Ike

Ike (アイク, Ike) is the main protagonist of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and it's sequel, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the ninth and tenth games in the Fire Emblem series.

About Ike
Ike is the son of Greil, a legendary warrior who leads a band of mercenaries which operates in Crimea, a minor kingdom on the continent of Tellius. He and his younger sister, Mist, live with the mercenaries in a remote Crimean fort. Notably, he is to date the only protagonist of a Fire Emblem game to have absolutely no royal, noble or divine ancestry at all; this is reflected in his initial character class in Path of Radiance not being the usual Lord, but rather the unique Ranger, instead promoting into a Lord when he is temporarily knighted.

Path of Radiance follows Ike's exploits through the Mad King's War. Having only recently been allowed by Greil to join missions with the Mercenaries, Ike encounters Princess Elincia of Crimea, on the run after the neighboring Kingdom of Daein attacked and conquered Crimea. Elincia hires the Greil Mercenaries to assist her in escaping Crimea, but after Greil himself is killed by his former student, the Black Knight of Daein, Ike is forced to take command of the Mercenaries.

Ike's journeys with Elincia - fleeing to the Begnion Empire, assisting its Empress Sanaki in destroying a slave trafficking ring, being knighted by Elincia, and raising an army to march on Daein and take back Crimea - brings him into contact with the ancient racial tensions between the laguz (clans of animal shapeshifters) and his fellow beorc; with a plot by Daein's Mad King, Ashnard, to unleash a dark god sealed within a bronze medallion and remake the world; and with the sacrifices his parents made to try and stop that plot decades prior. By the end of the war, Ike's deeds have earned him respect across the world, from beorc and laguz nations alike.

Path of Radiance received a direct sequel in 2007 called Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, in which Ike returned as part of a larger ensemble cast of protagonists, playing out the conflicts from multiple viewpoints. Radiant Dawn is set three years later, by which time Ike has renounced his Crimean knighthood and returned to work with the Greil Mercenaries. After assisting Queen Elincia with ending an uprising in Crimea, Ike is hired by his friend Ranulf, a cat laguz, to assist the Laguz Alliance in a war against Begnion, demanding reparations for the major atrocities they committed against laguz nations. This provokes a civil war in Begnion, in which Sanaki breaks away from her corrupt senate to join Ike's side, and is further complicated when Daein's army, led by the mage Micaiah, joins the war on Begnion's side.

The enormous war awakens and angers the goddess of order, Ashera, with the underlying conflicts having been specifically manipulated to do so, and Ike and Micaiah join forces with the released "dark god" - actually Yune, a sympathetic goddess of chaos - to reverse Ashera's judgement and save the world. The game ends with Ike dealing the finishing blow to Ashera, for which he becomes known as the legendary "Radiant Hero" (青い炎の英雄, Hero of the Blue Flame), and with him leaving Tellius forever for parts unknown.

Described in Radiant Dawn as "blunt, but genuine and loyal", Ike is reserved and socially awkward because of his sheltered upbringing, and starts out both naive to the way the world works and someone who is quick to anger. He is never comfortable in the spotlight into which his work with Elincia and Sanaki thrusts him, or with command of large armies, preferring to work in anonymity with the Greil Mercenaries, but his strong sense of duty and loyalty compels him to accept it when he has to.

Despite being a mercenary, Ike takes the life-and-death nature of war very seriously and only takes up arms as a last resort; the only exception is his rivalry with the Black Knight. Ike is also known for his sense of sympathy, even toward his enemies and those who betray him (worrying about what could have driven them to that point), and offers almost every boss he faces an opportunity to surrender and leave the battlefield alive. His one true desire is to someday be as capable a warrior as Greil was, even long after his father's death.