Marth

Marth is the prince of Altea, son of King Cornelius and his wife Liza, indirect descendant of the hero Anri, and inheritor of both the divine blade Falchion and the task of using it to strike down Medeus, the Shadow Dragon. Driven from his kingdom by the Dolhr Empire in the beginning of the War of Shadows, he took refuge in Talys for two years before departing to amass an army to resist and strike down the empire's grip on Archanea. Years later, he led Altea in the War of Heroes against his corrupted former friend and ally, Emperor Hardin of Archanea, and was tasked by Gotoh with ensuring the future of both humans and dragons by restoring the lost Binding Shield to prevent the return of the earth dragons of the Dragon's Table.

Through his deeds across the two wars, Marth developed a reputation as a legendary hero. He was believed by many to be destined to lead all of Archanea to salvation, as represented by his use of the legendary Fire Emblem. In time the continent of Archanea came to be united under his rule, and he became renowned throughout history as the legendary "Hero-King" of the Archanean Alliance.

Marth is the first main character, or "lord", of the Fire Emblem series, acting as the protagonist of four Fire Emblem titles: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem, and their Nintendo DS remakes Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem. In the years since his own games, he has appeared as an optional bonus playable character in Awakening and Fates. Outside the Fire Emblem series, Marth is a regular participant in Nintendo's crossover fighting game series, Super Smash Bros., making his debut there along with Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

In the early days of the War of Shadows, some time after King Cornelius had departed with Falchion to challenge the forces of Dolhr, Marth remained behind in Altea with his mother and Elice, committing himself to his studies; with much of the Altean army out to war under Cornelius, the defence of Altea was maintained by a Gra garrison. After Gra turned on Altea in the midst of battle, the garrison at Altea did the same, seizing the castle for Dolhr. While Elice stayed behind to buy Marth time, unknown to Marth himself, he fled the castle guided by Malledus, and gathered a small number of Altean knights to accompany him: Abel, Jagen and Frey.

On their way out, Cain returned from the battlefields of Gra to report the death of Cornelius and join Marth's group, and Marth rescued an Altean knight captured and gagged by the Gra forces, Gordin. Gra's King Jiol arrived with a wave of reinforcements, closing in on Marth's group; to ensure the escape of Marth and the others, Frey offered himself as a decoy, dressing as the prince and fleeing to the south, luring Jiol and the reinforcements away. Draug then arrived, having prepared a ship to facilitate the group's escape from Altea, and from there Marth reluctantly fled for Talys, swearing he would one day return to free his homeland and seek vengeance upon Gra and Grust.

Following Altea's fall, Marth and his retinue lived in exile in Talys for the next two years, hosted in the island nation's eastern fortress by King Mostyn. When the pirates of Galder descended upon Talys to raid it, called into action by the arrival of Caeda, Marth's forces departed the fort to combat the invasion; upon its fall, on the advice of Mostyn, Marth's retinue left Talys to commence its goal to rebel against the domination of Dolhr.

The group's first destination was Aurelis, where during their liberation of the country from Macedon occupation, Marth swiftly befriended Hardin, the country's prince, and was entrusted with the Fire Emblem by Princess Nynaof Archanea, symbolising his fate as the world's chosen champion against Dolhr. From there, Marth led the army to reclaim Archanea, then proceeded on to Gra in an effort to find Falchion, said by Cain to have been taken by the country from his father's corpse. Gra fell, yet Falchion was nowhere to be found, leading Marth to reluctantly decide to detour to Khadein, on Malledus's theory that it had come into Gharnef's possession, instead of pressing on to liberate Altea.

The trip to Khadein proved fruitless, with Falchion and Gharnef still nowhere in sight, and Marth turned his sights on liberating Altea. Upon Altea's fall, Marth learned of his mother's death at the hands of Morzas and that Elice had passed into Gharnef's hands. Despite his grief at this news, and despite Nyna and Malledus suggesting he take a break, he nonetheless greeted the people of Altea, joyful at their freedom.

