Player Name: Archer Personal Journal:murkrows E-mail:magiradyne@gmail.com AIM/Plurk/Etc.: startropics @ plurk Timezone: EST Current Characters in Route: None
Character Name: Henry Series: Fire Emblem Awakening Timeline: End of Chapter 25, just before entering battle with the Fell Dragon Canon Resource Links:“Special delivery!”
Note: Henry’s backstory is never properly told from beginning to end, only pieced together from snippets of info he drops in conversation. It also differs significantly between the English and Japanese versions of the game. And, what’s worse, the other characters frequently question whether or not Henry is even telling the truth about himself and his past, with absolutely no concrete answer. For that reason, Henry is subject to a lot of alternate character interpretation, and the bare-bones facts presented on the wiki are… well, sub-par.
So here’s the backstory I operate under.
Ever since he was born, Henry has had the ability to speak to all lifeforms, including animals and plants. When he was younger, he spent most of his time playing in the forest outside his village, because quite frankly, human society had nothing for him — his parents could sense his massive power and unstable disposition, and they hated him for it. The animals and plants of the forest didn’t seem to hate him, though; in fact, they quite liked him. One female wolf, in particular, took him in as a sort of adopted son. She is the person Henry refers to as his “mother”. They grew very close for several years, to the point where Henry would disappear for weeks or months at a time to go live with Wolfmom (his parents were just happy to have him ‘out with the beasts where he belongs’). One day while Henry was in the village, however, Wolfmom walked into town looking for him. Immediately, a number of terrified and angry villagers descended upon her, intent on killing the ‘monster’.
Henry got there too late, naturally. Wolfmom was dead.
Shortly afterward, he slaughtered every single member of that mob, using a blaze of magical power that he honestly didn’t even know he had.
That was the last straw for Henry’s parents. Perhaps justifiably, they decided to deal with the issue once and for all: they shipped him off to Plegian military school, to train his magic and hopefully get his bloodlust beaten out of him. Conveniently, he was stuck there year-round, meaning that the village would never have that walking disaster roaming its streets again.
During his time in military school, Henry did quite well, academically. Even though his natural aptitude for magic was high, he still had to put in countless hours of studying and training in order to become even remotely competent at magic – and he did. He took to it fantastically. Unfortunately, he didn’t do nearly as well behaviourally. After the, ahem, incident back at home, Henry discovered that magically beating the tar out of people felt really damn good. If some limbs got ripped off? Even better. If the victim died? Awesome! As far as Henry was concerned, he was here to study, but he was also here to enjoy himself. And so, after the mysterious deaths of a number of students and faculty, the school disciplinarians engaged Henry in a long and painful battle of stamina and wits.
Henry played some ‘pranks’, the sort which usually involved people getting horribly injured, if not killed. The disciplinary committee responded by subjecting Henry to physical punishments for his actions. Undeterred, Henry did it again, getting a bit cleverer with his tactics; the committee subsequently got a bit more forceful with its conditioning. The cycle continued, back and forth, throughout at least five years of schooling. During this time, Henry was physically tortured in almost every way imaginable – and yet, somehow, his spirit never broke and his body never gave out. Eventually, Henry began smiling at them, a team of full-grown mages who were trying and failing to win against a schoolboy – even when the pain was almost too much to bear, he just kept smiling.
Eventually, his training was complete and Henry was sent into the ranks of the Plegian army. He wasn’t crippled physically, and somehow he’d found a way to cope mentally and emotionally with the experience – but he wasn’t unmarred. Basically every nerve ending in his entire body had stopped functioning. (More on that soon!) Nonetheless, his magical power and range of movement was unhindered, and his superiors soon found that it would be unwise to just kill him and get it over with. As soon as he set foot on a battlefield, Henry was practically a machine, slaughtering enemy soldiers left and right with terrifying precision and brutality – while laughing and cheering like he was having the time of his life. Even if he was a loose cannon, he was simply too valuable as a soldier to throw away. Still, outside of battle, he made sure to keep a healthy distance between himself and the other soldiers – no one actually wanted to go up and talk to him, anyway. So while Henry was busy chatting with birds and making up puns all day, rumors started flying about “A silver-haired youth with a knowledge of curses and an extraordinary gift for magic. A man guarded by fierce crows, so that very few had seen the true extent of his powers”… (Those quotes were taken verbatim from Tharja, another Plegian soldier.)
