Valkyria Chronicles/WMG

The entire story is in universe post-war propaganda produced by the Gallian government.
Think about it for a second, Squad 7 must be the ultimate military version of Mary Sue. It is an entire unit of Good Looking Privates Super Soldiers who can each kill tons of enemies without any hesitation and even turn the tide of a battle and succeed in missions that the regular army failed at. The Empire are portrayed as evil with few exception, just for the purpose of making the propaganda less obvious. Meanwhile, the story also tries to whitewash the war crimes committed by the Gallian government such as the use of Child Soldiers by having the character of Aisha. The creators of the game even tries to clue us in on the true nature of the story by revealing at the end that the story was told from a book written by a reporter who worked for the Gallian state radio. In reality, the war very violent and destructive which left most of Europa in ruins, and instead of having a happy ending, many of the veterans suffer from PSTD for the rest of their lives.

The original Valkyria became the Darcsen.
Supposedly, the Valkyria defeated the peaceful Darcsen and then blamed the whole "conquering the world" thing on them. There's no other written record of this other than the Valkyria's (and their super secret inaccessible temples), or even an oral history by the Darcsen themselves. Then the Valkyria disappeared off the face of the planet, but not before giving their superweapon to a betrayer branch of the Darcsens who pretended to be Valkyria and were given their own kingdom. Supposedly there is an ancient language of the Darcsens, but nobody has ever seen an example in writing.

Hahaha. No.

What happened was the Valkyria were kicking butt and taking names, but then there was a feud among two smaller factions, who completely destroyed each other via a Final Flame attack in what was later called "The Darcsen Calamity." Realizing that their own power doomed themselves and the world, one branch who would become the Gallian Royal Family used a weapon/skill that genetically sealed their powers, and their memories of those powers, and then used it on themselves; a side effect erasing their memories of everything and darkening their hair. The Darcsens walked away, the Valkyria vanished, and history had a muddled sense of what happened and blamed everything bad on who was left.

The "blame the Darcsens" thing was supposed to be a scolding for themselves, but it was vastly over-interpreted.

The genetic seal, ironically, would be nullified via rare cases of crossbred atavists with other races.


 * This would explain one small, but unusual thing. We never learn Aliasse's last name in the sequel. Maybe her parents were Darcsens who were related to non-darcsens (e.g. like Lynn and Karl's children would be). Aliasse might not even have a last name.

Valkyria are powered by Spiral Power.
The seashell twist temples, spinning drills, spinning shields and twisting energy blasts weren't a clue?
 * It even says in the game that the Valkyria themselves uses a Spiral insignia to represent their power.

The viewpoint of the player is from that of a Reaper.
That explains how, when DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY, you can be ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

As to why one would be playing with these meatbags... Boredom, maybe. Or interest in the Valkyria.


 * So all the Gallian soldiers have the brain implants necessary for Reaper possession? Man, that's creepy.
 * What better way to explain how they just shrug off being SHOT while moving around? The enemy soldiers seem to deal with pain a great deal less...
 * It has been speculated that Shepard is somehow a "human Reaper" who empowers those who join him (but without controlling their free will). If so, this is the kind in the game.

The game shares a universe with Battlefield Heroes
The overall aesthetic of Heroes is a World War II one, Ninja Pirate Vampires not withstanding, and both games are vastly more colorful than ours was during the same approximate period. Ragnaid also explains how Bandages and Combat Medicine work.


 * Jossed. Battlefield Heroes has become far too saturated with modern weapons to work alongside VC.

VC 4 will see another Imperial invasion attempt
Because as far as we know, EWII is still going on, Ragnite isn't getting any less scarce, and from all the evidence we can gather, Gallia wouldn't have fully recovered even WITHOUT the minor matter of a massive civil war ripping the country in two. While I don't know the precise details of the game (I don't have it), I wouldn't even put it past the Empire to have instigated the whole thing in order to do exactly that.

