Lethe

Lethe
Names and Aliases
Name (Localized)	Lethe
Biological Information
Gender	Female
Race	Laguz (Cat)
Relatives	May contain spoilers Lyre (Twin-Sister)
Game Data
Game	Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
First Seen	Chapter 9 (Path of Radiance) Chapter 2 (Radiant Dawn Part 2)
Starting Class	Cat
Voice Actors
Japanese	Naomi Ōzora
English	Kirsten Day
[view]

“Sure, I'll take you on. But it's going to hurt! When I fight, it's with claws out.”
—Lethe to Ike in a support conversation

Lethe is a playable character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. She is a Cat Laguz from the Beast tribe of Gallia. She is the leader of a small platoon of Gallian soldiers. Lethe has a younger twin sister named Lyre.

Profile

In Path of Radiance, if Lethe and Ranulf share an A rank in Support Conversations, Ranulf will offer Lethe the opportunity to return to Gallia, leaving Ike and the Crimean Liberation Army behind her. Lethe will then decline this offer, promising to defeat Ashnard alongside the Crimean Army.

Lethe appears as a boss in the Radiant Dawn chapter, A Reason to Fight, but the player will neither be required to fight nor defeat Lethe in order to advance through this chapter.

Personality

Fierce and agile, Lethe is known as one of the harshest characters in the Tellius series, with her honor and respect for her duty leading her to be an extremely intimidating figure, strictly adhereing to her role as a beast-tribe warrior and commander, often being strict on herself and others. Despite this very fact, Lethe does care for her comrades, as can be observed from the contents of her death quote.

Though she serves Caineghis and Ranulf, she does not share their belief of pursuing a policy of peaceful coexistence with the Beorc. Her fundamental disgust with human existence shows when she was tasked with leading Ike to Castle Gallia. She has had trouble trusting Beorc having studied the history of the Beorc and Laguz –where “humans” had exploited and enslaved the “sub-humans.” When Soren provoked her, the already tense emotions [she felt toward them] rapidly escalated. However, after witnessing how Ike had used himself as a shield to help dissolve the situation, she began to change her outlook having seen that not all Beorc are bad.

Her strong attitude can occasionally invite misunderstandings, and was the reason behind her and her sister Lyre not speaking to each other for a long time. It was not until they reunited in the Laguz Alliance where they reconciled. Despite those arguments, Lethe only desires for Lyre's safety, and she will always try to protect Lyre, even if she has to be mean to her.

In Game

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Recruitment

• Chapter 10: Automatically from the start.

Base Stats

Starting Class								Affinity
Cat (Untransformed) ↓ Cat (Transformed)								Heaven
Level	HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Con	Wt	Mov
3	34	12 ↓ 18	4	10 ↓ 14	12 ↓ 15	15	9 ↓ 14	7 ↓ 10	6 ↓ 21	11	7 ↓ 9
Skills				Weapon				Starting Items
-				Strike				Claw Beorcguard

Growth Rates

HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res
130%	50%	5%	65%	70%	50%	40%	25%

Support Conversations

See also: Lethe/Supports

• Ike
• Jill
• Muarim
• Ranulf

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Availability

Part 1											Part 2					Part 3															Part 4							Endgame
P	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	E	P	1	2	3	E	P	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	E	P	1	2	3	4	5	E	A1	A2	A3	A4	A5
													◎		○					○			○	○		○	○			○	□	□	□	□	□	□	□	□	□	□	□	□

◎=Forced　○=Available　□=Available for selected　△=Reinforcement

Base Stats

Starting Class								Affinity
Cat (Untransformed) ↓ Cat (Transformed)								Heaven
Level	HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res	Con	Wt	Mov
21	51	9 ↓ 18	6 ↓ 12	13 ↓ 26	12 ↓ 24	18	9 ↓ 18	10 ↓ 20	6 ↓ 11	11 ↓ 31	7 ↓ 9
Skills				Weapon				Starting Items
Shove				Strike - A				Claw Laguz Stone

Growth Rates

HP	Str	Mag	Skl	Spd	Lck	Def	Res
85%	35%	5%	30%	40%	45%	35%	20%

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.