And that’s where he’s at when he runs into Chrom. From here on in it’s fairly well-documented.
Personality: Henry is a bit like a puppy. An excitable, eager, more-than-slightly demented puppy.
From a distance, and perhaps for the first minute or so of interaction, he just comes across as a childish but bubbly guy. He is always smiling and trying to lighten the mood; his preferred means of dealing with serious conversations is completely derailing them with bad puns and a fake smile.
In direct contrast to his upbeat attitude, Henry has some interests that make others extremely uncomfortable. He genuinely loves war and killing; he loves dismemberment, incineration, and other forms of physical torture. He loves inventing and casting curses that can lead to fates worse than death. Why? He just does. But possibly even worse than this is the fact that Henry loves sharing his enthusiasm with everyone else, whether they want to hear it or not. Mostly, the morbidity is just a joke to him, because he physically cannot feel pain and likes to see other people appalled and confused — but in addition, it was a very tried-and-true tactic to make sure people didn’t talk to him when he was younger, because quite frankly he didn’t want anyone to get too close.
Though he doesn’t like to talk about it, the issue of parental abandonment has a strong influence on his personality. Not only does he habitually push people away emotionally, but he has a powerful desire to be viewed as worthy in the eyes of people he actually cares about (for example, the Ylissean army’s highly accomplished tactician). To these people his enthusiasm seems completely sincere, in contrast to the questionable honesty he displays around others of his rank. Henry takes initiative and starts things on his own, but if a superior he respects tells him to stop, he will drop it immediately and with minor complaining. However, as he told the Ylissean tactician once, he will not listen to what he sees as ridiculous orders: “Heck, I always obey orders! Well, except for stupid ones like "don't fight the enemy". If someone tried to tell me that, I'd cut 'em in half and feed them to the crows!”
Somewhere during his time in magic school and the Plegian army, Henry started to develop a powerful apathy that bordered on the sociopathic. He has hardly any regard for taking lives, and likes to justify it in the context of the war — “I’ve already killed countless people, what’s a few more?” For the few times that he actually did get worried or upset about anything, he began drawing on his usually-cheerful attitude to put on a fake smile, so that other people would not approach him. Oftentimes, it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking, and whether the smile he’s wearing is sincere or not. Henry always thought he preferred to keep people at arm’s length (because in the end they would do something horrible like disown him or kill his lupine BFF/mother figure), but this slowly began to change as he spent more time in the Ylissean army. Now, he’s more open to making friends… but getting him to show any true feeling to them is still as hard as pulling teeth.
His fascination with murder and bloodshed mostly boils down to an extended power trip. As he discovered when he was a young boy who magically killed twelve full-grown men with no training whatsoever, Henry lives for the satisfaction of feeling powerful and important — and not to mention the adrenaline rush. Henry is always eager to override his doubts with fun sensations because he really doesn’t want to deal with them; this is the same reason he makes jokes in the middle of important conversations, because they amuse him, and if he’s amused then he won’t be thinking about the horrible mess of a life he’s made for himself.
When he was younger, he played up his own questionable sanity to get others to notice him — whether it was positive or negative attention didn’t matter — and now that he’s grown, he can no longer remember which of his highly disturbing mannerisms are real, and which are just acts that he forgot to take out. He doesn’t know if he always was cheerful by nature or if he started acting that way to put people off, and that fact scares him immensely. Even though coming to terms with his emotional problems is something Henry needs to do in order to truly grow up, he would much rather ignore it like an irresponsible child and continue walking around killing passerby for fun.
When people ask him if he’s insane (which they very often do), Henry’s response is a shrug and an “I don’t know, maybe!” It doesn’t seem to bother him that much, but needless to say, it does.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Try to cover the good points of what they can do, their life skills (not necessarily powers, but things they're just good at). Go into their biggest fears and what they just can’t do.