From there, Marth led his army in the conquest of Grust and Macedon, before being sent by Gotoh to Thabes in order to confront Gharnef. With Gharnef's death at the hands of a member of Marth's army wielding Starlight, Marth recovered Falchion and, at the top of the tower, reunited with Elice, who had been imprisoned by Gharnef for the purpose of using the Aum staff. In the closing days of the war, Marth turned his focus toward Dolhr Keep, where Medeus himself lay in wait. Engaging him in battle, wielding Falchion, Marth struck down Medeus as Anri had a century before.

At the end of the war, spurred by Nyna's urging, Marth finally confessed to Caeda his longtime affections for her, and the two became engaged.

In the year following the end of the War of Shadows, Marth devoted himself to the reconstruction of Altea and had planned a date for his wedding to Caeda, only to be interrupted by a missive from Hardin, now the Emperor of Archanea. Hardin bade Marth to lead the Altean army to Grust to suppress an insurrection there, a command Marth could not disobey owing to Archanea's power over Altea. Leaving Cain in charge of Altea's defense, Marth took Jagen, Arran, Draug, Gordin, and a number of newer knights with him to address the Grustian crisis. In Grust, he met with Lang, the general of the Archanean occupying force in the region, whose malicious attitude disgusted Marth; Lang revealed the alleged rebellion was being led by Lorenz, a former ally of Marth's, which raised Marth's suspicions about the situation. Marth soon learned that Lorenz was trying to protect the Grustian heirs, Yuminaand Yubello, from the Empire and that the uprising was in response to the harsh Archanean domination of the region. Lorenz died from wounds sustained in an earlier battle, and with his last words warned Marth of Hardin's change into a tyrannical figure.

Despite Marth's protests, Lang arrived and took the two heirs into his custody, then commanded Marth to travel to Macedon and address another rebellion there, in which a military coup had taken Marth's former ally, Princess Minerva, prisoner. Marth's army successfully subdued the coup with the aid of Catria and Palla, but failed to find Minerva as she had already been taken away by her brother, Michalis. During this battle, Marth met Julian and learned of the mysterious disappearance of Minerva's sister Maria, and of the cleric Lena. He also encountered Linde, who entrusted Marth with the Fire Emblem again on Nyna's orders, although she remained unaware of why Nyna did so. Lang's next order to Marth was to recapture Yumina and Yubello, who had been freed from captivity in his castle by Ogma and were on the run; Marth, however, refused point-blank to follow Lang's orders any further, and his defiance was taken as an act of war by Lang, who fled upon being challenged by Jagen. Marth's army moved to rescue Ogma and the children, adopting them into his army along with a mysterious masked knight known only to him as Sirius. At the battle's end, Caeda arrived and broke the news to Marth that Altea had fallen to an assault by the Archanean army, and that only she had escaped while Elice remained behind to hold them off.

In a bid to end the Archanean abuse of the Grustian people, Marth led an attack on Olbern Keep, Lang's domain and the Archanean headquarters in Grust. Following Lang's defeat, Marth found Wendell imprisoned in the fortress, who told him of his quest to collect the lost pieces of the Starsphere to prevent the world from falling into ruin. On Wendell's advice, Marth travelled to the Fane of Raman in a bid to find some of the shards, only to find it stripped of all its contents by a band of local marauders. Their next destination was Chiasmir, seeking to cross the bridge to avoid pursuit, only to find the entire area already under the thumb of Hardin himself, who approached Marth and announced his intent to crack down on all possible dissent against him. Marth had no choice but to escape Chiasmir by sea, taking a ship north to Khadein. Marth resolved to find a way to pierce the dark protection his army had observed surrounding Hardin, but was interrupted by an attack by Khadein's mage corps. During the battle he and Wendell found his friend Merric fighting his former classmate Ellerean, who in a jealous fit toward Merric had seized control of Khadein and directed its army to attack Marth and Merric; he was also approached by Minerva, who had been tasked by Michalis with joining up with Marth to fight Hardin.

Once the crisis had been settled, he was contacted through magic by Gotoh, who told him of Hardin's fall to the Darksphere and requested he travel to the Ice Dragon Temple in the north in order to collect the Lightsphere, the only means of piercing the Darksphere's protection and saving Hardin. Guided by Xane, Marth travelled to the Ice Dragon Temple on foot along Anri's Way, a path once traversed by Anri himself a century prior. As he travelled the route through the Marmotord desert, the Flame Barrel graveyard and the frozen wastelands of the north, fighting degenerated wild dragons, collecting the Starsphere's shards and learning from Xane the true history of Archanea, the Manaketes and the creation of Falchion and Fire Emblem. Upon reaching the Ice Dragon Temple, Gotoh used the twelve shards to reconstitute the Starsphere, giving both it and the Lightsphere to Marth to use against Hardin. He also allowed Marth to wake Tiki and take her with him on his journey, on the condition that Marth collected all five of the Emblem's spheres to restore its true power and allow Tiki to survive.

Gotoh sent Marth's army back to Altea with his warp magic, and Marth once again fought to free Altea from Archanean conquest. At the battle's end, Gotoh contacted him again to warn him of Gharnef's return, and that Gharnef was responsible for abducting Elice, Maria and Lena for reasons unknown, and that he likely sought to abduct Nyna next. Marth resolved to lead a march on the Archanean capital itself, to stop Hardin and get to Nyna before Gharnef abducted her; unbeknownst to him, Nyna had already been given away to Gharnef by Hardin himself. After a long campaign, Hardin fell to Marth's army, and as he died his mind returned to him and he begged Marth to save Nyna and stop Gharnef. Having collected the final sphere from Hardin, the Fire Emblem was restored to its true form, the Binding Shield; Marth was approached by the four missing clerics, but the Shield's power revealed it to be an illusion cast by Gharnef. Gotoh then arrived and told Marth of how Gharnef was preparing to revive Medeus himself using the four clerics.

In order to stop Gharnef, Marth travelled to the Dragon's Table in the Macedon/Dolhr border region. En route he visited a village and encountered a severely wounded Michalis, who gave Starlight to Marth for use against Gharnef once more. In the Dragon's Table, Marth's army fought Gharnef once more and used Starlight to kill him, allowing Marth to finally reclaim Falchion from him. The revived Medeus awaited in the next chamber, now evolved into the powerful form of a Shadow Dragon, surrounded by the four clerics hypnotized into his service. Determined to rescue the clerics, Marth had some of his allies work to awaken them, clearing the way for him to kill Medeus for the second and final time.

Marth and Caeda, together after the war.

With the War of Heroes finally over, most of Archanea's noble houses were left in ruins. Almost all of its surviving rulers ceded sovereignty over their territories to Marth himself, and so Marth united the continent as the Archanean Alliance, serving as its first king with Caeda as his queen. Under Marth's reign, the continent experienced a golden era of peace and its wounds began to heal.

At least two thousand years later in the era of Fire Emblem Awakening, Marth's tale has passed into legend and he is revered as a mythical figure of the utmost importance, revered as the "Hero-King" and a legendary ruler beyond compare. The royal house of the Halidom of Ylisse, one of several post-unified Archanean nations, are his descendants and continue to wield both Falchion and the Binding Shield, which they now call the Fire Emblem. In their portrayal of him, Ylissean culture appears to have reinterpreted Marth as fiercer and harsher than he actually was, overlooking the legacy of victory through kindness he built. When she travelled back in time to try and prevent the resurrection of the fell dragon Grima, Marth's descendant Lucina cloaked her true identity as Chrom's daughter by adopting the name of Marth as her own.

In The Legacy of Chris Thorndyke,

And he is reprised by Yuri Lowenthal in the English dub and Hikaru Midorikawa in the Japanese dub.