Welcome to my first Weapon Discussion (open to suggestions for cooler names), where I create a weapon from the Fire Emblem series and then talk about its appearances in the series!
This time I have selected Durandal, The Blazing Blade, most notable for its appearance as the (regionally) eponymous weapon in FE7, the very first one to be released officially in the West.
Despite this being the case, it feels like it’s one of the most (if not the most) forgotten “game main weapons” in the series, so let’s give it some love today!
Just a heads-up, though, I’m speaking off of my memory from playing the Binding Blade recently, and my experience with Blazing Blade a long time back. I’ve looked some stuff up to double-check, but there’s a chance I’ve misremembered something. Feel free to correct me!
Before the Games
To understand where Durandal came from, we have to talk about the Scouring. Almost 1000 years before the events of The (Binding/Blazing) Blade, a massive human-dragon war known as the Scouring was fought on the continent of Elibe. The humans, pushed into a corner, created 8 Divine Weapons for each of their 8 Divine Generals, including Durandal. Durandal was given to the Little Knight Roland (the names most likely pulled from the French legend, from what I understand), and with it he fought together with his comrades to win the war for the humans.
All the Divine Weapons were created to be extremely powerful, with some of the best stats in the games they appear and an effectiveness against dragons. Also, apparently, when Roland returned back home to Ostia after the war, he raised Durandal skyward and the unrecognizably war-torn lands were returned back to how they once were. Very convenient, and also something that is never mentioned again.
However, the Divine Weapons’ power was so great that it overall upset the balance of nature and caused various calamities to befall the land, as well as the inability for dragons to remain in their true forms. They sealed their dragon power inside special stones, and could only transform for limited times; in other words, they became Manaketes.
After the Scouring, Durandal was sealed in a volcano near Ostia, where it lay undisturbed for over 900 years.
In The Blazing Blade
Story
While The Blazing Blade (simply released as “Fire Emblem” in the West) was released after The Binding Blade, it is set before The Binding Blade, so I’ll talk about it first.
In Chapter 28 of Eliwood’s tale, the crew set foot in the aforementioned volcano at the sage Athos’ recommendation, and fight a crew of Roland’s ghostly soldiers in order to prove their worth. They succeed, and Eliwood is granted access to Durandal.
But then out of the blue, an Ice Dragon appears, and as if possessed by the sword, Eliwood strikes it down in one blow. It turns out to be his ally (love interest?) Ninian’s dragon form (oops), so Eliwood, shaken, entrusts it with Athos, wherein it is returned to Eliwood in the final chapter to fight Nergal, his morphs, and the fire dragon he summons. Eliwood uses it through the fight, and then returns it to its resting place for the next 20 years.
Stats
It’s a 1 range, Eliwood-locked sword only available in the final chapter when Athos brings it in from the start.
Might 17, Weight 16, Hit 90, Crit 0, Range 1, 20 uses, and no worth. +5 strength when equipped, and deals bonus damage to dragons and wyvern riders (its might effectively doubles to 34 in these cases).
It has the second-strongest Might of any sword behind the Regal blade with 20, but is the heaviest sword in the game. It is tied for fourth in accuracy with the Iron sword (and Emblem blade), behind the Slim Sword with 100, and the Sol Katti and Rapier with 95.
My thoughts
This appearance is quite the sad one for a main character’s titular weapon; it only is available for the final chapter, and only usable by Eliwood (duh). He’s generally not seen to be the best of units in the first place, and his access (or lack thereof) to Durandal unfortunately doesn’t really help his case. Instead of being custom-tailored to work well with him, its high weight of 16 (increased by 4 from The Binding Blade) weighs him down significantly–with a default promoted constitution of 9, he’ll take a heavy -7 Attack Speed, which even a capped-speed Eliwood (which is not expected to happen even with 40 levels) will be taken down to ~17 Attack Speed, which will see him getting doubled by some of the faster enemies in the final chapter, like Lloyd and Uhai–neither of which would do so against a weapon that doesn’t slow him down, including the Regal blade. Yikes!
Additionally, the effectiveness against dragons was nerfed from The Binding Blade from triple to double, and the only dragon left in the game at that point is the final boss, which effectively means that Eliwood gets +16 damage against the final boss only.
It also feels a bit insulting that the Regal blade–the S-ranked non-legendary sword whose backstory we know nothing about–has three more might than Durandal. Granted, the +5 strength boost effectively makes Durandal hit harder, but still.