+ Dedication/strong memory. Although he had a lot of raw magical power, Henry was still required to put in endless hours of training and study in order to become even remotely competent with magic. He has also developed a good memory for facts, figures, and steps in a procedure. + SCIENCE! Although dark magic is defined as ‘a type of magic that brings dreams to life’, it bears resemblances to several different practices, including alchemy. He seems to have an understanding of scientific study (or at least how to dissect and analyze a zombie arm), even though it’s way too much trouble for him to bother with most of the time. + Nerve damage and general high tolerance for pain. Though it may seem odd at first that this is a “strength,” Henry was basically pummeled constantly during his school years as punishment for bad behavior and wanton torture of students and faculty. Somehow, he managed to survive. Now he has developed a very high threshold for pain, and his nerves have been wrecked to the point that he wouldn’t notice a giant gash through his chest until he looked down and saw the blood. + Follows orders. Due to both a military upbringing and a strong need for validation, Henry will follow any orders he is given to the letter (barring certain circumstances, outlined below). He has stated himself that he prefers not to get involved in the politics or morality of war; the actual fighting, to him, is much more fun, and he will listen to pretty much anyone who gives him orders or asks him a favor. + Animalspeak. Henry can canonically speak with animals, and he can speak with Pokémon as well. He loves animals and generally treats them much better than he would humans.
— Hates harming animals. Related to the above, Henry is all about mass murder of human beings, but he dislikes causing unnecessary harm or strife to animals and Pokémon. As such, if a Rocket commander gives him a mission that involves abusing Pokémon, he will flat-out refuse and do something else instead. He will not object to stealing Pokémon from Trainers, however. — Technologically inept. Since he comes from Medieval Fantasy Europe, Henry will have an incredibly hard time understanding modern technology of any kind. — Deceptive. Henry is a liar, plain and simple, especially when it comes to personal topics. He will happily make up complete lies for any number of reasons: to impress or unsettle others, to divert attention from his personal life, to weasel out of an uncomfortable situation, etc. However, he doesn’t often think far enough ahead to manipulate people long-term. Of particular note: Henry’s favourite victim of deception is himself, though he’s not always aware of it and will refuse to talk about it if he is. He has convinced himself to believe many aspects of his personality that aren’t really true. — Fee-fees. As was previously mentioned, Henry has absolutely no desire to confront his negative feelings, mostly out of fear of what he’ll find there. It’s rather like the knowledge of having a monster in his basement; he knows it’s there, he knows it’s getting worse by not confronting it, but he’s too scared to ever open the door. So he continues walking by said closet every day and pretending it’s not there, ignoring the fact that the only thing standing between him and the monster is a flimsy piece of wood.
Henry | Fire Emblem: Awakening | Unreserved, reapp
Name: Archer
Personal Journal:
E-mail:magiradyne@gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: startropics @ plurk
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: None
Character
Name: Henry
Series: Fire Emblem Awakening
Timeline: End of Chapter 25, just before entering battle with the Fell Dragon
Canon Resource Links: “Special delivery!”
Note: Henry’s backstory is never properly told from beginning to end, only pieced together from snippets of info he drops in conversation. It also differs significantly between the English and Japanese versions of the game. And, what’s worse, the other characters frequently question whether or not Henry is even telling the truth about himself and his past, with absolutely no concrete answer. For that reason, Henry is subject to a lot of alternate character interpretation, and the bare-bones facts presented on the wiki are… well, sub-par.
So here’s the backstory I operate under.
Ever since he was born, Henry has had the ability to speak to all lifeforms, including animals and plants. When he was younger, he spent most of his time playing in the forest outside his village, because quite frankly, human society had nothing for him — his parents could sense his massive power and unstable disposition, and they hated him for it. The animals and plants of the forest didn’t seem to hate him, though; in fact, they quite liked him. One female wolf, in particular, took him in as a sort of adopted son. She is the person Henry refers to as his “mother”. They grew very close for several years, to the point where Henry would disappear for weeks or months at a time to go live with Wolfmom (his parents were just happy to have him ‘out with the beasts where he belongs’). One day while Henry was in the village, however, Wolfmom walked into town looking for him. Immediately, a number of terrified and angry villagers descended upon her, intent on killing the ‘monster’.
Henry got there too late, naturally. Wolfmom was dead.
Shortly afterward, he slaughtered every single member of that mob, using a blaze of magical power that he honestly didn’t even know he had.
That was the last straw for Henry’s parents. Perhaps justifiably, they decided to deal with the issue once and for all: they shipped him off to Plegian military school, to train his magic and hopefully get his bloodlust beaten out of him. Conveniently, he was stuck there year-round, meaning that the village would never have that walking disaster roaming its streets again.
