Tharja

Tharja is a character from the Fire Emblem Awakening games.

Tharja is a Dark Mage who hails from Plegia, though she does not care about the conflict between Plegia and Ylisse. After joining Chrom's army, she falls in love with Robin, regardless of Robin's gender.

In the AWA fics, Tharja is a student at the AWA Academy.

Appearance
Tharja has a mid-length dark hair tied in small pigtails and has dark eyes, she also wears a yellow circlet around her head. She wears a black cape with a yellow high-collar over a black & yellow crop top, black mesh bodysuit, black and yellow loincloth, yellow rings on her lower thighs and yellow sandals.

Personality
Tharja comes off as a stalker due to her obsession with Robin, regardless of their gender. She even values Robin's life more than her own and usually acts quite amorously around them. She is willing to do whatever it takes to win their affections, even if it means changing her whole personality to suit their taste.

Around others though, she is a rather cold and moody individual, usually threatening to curse them if they stand in the way of her plans of gaining Robin's affections. Despite Tharja's grim personality around others, she is capable of loving another person, though her love for Robin often takes a higher priority in the end. While pretending to be an uncaring individual, she is sensitive about others to an extent, even vaguely telling Nowi, that her parents are dead, while passing it off that they are "far away".

Contrary to the dubious nature of Dark Magic, Tharja's knowledge of hexes and curses allows her to use them for more positive reasons. She has hexes that can ward off insects, cool down fevers, or general ally protection. She even is a skilled talisman maker, making one that helps her daughter deal with her own meekness, and according to the comics she also can use crystal balls. She is capable to admit that she is not flawless, as she stated not to be very good with physical works in her support with Frederick, and that Henry could have erased her hex. However, she is proud and claims she can be as good at him at dispelling hexes.

It is revealed that she is very self-conscious in her conversation with Cordelia in Xenologue 17, having no idea of her own sex appeal and was quickly embarrassed when it was pointed out to her. In her conversations with Nowiin Xenologue 16, she was also embarrassed when Nowi said that she had the largest breasts out of the women of the army (silkiest hair in the European version). She is also shown to feel guilty for not being able to save her fellow soldiers that died in a battle mentioned in her A rank support with Vaike. Additionally, she had zero respect for Gangrel's leadership, believing him to be unworthy of the crown and willing to harm his own citizens for his own purposes; she first mentions her disdain while talking to herself before being recruited, and repeats it in her supports with Stahl when she asks him if he believes her to be a spy.

Tharja's relationship with her daughter Noire is extremely complicated, whether in the bad future or the present. Tharja's future self largely ignored Noire as she grew up, as she wrapped up in her research in an effort to avenge her husband's death, and often used her as an unwilling "guinea pig" for curses - until both of them were cornered by the enemy, with the Future Tharja saving Noire at the cost of her own life.

The present Tharja remains cold to Noire, even as she considers teaching her daughter dark magic. She has no idea if her future self truly cared for Noire as she does, but upon telling Noire that she loves her in their A rank support, she is also quick to state that she may never say that again regardless of her feelings, probably since she lacks proper ways to show her actual feelings. In The Future Past, she also shows a borderline overprotective streak towards the Noire of that particular world.

Abilities
Tharja's growths may be a little strange compared to the three mage characters present before she is recruited, but as a Dark Mage, Tharja performs her role nicely. Although Robin, Miriel, and Ricken may already be at a higher level, Tharja is able to take physical hits better than Miriel, is stronger and faster than Ricken, and does not have the varied growths that Robin has. Her Skill is indeed quite low, though her skills in Hex and Anathema help compensate for that by lowering the opponents' Avoid and Critical Avoid. Though Tharja may need some catching up to do by the time she is recruited, she has the ability to use Dark Tomes, which can be useful. Tharja has Nosferatu upon her recruitment, which can be a good relief weapon in case she takes a beating. Four chapters after her recruitment, she will be able to wield as many of these as she can, as Carrion Isle begins to sell them.

Tharja can perform well as both a Sorcerer and a Dark Knight. As a Sorcerer, she is slightly stronger magic wise, but unfortunately still has fairly low Skill. Luckily, her attacking skill from this class, Vengeance, has a high activation rate, although Henry will generally activate it more often than her due to his higher Skill stat. Tharja can learn Tomebreaker, which will boost her hit and dodge rate against tome units, allowing her to potentially be used as an anti-mage unit. Tharja works decently as a Dark Knight, and between Tharja and Henry, there is very little difference aside from her stronger Magic but lower Skill. Despite the loss of Dark Magic, the Dark Knight gives Tharja the Slow Burn skill to help with her low Skill and Luck, as well as Lifetaker to prolong her survivability from the double-edged sword of the Vengeance skill's damage.

Trivia

 * Tharja was the 3rd most popular female character and the most popular parent character (behind Female Robin) in the Japanese Fire Emblem Awakening popularity poll.
 * Tharja came in 3rd for females in the Fire Emblem Heroes Choose Your Legends popularity poll. She had 29,540 total votes.
 * The "Choose Your Legends" event of Fire Emblem Heroes revealed that she was 4th place out of 791 with 29,540 votes, making her the 2nd highest scoring character of the Awakening portion, and third most popular female character overall.
 * Tharja shares her English voice actress, Stephanie Sheh, with Kjelle, as well as Fates ' Rhajat, Sophie and Beruka.
 * Tharja also shares her (first) Japanese voice actress, Akutsu Kana, with Cherche and Rhajat.
 * Tharja is the only character to have special Event Tile/Barrack relationship quotes when paired with Robin.
 * Tharja's confession scene ends with the same bubble background like most of the cast, but the color of her background is green instead of pink. This is likely a reference to the term “Green with Envy”, which goes well with Tharja’s overall feelings towards Robin.
 * Tharja is the basis for Rhajat, the daughter of Hayato from Fire Emblem Fates, whose name is also an anagram of hers. Her death quote in Fates implies that Tharja is her reincarnation.
 * Tharja has had numerous instances of censorship and change.
 * Her original Japanese roster description "Has the nicest body in the army" was changed to "The one with the darkest thoughts." However, many other characters received different roster descriptions as well.
 * Tharja's conversation with Nowi in the Harvest Scramble DLC was altered in European versions to talk about her hair rather than her body. The North American version retained the original Japanese conversation.
 * In the Summer Scramble DLC, the rear part of her swimsuit scene was very subtly censored by a curtain in North American versions of the game, for unknown reasons.
 * Tharja is the winner of the 3rd Voting Gauntlet (Battle of the Mages) and the 9th Voting Gauntlet (Enduring Love) in Fire Emblem Heroes.
 * She is also the first character to win more than one Voting Gauntlet.
 * Tharja's victory pose in Warriors is based off her Max Factory's PVC figure.