Art design-wise, I obviously was drawn to it to make 3D printable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. While I do like it, it’s pretty darn simple; the blade part is as uninteresting as it gets, but I do like the dragon design on the pommel. The somewhat blurry design makes it look kinda like it’s just veins on a polished stone, but I kinda wish the dragon looked a little less blobby.
…It was hard to design into the 3D printed version.
And also… I wish there was more fire, given it’s the Blazing Blade.
I have more about it to say, but let’s start by talking about its appearance…
In The Binding Blade
Story
Durandal sees more use than in its pre-sequel. At the end of Chapter 8, should the player manage to safely rescue Lilina, she will tell Roy of Durandal, how Roland used it to revive Ostia, and that it’s hidden in a volcano nearby Ostia. Roy decides to fetch it to increase their chances of opposing Bern (which, side note, I really found weird. They just managed to retake Ostia, are expecting wyvern riders to be heading over from Bern at any moment, and they decide it’s worth it to take a quick trip to a volcano? If Lilina doesn’t make it, they show up immediately after the fight ends. Convenient!)
After taking care of a group of bandits holed up in the cave, Lilina uses the secret knowledge passed down from Roland himself to locate the hidden sword, and she and Roy have this convo after they get it (my translation):
Lilina: Roy, there it is! Here.
Roy: So this is the “Blazing Blade,” Durandal…
It’s a remarkably large sword, huh? It seems we need to find the right person to use it.
Lilina: Well, according to records, Roland was a man of small stature.
Whether you can use it or not depends on your sword arm, don’t you think?
Roy: If I hone my skills, I wonder if I too could wield it?
Lilina: Maybe.
Roy: “Maybe,” huh…
Lilina: heeheehee!
The sword is then available for the rest of the game, and if all the other Divine Weapons were gathered and still in playable units’ inventory/convoy when King Zephiel is defeated at the end of Chapter 22, they all point the weapon to where Idunn is hiding, and the game continues on to the true final boss.
I have yet to get there, but I do believe Durandal isn’t mentioned at all after this, even in passing (?)
Stats
S rank swords, Might 17, Weight 12, Hit 90, Crit 0, Range 1, 20 uses, and no worth. +5 strength when equipped, and deals bonus damage to dragons (its might effectively triples to 51 in these cases).
Its stats are exactly the same as in The Blazing Blade, with the exception of having four less weight, being usable by any character that reaches S rank in swords, and due to how bonus damage is calculated in The Binding Blade, its might effectively triples for +34 extra damage (!) on dragons and wyvern riders.
It is second in strength only to the Binding Blade with 18 might, and tied for fourth in weight with the Iron Blade and Brave Sword, behind (the unobtainable) Eckesachs with 15, Steel Blade with 14, and Silver Blade with 13. In this game it’s the 4th most accurate behind The Binding Blade, Rapier, and Slim Sword, all with 95 Hit.
My thoughts
Durandal is infinitely better in this game. Not only are its stats equivalent or better in every way (triple effectiveness!!!), it’s not Eliwood-locked, so anyone with a sword rank of S can wield it.
Roy, Dieck, Rutger, Noah, Ogier, Fir, Perceval, Karel, Marcus, Alen, Lance, Shanna, Sue, Zelot, Trec, Sin, Thea, Echidna, Melady, Zeiss, Juno, and Dayan can technically wield it if you so choose, even if you have to go out of your way to train some of them. Roy needs to wait until after he promotes, so he’s locked out of it until Chapter 22.
Also, the game itself gives you more chance to use it; literally every Manakete in the game and almost every single Wyvern Knight/Lord doesn’t show up until after you obtain it, so you can reliably use it to take care of any pesky, too-strong enemies in your way. You do have to pump the brakes a bit; if you want the true ending that means it’s the easiest one to get and then lose–I personally (albeit intentionally) broke it in Chapter 21 on the hordes of Wyvern enemies. Doing so locks you out of the true ending.
As for who to use it on, Rutger is an obvious choice. He’s a very good boss killer early on and with Hard Mode bonuses he stays relevant there too, so it’s easy to delegate Manakete removal to him with Durandal. His speed can often overcome its weight, and it’s not too rare to see him double enemies even with the hit to attack speed.
It can also be interestingly used by Roy in Chapter 22 in order to prevent him from using up the Binding Blade before the true ending.
If I had to pick a “canonical” user for it, I’d have to say… hm… Ogier, maybe? He looks kinda like Roland, and while I don’t believe he was born in Ostia, he does reside there now, and his supports with Barthe imply that he’s on the smaller side, just like Roland.
