(Warning!: Some minor spoilers for a few of the more recent Fire Emblem games! Though those have been out for a while... but mostly, this will be a case of some rather major fanboying. This is a Waifu story!)

    April First. Quite the ironic day for her birthday. But an important one to me all the same.

  Some may say that having a Waifu is rather representative of the gaming culture... or a very lonely life. For those of you uninitiated in the term; A Waifu (Husbando, if your target is male [or horsebando if you've taken a liking to a stallion in the MLP fandom, though that's likely there just for the pun.]) is some imaginary character from popular media, such as anime, video games, comic books, etcetra, that is both a focus of a good portion of your attentions and serves as an image for what you view to be an ideal mate. Sort of like a Dream Date, if you will.

   Now I know what a good half of you would be proclaiming loudly if this weren't typed word and you have no way to argue back at me as the internet is wont to do. "They're not real though, your setting up unrealistic expectations & possibly sabotaging your chances at getting out there and wooing a real girl!"  And to that I say: Yeah? And?

  I have always been one to doubt reality, have issues knowing where the line is drawn, as if it were. I've not led a very... kind life. Not the worst of course. I'm no orphan... child-protective services never got involved or anything, but the point is that a lot... no... yeah, pretty much the vast majority of my childhood was spent in retreat. If I wasn't a latchkey kid left alone at home with the only company being the television set then it was trying to fully absorb myself as much as possible into my books or the images in my head in a vain attempt to escape the situation I was living in.   I say, just because something isn't real, doesn't mean it isn't real. Something as simple as a face on a screen showing you compassion at a level the real world has never chanced to give you carries as much mental impact were a real person doing so.       ...but I digress. Let's get on with the story.

   See, was late in getting my first job. I had left to live with my sister on account of not having my own income & after a while the situation came down to me working at a grocery store while watching my sister's house whilst she was deployed overseas. So there I am. In a big empty two-story, working minimum labor at a job with at least four bosses that shifted around so much they couldn't pay attention or care for you even if they wanted to while I'm running myself ragged in hundred degree heat pushing scorching metal, too scared to speak up to my superiors to the point where I was on occasion breaking down into tears in the parking lot late at night, and when I came home all I had was a dog with steadily & gruesomely declining health to which I faulted myself for and no body to turn to. I was in a dark time of my life.

   Then, I heard news that a new gameboy & pokemon version was coming out. I had been involved with pretty much every installment, being just as old as the franchise myself, but I was doubting whether I should even bother. What good would a video game do my life? I have work.  But then what convinced me was how cute the little Fennekin was. I looked at that tiny, adorable fox and said to myself that I didn't care what became of this, what it turned into or what. This was something I could love. Something I could actually look forward to in my directionless life. I could have Hope again. And yes, I do have feelings for a digital male fox, but that's a blog story for a different time. Point IS, That's what I used my very first paycheck for. I owned that gameboy. For the first time in my life, I had something that was purely my own decision; something that only meant something to me & just me. No one was telling me I had to do it, and in fact, maybe that would have been better spent on food, but this ...this made me feel better. To some varying degree.

   The second game I got was Fire Emblem: Awakening. I knew nothing about it. Through some serendipitous turn of an internet page or something, I found out this was a game that had dragons in it. Hey, dragons are awesome. Then, The Internet told me it had a character in it that could transform at will into said dragon. Doubly awesome. Then it said that that characters, including you, could marry each other in this game... which meant... you could marry a dragon!  Hey, I'm lonely. I reeeeally like dragons. This was just too much awesome to pass up, and so I bought it! Something else I could look forward to! Some more escapism that I can be happy to get home to after working in a job that was slowly slashing away my hours and making me feel like the disposable labor & spineless mook that I was.

   So yes, Nowi is what got me to buy the game. Yes. Shut up already. I know half of you have already googled her. I Know what she looks like, but really, she's a thousand year old dragon that only looks like a scantily clad young girl! The fact that she's a sweet, chipper lass & a dragon to boot is more then enough to outweigh the sketchy looks you all are giving me through the screen right now. For those of you more inclined towards the horses this forum is themed around, She's basically the Pinkie Pie of the Fire Emblem franchise! Thing is though, while she still holds a place in my withered heart, she's kind of fallen a bit in my favor. Mostly because she gets along much better with Lira in my opinion, than the somewhat icky Teacher-Student dynamic she has with you, the main character.    But I digress.