During his time in military school, Henry did quite well, academically. Even though his natural aptitude for magic was high, he still had to put in countless hours of studying and training in order to become even remotely competent at magic – and he did. He took to it fantastically. Unfortunately, he didn’t do nearly as well behaviourally. After the, ahem, incident back at home, Henry discovered that magically beating the tar out of people felt really damn good. If some limbs got ripped off? Even better. If the victim died? Awesome! As far as Henry was concerned, he was here to study, but he was also here to enjoy himself. And so, after the mysterious deaths of a number of students and faculty, the school disciplinarians engaged Henry in a long and painful battle of stamina and wits.
Henry played some ‘pranks’, the sort which usually involved people getting horribly injured, if not killed. The disciplinary committee responded by subjecting Henry to physical punishments for his actions. Undeterred, Henry did it again, getting a bit cleverer with his tactics; the committee subsequently got a bit more forceful with its conditioning. The cycle continued, back and forth, throughout at least five years of schooling. During this time, Henry was physically tortured in almost every way imaginable – and yet, somehow, his spirit never broke and his body never gave out. Eventually, Henry began smiling at them, a team of full-grown mages who were trying and failing to win against a schoolboy – even when the pain was almost too much to bear, he just kept smiling.
Eventually, his training was complete and Henry was sent into the ranks of the Plegian army. He wasn’t crippled physically, and somehow he’d found a way to cope mentally and emotionally with the experience – but he wasn’t unmarred. Basically every nerve ending in his entire body had stopped functioning. (More on that soon!) Nonetheless, his magical power and range of movement was unhindered, and his superiors soon found that it would be unwise to just kill him and get it over with. As soon as he set foot on a battlefield, Henry was practically a machine, slaughtering enemy soldiers left and right with terrifying precision and brutality – while laughing and cheering like he was having the time of his life. Even if he was a loose cannon, he was simply too valuable as a soldier to throw away. Still, outside of battle, he made sure to keep a healthy distance between himself and the other soldiers – no one actually wanted to go up and talk to him, anyway. So while Henry was busy chatting with birds and making up puns all day, rumors started flying about “A silver-haired youth with a knowledge of curses and an extraordinary gift for magic. A man guarded by fierce crows, so that very few had seen the true extent of his powers”… (Those quotes were taken verbatim from Tharja, another Plegian soldier.)
And that’s where he’s at when he runs into Chrom. From here on in it’s fairly well-documented.
Personality: Henry is a bit like a puppy. An excitable, eager, more-than-slightly demented puppy.
From a distance, and perhaps for the first minute or so of interaction, he just comes across as a childish but bubbly guy. He is always smiling and trying to lighten the mood; his preferred means of dealing with serious conversations is completely derailing them with bad puns and a fake smile.
In direct contrast to his upbeat attitude, Henry has some interests that make others extremely uncomfortable. He genuinely loves war and killing; he loves dismemberment, incineration, and other forms of physical torture. He loves inventing and casting curses that can lead to fates worse than death. Why? He just does. But possibly even worse than this is the fact that Henry loves sharing his enthusiasm with everyone else, whether they want to hear it or not. Mostly, the morbidity is just a joke to him, because he physically cannot feel pain and likes to see other people appalled and confused — but in addition, it was a very tried-and-true tactic to make sure people didn’t talk to him when he was younger, because quite frankly he didn’t want anyone to get too close.
Though he doesn’t like to talk about it, the issue of parental abandonment has a strong influence on his personality. Not only does he habitually push people away emotionally, but he has a powerful desire to be viewed as worthy in the eyes of people he actually cares about (for example, the Ylissean army’s highly accomplished tactician). To these people his enthusiasm seems completely sincere, in contrast to the questionable honesty he displays around others of his rank. Henry takes initiative and starts things on his own, but if a superior he respects tells him to stop, he will drop it immediately and with minor complaining. However, as he told the Ylissean tactician once, he will not listen to what he sees as ridiculous orders: “Heck, I always obey orders! Well, except for stupid ones like "don't fight the enemy". If someone tried to tell me that, I'd cut 'em in half and feed them to the crows!”
Somewhere during his time in magic school and the Plegian army, Henry started to develop a powerful apathy that bordered on the sociopathic. He has hardly any regard for taking lives, and likes to justify it in the context of the war — “I’ve already killed countless people, what’s a few more?” For the few times that he actually did get worried or upset about anything, he began drawing on his usually-cheerful attitude to put on a fake smile, so that other people would not approach him. Oftentimes, it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking, and whether the smile he’s wearing is sincere or not. Henry always thought he preferred to keep people at arm’s length (because in the end they would do something horrible like disown him or kill his lupine BFF/mother figure), but this slowly began to change as he spent more time in the Ylissean army. Now, he’s more open to making friends… but getting him to show any true feeling to them is still as hard as pulling teeth.
