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[ headcanon ]
In which I launch the 'canon' established by First Strike and the subsequent "voiced" novel* into the sun—
* 断罪者の系譜 — Fandom has taken to calling it Genealogy of the Convictor, which sounds very thesaurus-wordsalad. 系譜 is lineage or family tree, and is very much not necessarily the academic study thereof, and 断罪者 even already has an official translation: It's the Enforcer from Yuri's Dark Enforcer title. Legacy of the Enforcer is what I strongly prefer.
** Also hopefully it goes without saying that since this is headcanon, no one's gotta agree with me on it; I just wanted to get some thoughts down on 'paper' that have been rattling around in my brain half-formed for a while now.
* 断罪者の系譜 — Fandom has taken to calling it Genealogy of the Convictor, which sounds very thesaurus-wordsalad. 系譜 is lineage or family tree, and is very much not necessarily the academic study thereof, and 断罪者 even already has an official translation: It's the Enforcer from Yuri's Dark Enforcer title. Legacy of the Enforcer is what I strongly prefer.
** Also hopefully it goes without saying that since this is headcanon, no one's gotta agree with me on it; I just wanted to get some thoughts down on 'paper' that have been rattling around in my brain half-formed for a while now.
PEOPLE WHO NEED NAMES
and Jiri*are joined in the Lower Quarter by:- Tillie and Owen, the couple who run The Comet, the inn (and tavern) where Yuri and Flynn grew up sharing a room that Yuri now lives in alone.
- Roxanne, who goes by Roxie, the little girl who sometimes hangs out in the Comet's tavern. May or may not be their biological daughter.
- Cecil, the guy who mans the fruit stand by the fountain.
- Bert, the guy who keeps showing up every time Hanks and Ted talk to Yuri but who doesn't get a name. (He has a girlfriend he'd like to be married to someday, who only gets an offhanded mention during the opening segment; he used money he was saving for proposing to her to chip in for the aque blastia repairs.)
- Yuri and Flynn's dead moms could use names, lol! They're probably both using their mother's maiden names; Yuri's mom should maybe have a Japanese-y name, like he does. Maybe something with a similar meaning.
* I like the idea of Hanks having a badass dead wife. I dislike... pretty much every other aspect of Jiri's character, from the fact that they called her Dark Wings even though Vesperia already has a Dark Wings (it's a Guild) to the idea that Yuri needed someone to inspire him to vigilante justice to the way that she dies to the idea that she and Hanks adopted Yuri and Flynn. I wish these sources of extra-canon material were... better!YURI'S CHILDHOOD
Yuri only knows Sandwich when the game starts partly because of mechanics, partly because he hadn't actually memorized any of the tavern recipes, and mostly didn't cook them by himself anyway, so he wouldn't necessarily be able to replicate the whole thing if he tried.FLYNN'S CHILDHOOD
This is where I really throw the movie / "voiced" novel canon out the window, because it's bad and it should feel bad.- His dad is also a question mark*, his mom contracts some sort of terminal illness when Flynn is around 4.
- The Lower Quarter takes care of its own, so they work together to save up enough money to buy medicine to treat her — only to find, by the time they have enough, that the Royal Quarter has driven prices up astronomically by taking it as a preventative measure.
- Flynn's mother thereby dies, and Flynn winds up at the informal Lower Quarter orphanage. Yuri immediately becomes his favorite person in the world by coming up to him and offering comfort in a way that almost made him laugh.
- See above. Flynn's interest in learning to cook probably stemmed from his desire to take care of people, which is also what Yuri gets out of it, ultimately, but Flynn was a slightly more in-touch-with-his-feelings child.
- At age 7: Flynn falls into a river, is swept downstream, and winds up locked in combat with a Merman (mid-level monster, six feet tall). He's fished out of the river and rescued by Hanks, and turns immediately to Yuri to cheerfully say he's glad it wasn't any big deal.
