Anna. The mysterious merchant known only as "the secret seller". There is a mystery behind this character from the Fire Emblem series. Let's analyze her appearances to figure out exactly who she is.
It’s important to note that ranking so high in the Aksr military would give her access to their gates to other worlds meaning that she could be anywhere in any timeline
My money is on Anna finding a Dragon Gate and meeting other versions of herself and starting a multiversal scam guild with only herself as members with the excuse that they are all sisters named Anna which is just a cover so no one knows what they are doing.
In Engage, Anna mentions her sisters. And then at the end of the game we see her reunite with her sisters. And it’s the Anna’s from Awakening and Fates.
My guess is that the original Anna is Heroes Anna, who has lived outside of the original timeline. That Anna, wanting to experience the worlds in more of a fresh light, traveled back to where it all began in the hopes of experiencing as much as she could, but during a few of her travels she has found her one true love Jake, but still kept going back and forth in time to go through more adventures. Yet, in the end decided to settle down with him even when just for a while. Once her kids were old enough, she went out to go to more worlds, and soon find knowledge of the real world, and noticed that the wealth in the worlds is useless and attempts to gain money from the players, meanwhile her children got far out of control and began repopulating the world in the masses, going from potentially 2 kids to in the hundreds. Some of these Anna's are warriors, some are just regular folks people, yet most have learned from their mother and decided to go out into the world as a shop owner, and those few are the ones who created the secret shops. And the newest Anna from Engage, she is just the youngest of a new generation of Anna's, and her family is most probably just Anna and Jake
I was hoping you'd touch on one of my favorite things about fates Anna. Her marriage quote is "no refunds!" a fun nod to the fact that she is literal unrefundable content you paid real money for.
There’s also Apotheosis Anna that could confirm the theory too. The apotheosis dlc is stated by Anna to be a domain for beings who are beyond their world’s powers, being compared to gods frequently and it features enemies with stat caps beyond what the player is capable of reaching. If you manage to beat the “Secret Trials,” which has even more difficult enemies, Anna will be the final boss at the end of the map with a stat line of 80/60/50/70/70/65/55/55 and the skills (Aether, Counter, Rightful God, Vantage+, Dragonskin), meaning she 100% has dragon blood in her veins.
In the hidden library in Three Houses, it states that the calendar was reset after the war against Nemesis. That's why they're called Moons instead of Months, and it's one of the reasons why the Agarthans have highly advanced technology. That would mean that Anna's birthday in that game could be off from the calendars outside Fódlan.
At first when he got into her whole backstory I was like "this is going too far". Until I settled down and let myself enjoy, and just let you speculate for fun. And it was fun indeed. Good job. Never realized she may have a connection to Dragons too.
Counter point to your claim that 3H Anna's paralogue doesn't add anything to her character: Despite still holding a love for money, this Anna seems to be at least a little less exploitative and greedy as she firmly believes in the trust between the customer and the merchant, and some monastry dialogue further supports her not being nearly as self centered, like her expressing her grievances about the Blood of The Eagle & Lion at Gronder and feeling genuinely upset after ch 9 Course those glimpses are all we have cause IntSys couldn't even be bothered to give Anna more depth with supports even though they sure as hell put a lot of depth into literally everything else in the game!!! And that shown potential with the afformentioned monastary dialogue *really* makes her lack of supports hurt
Sure. But even since Awakening Anna did show traits of humanity as well. In her A support with Robin, she talks about her need for companionship. Her A support with Corrin is about her expressing guilt for violating that merchant's trust by exploiting him. Even Warriors has a wealth of surprisingly insightful conversations with her. When I said that Anna became more greedy with Awakening, I did not intend to mean that as an absolute she adhered to. The Three Houses monastery conversations are neat, so I'm glad you did call attention to that. The fact that she helped the little girl that reopens the secret shop is my favorite detail, so I needed to shout out that one. But her paralogue specifically I still dont think adds to her character. It doesnt add any new lore, it doesnt retroactively inform me of how her character operates, it doesnt even feel like she learns a lesson from it. It feels like her takeaway was "Pollardo screwed me over... good thing he's dead!" I just think more could have been done to put an interesting twist on her. Especially since she doesnt have supports to flesh out this iteration specifically.
My Feena theory One day the house Was to full so Anna sent her daughters out which they did When the Anna’s came back in they forgot one Anna. Feena. She was the only Anna who had a minor crest. She loved to dance so that’s what she did later she met protagonist someone.
I like to think the Anna's can 100% tell each other apart and Anna's husband/father can't. It'd also be funny if they all pronounced their name slightly differently
Imagine fighting a war in your country, winning said war, moving to another country and then deciding to fight this country's war as well. Jake is a madman, he needs teraphy, violence is the only thing that gets him going.
Anna not being in GAIDEN or Echoes of Valentia maybe that Gaiden/EoV happens in the same timeline and world of the Marth Games, which makes sense since she is in another Continent.
I actually like the modern version of Anna. Sure her love of money being a main personality trait is a little annoying, but I’m just glad she’s a lot more prevalent nowadays. I always found her interesting even in the older games.
In three houses you find her "thing" behind a closed well.. is that a reference of Inuyasha? Where Kagome goes into a well to travel to the past?? And she closes the well to not be able to be detected? It's interesting thoughts.
Fun fact; Anna was originally going to be named Esther, but then Lucina traveled through time to warn about the series being canceled for antisemitic reasons. We got the good timeline.
dude, this video is amazing, I love this kinda of theory video and fire emblem needs more videos like it, amazing job, and my headcannon was always that she was linked to dragons, but I couldnt come up with the specifics of how, the Ernest crest kinda makes it official in a way
If her post-Awakening personality trait is going to be Mr. Krabs/Nami adjacent, I think I'd want ALL FUTURE ANNAS to have 6 fingers. Money-grubbing bird always be looking to add extra digits to her sales.