Durandal Overall
As much as it pains me to say it, in all the research I did in making the sword and this write-up, I’ve really come to understand why this guy is one of the most forgotten “main swords” of the series. In most other games, the main weapon is typically singularly special in some way, but Durandal feels like… just “one of the legendary weapons.”
Now, I haven’t confirmed this specifically via an interview with the devs or anything, but a lot of this stems from the “fanfiction” nature of The Blazing Blade’s writing. Not in the sense that its writing style feels amateurish, but that it feels like The Binding Blade was written as a complete standalone story, and then The Blazing Blade was created as a retroactive prequel to try to bank on Melee’s success and to bring Fire Emblem to a Western audience. Given how long it’s been since I’ve visited Eliwood’s and Hector’s tales, I’m unsure if there are any actual glaring contradictions, but at the very least you’d expect that in Binding Blade they’d mention something about Roy’s dad wielding Durandal, or Lilina’s dad wielding Armads.
It’s also strange throughout the story how little people know about dragons–even ones that specifically research them don’t know anything about them despite the main character’s father literally meeting (and potentially even marrying!) dragons.
And how one of the main characters, Lyn, just kinda up and disappears sometime after the game is done, and is never mentioned in The Binding Blade, or how the version of Eliwood found in the bonus maps in The Binding Blade has his highest weapon rank in lances; his A rank in swords means that he can’t even wield his own sword in that game.
I could go on, but you get the point.
All this is to say that the reason that it feels like just “one of the legendary weapons” is probably because that’s all it was intended to be at the beginning. It’s not the leader of the 8 Divine Generals’ better-than-the-actual-8-weapons Binding Blade; it’s just one of the 8. Imagine if Frodo came across just one of the 7 Dwarven rings in The Lord of the Rings. Doesn’t have the same impact, does it?
The only reason it was picked to be a titular sword was probably because a) it’s a sword, and swords are popular, and b) Roland founded the main character’s home of Lycia, even if he’s not even from Pherae.
But the thing is, when the titular The Blazing Blade released, they had the opportunity to make it a lot cooler, but they made it worse in every way! It’s heavier, has lower availability, is locked to one unit, and doesn’t do as much bonus damage as its Binding Blade counterpart.
And to be fair, while it is better than most weapons against the final Fire Dragon, Armads does more damage, and the game gives you a free unit in Athos who can use Forblaze, Aureola, and/or Luna to do significant damage.
Thematically speaking, I feel like its lore is also strange. It revives the war-destroyed Ostia… why? We never see it do anything like that again. It feels like thrown-in exposition to make it seem more powerful. And to a certain extent I understand Roy and Lilina’s talk about even smaller people can wield it–Roy is 15, and in Fire Emblem, you can wield any weapon you have the proper rank to, even if it’s big, but the game’s mechanics specifically make it so that if you’re small, you have a hard time wielding big weapons. Did Roland have like 4 body rings stuck to him? Eliwood takes a huge penalty for using it, one that was again exacerbated by the choice to make the Blazing Blade heavier. If this appeared in the Tellius games, where the weapon’s weight is negated by strength, it would make much more sense–the +5 strength it gives you would offset it, so it would be presented as this giant sword that gives its user the strength to wield it. But it’s not, so while we see Eliwood throwing it in the air like it’s made of wood, in reality he’s lugging it around, swinging it like a mace.
And speaking of Blazing… as far as I know, in the games it does literally 0 blazing. No fire comes out of that sword. In The Binding Blade that makes sense, since custom animations aren’t made for any weapon other than the titular one, but in The Blazing Blade… nope! Sword looks normal. Even in the key art.
The +5 strength is nice in both iterations, but given that bonus damage is calculated by multiplying the might of the weapon, that extra five isn’t factored in. This may have been done with balancing in mind, but either way it means you miss out on an extra 5 or 10 damage against dragons.
So in essence, you have a legendary weapon that was given a chance to shine in the spotlight in its very own game, by…nerfing it and intentionally writing it out of all combat but the final chapter. It feels like the game itself doesn’t like the fact that it’s called The Blazing Blade–it’s a small wonder why they removed the subtitle in the West!
Wrap-up
Phew, that took a negative turn, didn’t it? Shame. I felt really drawn to the design and its unique story as kind of a retroactively promoted main character weapon, so I was excited to design it and make the video. But as you can see… I unfortunately didn’t really like what I found.
But regardless, it was fun looking into this and being a bit more analytical than I usually am about games. I’m planning on making this a series, so stay tuned! I’ve already got Urvan from Tellius ready to go, so once I make one about that, I’ll ask for requests for the next one!
If you wanna print it out yourself, check it out here.