His fascination with murder and bloodshed mostly boils down to an extended power trip. As he discovered when he was a young boy who magically killed twelve full-grown men with no training whatsoever, Henry lives for the satisfaction of feeling powerful and important — and not to mention the adrenaline rush. Henry is always eager to override his doubts with fun sensations because he really doesn’t want to deal with them; this is the same reason he makes jokes in the middle of important conversations, because they amuse him, and if he’s amused then he won’t be thinking about the horrible mess of a life he’s made for himself.
When he was younger, he played up his own questionable sanity to get others to notice him — whether it was positive or negative attention didn’t matter — and now that he’s grown, he can no longer remember which of his highly disturbing mannerisms are real, and which are just acts that he forgot to take out. He doesn’t know if he always was cheerful by nature or if he started acting that way to put people off, and that fact scares him immensely. Even though coming to terms with his emotional problems is something Henry needs to do in order to truly grow up, he would much rather ignore it like an irresponsible child and continue walking around killing passerby for fun.
When people ask him if he’s insane (which they very often do), Henry’s response is a shrug and an “I don’t know, maybe!” It doesn’t seem to bother him that much, but needless to say, it does.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Try to cover the good points of what they can do, their life skills (not necessarily powers, but things they're just good at). Go into their biggest fears and what they just can’t do.
+ Dedication/strong memory. Although he had a lot of raw magical power, Henry was still required to put in endless hours of training and study in order to become even remotely competent with magic. He has also developed a good memory for facts, figures, and steps in a procedure.
+ SCIENCE! Although dark magic is defined as ‘a type of magic that brings dreams to life’, it bears resemblances to several different practices, including alchemy. He seems to have an understanding of scientific study (or at least how to dissect and analyze a zombie arm), even though it’s way too much trouble for him to bother with most of the time.
+ Nerve damage and general high tolerance for pain. Though it may seem odd at first that this is a “strength,” Henry was basically pummeled constantly during his school years as punishment for bad behavior and wanton torture of students and faculty. Somehow, he managed to survive. Now he has developed a very high threshold for pain, and his nerves have been wrecked to the point that he wouldn’t notice a giant gash through his chest until he looked down and saw the blood.
+ Follows orders. Due to both a military upbringing and a strong need for validation, Henry will follow any orders he is given to the letter (barring certain circumstances, outlined below). He has stated himself that he prefers not to get involved in the politics or morality of war; the actual fighting, to him, is much more fun, and he will listen to pretty much anyone who gives him orders or asks him a favor.
+ Animalspeak. Henry can canonically speak with animals, and he can speak with Pokémon as well. He loves animals and generally treats them much better than he would humans.
— Hates harming animals. Related to the above, Henry is all about mass murder of human beings, but he dislikes causing unnecessary harm or strife to animals and Pokémon. As such, if a Rocket commander gives him a mission that involves abusing Pokémon, he will flat-out refuse and do something else instead. He will not object to stealing Pokémon from Trainers, however.
— Technologically inept. Since he comes from Medieval Fantasy Europe, Henry will have an incredibly hard time understanding modern technology of any kind.
— Deceptive. Henry is a liar, plain and simple, especially when it comes to personal topics. He will happily make up complete lies for any number of reasons: to impress or unsettle others, to divert attention from his personal life, to weasel out of an uncomfortable situation, etc. However, he doesn’t often think far enough ahead to manipulate people long-term. Of particular note: Henry’s favourite victim of deception is himself, though he’s not always aware of it and will refuse to talk about it if he is. He has convinced himself to believe many aspects of his personality that aren’t really true.
— Fee-fees. As was previously mentioned, Henry has absolutely no desire to confront his negative feelings, mostly out of fear of what he’ll find there. It’s rather like the knowledge of having a monster in his basement; he knows it’s there, he knows it’s getting worse by not confronting it, but he’s too scared to ever open the door. So he continues walking by said closet every day and pretending it’s not there, ignoring the fact that the only thing standing between him and the monster is a flimsy piece of wood.