My headcanon is that "Anna" is more of a title (or family name) given to the Secret Merchants -and more importantly- Dragon Gate Keepers (because, I mean, the Annas seem to like those a lot) If you're familiar with Breath of the Wild, it's more or less like how Bolson's Construction Company only accepted people whose name ended in "son". Every member of the "Dragon Gate Clan" (let's call them that) inherits the title as part of their actual name. I don't have any actual proof of this, but look at Anna's only possible children -specifically at their names: In Awakening you have Morgan, which is a gender neutral name, but ad "a" at the end and becomes Morgana. Morg-Anna. In Fates you have Kana (again, gender neutral) and that's just "Anna" with a K at the start. *Yes both of this are missing an "n" but the sound is what counts I think this was a very deliberate choice, just in case you decide to marry Anna, so your child togheter keeps the tradition. So Morgan and Kana are (or could be, if you decide so) technically Annas
Anna was like the Pokemon franchise's Fire Emblem equivalent of Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny. She has a huge number of siblings across the outrealm. She's a great unit to use in Awakening and Fates especially if you choose to promote her as your magic unit.
three years late to this, but whats a pretty interesting tangential detail to the Crest of Ernest bit, is that each of the crests lost to history (Aubin, Noa, Chevalier, Timethoes and Ernest) are only seen in their major form. and while its clear the first for have a specific origin in setting, the fact that Fodlan is the only place to have gone all in on this Inherited/Gifted magic of Crests and bits like the consistency of Anna knowing about the Dragon Gates or at least conveniently working near them. all gives some interesting credence to the idea that Crests/Holy Blood could potentially be concepts in most FE settings just the culture and story had no reason to discover them so Anna's crest of Ernest hides out in most settings unseen and not helping, but this also results in Fodlan's Anna being extra secretive and also finding no reason to extend the trust she does in other places, because surely somebody would ask questions about her truely unique crest that she wants to keep under wraps as it creates trouble about a crest who's progenitor is left unwritten. Really adds to the idea that the Anna of each game isn't really "Native" to that world, and the merchant clan of Anna and her family being gifted knowledge and means to fan out and also a need to blend in. the thing i like best about all of that I could even seen the idea that maybe they're given name isn't actually Anna at all, but something that could easily be shortened or extended then shortend to Anna, Morgan -> Morgana -> Ana for example. This to some extent even works to account for Feena who hadn't taken up the merchant trade so chose not to adopt the name conveniently dodging around any questions about her and Anna by proxy. All of this is to say depending on the game the degree of this Anna is a character knowledgeable of the web of connected timelines and chronologies who in some sense recognizes the players observation of the tale and acts as a guide of sorts, even the strange locations of older games secret shops or the mostly not secret nature of the member card she has you get in 3H on top of the semi consistent 4th wall breaking either in her choice of lines or more directly, even down to the fact that secret shops consistently contain rare and valuable items you otherwise have very short supply of dracoshields and goddess icons and the like basically being relics or treasure, and yet Anna finds herself in position to have the vast majority of these items in the games that feature in map secret shops or otherwise one of if not the only suppliers of them. In short amazing theory on the dragonpact idea for Anna and her brood of Anna's even if the games don't give us much to go on in a lot of cases. and to some extent thats fine, though Fodlan did her dirty by not giving her supports. (and making Trickster such a crappy class, but thats besides the point.)
Deep down we know Annas are an unlimited numbrr of clones that travel through dimensions spreading the art of capitalism across the land. She also sells items that can shape the universe's fate.
Honestly I would think it’s funny if it’s just a normal girl who married a guy named Jake who kept having daughters named Anna and they kept marrying guys named Jake leading to how they’re everywhere
I like how FEH legit went "Anna is a multidimensional entity, just like the gods and the dragons" and that's that lol or rather... in FEH, the one who suggests the ritual to bring a Summoner from another world, using the special (and unique to a Summoner) weapon Breibadikk is... Anna. She is the one who knows about a weapon that opens dimentional rifts and rules a Knight Order in a kingdom named after a God of OPENING (Askr). OH I THINK YOU CRACKED THE CODE
Chris: Making questions about how Anna appears in any game and in multiple plces at a time My silly ass: Oh, that's easy! A family of sisters that look almost identical and have the same names 😀
A little dumb but fun theory, what if Anna was a person from our world and it somehow got into the fire emblem games? Which is why she breaks the fourth wall in the first few games, and the reason why her crest isn’t in the history book in three houses is because the crest wasn’t from that world but from ours. It was coded in to protect her in that world. The other Anna’s are her irl sisters who are nearly identical or friends who just happened to look alike, which is why they are coded to be the same person/sisters.
There are multiple Annas that can be found in the same instance in the games. You can bring the Anna you recruit in Paralogue 6 of Awakening to meet the one from Paralogue 2. There’s the wave of Annas that chase after her in her Warriors animation. If this is some elaborate prank from *one* interdimensional being, then I find the methods very perplexing.
@@jeythecount6546 to answer your first question, no I did not consider that Anna is a divine being that's doing a bit of trolling. As for you second question, no I suppose a "goddess" for lack of a better word could create multiple copies of herself. However, Anna as a character and her specific rules are an unknown until proven. The speculation I provide is this video is simply the explanation I found to be most plausible.
Anna takes the Role of Farina from FE7, but Farina is better since she has much better character development due to her sisters and backstory.. and also being the middle sister she suffers from that also, although sutil.
Maybe she's the Goddess of the Fire Emblem Universe. Fire Emblem, right? Fire = Red = Rouge. Money has emblems. Hence, Anna's Money = Fire Emblem hahaha just joking.