Something happened to all the male valkyrur
According to this theory, the valkyrur were not always a One-Gender Race. At some point in the past, though, something happened that killed all the males. The females who remained discovered that after many thousands of years of evolution they were still able to mate with human males, but that just wasn't enough to save their empire.

Welkin is a male valkyrur.
Or at least a throwback to one. He didn't get the blue flames or red eyes, but his hair, normally brown, in some light is a toned down grey. His power is in his Commanding Voice, which can, among other things, command machine guns to punch through tank armor and awaken dormant powers within people. The Aged Gentleman was another one.
 * Yes, there are others who can use commands, enemy leaders and Avan in the sequel, but the enemy leaders don't use the Game Breaker ones, and for Avan these require far higher levels of training (and a lot more Command Points) to learn and use. Avan's bizarre Jack of All Trades ability to be anything lets him use the commands.

Dr. Foerster is the Big Bad of the series
She has no allegiance to any nation working for both the Empire and Gallia. She experimented on Selvaria, and created every version of the Artificial Valkryia equipment. (Odds are good she'll work for the Federation and maybe had a hand in aiding VCIII's opposition, Calamity Raven.) She's completely without morals or ethics, and she's convinced that a Valkyria only has use as being a Person of Mass Destruction. When she's got the Artificial Valkyria 'right,' odds are good she'll use it on herself. Then Alicia, Aliasse, Riela (aka No. 13), and maybe Isara have to take the bitch out before she unleashes a Final Flame that levels Gallia.
 * ...Isara is dead. Her Old Save Bonus appearance in the sequel is treated as non-canon by that game.
 * That other Isara.

Gallia's demographic situation is going to come back to bite it in the rear soon enough.
Consider: Even by the most GENEROUS assessment, Gallia lost 75,000 people in EWII... out of a population of 800,000. Now, even if we tweak those numbers to their most generous extent, that still leaves us with just under an 8th or a 9th of their population to death, and chances are it was actually *higher* than that. And then, just when the ability to rebuild is absolutely necessary, a civil war breaks out soon after the end of the Imperial invasion and lasts for about two years. And this is before we talk about the more likely lower population threshold minimum, which would have seen at LEAST 46,000 dead out of a population of 430,000, WEEELLLLL over 10% dead. Now, even assuming that births outpace deaths throughout this period of time, that STILL is a massive chunk of the Gallian population that is just dead, with the most affected being men and women in the prime of life (who are in the armed forces and generally get killed, incapacitated, or disappeared)- precisely those in the traditional childbearing stages of their lives- with most of the replacements being (naturally) extremely young. As such, the older generation is probably decimated in an almost literal meaning of the term (with about a 10% death rate at least and even more rendered all but hopeless by their wounds). And if Gallia faces another large-scale conflict at any point in the next twenty or so years, that demographic situation is likely only going to worsen. Which means that soon Gallia will be desperately short of warm bodies and with absolutely no room to maneuver in terms of military and political options. And traditionally when that happens, VERY bad things occur.
 * On the other hand, the sequel mentions that a large number of Darcsens are immigrating to Gallia from the Empire after Cordelia revealed her heritage. Granted, many were killed by the rebels, but that still represents a source of repopulation, especially after the civil war is won and they can safely resume immigration.


 * Are you sure the population is 800,000? One of the guidebooks I've got (the Japanese artbook, I think) gives the population as 4.3 million or 4.5 million or so. I had been wondering about the population because Avan's hometown of Mellvere is big enough to field a soccer team, which wouldn't be possible if the whole country had a population equal to one big city. Gallia being in the 4-5 million range puts it around the same as Norway and Finland.

Selvaria, in her Final Flame, transcended reality and is now a Queen Under the Mountain and she will arise to save Europa in its darkest hour.

There was a process of "resurrection healing" being experimented on that was mastered in the second game.
A Project run by Dr. Foerster, who doesn't care what country lets her experiment or who gets her research. The first subject was "Ty the Immortal", the Ace who took grenades and headshots and kept appearing in later stages; and then this was given to other Imperial Aces. The nature of this treatment was a kind of "Ragnaid Concentrate Implant" that burst upon the death of the body; flooding it with Ragnaid and rejuvenating it. It takes very severe bodily damage to overwhelm a Ragnaid Implant.
 * Second game; a minor feature of this was given to Lanseal Cadets. Characters do not die anymore if their bodies are set upon by enemies after they're downed. They're "hospitalized" for 3 battles; and then return good as new.
 * Abilities like "Phoenix" also trigger this feature; and so is Dirk and Baldren's ability to revive any of their units that you don't send one of your units to retrieve the body.
 * It Got Worse. After Dr. Foerster left Lanseal, and after Lavinia and Avan destroy make the Ghost Tank stop moving, Dr. Foerster studied it and learned how to duplicate them. The Three-Star missions in VC 2 are Dr. Foerster's mastering reviving Dirk, Baldren, and Audrey (this was occurring even during the main game; hence how you could keep killing them and they would get back up); and backing them up with Ghost Tanks for combat data.

The reason the Valkyria are so rare now is because they lose their powers when they get married.
Wherever the Valkyria come from, it was a matriarchal society. It wasn't a One-Gender Race, they simply come from Lady Land; eventually when they came and conquered Europa, the Calamity happened. It's said that they installed Cordelia's family to rule and disappeared afterward-- but they didn't. They simply married. Just like the legendary Valkyries, marriage is a punishment that enslaves a former Valkyrie to her husband and robs her of her powers-- they knew the Calamity was their fault, but also knew they couldn't rule Europa and do penance for what they had done, so they installed the Darcsen traitor family as rulers in their stead, hoping to do both. Generations down the line the Valkyria eventually married themselves mostly out of existence; modern living Valkyria simply have never had married ancestors.
 * Not married, but perhaps when they have children, for the same reason only women seem to be able to naturally use such power.
 * Alicia pretty clearly loses her blue-flame powers with the ring and the kiss, though it's possible that she would have only lost her rapid healing and boosted stats at half-health after giving birth (after all, those abilities probably make childbirth a breeze)... unless li'l Isara had already been conceived by that point... *blush*
 * Having the powers dissipate after a kiss doesn't mean she lost them, just that she stops using them. We have no reason to believe they were actually gone for good.
 * I dunno, I think that part is up to interpretation. She never uses them again, after all that blue fire dissolves into green pollen and scatters all over the plant life around them. Every other time, the fire just goes out, it doesn't go anywhere. That scene is ambiguous enough to be open to interpretation.

The Valkyria lost their powers because nobody wrote notes on how to activate them.
Any ancient writing of the Valkyria is either incredibly poetic/cryptic or else propoganda. Being able to use the power required specialized "awakening" (of which modern methods are a costly and inefficient attempt at) which were such an extremely guarded secret that a generation passed without anyone passing on the secret on how to awaken the power; and thus the knoweldge was lost, and the Valkyria used their remaining power to cover their butts.
 * The Darcsen Calamity was the destruction of the only known "Awakening" method of the Valkyria. With it gone they were doomed. In retaliation, they blamed the Darcsens.

The dead characters who are bonus unlockables in Valkyria Chronicles 2 are Einherjar.
As in Norse Mythology, after they died, they went to Valhalla, regardless of previously Earthly allegiance. While one large skirmish and resurrecting every day is good basic training – long-term campaigns can teach long-term tactics – so Odin sent them back to Earth, each with a glamor to prevent anyone from recognizing them and instructed not to reveal their identities. (Selvaria's powers were locked as they would be too hard to conceal.)

