Arden

"Hrmph. I can live with the strong and reliable part, but leave the slow bit out of it, ok?"

- Arden in Genealogy of the Holy War

Arden (アーダン Ādan, Ardan in the Super Tactics Book) is a playable character from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. He is a Knight of Chalphy under Sigurd, and is constantly insulted for his inability to carry out actions swiftly. Arden will eventually perish in the Battle of Belhalla, alongside a good number of his comrades.

Personality
Arden is a strong and reliable individual, but is often mocked for his slow and cumbersome movements, a trait which he is revealed to be rather frustrated about. He is also shown to be jealous of Alec, noting that the latter is much swifter and charming than he is.

Arden can also be said to be humble, as can be seen in a conversation which he shares with Erinys if he is paired up with her, in which he expresses amazement at being able to get "someone as perdy as [her] for [his] wife".

Growth Rates

 * 90%
 * 50%
 * 5%
 * 10%
 * 20%
 * 10%
 * 40%
 * 5%
 * }

Overall
Arden is a rather difficult unit to use effectively. On one hand, he is very durable with very high HP and Defense, meaning he would make an ideal tank for choke points. However, due to his low Movement, it will basically be impossible for him to fill this role effectively on most maps since in Genealogy of the Holy War, the maps are very large and half of your army is made up of mounted units with twice as much mobility as Arden. This makes it difficult for him to not only act as a tank, but to even keep him relatively close in level to the rest of your army will require you to intentionally slow your assault so that Arden can participate. On the other hand, through engagement in Boss Abuse, Arden can easily promote and reach maximum level early on since his high durability makes it rather easy for him to gain tons of experience from any Level 20 boss. However, even if special care is taken to level Arden, he will still be slow and difficult to use effectively. Even after promotion, his primary purpose will be to defend a castle rather than take an active combat role.

Mobility issues aside, Arden himself is somewhat mediocre in combat. He can handle large groups of enemies due to his high durability, but his damage output is abysmal until he promotes, and even after promotion it merely becomes average as he will gain access to more powerful weaponry but lack the means to Double Attack. While Arden is quite strong, his choice of weapons and lack of Speed/Pursuit means his only real damage can come from single hits from B-level Swords until he promotes, resulting in extremely low damage. So while Arden can take damage well from physical sources, he is not very proficient at dishing it out.

A few chapters in, it is possible to obtain a Pursuit Ring for Arden. However, in almost all cases players choose to sell the ring to another character because Arden's very low Speed means he will not activate it very often. There are many other characters with higher Speed that lack Pursuit that can make much better use of the item (Lex, Tailtiu, Lewyn, or Dew being much better choices). If Arden keeps the Pursuit Ring for himself, he can become fairly effective against Axe wielding units as they may have low enough Speed for Arden to Double Attack them.

Father Overview
Arden is one of the weaker father choices available in the game. Part of the reason for this is that Lex makes Arden obsolete. They have very similar growths they give to their children, with Arden giving slightly better Strength and Lex giving slightly better Skill, Defense, and Luck. They both give their children Vantage. Where they differ more significantly is that Arden is given more freedom to pass on weaponry to his children where Lex offers the Elite skill. Though Arden is outshone by Lex, he can still make some decent pairings.

Arden is best paired with Ayra or Tailtiu. The rest should generally be avoided due Magic-oriented children where his stats are a poor fit, his lack of Pursuit/skills in general, his poor overall growths, or some combination of all of those reasons making the pairings unremarkable.
 * Ayra: Ulster and Larcei will automatically have Pursuit, and Vantage is a decent skill for them to inherit. They get some nice durability to survive frontline fighting and Strength growth to compliment their class. Arden will be able to pass on some good weapons to Ulster. This pairing is not particularly spectacular, but the children will turn out well nonetheless.
 * Tailtiu: This pairing can be decent for the same reason Lex makes a good pair with Tailtiu; the Vantage and Wrath combo. While Tailtiu's children will have poor Magic growth, they will become explosive killing machines when being attacked. One problem with this pairing is that Arden will need the Magic Ring and Pursuit Ring to make Arthur a lot better, and the Pursuit Ring is usually heavily contested and often used by other, better characters.

Conversations
In Chapter 2, if Arden moves to a certain spot on the map, an event will occur, in which he will gain the Pursuit Ring.

In Chapter 5, if Arden moves to a certain spot on the map, an event will occur, in which he will gain five points of Skill.

In Chapter 5, after Phinora Castle is captured, if Erinys/Ayra and Arden are lovers, she may speak to him, but nothing will result of it.

Love Growths

 * Deirdre: N/A
 * Ethlyn: N/A
 * Edain: 0+2
 * Ayra: 0+2
 * Lachesis: 50+2
 * Erinys: 50+2
 * Sylvia: 0+3
 * Brigid: 50+4
 * Tailtiu: 120+3

SpotPass
*Enemy only, joins unequipped

Quotes
"Sir Sigurd... I`ve served you my whole life, I have no regrets."

- Arden's death quote in Genealogy of the Holy War

Fire Emblem 0 (Cipher)
Arden is illustrated in the trading card game with the following cards:

Etymology
Ardan was a brother of Naoise (Noish) in Irish mythology.

Trivia

 * Norton from Tear Ring Saga bears an uncanny resemblance to Arden.
 * In one of the manga adaptations of the game, Arden was left behind at Chalphy throughout the entire duration of the Prologue and Chapter 1. He is, however, called to Evans Castle to attend Sigurd and Deirdre's wedding.
 * If Ayra and Arden are lovers in Chapter 5, their final lover conversation may prove to be rather confusing. In the alleged conversation, when Arden admits his love for Ayra, she will appear to be rather doubtful, almost as if she is unaware of his feelings.
 * The "Choose Your Legends" event of Fire Emblem Heroes revealed that Arden was 93rd place out of 791, with a total of 3,094 votes. This makes him the third highest scored character of Genealogy of the Holy War. The other characters of the game that were placed in the top 100 are Sigurd and Ayra, who were 55th and 65th place respectively.