In Part II, Lethe will be a pretty decent unit, although by no means the best. Her stats are decent all across the board, with very high Speed, yet has somewhat low growths and gains very low EXP from kills while transformed, making it hard for her to take off. As a Cat, Lethe's biggest disadvantage is her quick transformation times, meaning she can only stay in her transformed form for a few rounds, and keeping her transformed for longer periods of time will require heavy usage of Olivi Grass.

In Part III onward, she is still able to perform double attacks somewhat reliably due to her high Speed, but her other stats will prove to be a detriment to her. Lethe's Defense and Strength are low, meaning that she will most likely sustain large amounts damage, alongside inflicting low amounts of damage at the same time. It doesn't help that her availability doesn't match the Greil Mercenaries' either, that she gains only around 10 EXP at best on Normal Mode per kill in Part III on regular enemies, and that her untransformed bases don't allow her to deal damage at all for training purposes, resulting into a unit who is very difficult to grow. An Energy Drop might fix her damage output somewhat (effectively 4 points of Strength instead of 2), but after that, she will still struggle really hard to level up outside of getting help from Bonus EXP, and will always suffer from the ephemeral cats' transformation gauge.

Lethe is considered a one-and-done character; she contributes well in Part II for two chapters, but largely falls off by Part III, while still being usable for chip damage, but nothing beyond, unless privileged by the player.

Fire Emblem Heroes

Gallia's Valkyrie

A cat warrior from Gallia, the home of the beast tribe of laguz. Once had a distrust of all beorc, but that's slowly changing. Appears in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Base Stats

Rarity: ✯✯✯✯✯

		Title
		Gallia's Valkyrie
		Group
		Cavalry
Level	HP	Atk	Spd	Def	Res
1 40	16/17/18 38/41/44	8/9/10 30/33/36	9/10/11 35/38/41	3/4/5 22/26/29	5/6/7 15/19/22
Skills			Weapon
Brazen Cat Fang New Moon			Beast

Skills

Type	Name	Prerequisite	Default	Unlocked
	Whelp (Cavalry)	-	-	-
	Yearling (Cavalry)	-	-	-
	Adult (Cavalry)	-	-	-
	Brazen Cat Fang	-		-
	New Moon	-		-
	Moonbow	New Moon	-
A	Spd/Def Solo 1	-		-
	Spd/Def Solo 2	Spd/Def Solo 1		-
	Spd/Def Solo 3	Spd/Def Solo 2
C	Hone Atk 1	-		-
	Hone Atk 2	Hone Atk 1		-
	Hone Beasts	Hone Atk 1

Quotes

Path of Radiance

“Ahhgrr! A terrible mistake... I must be allowed to withdraw. All of you, live to fight again!”
—Retreat quote

Radiant Dawn

“Ugh...! Defeat! I've gotta fall back... Everyone... Stay alive!”
—Retreat quote in Part 2

“While I can breathe... I will still...fight... ...L-Lyre...”
—Death quote in Part 3

Heroes

Lethe/Heroes Quotes

Epilogue

Path of Radiance

Normal

"I can't believe I'm doing this, but... I must admit that you've done well. You were a good fighter. Too good to leave with these beorc. We'll meet again."

A Support with Ike

"I don't know when, but... If that thing we talked about happened...that would be fine. I guess. Not that I care. So...good-bye."

Radiant Dawn

Gallia's Valkyrie - Lethe (ガリアの女戦士 Garia no onna senshi, lit. The Female Warrior of Gallia)

Lethe later became captain in Gallia's home guard, and pounded battle skills and fighting pride into young warriors.

Non-Canon Appearances

Fire Emblem 0 (Cipher)

Lethe is illustrated in the trading card game Fire Emblem Cipher with the following cards:

B03-027HN

B03-028N

B09-078R

B09-078R+

B09-079N

Etymology

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Those who drink from it will forget their past lives. Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified.

In Classical Greek, the word lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment". It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (ἀλήθεια), which through the privative alpha literally means "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".

Trivia

• Interestingly enough, Lethe's eye color differs between her two forms. While her eyes are purple when she is in her human form, her feline form possesses yellow eyes.

Gallery

See main article: Lethe/Gallery.