Leen Analysis

[hakkari]

or "I can't believe I'm using internet explorer to shift things over"

This is basically just copy pasted over from my tumblr for now. I may go back through and reformat but honestly I'm very lazy.




You know for characters that pretty much flip Ares’ beliefs over immediately the dancers don’t have much development.

I’ll go ahead and give a special shout out to Laylea and her ridiculous shoulder ruffle things, but this post is mainly going to be about Leen.

So yeah, we’re diving into analysis/headcanons about a character with like eight lines in the entire game. I’ll try my best.

I have a couple of headcanons that conflict with canon so I’ll leave those to the end… I’ll try to keep all that out of the actual analysis and save it for the end.

Anyway! What we know about Leen from game canon:
- She’s really close to Ares
- She’s really reasonable and level headed
- She wants to find her mom
- She was raised in an orphanage
- She taught herself to dance
- ?????

That’s really about it. She also doesn’t appear in Light Inheritors and if she appears in the Oosawa manga I don’t know since those pages haven’t been scanned/translated yet. Same thing with the Treasure book, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much in there about her.

Compared to her mom, Leen gets the short end of the stick. She doesn’t have any lover conversations (even with Ares, oddly enough), and the only people she talks to at all throughout the game are Ares, Seliph, and Corpul.

The interesting thing about Leen to me is her demeanor and how it changes depending on who she’s talking to. With Seliph she’s teasing and even flirtatious:

Lene:
Ohh? Mister Seliph, is this the first time you’ve ever seen a dancer?
Seliph:
Y-yes, miss…
Lene:
Hee hee… That’s adorable!

But with Ares her tone almost completely changes, becoming matter of fact and really blunt:

“Hahaha… you just don’t let up, do you? Your father and that Sigurd guy were both knights. Well, their job was killing people. Am I right? Sometimes I have to dance for disgusting men, but that’s a part of my job! We do what we do to survive! So don’t hold a grudge over someone else’s livelihood.”

I find it funny that she’s apparently so comfortable around Ares that she’s basically telling him that his revenge plot is pointless. And he actually agrees that he should cool down.

So we have two faces of Leen: the playful dancer who loves her job and the lonely, almost tired girl who taught herself everything she knew and throws herself in front of a bunch of really gross people in the hopes of finding her mom.

You can see both sides in her conversation with Corpul, where she opens up about being an orphan and teaching herself before immediately flipping back to “You don’t like dancers? Aw, I’m glad I changed your mind!”

And the epilogue if she’s alone:

Lene:
I don’t exactly have a home to go to, so I thought I’d give Agustria a try.
Seliph:
I see… Don’t worry too much. Somebody wonderful, I know, will be graced with your charm someday, Lene.
Lene:
Hee hee.. Oh, Lord Seliph! I know you’re just trying to perk me up.
But it’s okay! I’ve always got dancing…
I’ve been alone my whole life. Staying alone for the rest of it won’t be that bad.

So what we know is that throughout the game the only person she really opens up to Ares, and she only shows her true personality in brief flashes to everyone else.

Anyway, her relationship with Ares aka where unfortunately headcanons are probably going to clash because we don’t really know much about this poor girl (or even Ares, who’s the least developed of the Junior Lord Trio):

For Leen, Ares:
- Threatens the leader of the castle he’s staying in
- Agrees that he should cool it on the Seliph revenge plot
- Flips sides immediately
- Turns against his employer/father figure*
- Teams up with the guy he believes is his one true enemy

Regardless of shipping it’s very clear that Leen is a very important person to Ares and vice versa, even to the point where, until she’s paired up with someone else, mentions him in her death quote.

While we never get to see how they met or what happened, it can be inferred that they’ve known each other for at least a little while, considering how familiar they are with each other. Alternatively considering the game we’re in it’s just as likely that they met five minutes before Chapter 7 starts but you know :P

They also argue briefly before Ares leaves but they get over it fairly quickly (as long as you rescue her) so there’s not much to say there other than admiring how reasonable both of them are.

As far as romantic/platonic relations go, the game wants you to see them in a romantic light.They start off in love with each other and Jabarro blatantly tells Ares not to actually fall in love because that’s not the mercenary way or whatever.

Since you can still pair them off with different people, though, romantic!Leen/Ares isn’t their only endgame but it’s clear that they remain important enough to each other that Leen decides to follow Ares to Agustria (as long as she’s not married).

The poor girl unfortunately has no other conversations (other than a very basic one if Lewyn is her dad, where she admits how lonely she is and wonders at the fact that neither parent came to get her), so it’s basically shooting in the dark at what her relationship with other characters would be. Would she try to keep up her cheerful persona forever or would she eventually actually show her insecurities? etc etc.

EDIT: May add more into the romantic!Leen/Ares part because why not at this point.