How the game approaches Generational Trauma and The Chain of Harm

As a game that makes heavy use of Time Travel and Set Right What Once Went Wrong as plot points, it only makes sense that the game would linger pretty heavily on the actions of people, but what I found interesting is how the game particularly likes to focus on how the actions of parents define their children. There's the second-gen characters, of course - it's made abundantly clear that Grima's resurrection and Chrom's death in the Bad Future changed the trajectories of their lives in vastly different ways - but one parent-child relationship that often goes ignored is that of Ylisse's previous Exalt with his children, Emmeryn, Chrom and Lissa.

Their father's war-hungry nature and premature death in battle led Emmeryn to have to assume the throne at a very early age, and while she at least seems well-adjusted personally, she compensated for her father's militarism by arguably going a bit too far in the other direction, sharply downsizing Ylisse's army and largely leaving local problems to the Shepherds, which very nearly bites her in the ass (and did in Lucina's timeline) when Plegia, Valm and later the Grimleal take advantage of Ylisse's pacifism to make major headway on their plans, culminating in her suicide after being taken hostage by Plegia.

Looking at it like this, it makes sense as to why Chrom felt so guilty for what happened to Lucina, and why he said his famous "one sword and a world of troubles" line - though the circumstances may have been different, he and his sisters ultimately received the same burden from their own father.