Eliwood

"I know that I've caused much pain for my friends. But that is why... I will not lose here today!!"

- Eliwood vs Nergal

Eliwood is one of the three main characters in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and the father of Roy, the main character of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.

Profile
Eliwood was born of the noble house of Pherae; his father was Lord Elbert and his mother was Lady Eleanora. His childhood best friend was Hector, the younger brother of Uther, the Marquess Ostia. Having met Hector at a young age when the two attended school together, one day, in a meeting of lords of Lycia, when the children were ordered by Erik of Laus to cut their hands and shake with another to follow a warrior's custom, Eliwood and Hector chose each other, and, as they grew older, their friendship grew as well, with them sparring since the age of 12 once every two months.

Lyn's Story
By chance, one day, when Eliwood was passing through Khathelet to meet with Hector for their monthly spar, he stumbled upon a group of bandits who had captured a young girl named Ninian. After he set about rescuing the girl, he met Lyn and decided to see if he could help her in her quest to free Caelin from Lord Lundgren. While Lyn refuses his offer at first, she later asks for his help due to Lyn and her partners being branded as traitors and pretenders to the throne, which Eliwood complies by convincing Caelin's neighbors to remain neutral in Lyn's dispute.

Eliwood's Story
One year after, amid the disappearance of his father and rumors of his death, Eliwood elects to embark on a quest in order to find him. On the way to Santaruz, however, he is quickly overwhelmed by some opposition. Fortunately, his friend Hector came in to help Eliwood at the same time. After repelling the attack, Eliwood presses on, only to find a dying Helman who warns him of the Black Fang. Upon hearing more rumors about Marquess Darin, Eliwood continues to Laus with his allies to see if he knows anything about Elbert's disappearance. While he is initially attacked by Laus forces headed by his son Erik, Eliwood repels the attack. To everyone's surprise, however, Darin is nowhere to be found inside the castle. Only a short time after this attack, it is announced that Laus has attacked Caelin, and as such, Eliwood hurries there to save both Lyn and Marquess Hausen.

Although Eliwood's forces are successful in reclaiming Caelin, Darin is still nowhere to be found. Unsure of what to do next, Leila appears before him and Hector and Eliwood learns that not only his father alive, but he also learns of the Black Fang's true intentions, their past, and how Elbert had been kidnapped by the Dark Druid, Nergal onto the Dread Isle. After finding some aid from the pirates headed by Captain Fargus, Eliwood's group ends up fighting their way through the Isle, and along the way, he comes across Ephidel, who orchestrated many of the events that led to the current state of affairs in Lycia. The group eventually locate his father, alive but shaken. The reunion, however, is cut short; after seeing the face of his father's captor, Nergal, for the first time, who is able to kill Elbert by harvesting his quintessence. Even with this, however, Elbert delivers one final act of rebellion against Nergal by almost fatally stabbing him, and he himself dies in Eliwood's arms, telling him to continue to oppose Nergal.

Shaken by his death and by the revelation that Nergal intends to bring Dragons back into the world, Eliwood and his comrades decide to seek aid from Marquess Uther, and while Uther is unable to provide direct aid to the group, he points them to the Nabata Desert to seek "the living legend". After another long journey, though without hindrance, they enter a mysterious structure in the desert, where they encounter an Archsage, revealed to be Athos. Meeting Athos for the first time, after seeking his advice, Eliwood's group is sent back to Lycia in order to continue fighting against the Black Fang.

After spending a day to rest in Pherae, with Eliwood greeted greatly by his mother, they set off for Bern in disguise as inconspicuous travelers in order to attack the headquarters of the Black Fang. However, the lords find their way deterred by the legendary Four Fangs of the Black Fang. In addition to slaying many of the members of the Black Fang, Eliwood ends up having to solve a problem in Bern's ruling class: Queen Hellene requests that Eliwood retrieve the Fire Emblem back from the Black Fang so that she may give him the passage to the Shrine of Seals. After retrieving the Emblem and stopping a plot to slay prince Zephiel, Eliwood is granted passage to the Shrine and journeys deep within the earth to retrieve Durandal, a legendary sword and the eponymous The Blazing Blade or "Blazing Sword," which was used by Roland, the founder of Lycia.

After receiving the Durandal from Athos, Eliwood and company encounter an Ice Dragon. Durandal, acting on its own, slays the dragon with one hit. Then Nergal appears, and tells Eliwood that the Ice Dragon he just killed, was not a dragon he just summoned, but it was actually the person who loved him the most, Ninian. Eliwood feels defeated once again, and cries as he holds her body in his arms. His idealistic resolve has been crushed, and his loses starts to affect his will to use Durandal. Despite his losses starting to affect his will to use Durandal, Eliwood continues forth, but with a new resolve to stop Nergal. After repelling one last desperate attack from Nergal in Ostia, Eliwood returns to Dread Isle, and faces off against Nergal for the last time, and after getting accused of being callous for moving on from Ninian's death so quickly, kills the druid.

