Arden

Arden
Official artwork of Arden from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War.
Names and Aliases
Name (JP)	アーダン
Name (Localized)	Arden
Biological Information
Gender	Male
Race	Human
Affiliations
Nationality	Dutchy of Chalphy Kingdom of Grannvale
Game Data
Game	Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War Fire Emblem Awakening (SpotPass) Fire Emblem Heroes
First Seen	Prologue: Birth of the Holy Knight (Genealogy of the Holy War) Xenologue 4: Lost Bloodlines 1 (Awakening) Paralogue 13: World of Holy War (Heroes)
Starting Class	Sword Armor
Voice Actors
Japanese	Toru Okawa
English	Mick Wingert
[view]

“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 (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 being slow and having 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 more charming than he is.

Arden is 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 pretty as her for his wife.

If married, he sees his wife and children's well being as a motivation to fight and sacrifice himself, putting the safety of his family in first place, as stated in his monologue in Phinora.

In-Game

Genealogy of the Holy War

Base Stats

Starting Class								Holy Blood
Sword Armor								-
Level	HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Mov	Lead	Gold
3	36	13	0	5	4	3	13	0	5	0	2,000
Skills				Weapon				Starting Items
Vantage				Sword - B				Iron Sword

Growth Rates

HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res
90%	50%	5%	10%	20%	10%	40%	5%

Promotion Gains

Promoted Class
General
+1	0	+1	+2	+2	+3	+0
Weapon Levels
+1 A B B

Overall

Subjective: The following part of this article is based upon the editor's personal experiences and opinions, and therefore may not be applicable for all readers.

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.

One way to ensure Arden seeing combat is to simply let Arden occupy the player's castle (or liberated one) and let enemies go to it, past your main offensive force. I.E don't make Arden go to enemy, make enemy go to him. In situations where this is feasible, it might also reduce some headache on player's part, so one doesn't need to hunt down every single enemy unit of the platoon. However, player should not let him deal with excessive numbers and avoid letting magic-users and certain strong units (Ayra, Eldigan for example) from reaching him.

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 (Naoise, 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. It is also possible to give him the Leg Ring in Chapter 3 giving him +3 movement.

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.
• Edain: Both are foot units, and the fact that Edain is a healer and stay behind due to being unable to defend herself before promotion, makes easy to pair them up. Arden has access to bows when promoted, and can pass bows to her son Lester, along with the pursuit ring. Their daughter Lana will have bulkier growths for a priest.
• 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

Fire Emblem Awakening

SpotPass

Starting Class
Knight
Level	HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Mov
12	31	16	0	7	5	4	18	1	4
Skills			Weapon			Starting Items
Defense +2 Indoor Fighter Vantage			Lance - C			Steel Lance*

*Enemy only, joins unequipped

Fire Emblem Heroes

Strong and Tough

An armored knight from Chalphy. Dreams of fighting on the front lines, but is often assigned to castle defense. Appears in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War.

Base Stats

Rarity:

✯✯✯✯

		Title
		Strong and Tough
		Group
		Armored
Level	HP	Atk	Spd	Def	Res
1 40	24 57	10 34	2 14	13 39	2 14
Skills			Weapon
Brave Sword Buckler			Sword

✯✯✯✯✯

		Title
		Strong and Tough
		Group
		Armored
Level	HP	Atk	Spd	Def	Res
1 40	25 60	10 36	3 16	13 41	3 16
Skills			Weapon
Brave Sword+ Buckler			Sword

Skills

Type	Name	Prerequisite	Default	Unlocked
	Iron Sword	-	-	-
	Steel Sword	-	-	-
	Brave Sword	-		-
	Brave Sword+	-
	Arden's Blade	-	-
	Buckler	-		-
	Pavise	-	-
B	Follow-Up Ring	-
C	Spur Def 1	-		-
	Drive Def 1	Spur Def 1		-
	Drive Def 2	Drive Def 1

Quotes

Genealogy of the Holy War

“Sir Sigurd... I`ve served you my whole life, I have no regrets.”
—Arden's death quote

Awakening

“I'm strong and reliable, but...”
—Arden's SpotPass parley quote

“...Don't call me "lumbering"!”
—Arden's SpotPass battle quote

“*sigh* It's not easy being me.”
—Arden's SpotPass recruitment quote

“Who are you? And why have you come to this land?”
—Arden's battle quote as an enemy, in Lost Bloodlines 1

“Ah, so you have that problem, too? And here I thought I was the only...Wait, why are we talking? Fight me!”
—Arden's battle quote versus Kellam in Lost Bloodlines 1

“However noble you think your purpose, it won't stop you from losing.”
—Arden's battle quote as an enemy, in Lost Bloodlines 3

“Was it now? Pah! Do your worst!”
—Arden's battle quote versus Kellam in Lost Bloodlines 3

“How did you dent my...armor?”
—Arden's death quote as an enemy, in Lost Bloodlines 1

“Damn...I've been bested... Next time I'll come better prepared...”
—Arden's death quote as a NPC, in Lost Bloodlines 2

“This blasted armor...slows me...rrgh...”
—Arden's death quote as an enemy, in Lost Bloodlines 3

Heroes

Arden/Heroes Quotes

Non-Canon Appearances

Fire Emblem 0 (Cipher)

Arden is illustrated in the trading card game with the following cards:

P06-003PR

P19-005PR

S08-004ST

B17-099N

B19-057R

Choose Your Legends Placement History

Round	Placement	Character Version	Votes

CYL1	93	Genealogy of the Holy War	3,094
CYL2	368 ↓275	Genealogy of the Holy War	510 ↓2,584
CYL3 saw the transition to different counting mechanisms involving versions of characters and ties, so change measured between CYL2 and CYL3 shouldn't be taken at face value.
CYL3	325 ↑43	Genealogy of the Holy War	584 ↑74
CYL4	329 ↓4	Genealogy of the Holy War	361 ↓223
CYL5	283 ↑48	Genealogy of the Holy War	266 ↓95

CYL6

290

Genealogy of the Holy War

271

Etymology

Ardan was a brother of Naoise (Noish) in Irish mythology. The name has Celtic origins and is related to a lot of locations, it means "high".

Trivia

• Norton from Tear Ring Saga: Utna Heroes 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.
• Arden in Heroes wears blue armor akin to his official artwork from Genealogy of the Holy War rather than the grey color of the armor in-game.
• In Fire Emblem Awakening, Arden uses the generic knight model when he appears as an enemy in SpotPass or DLC battles. When recruited however, the armor covering his head and shoulders are removed.

Gallery

See main article: Arden/Gallery.