  I married her on my first run through and on my venture though the story, on pretty much the next stage after her... something interesting happened. There did our armies stand on the desert battlefield, both of us running a bit ragged trying to keep an even stalemate at a rather crucial point in the story. From across the dry battlefield I hear a raven-haired lady start talking loudly to herself, seemingly unaware of the armies advancing, deep in her own thought. She says to herself that while she is loyal to this foreign land, she's become more aware (more so than the other mindless, mute soldiers) that the loudly cackling madman leading the armies might not be the best to listen to. She wants to protect her land, yet... she's rather not die for some screeching king. I thought myself too, that this seemed odd. We'd met prior members of his army that were dissenting & questioning his mad bid for power but none this... reasonable. Or kicked this much ass.   Sadly, both of us couldn't meet at that moment, being on the backlines of two armies. Both of us casters and planners that worked better from the rear flanks. That, and she was nailing our army for so much damage that our front lines had to trample forth and swat her down before we got any more butchered.

   It wasn't until afterwards I looked it up and the Internets said that you were supposed to recruit her to your side. Shocked by this, I immediately opened up a new save file to get back to that point & try again. At that point, I wasn't aware talking was an option in this war. I was always in the backlines trying to minimize casualties while Crom, the de facto leader of our defending nation and the only other one given the option to talk to dissenters and stay our blades, was always on the middle of the frontlines swatting away two or three enemies at a time. This turn around I was more careful, I wanted to experience everything this game had & needed all the help I could get in this war. When we could manage, we got the mage by herself and Crom became aware of her wavering, and righteously so, loyalties. (and yes, being aware of things is rather rare for ol' Crom.) She said point blank to his face, right in front of his army too, that she still is from a warring country, that he has absolutely no reason to trust her & that she could just as easily slip a dagger into him the moment Crom turned around. Something that echoed my own thoughts from the way that Crom had found me too, as a mysterious unconscious man in a field in an area where treachery was common. And in that moment... a direct, thin but unbreakable red line was forged across the desert battlefield between us two that had never spoken.

   Tharja was a wise woman. She, as much as I, was living in a time where violence was not only expected but warranted. It was wartime after all. In that time of warring nations, killing others was what was needed, and Tharja did that very well. She liked doing it, sure, but she didn't want to have to.

  But what did Tharja, the self-proclaimed bone-collector and master of dark magic, do around our camp? She helped others, she divined the whereabouts about lost loved ones, fortold futures, even started to visibly panic a little bit when she couldn't come up with good news as to what happened to Nowi's parents. There's also... one other thing she did around camp. Me.

....uh, I mean... followed me around, that is. Almost the second she touched down in our bivouac she was seen trailing Mr.MainCharacter like a shadow. Now, you're right. Or at least, I'm right in attributing this right thought to you that I'm going to extrapolate on now. Putting a "stalker", or Yandere, type into the roster of peoples you can marry is a clear ploy to get a fandom to sprout up around your product. But that's just what I needed.

   I'm not a... self-confidence isn't something I'm good at. Some of you my have noticed my self-defacing humor or noticed that I can't take a compliment very well. It's hard for me to trust. It was, and still is today to a lesser extent, completely incomprehensible to me that anyone else could ever see me as anything other then some guy to do as he's told. The muscle, the lunk, the mook, the ultra-maroon. For as far back as I can remember, I just did what I was told. Independent thought was not what Mother raised me to have.

   But that's not how Tharja operates. She's an outright jackhammer. She doesn't give me a chance to doubt myself, to think about ulterior motives. She doesn't say that I'm pretty, or sexy, or that I have some main-character power that she wants to manipulate out of me like my cannonical "Father" created me to be. She's convinced herself that I'm her soul mate. She likes me because she likes me. There is nothing else. She wants to be around me just because I simply am there. There's no eggshells to walk on around her, there's no expectations I have to meet or orders & commands that must be followed. (Though... granted... she did say she'll kill me if I ever cheated on her, but that's a stance I fully endorse. Loyalty is integral to the very fiber of my being. I'd rather be dead than live knowing I betrayed the trust of someone who took the effort to truly care for me.)

   And, more so than that, it's a two-way street of a relationship. After you, the main character (MU or let's just call him Robin) mention that its a bit unnerving how much of her attention is so intently focused on you (NOT something I would say, Hah! Immersion broken, thank you!) she gets a bit crest-fallen, and sulks off. A while after she comes back after having done "Normal Practice" for a week, probably some minor spellwork, and at even the mere mention of you pointing out just how 'normal' she's being her dark face lights up to a vivid red, absolutely ecstatic that you're actually complimenting her. So much so, that she kind of over does it and literally shoves freshly-baked pie into your face. (Eel-liver pie?... is that a thing?... where can I get some?) Rebuffed now that you've told her off for going too far the other direction, she sulks off once more. But the point is made, she felt she didn't come up to snuff & came off too off-putting and wanted to change so she could be closer to you. Despite what some might say, she does have a heart.