With the gate still opened as a result of Nergal's actions, the siblings find it needed to return to their own home to seal the gate from their own side, as well as the fact that the air in Elibe would be unable to sustain them and they would die shortly after should they reside in the human world. Before Ninian and Nils leave, though, they fondly bid the lords farewell. Alternatively, if Ninian has an A support with Eliwood, Ninian will choose to stay with Eliwood. The lords and their companions return to the mainland, where they bid farewell and return to their former lives or go off with loved ones gained as a result of the journey.

A year later, Lyn and Hector attend Eliwood's coronation as Marquess, where Eliwood and his wife invite the Tactician he met during his journey to his wedding but is saddened that they are going to leave shortly after. He asks them to name his first child, as well as offering him the opportunity to be a godfather to his future child. Eventually, he remembers the name the Tactician gave him, and named his first born, a young boy named Roy.

Several years later, Hector invites Eliwood to Castle Ostia to discuss the unrest happening in Bern. He meets Hector's daughter, Lilina, for the first time and has Roy befriend and play with her as their father's discuss important matters.

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade
At the start of the game, he is beset by illness, which prevents him to ride out in order to fight nearby bandits and prevent them from raiding towns, so he decides to stay at Castle Pherae and trusts Roy with some members of Pherae's army to drive off the bandits. When news comes of Bern's invasion, Eliwood chooses to send his son to Ostia in place of him and stays at the castle, while hiring Dieck's mercenaries to help him. However, he and Hector can be used as playable characters in the link arena and the battle maps after the game is beaten. He comes as a Paladin.

Personality
Eliwood is an idealistic pacific leader who, even though is seen as charismatic, since a lot of supports mention him as a dependable leader, is frequently seen as weak, or rather, as someone who has to be protected, to the point when Marcus and Harken ask him to stay out of battle, and to let them deal with the enemies. Despite this, Eliwood prefers to keep fighting, because he feels that he must battle, not only as a leader, but because he doesn't want to feel like he is escaping from his own duties. However, even when he is struggling with his problems, he often shows concern in the troubles from others, one example being in one of his supports with Fiora, in which he asks if she feels comfortable with his army.

Nevertheless, his conviction is put to test several times when he encounters Nergal and sees those closest to him get killed, even feeling lost and dejected. Going so far as to stop talking to the rest of the army for a while, he is still concerned about their well-being, and keeps being idealistic, eventually deciding to uses their deaths as motivation to keep fighting, even passing some of his beliefs to his son.

Recruitment

 * Trial Maps: Clear the game five times.

Growth Rates

 * 60%
 * 20%
 * 30%
 * 35%
 * 25%
 * 15%
 * 5%
 * }

Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
Description: ''Marquess Pherae's young son. Just and honorable.''

Recruitment
Eliwood’s Mode
 * Chapter 11: Automatically from the start.

Hector’s Mode
 * Chapter 12: Automatically from the start.

Growth Rates

 * 80%
 * 45%
 * 50%
 * 40%
 * 45%
 * 30%
 * 35%
 * }

Supports

 * Hector
 * Lyn
 * Ninian
 * Marcus
 * Lowen
 * Harken
 * Fiora

Overall
While Lyn possesses high Speed, Skill, and Luck, and Hector possesses high HP, Strength, and Defense, Eliwood has no stat in which he truly excels, although it should be noted that he possesses an unusually high Resistance growth for any physical unit short of a Falcoknight, outstripping both of his peers in Resistance. In addition, his high HP growth and average Defense together means that Eliwood is not a unit that will die easily after a couple of levelups.

Although slow in comparison with Lyn, Eliwood's decent Speed and Luck growths, combined with his base of 7 for both, grant him good avoid and doubling capacities, though he may have trouble doubling enemies early on. His Skill will rarely be a problem, but his Strength starts off rather low, and this, combined with his lack of early ability to double, may result in the player having to feed him kills occasionally. His rapier can fix this offensive problem against cavaliers and armored knights at least, though latter one tend to possess enough defense to avoid getting onerounded as well for some time, since in the non-Japanese version of the game effective damage only doubles weapon might.

Once Eliwood gets past his initial difficulty with scoring kills, he will usually get quite decent at combat, having enough bulk, dodge and attack power to keep the upper hand against most enemies. Sadly, being locked to swords as well as being unable to promote for a long period of the game holds him back from catching up to your better combat units like your cavaliers or Raven, who starts in a class locked to swords too, but can promote quickly into a Hero unlike Eliwood.

However, he possesses the Anima Affinity, widely considered to be one of the best Affinities, and his supports with Hector and Lowen (and to a lesser extent, Lyn) will boost his fighting capabilities. He does possess other supports as well; however, they are generally considered less effective than the ones already mentioned.

