Magic: the Gathering Colors of Magvel and Tellius Characters

[queenlua]

I'm pretty sure the intersection of the sets "people interested in Fire Emblem meta" and "people interested in Magic: the Gathering color types" is like, me and me alone, but OH WELL posting this anyway.

Partially inspired by professor_tammi's affection for MBTI typing of FE characters, I decided to figure out what colors a whole bunch of FE characters would be if they were placed in Magic: the Gathering.

WHAT THE COLORS MEAN

Green corresponds strongly with commitment to familial ties, tradition, instinct, and a personal sense of honor and ethics. Often includes an appreciation for nature, though not always. Pop culture example: Al, from Fullmetal Alchemist. Noteable M:tG canon character: Jolrael.

White corresponds with order, peace, obedience to a higher authority, religiosity, and respect for the community and laws. Pop culture example: Captain America. Notable M:tG character: Mangara of Corondor.

Red corresponds with passion, recklessness, dedication, emotion, freedom, and power. Pop culture example: Ash fucking Ketchum. He wants to be the very best! Notable M:tG canon red character: Jaya Ballard, who's got some of the funniest card flavor text ever.

Black isn't the "evil" color, per se, though it sure tends to have a disproportionate share of baddies—it's associated with pragmatism, selfishness, ambition, practicality, and pride. It's basically the Slytherin of Magic colors. Noteable black characters in M:tG canon include Toshiro Umezawa (a hero!) and Yawgmoth (one of the most notorious baddies ever).

Blue corresponds with intellect, cunning, patience, and objectivity. Pop culture example: Spock, predictably. Noteable M:tG character: Teferi.

It's also quite common in Magic for a card to have two colors (or three, or four, or even all five, though for my sanity's sake I limited each character to two colors max). "Ally" colors lie directly next to each other on Magic's color wheel; "enemy" colors lie directly across from each other on the color wheel. This leads to ten possible two-color combinations.

And now, for the breakdown. I put a "?" next to characters I felt uncertain about.

MONOCOLORS

White

• Elincia
• Geoffrey
• Eirika
• Kurthnaga

Blue

• Innes
• Lute

Black

• Rennac
• Valter
• Makalov

Red

• Mia
• Nailah
• Skrimir (though he gets more red/white-ish as the game progresses)

Green

• Ike
• Ephraim? (Green tends to be pretty associated with instinct/impulse, and honestly I don't know if Ephraim really thinks much before he does stuff—not because he's like overwhelmed with passion or anything, which would be red, just because he's not an introspective guy—so I put him here? :D;;;; /badatmagvel)

ALLIED COLORS

White/Blue

• Lucia
• Sanaki?
• Lyon (if you go with "squishy"/Eirika route Lyon; otherwise, he's more Blue/Black)

Blue/Black

• Soren

Black/Red

• Almedha

Red/Green

• Tibarn
• Marcia
• Reyson (honestly, if I were allowing myself to use three colors, I'd go with red/green/white for him, but since I can only use two...)

Green/White

• Micaiah?
• Titania
• Rafiel
• Rhys

ENEMY COLORS

White/Black

• Naesala (borderline; you could argue he's monoblack)

White/Red

• Kieran
• L'Arachel
• Zihark? (I feel like he's a bit of a hard case. He eventually becomes Mr. Peacekeeper, which is very white, and I imagine getting involved with a laguz despite the whole Daein thing involved lots of red, but I also get a pretty green vibe from a lot of his conversations—probably his general easygoing-ness and unruffled-ness. I nearly placed him in green/red, and if I were doing three colors, I'd just make him all three.)

Blue/Red

• Calill

Blue/Green

• Ranulf
• Bastian? (It was either this or blue/white; it's hard to tell whether his dedication to the royal family is due to his friendship with him or out of some higher ideals about order and such)

Black/Green

• Shinon?

CHARACTERS I WANTED TO PLACE BUT HAD TROUBLE WITH

• Pelleas
• Sephiran
• Stefan (probably varies wildly, depending on your particular headcanon regarding him)
• Forde
• Joshua

Comments

[raphiael]

Hm, I think even on Eirika's route, Lyon is heavily at odds with religiousness, obedience, and order. In both routes, after all, his entire goal is playing god for Grado.

Pelleas is weird, because mages are usually associated with intelligence. Pelleas never really read as bookish or clever, to me; there's power there, yes, but it's not "I studied for ages to become awesome". And he changes so radically across the game that it's hard to pin anything down. I guess I'd lean toward green for endgame (not dead) Pelleas, from what you have here?

I agree with your assessment of Ephraim, btw. There's probably some red in there, because he is pretty impulsive and dictated by emotions (hey let's plow through enemy territory with three other guys to talk to my broski about this war thing!!)

I'd offer opinions for Joshua, but I don't understand him at all, to be honest.

[queenlua]

Hm. I feel like there's an argument to be made that Eirika-route Lyon has a bigger/more genuine interest in promoting public good/order/harmony/whatever, rather than explicitly playing god, and something something the demon king corrupts his good intentions something, though I don't know the source material as well as you, and black seems like it could fit as well.

And yeah, green seems like an okay approximation for Pelleas—in general, green seems like a pretty okay "neutral" option for characters I'm unsure of :P

...I felt awkward when I was doing this because I realized I don't have a very clear mental model of Joshua, despite the fact that he's one of my favorites D: