Phantasy Star 3 Marriage Observations

So I was thinking of Phantasy Star 3. And I realised how weird the whole marriage thing is.

Not so much for the hero since you've been adventuring with your wife-to-be much of the time. Exceptions being Maia, who Rhys was engaged to before she was abducted. But Alair, who is practically a stranger, is a bit of an odd choice for Nial to make. But thou must.

If you marry Lena, Nial gets to choose between Alair and Laya. He's been adventuring with Laya for awhile. But he's only met Alair a couple of times. I think you only meet her like twice total. Twice. And I don't think Lune and his lime green codpiece are going to let his darling little sister marry just any yahoo who moseys on into Dahlia. Sure you did rescue her and all. Who knows what those freaks in Divisia were going to do to her. Honestly, I was hoping Lune would just raze Divisia to the ground. After all that second hand bravado you hear about him you'd think he'd get the job done himself.

He did absolutely nothing but sit his ass down on Dahlia while Alair sat in a cold dark cell. If you're gonna start a war then do it right Lune! Sure, just burn Satera and go watch Netflix while Alair suffers. Hey you need a break too right?

But no. It's up to Nial. Everything's always up to Nial. I think Nial should go on strike.

So let's say Nial chooses Alair. That chick he just met. Because Lune is probably totally down for that right? That's the real reason why you need to beat his ass. He won't let you marry Alair unless he thinks you're worthy. Otherwise it's kind of ridiculous. It's the "but thou must" principle. If you rescue her you must marry her.

Unless Alair is all like "Finally! If I marry this schlub I don't have to look at that stupid lime green codpiece anymore!"

Seriously, look at this thing. It's so freaky and distracting.

Alair never loved Nial. She was just so disturbed by Lune's codpiece that she'd do anything to get away from it. I hear ya Alair. It freaks me out too.

If Nial marries Alair and rescues her from a lifetime of playing cards with Mr. Neon Codpiece they will have a son named Aron who shares his mother and uncle's love of blue headbands (Kara is isn't in to trends so she remains headband free). Aron's the last generation so he doesn't get to marry anyone. The last thing he wants to do after saving the world from Dark Force is to deal with the stress of a wedding.

Would he marry Kara? They're first cousins. But royalty does like to keep it in the family... I guess he could go for Laya. The same Laya that was all ready to take the plunge with his dad. Yeah. That's gonna be awkward. But at least she's still young. She put herself back in cryostasis after being friendzoned by Nial. I know that's how I deal with these things.

So then what about Kara? This is where things get a tad complicated. There are two versions of Kara. They are "warrior" and "princess". Warrior Kara appears when you are playing as Sean or Crys. And princess Kara will be along for the ride with Adan or Aron.

So why the change? Is it because of who Lune marries or because of how she was raised? As I recall, warrior Kara's timeline is a bit more catastrophic. In princess Kara's timeline Nial ended the war before it could get too out of hand. Warrior Kara lives in a world where her father is having a rough time dealing with his former evil ways. He's sorry now. But that doesn't save Satera, Lune. Too little too late. No wonder your daughter doesn't respect you. Maybe you could like... I don't know, help rebuild or something? Start a charity for Sateran war orphans? Do something positive with your life Lune.

Princess Kara has the benefit of growing up with a more peaceful, less broody father. Maybe he helped those poor war orphans. So Kara probably never had the urge to become a warrior herself. But I still always wondered if they had different mothers or something. Maybe she's the product of some unnamed NPC that wasn't too turned off by that freaky codpiece. Or maybe it's Thea (she probably still exists there right?) if you picked Lena back in gen 1. Or it's Alair ( Alair! XD ) if you picked Maya. Either way it can't be Laya because reasons.

The reasons being that there's no acknowledgement that she's ole "birth 'em and leave 'em Laya". No "You broke my heart!" from Lune. Or any "I hate you mother!" from Kara. Although this would have made for a much more interesting story.

Laya is absent from the second gen if you pick Maia. But there's no acknowledgement of a broken home when she's with you in gen 3. In that timeline Laya isn't woken up until gen 3. She's with you for gens 2&3 if you marry Lena.

But imagine the headcanon implications! Lune is secretly in love with the elder Laya. But he can't have her. So he turns his affections towards younger sister Laya. But her feelings for him aren't true. She only had a relationship with him out of pity. She wasn't ready to be a mother either so she left young Kara with a broken hearted, twice friendzoned Lune and went back to sleep. Lune never tells Kara. He just says her mother died after giving birth. Laya chooses to honor Lune's lie and not complicate Kara's life. So when she returns she just plays along, keeping the sadness in her heart for Kara's sake.

How would she get back to her hidden world though? Secret Agent Wren! He had those submarine parts all along didn't he? A little slight of cyborg hand and suddenly they "appear" in Rebel Cave. That sly mechanical dog!

Yeah. That's terrible fanfiction right there. Let's just forget this even happened.

The first time I played this game I picked Maia first, then Thea. This left me with Sean as the third generation character. You don't run into Lune in the second generation this way. But you'll still encounter his army saying "You cannot enter. Lune forbids it." when trying to get into certain caves. I had absolutely no idea who the hell Lune was and why he was forbidding me from entering places. I assumed I'd run into him as a gen 2 end boss. But no. It was Siren all the way.

In gen 3 you'll find out that Lune and Alair were the ones who destroyed Satera. But it feels irrelevant since Ayn never encounters Mr. Neon Codpiece ever in gen 2. Just Siren's obsolete ass. And his codpiece (why he needs one I don't know) looks a bit... happy to see you.

At least warrior Kara thinks that Lune needs to reevaluate what it means to be a military commander. It's about time someone gave this guy a dose of reality! You're not all that Lune. But since you look like you belong in an 80s hair metal band I'll forgive you.