The "Militia isn't allowed to participate in Civil Wars" rule is diplomatic wording.
The Rebellion was formed of disaffected nobles. In the first game, there was a big class difference. "Commoners" made up the Militia, and "Nobles" made up the Army. (Then the Army got nuked...) With the rebellion, some nobles were on the bench, but since the Army was literally halved in the first game, didn't want to take command from "commoner" Militia. It even says in game that the Army rebuilt its numbers using vast amounts of the former Militia. So Cordelia changed the criteria of who is a member of the Gallian Army. Nobody was turned down from defending the capital from rebels because it was against the rules. The Army was mostly held up in Northern Gallia, though.

Welkin was part of a secret strike force helping Lanseal out in the second game.
Two years after the first game, people are slaughtering Darcsens and he's taking it easy just because they aren't Imperials? No. He was spearheading special operations, many of them being the "3 Star" missions you can play post-game. Many of the other unlockable characters are part of this team.

Aisha and Helmut (from VCII) will appear in a future sequel, perhaps as story characters.
Aisha is only 12 in the game, by far the youngest unit in the series thus far (even beating out Aliasse in the sequel). It says she starts studying strategy to emulate Eleanor Varrot. So 20 years down the road, she might be an important character (maybe playable, maybe not). Given she's been described as a genius, she'll probably be 'The Zeri' in your squad so far as brains go. Same with Aliasse.

Also it says Helmut and the Imps were preparing for another invasion... but his heart was not into it. So we might have a possible turncoat for the Gallians.

The sniper shot the medic
I was wondering why Welkin didn't bother to call for the medic when Isara was shot, and I've come up with a theory. The sniper heard that Isara developed the smoke mortars that allowed them to pull off the impossible. He shot the medic, not accurate enough to kill her (considering she's carrying a ton of ragnaid) but enough that she couldn't make it in time. He then shot Isara (or maybe vice versa). Welkin heard over the radio what happened to the medic, which is why he didn't bother calling out. He knew she wouldn't make it in time.
 * But there was only one shot, right? Or did the Plot make the other one happen off camera?

The male Valkyrur were like male Claymores
Just as powerful as the females, or perhaps even more powerful, but far harder to control. They exploded at the tiniest provocation and went on berserk rampages all the time. At some point the female Valkyrur just had enough of their bull and decided to mate only with human males from now on (due to some quirk of their chromosomes, the male children of a female Valkyrie and a human male can only be regular humans, while the female children have a 50% chance)

Characters with "Full HP Healing" or "Phoenix" are of partial Valkyrian descent.
It would explain why they can heal just as quickly as, who is a Valkyria. The Valkyrian descent gave them at least some of the powers that would be granted to a full Valkyria.

When an enemy reaches a fallen comrade...
They disappear in game, but that is just to hide that you just stabbed/finished them off. At least that is what I can see.

The Americas were never discovered, or just plain don't exist, in the VC universe
There are only 2 mentions of places outside of Europa in the game 1: A fantasy of being able to conquer not just Europa, but the globe (And Asia, Africa and Australia would be outside of Europa but still in the globe) 2: Its Europa War 1/2, not World War 1/2. The Airplane doesn't exist in the universe either. Shin Hyuga's bio (some country from the far east) and being based on Feudal Japan is written in a way implies VC!Japan isn't known or not important to the outside world, which could be done by Commodore Perry never existing.

The nail that causes VC's Earth to be the way it is is the lack of Christianity
The opening gives suffix to the year. I forget what it was, but I'm sure it didn't refer to Christ. Christmas doesn't exist, but something more along the lines of the pagan traditions it is based on does. The only mention of religion is the Valkyria.
 * Avan tells someone to "Go to Hel!" or something along these lines in VCII. It would seem that the dominant religion in Europa has evolved from a sort of Germanic paganism.

Europa is only Europa because no one is speaking English or French
Luxembourgish, Dutch and German (with some French, though not primary) are the languages spoken in the real world in what is Gallia in the VC universe, and the continent is Europa in all of them.