applies to Lucia with Zihark, except Zihark will have slightly higher HP rather than luck. In contrast to Edward, Lucia has lower HP, strength, luck, and defense, but higher magic and much higher resistance. Lucia has less HP, strength, and defense than Stefan, but higher magic, luck, and resistance. Overall, Lucia is not the best character in the bag, but if her qualities of high magic and resistance are needed in a Trueblade, then she may be the right choice.

SpotPass
*Enemy only; joins unequipped

Path of Radiance
"I will not die... I must not cause the lady Elincia any more grief... I must not! Live... No matter the pain... I will live!"

- Lucia's death quote in Path of Radiance.

Radiant Dawn
"I...cannot die... Elincia... I cannot leave her to mourn... Geoffrey... Bas...ti...an..."

- Lucia's death quote in Part 4: Endgame.

Path of Radiance
"Thank you, General Ike. Because of you, I believe we better understand how best to serve Princess Elincia."

Radiant Dawn
Where the queen went, Lucia followed. Their love was fabled to be stronger than even most blood sisters.
 * Tireless Advisor (女王の姉妹 Joō no shimai, lit. Sister of the Queen)

First among the ministers to support her queen, Lucia never married. However, her affair with Count Bastian continues.
 * (A Support with Bastian)

Etymology
'Lucia' is the feminine form of the name Lucius in Italian, German, and English. Her name is pronounced 'Lu-CHEE-ah' in Italian, corresponding to her Japanese name 'Luchino'. Despite this, however, Mist calls her Lu-SEE-ah in the cutscene at the end of part 2.

In Christian tradition, Saint Lucia was a martyr from Syracuse in the 4th Century, and had her eyes gouged out. Thereafter, she became the patron saint of the blind, gathering a strong following in medieval Europe.

Trivia

 * It is possible for the player to only use Lucia to clear Chapter 2-2 of Radiant Dawn on easy mode.
 * When she undergoes a Class Change, her battle model as a Trueblade will feature her with her hair cut. This alludes to the developers not having created a battle model of Lucia as a Trueblade with long hair. This is most likely due to the fact that characters may only undergo Class Changes to their third-tier classes with Master Crowns in the Japanese version, and the first one is not available until Part 3 of the game.
 * In a support conversation with Janaff in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, it is stated that she is not old enough to be without a chaperone.
 * In her SpotPass battle in Fire Emblem Awakening, her team includes Heroes, Snipers, but more importantly one Sage with the Rexcalibur tome, in reference to Bastian.
 * Lucia's profile from the official Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance website implies she hunted down down Daien soldiers of her own accord in an attempt to either restore her honour, exact revenge on Daein for killing Elincia and taking her homeland or as a means to deal with her grief.