But as a child I was very confused by Kara. This was probably due to Alair being the last second gen marriage I chose. Meaning that Aron was the last third gen hero I played as. So all that time I thought that Lune had shacked up with Alair (his options were limited since the codpiece was seriously killing his game) and made an incest baby. I literally believed this for years until I actually bothered to play again and married Alair, noticing that even then Kara still existed. And I still wondered if Kara's existence was completely Lune dependent. Like he always wanted a daughter named Kara and depending on who the mother was Kara would be either super tough or super princessy. Maybe Kara was his mom's name or something. I don't know. So I still thought maybe there was a possibility that facing a lifetime of forever alone (protip: lose the neon codpiece) he just ended up proposing to Alair. She pitied him. After all, she didn't have the heart to actually tell him it was his codpiece that was keeping him from being covered in bitches.

I created a crack pairing without even knowing it.

I have no idea what caused me to think this. But I was young and dumb and my line of reasoning is obscured by the sands of time. So are the days of our lives.

Let's get back to generation one for a bit. If Rhys marries Maia instead of Lena then your second gen hero will be Ayn. Along with your eternal cyborg buddies you'll be traveling with Lyle's daughter Thea and Lena's amazingly strong daughter Sari.

Marry either one and you still get warrior Kara. But does Lune get your sloppy seconds regardless? I don't know. But Ayn marrying Thea gets you Sean while Sari will get you Crys. And in both cases Laya only shows up in the third generation.

Secret Agent Wren!

Yeah that's awful. I thought I was to speak of this never again?

So I guess we can chalk up Kara to being the offspring of Lune and random NPC #52. She was hot. So who is the lucky lady that gets to snuggle close to those amazing pecs every night? How about the girl at the inn? She's cute. Or the nurse at the church. She's got green hair. So she and Lune have a lot in common already. A perfect match! Lune even convinces her to tell people the codpiece is medically necessary. Only Alair knows the truth. But who's gonna believe her? She doesn't even have a degree in nursing.

Besides the codpiece, Lune appears to be living in the past. He's the only Layan male who wears his long hair down and liberally sprayed with Aqua Net. And on top of that he uses a slicer. Everyone knows that slicers are girl weapons Lune! Perhaps that's the way things were done in your time, but now you're 1000 years out of fashion. But you have awesome pecs and are hot so I'll give you a double pass on these terrible infractions against the sanctity of modern sensibility.

Now there's one odd man out in this game. No, not Wren. If there's cyborg lovin' to be had, well he has Mieu. I'm talking about Ryan. The one with the cool sunglasses and 80s porn 'stache. Ryan only appears in Nial's adventure. He's a Layan rebel opposing Lune. You never see or hear from him again and he is not present in Aron's adventure if you marry Alair, or Adan and Gwyn's if you marry Laya.

Ryan was certainly the most unique looking guy in the game and somebody put some work into giving him his own personal style. So what happens to him after Nial's adventure comes to a conclusion? Does he coolly walk off into the sunset? Maybe he retires to some backwater town and lives out the rest of his days in peace. Perhaps he starts training the youth so he can pass on his skills to the next generation. Maybe he goes on to have more adventures of his own. Who knows.

But you never ever see him again. That's a bit strange since he's the only playable character that remains unaccounted for. Maybe some time in the interim between gen 2 and 3 he dies. Chirper pox, eindon flu, tragic tech distribution accident, pecked to death by hackgulls ect... It makes you wonder if he ever marries. They could have at least put him with Alair if you picked Laya. Give him some sort of conclusion.

Or maybe it's just cooler that he becomes a mystery man.

One more thing that's interesting, while the first and second generation princes all age with time the female characters do not. This makes sense for Mieu and all versions of Laya save for the one that gives birth to Adan and Gwyn. But not anybody else. It makes you wonder what their fabulous beauty secret is. It's a little jarring when middle aged royalty looks like they've bagged girls young enough to be their daughters. But it probably just boils down to not having any aged up portraits drawn for whatever reason.

Or maybe they're all really cyborgs like Mieu.

I have some extra info I'd like to add. I just realised that there is one other character unaccounted for in gen 3 as well if you don't marry her. That would be Thea. But the circumstances are a bit different. She isn't a "mysterious" character.

In Ayn's adventure Cille and Shusoran are attacked by Siren's cyborg army. He wants totes revenge on the Layans. He's about 1000 years too late. >>

The citizens of those towns flee to Aridia. Kind of weird since Aridia is inhabited entirely by cyborgs. Maybe they should have gone to Landen instead since they should all be friends now.

It's kind of a jerk move not to marry Thea because her dying father Lyle uses the last of his strength to turn into a dragon and fly you safely to Techna to stop Siren. He then immediately succumbs to his injuries, telling Ayn to take care of Thea. You feel terrible if you friendzone her.

However, Ayn must have been born under a bad star because he and Thea move to the artificial satellite Azura. Presumably with the entire population of Cille and Shusoran. After a period of peace the Alisa 3 mysteriously begins firing at Azura and it is destroyed. Ayn and Thea both die. Their son Sean escapes with Mieu and Wren. But it looks as if two entire Layan populations were genocided when Azura got laser'd to death. Sometimes you just can't avoid tragedy. This is why Sean looks so moody and is characterized that way in Toyo Ozaki's supplemental works. He has no home to go back to and everyone he knows and loves is dead. He's all alone now. Well save for his pet cyborgs. Truly tragic.

As for marrying Sari, it seems that if you do Thea is nowhere to be found. Sari is present in Sean's adventure as the queen of Landen. But I don't remember ever running into or hearing about Thea as Crys. It's possible that she's on Azura now though. That's probably the most logical answer. So unlike Ryan she isn't really "missing".

Now let's look at: Marriage Tables