During his own tale, Eliwood will be forced to wait an awfully long time until he can finally promote, making him usually worse than Hector and Lyn for a couple of chapters since they'll get the possibility of gaining higher stats, new weapon types and, in Lyn's case, also additional movement. He can still perform well after promotion though, since he gets a mount as well as access to lances and thanks to the fact that enemies aren't very strong in Eliwood's tale.

In Hector's story on the other hand, he can promote a few chapters earlier at Chapter 24, with Lyn being his only competitor for the first Heaven Seal. Compared to Lyn, he'll gain a mount, more movement, a boost to his aid and a D rank in lances instead of bows, commonly making his promotion preferable. While he most likely still gets outclassed by your other promoted mounted units, due to the fact that he lacks one point of movement, has a lower lance rank and probably even lower stats too, he can be a useful unit to ferry your infantry units around, especially Hector, since maps actually start to get extremly large at this point and are also filled with nasty mages who can pick off Hector and other low res units if you aren't careful; and he can be useful in combat as well, since he now has a 1-2 range option with the javelin and a nice balance of defense, speed and strength, which helps him to quickly get rid of unpromoted enemies on his own and to defeat more powerful promoted foes when getting some support.

All things considered, Eliwood is a solid unit being hold back by being swordlocked during the earlygame and suffers from his late promotion, especially during his own campaign, though he is still easily usable and can grow into a pretty good unit once he promotes.

SpotPass
*Enemy only, joins unequipped

Fire Emblem Heroes

 * -|Original=
 * Knight of Lycia
 * A sincere noble of Pherae. His friends Lyn and Hector serve him loyally. Appears in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade.

Base Stats
Rarity:

Passive

 * -|Love Abounds=
 * Devoted Love
 * A sincere noble of Pherae. Wishes to enjoy the festival together with his close friends Hector and Lyn. Appears in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade.

Base Stats
Rarity:

Weapon Refinements

 * Casa Blanca+

The Blazing Blade

 * Eliwood/The Blazing Blade Quotes

Heroes

 * Eliwood/Heroes Quotes

Possible Endings

 * Eliwood - Knight of Lycia
 * Eliwood succeeded his father as the marquess of Pherae. His sincerity and his clear guidance made him his father's equal in all eyes.


 * Eliwood and Ninian
 * Eliwood and Ninian were wed after the conflict. Ninian gave up her old life and her people to enjoy a brief life with Eliwood. They have a son named Roy, who will one day take up arms to defend his nation.


 * Eliwood and Lyn
 * The marquess of Pherae and the princess of Caelin were wed after the conflict. All of Lycia was in an uproar, but none could sunder their bond of love. They have a son named Roy, who will become a great hero.


 * Eliwood and Fiora
 * Eliwood and Fiora were wed after the conflict. A group of Lycian nobles protested that she was a mercenary, but none could sunder their bond of love. They have a son named Roy who will become a great hero.

Hasha no Tsurugi
He plays a minor role in the Hasha no Tsurugi manga during the Kruzard arc, which occurs between chapters 9 - 13. During this arc, he is attempting to help reform the Lycia Alliance amidst a rebellion lead by Kruzard. He then later works with Cecilia in sending Al's group to the Western Isles to investigate the Etruian governments' corruption on the Isles.

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

Etymology
Eliwood's name possibly comes from the Germanic name elements "elf" and 'wood,' meaning 'wood of elves,' which might be a reference to Avalon, the legendary island where King Arthur supposedly went to be healed after his last battle. Alternatively, the name 'Elwood' means 'elder tree forest' in Old English.

Trivia

 * On the official Japanese website for Nintendo, Eliwood won 26th place out of 80 in the character popularity poll for Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. The male-female vote ratio is 2:1. The voter comments seem to mostly focus on his appearance in the game's prequel and his role as the main protagonist Roy's father.
 * Eliwood's The Blazing Blade incarnation came in 19th place for males in the Fire Emblem Heroes Choose Your Legends popularity poll. He had 8,393 votes.
 * When Eliwood is a Lord, he holds his sword in his right hand. However, When he promotes into a Knight Lord, he holds swords and lances in his left hand.
 * According to a support conversation between Marcus and Lilina in The Binding Blade, Eliwood once disappeared for three days from Pherae and returned with a flower from the "snowy highlands." He presented this flower to his unnamed wife when he returned.
 * If you fight Eliwood as a SpotPass character for The Blazing Blade, the other units that join him could represent some of his early allies:
 * 2 Paladins (Lowen and Marcus)
 * 2 Warriors (Bartre and Dorcas)
 * 2 Generals (Hector and Oswin)
 * 1 War Cleric (Serra)
 * 1 Trickster (Matthew)
 * And 1 Swordmaster (Lyn or Guy)
 * In Awakening, the rapier Eliwood wields in his The Blazing Blade official artwork is made into a usable weapon called Eliwood's Blade.
 * Eliwood shares his English voice actor, Yuri Lowenthal, with Marth, Merric, Ricken, Kiragi, and the male Avatar from Fates.