Fate:Lost Einherjar theory time

 written By Ethan

Edited by Kwame Obiri-Addai    

So announced  in October this year, and then pushed back to the very end of the year, was

Fate: Lost Einherjar - a new light novel series written by Hikaru Sakurai and illustrated by

Shirou Miw. The light novel is set 10 years after Fate/Apocrypha’s 7 Vs 7 team deathmatch

Holy Grail War, and sees a remaining member of the Yggdmillennia Clan of mages enter into

a new Grail War taking place in Oslo, Norway in 2014. Here, masters summon 2 servants each

and compete in what's Ostensibly a Holy Grail War duos, with the main character summoning

Aslaug(the daughter of the legendary dragon-slayer Sigurd), the Valkyrie Brynhildr (who is an

Archer class servant) and her husband Ragnar Lothbrok (legendary Viking king who shows up

as a Berserker Class servant). The story itself will be split into two parts - the present day grail

war and the past, telling us how these two met and fell in love. With its close release and not much

to go on, I'm going to attempt to theorize on who a handful of the 12 other servants are. 

It’s worth noting how this light novel came to be. Shirou Miw, after being asked to design Sigurd

and Brynhildr for Fate/Grand Order, kept designing other Norse mythology figures on their own.

After seeing how another artist’s own extra work on an alternative version of a character they

designed for Fate/Grand Order would be implemented into the game, following positive

reactions when they shared art of that alternative version online, decided to show Type Moon

the other Norse servants they had designed. In response, Type Moon greenlit this light novel

using these designs. From this, we know a lot of the servants present will be Norse. 

Okay, so first off, we aren’t going to be able to ID most of the servants that will be in this.

“How many will we be trying to ID then, Ethan?” I hear you ask like a dark god calling to me

in the night. Well, about 5 readers is the most we can really go on since that's about how

many we have any information on in the form of pre-release art work. 

So what info do we have going in ?

 Well we already know there will be a lot of Norse figures in this, due to how this light novel got greenlit. 

it’s a regular Holy Grail War so no divine servants - no Odin, Bragi, Loki, or Thor but Demigods are still possible .

Due to the Specifics of this Holy Grail War, we know know that there will be two of each class.

We also already know 100% that three of the servants in this series are Aslaug, Ragnar Lothbrok and the Lancer servant, Percivil 

For Percivil’s involvement this, we need not look further than this piece of promotion art that was dropped

when they announced the book’s delay from October till December:

See that person in the top left, next to some hooded guy? Well, that’s Percival. You can compare that

to this artwork from the artist that designed them for Fate/Grand Order’s twitter account: 

The first servant I would like to speculate on is the unknown Caster servant whose Slavic familiars

I mentioned in the prologue that was released with the announcement of this light novel. My first theory is that

this is the Baba Yaga, the famous cannibal witch from Slovic folklore. I think this mainly because there aren’t many Slavic figures that are as well known as the Baba Yaga that also would fit this class so perfectly. 

The other servants I would like to take a crack at IDing are the new faces on the cover for volume 1: 

Let’s start with the easy one - this red and gold shieldmaiden is Lagertha Ragnar’s second wife. We know this by looking at the art book Shirou Miw put out this year focusing on characters designed for Lost Einherjar. She's most likely a Saber servant.

Fans translated this image, revealing these 4 to be (from top left): Thora Borgarhjört Ragnar's second wife,

Lagertha Ragnar’s second wife, Sigmund Aslaug’s granddad and Regin, a blacksmith and

foster father to Sigurd Aslaug’s dad. 

Now let’s move on to talking about the one that probably caught your attention first - the wolf man. First, we need

to talk about how they are commonly speculated to be Sigmund. I disagree for two reasons:

1) The wolf man appears to not have the cape Sigmund is shown with in the art book, and

also has different spiked gauntlets. 2) Fans claim sigmund turns into a wolf in his legend.

This is something I'm not able to find myself. Instead, I’m only able to find tellings of

Sigmund's legend, where his mum turns into a wolf and not him. So with that out of the

way, my speculation on who that might be is Fenrir the demigod child of Loki. They would

fit into the berserker class. Other than them being the most prominent wolf in Norse mythology,

it would be insanely cool to see them appear, and designing Fenrir, I think, would be far too

tempting to pass up. 

Finally, the bard. He is also someone with a commonly theorized identity that I agree with.

Firstly, let me just say that I think they are the second Caster servant. This would track with other musicians like

Mozart appearing in the caster class. Now then, that commonly theorized identity is Bragi, a musician that was pals with Ragnar when alive and is described as looking very similar to the bard on the cover.

This is probably the most easy to lock in a guess for alongside Lagertha. 

I'm very excited for Fate:Lost Einherjar to release at the end of this year. It will be only officially be releasing

in Japan, though i'm sure fans will translate it, and when they do you can expect a review from me.