Raising and maintaining a family can be difficult, and only gets harder with each new addition. Siblings aren’t always going to get along. Older ones will taunt younger ones, younger ones will play up around older ones. They can fall out and cause all kinds of trouble. But if all is well, they’ll make up and ultimately get along.
People would think the best scenario is when siblings get along like a house on fire, like best friends within the same house. But some take it too far and make things really awkward. These squicky sibling stories turn up in novels, films, and even video games. Usually, it’s about a brother dealing with his issues. However, these gaming girls with brother complexes prove it's not a one-way street.
8 Bethany Hawke, Dragon Age II
Starting off light with the least regarded entry in the Dragon Age series, Bethany Hawke showed a talent for magic at an early age. This caused her family to move from one place to another to avoid suspicion, and her to largely stay indoors in case the wrong people caught sight of her ability. As such, she ended up following in her father’s footsteps as an apostate mage. It also meant she got close to her big brother, the player character.
The friendship meter in the game starts off close to the ‘friendship’ section already, and the Codex says she near-idolizes him for their own magic skills and support. But that’s as far as it goes. Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw stopped it short of going into Game of Thrones territory. Plus, she feels the same way if the player makes their Hawke an elder sister instead of a brother. Strong affection instead of a concerning condition. So, it only just qualifies for the list.
7 Lymsleia Falenas, Suikoden V
Likewise, the heir to the throne of Falena is comparatively innocent to the rest of the list too. She spends most of Suikoden V dealing with one political crisis after another, while her brother Freyajdour and his party handle the legwork. She wasn’t always so warm to him. Being the heir, she’d look down on her brother for being beneath her.
Yet, once she comes of age and realizes she’ll be married off to a suitor, she begins to appreciate him more. His brotherly love and compassion put him ahead of the lunkheads at the Sacred Games. She aids him in his quest, and often greets him with a running hug (or ‘glomp’ for any older readers). Though these feelings are less a need to page a therapist and more an indictment on the quality of noblemen in Suikoden V’s world.
6 Emilia, Yggdra Union
Despite her size, Emilia is strong enough to be one of the Five Dragon Generals under her brother Gulcasa. Though he’d rather keep her away from the battlefield, she goes out there the most, and has saved Gulcasa on more than one occasion. Pretty noble for the game’s bad guys. Not that they always knew they were siblings. In fact, in the prequel game Blaze Union, they didn’t even know each other all that well.
They’re half-siblings through a shared father, and thus can both tap into the same demonic power that runs in their blood. Maybe this helps them sense each other as, despite being raised apart, Emilia knew she had a brother, learned his name, and went looking for him. She adored him before she even met him, then only got closer to him afterwards.
5 Sleigh Presty, Super Robot Wars Alpha
Speaking of adoration, the video game adaptation of Super Robot Wars Alpha follows the show close enough to involve the story of the Presty siblings. Sleigh Presty practically worshiped the ground her brother Filio walked on. He was a genius engineer who came up with Project Terrestrial Dream, a series of giant mechs capable of deep space exploration. Sleigh would serve as one of his original pilots, alongside her rival Ibis Douglas.
When Ibis causes an accident that claims Filio’s life, Sleigh isn’t too pleased. She thought Filio was perfect, and Ibis inferior all around. So, she deserts her side with her mech, the Vegalion, and joins the Neo Zeon in the hopes she can finish Ibis off and take her brother’s Altairion mech back from her. While her situation is rough, switching sides to the villains because she lost her brother in an accident is a little drastic. Unless Filio was practically perfect in every way, which to Sleigh he was.
4 Princess Lachesis of Nordion, Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem isn’t a stranger to Hapsburg-eseque pairings. This trend is said to have started with Princess Lachesis in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. At first, her situation is more like Suikoden V’s Lymsleia, where her half-brother Eldigan is just a better person than her official suitor Elliot. But then it goes further.
First, she declares she won’t marry anyone unless they’re the same ‘caliber’ as Eldigan. She won’t even give other people the time of day unless they know or get recommended by Eldigan, like her about-face when Beowolf says he’s his friend. Even her Spotpass cameo in Fire Emblem Awakening as ‘Raquesis’ has her talk about her elder brother being “the greater warrior”.
3 Elise Schwarzer, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
Elise Schwarzer is probably a more textbook example of the trope, as she outright has a crush on her brother Rean, who’s also the player’s character. She wants to stay close to him and help him overcome his trauma. She goes out of her way to visit him at his military academy, and rallies behind his cause when he raises arms.
No one seems to have a problem with her having a thing for her brother. Her friend Alfin teases her about it, while a Drama CD based on the Trails games has her mother Lucia practically trying to marry the two off together. This is because Rean and Elise aren’t related by blood: Rean was adopted into the Schwarzer family.
2 Miku, Fatal Frame
This is where things get worrying. In the first Fatal Frame, Miku Hinasaki was basically raised by her big brother Mafuyu after their parents died. So, when he goes missing investigating the Himuro Mansion, she heads on after him with just her late mother’s keepsake, a camera obscura, in her hands.
Then Fatal Frame III has Miku explore the Manor of Sleep to undo a curse. She ends up meeting her brother one more time and decides to succumb to the curse than live on without him. Then, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water has its protagonist Miu Hanasaki searching for her mother Miku after she left her when she was 3. She learns her mother had a ‘posthumous’ marriage with her brother Mafuyu and produced a ‘Shadowborn’ togeth, which was Miu and that’s certainly horrifying.
1 Furiae, Drakengard
Drakengard’s localization toned down a lot from the original Japanese game. Even then, the edginess still came through, as the action game sees silent murder enthusiast Caim slaughter swarms of fantasy creatures alongside cannibal elf Arioch and watch list-entry Leonard. Still, some things were too near the knuckle to make it into translation. Namely, the big plot twist behind Caim’s sister Furiae.
As the world’s ‘goddess’ (more like a chosen priestess), Furiae has to live in seclusion to maintain a magical seal. If she and the other ‘seals’ are broken (i.e., killed), bad things will happen. Caim and co try to protect her, but Furiae ends up killing herself when the villain Manah…vaguely hints at something. That’s because, in the original Japanese, she revealed Furiae had amorous feelings for her brother, which he didn’t share. It makes the Nier games feel cosy by comparison.