* Flynn's dad dying while disobeying orders to save a town and that somehow convincing Flynn that he Must Always Obey Orders is the most bizarre thing to have ever bizarred, made even more hilariously awful by how none of this is brought up in any way whatsoever when PS3!Flynn starts flouting orders to repeatedly join the party, and his dad having been a Knight at all, when there were supposed to have been barely any commoners in the Knights, just....... Flames! Flames on the sides of my face—REPEDE
JOINING THE KNIGHTS
- Roughly three years before the game starts
- Yuri and Flynn are 18; I've seen it claimed that that's the youngest you can enlist in the Knights
- They share a dorm, which is no problem whatsoever, because they've been sharing everything for their entire childhood. Yuri's a little messy, but he's always been a little messy. It isn't until they're already having Other Problems that this sort of thing starts to wear on them.
- The Fedrock Brigade (named for Niren Fedrock, its captain) has blue and teal as its colors, matching the uniform Flynn actually wears in-game. The first time Yuri puts it on, Flynn bursts out laughing, because he looks so incredibly uncomfortable in it and it doesn't suit him and the colors kind of clash with his skin tone and (on and on). This rather sullies Yuri's initial impression of the uniform.
- Hisca and Chastel can still exist as slightly senior recruits, but their initial impression of Yuri and Flynn should be one of impressive synchronicity. What some people might dismiss as a brotherly bond, Hisca and Chastel are like, "LOL we're twins and we don't get along that well."
- Also, Hachette, who joined the Knights at the same time Yuri and Flynn did (canon), and was also from the Lower Quarter (headcanon). He and Yuri do a fair amount of goofing off and messing around for the three months that Yuri lasts in the Knights, much to Flynn's initially fond exasperation. One of the things they used to do was sneak into "the warehouse" to switch their bohdi blastia out for nicer ones*.
- Then, of course, things start to disintegrate.
* Directly contradicting First Strike's somewhat strange claim that rookie Knights don't get bohdi blastia. (Even in the smallest least significant details, this movie, I swear.......), and I don't remember that being mentioned but see no reason to disbelieve that post haha it was very thorough.Also they don't have radically different cup sizes because what? What?? What????LEAVING THE KNIGHTS
AFTER YURI'S EXIT FROM THE KNIGHTS
- Yuri returns to the room above the inn, determined to help the Lower Quarter now in his own way, but by his own account he is largely unsuccessful. He gains a reputation among the Knights as a troublemaker, eventually winds up with a very long rap sheet of mostly petty crimes, and pretty regularly spends the night in
- Because of the above, and also having lost his best friend, Yuri eventually slips into depression and apathy. By the time the game starts, Ted coming to him for help with a problem first gets backtalk, as Yuri rather snidely asks him why he didn't go to Flynn for help instead. There's also empty bottles of alcohol on the little table in Yuri's room, which seeeeem to suggest that he's taken up daydrinking, although obviously not to the point of alcoholism (since he doesn't drink at all in the course of the game and we never see any indications of withdrawal).
- Meanwhile, at some point Flynn makes friends with Estelle. (She says they've known each other for 2 or 3 years; Yuri had never heard about her prior to meeting her at the start of the game, and in fact was surprised to hear Flynn had "someone he could talk to" at all.)
- Flynn works his way up to officer, absolutely blowing past Hachette and others who joined the Knights at around the same time as or even before he did. (Sodia, a junior knight in his brigade, comes to admire him.)
- Shortly before the start of the game, something happens to both Niren and his lieutenant — perhaps they both retired, perhaps they were both killed in action, perhaps Niren's lieutenant had been promoted to captain of another brigade and Niren had already tapped Flynn to replace him when he himself retired/was killed in action/whatever*. In any case, both positions on Flynn's brigade are vacant at the start of the game, but he has recently been informed that he's going to be promoted to lieutenant himself.
- Although Yuri and Flynn are not talking to each other at this point at all, they have still kept tabs on one another from a distance. (Easy for... both of them really, since the whole Lower Quarter is continuously abuzz with talk of Flynn's career, and Yuri keeps getting in trouble with the Knights.)
* Really, a less tragic explanation makes more sense, as otherwise one might expect Yuri to offer condolences when they first see each other in person, especially if Niren was someone either of them were at all close to.jailthe castle dungeon. Among his crimes: throwing a tax collector into the river. (This would also be an example of one of Yuri's more... short-sighted attempts to protect the Lower Quarter; even Ted, who is like 10 years old, calls this out as having been a very "simple" solution to a more complicated problem.)