   Some time later, either from the stress of having to plan out a war, deal with casualties or that Tharja is still stalking you, but at a respectful, recreational distance. Robin passes out cold in the middle of the street from a fever. (Are stress fevers a thing? I feel if anyone would catch those it'd be me...) Because she cares enough to stalk, to know how many times you turn in your sleep and every other unimportant detail, she's there to notice when you fall out of sorts, there to do something for me. Not because of me. And we see her fully aware of how bad the situation is, she may be a brewer of hexes, but she's no doctor. When Robin wakes back up, he's fully aware of how important her attentions are & Tharja knows where to respect the boundaries of someone she wants to love.

   ...and then when Robin thanks her and falls asleep in front of her, the scene fades out while she's chuckling ominously at having the target of her affections unconscious before her. Hey, girl has her faults!

   But that's the point of all this. Tharja taught me how to love. I may still be rather unsure on its definition and she wasn't the first lady I developed a crush on, but she'll always hold a major hold on my heart. She was the first... representation of another human being who ever made it clear that I could be wanted. That complete unconditional love could be had from something other than the family dog. Heck, think I was well past twenty at the time & before Tharja made it clear  to me that the word 'attractive' could even be conceivably used in my direction.

   While she may lack a physical presence, she provided enough room & forcibly pulled me into a place where I could even think of myself as being worthy of another person's mere presence.

   ...then they redid her.

             Fire Emblem: Fates came out, and they decided they could revisit old characters, give them new names and shufle their backstories a bit. Rhajat still is Tharja, perhaps a bit more watered down though. But I like that.

  One of the major complaints about Tharja is that she supposedly experimented with her curses on her young child, Noire. Though I feel I must remind people... everything Tharja does is called a curse. Divination, potion-brewing, just because its black magic doesn't mean it'll hurt you. Sure, Noire is a bit messed-up, but I think that's what they were originally alluding to. She carries a pendant around with her since childhood that Tharja gave her with vague words of how it would help her poor self-confidence, she may go full psycho in battle but if she loses that pendant she loses all confidences and devolves into cowardice. And I don't think Tharja ever put any magic into that pendant, the age-old story of being just as capable without it. But hey, the poor girl does have a Black Magic Woman & a Shadow Dragon Construct for parents, cut her some slack!

   Rhajat however seems a bit younger. She's not had to be forcibly recruited into battle, she's not so dark a mage that she dabbles in poisons, bone-collecting or... well, she does do necromancy, but only because she wanted to prove her magical prowess to her father.

   I can still see it now! She's set up shop in the swamps outside of the town she was raised in to practice her necromancy and has succeeded in setting up endless spawnpoints for those bulky zombies that she affectionately refers to as her 'children.' Me, having led the charge into battle has forgotten to think of that enough steps ahead (hey, last generation was the tactician, ima big honkin dragon now! Dwagons don' need to think ahead of time!!) and am currently drenched in about seven zombies deep with Silas clinging frantically to my back. She's cackling at her proving her magical might, I'm cackling mad at my refusal to admit how stupid my plans have been & gotten myself stuck in an endless loop of battle. Truly, we were meant to be soulmates! 

   That's what the story is behind Rhajat. That your love has transcended the boundaries of time to be reincarnated again in to star-crossed lovers destined to meet again! You having rescued her as a child (time is sped up in the peaceful pocket dimensions the characters go to raise their children. Yes... its another age issue... stop wit' the looks, will yah!?!) which set her spinning into a life as a more cautious and magical woman that she is today, forever grateful for your unintentional heroism!

   And we see too, that she's every bit as shy & socially awkward as her ancestor. She weirds out the villages in her attempt to help cure them of the disease they're under the sway of, but has to have her strong-armed mother come in to set things straight. (Rika, think her name was? The flame-tribeswoman and barbarian? Might have gone for her, but I was determined to get my soulmate!)

   But anyhow! This, April First being the birthday of Rhajat and the second being the birthday of Tharja: I thank you deeply, Tharja, for opening my heart & allowing me to feel that it is actually possible for someone to love me. Just... something I wanted to put out there on the Internet & profess my feelings for.