真田 信之 ✦ sanada nobuyuki (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matsushiro) wrote2015-10-15 01:27 am
matsushiro) wrote2015-10-15 01:27 am
app.
OOC Information
IC Information
IC Information
Name: Nobuyuki Sanada
Canon: Samurai Warriors. (As I already play Hanbei, I will go ahead and note here that he and Nobuyuki have virtually no overlap in canon; although there is one battle they both appear in, they don't interact there and never share screentime beyond that - the majority of Nobuyuki's time in the story occurs after Hanbei is long since dead.)
Gender: male
Age: cries self to sleep in the corner
So: SW follows the normal historical passage of time - the Chronicles games even slap the date on every battle, just in case you didn't already notice that three decades just went by and nobody looks any older. Thanks, video game logic!
Nobuyuki's historical death came at the age of 92. He never looks older than like late twenties in-game (even when appearing at battles where he should've been like nine years old). Thanks, video game logic.
My usual coping method is to try to circle far around discussions of age while crying into my coffee; if it's possible to say that the system could have uploaded his data consistent with an earlier point in his life for whatever reason then I would deeply appreciate having that explanation as a fallback. I do want to keep the historical death rather than BS one at an earlier point because the fact that he lived well into the Edo and died peacefully is pretty relevant to his personal story and all the ways he's meant to contrast Yukimura.
History: On Koei wiki.
Personality: Nobuyuki's story in SW begins and ends with his brother; the things he shares with Yukimura - and the things that drive the two of them apart - are the focus of his narrative and a key shaping force of his personality.
As the older brother, Nobuyuki's always had to be the responsible one - not just in the sense that he looks after Yukimura, but because he's the heir to leadership of the entire Sanada clan. He's learned from a young age to keep his own feelings under wraps and put his family first, because his decisions will have effects that go far beyond himself. That responsibility, initially, is somewhat intimidating to the young Nobuyuki; his earliest appearances are in the Takeda clan's story, where he spends much time listening to his lord's words, pondering his lord's decisions, and wondering whether he'd be able to do so well at coping with the loss of his own brother as Shingen has.
He matures, though - by his later story appearances, he spends less time questioning himself as he takes on greater responsibilites and acts to protect the Sanada clan through its newfound independence with the fall of the Takeda (though he still has his moments of doubt, they're less frequent the older he gets). Where others would say it's over, he understands that it's only beginning; their lords may have fallen, but the Sanada still exist, and as long as they do, he's determined to chart them the safest course to endure through the turbulent times.
As a leader, Nobuyuki is calm and steadfast. He's always polite and diplomatic to enemy and ally alike, and he's a good listener and a comforting presence to his allies; when Lady Hayakawa is plagued by doubts about her ability to fight her dear friend Kai, Nobuyuki takes the time to speak to her, let her know that he's in a similar position of having to fight his brother, and bolster her resolve by reminding her of the importance of what they're fighting for. His chronicle mode events mostly revolve around him listening to the protagonist's troubles while never offering up his own, and having to be dragged out of the castle to convince him to take a break from managing the clan's affairs.
He tries not to take things at face value when there's more to them, a lesson imparted to him by Shingen; as early as the battle of Mikatagahara, he's seen questioning Ieyasu's actions and the devotion of Ieyasu's retainers, wanting to understand the man's motives and what he does to earn such loyalty, rather than simply seeing him as an enemy to be fought and moved on from. It leads him to develop a respect for Ieyasu's actions, even the ones that earn him contempt from the Western Army, and Ieyasu in turn recognizes that resolve and Nobuyuki's ability to look forward to the eventual outcome of their actions, rather than the immediate situation - in Nobuyuki's 4-2 route, Ieyasu and Nobuyuki discuss the possibility of unrest after Hideyoshi's death long before it happens.
Despite his somewhat reserved nature, he's not cold by any means; the depth of his feelings for his wife Ina, despite their marriage having been arranged for political reasons, is fairly obvious - his interactions with her are calm but very warm, in the same way that his earlier interactions with Yukimura are. He's polite and restrained, but it's easy to see how much he loves his family.
His family, indeed, comes before everything - and that intense desire to protect his clan is what ultimately puts him and Yukimura on opposite sides of the battlefield. In the wake of Hideyoshi's death, Japan splits itself mostly down the middle: the Western Army, led by Mitsunari, aims to defend the claim of Hideyoshi's young son, while Ieyasu's Eastern Army supports Ieyasu's bid to take power himself, because a country so newly united needs a strong hand to keep it together through its growing pains - and Mitsunari, they believe, is not up to the task. Yukimura, a close friend of Mitsunari, believes that supporting the Western Army is the only honorable course of action; Nobuyuki, sensing that Mitsunari is both unable to win and unable to command the loyalty and respect of the daimyos, believes that supporting the Eastern Army is the only way to ensure that the Sanada clan survives, and he feels that protecting the clan is worth being thought of as a coward or seen as having a lack of honor. Yukimura leaves, the Sanada pledge their support to Ieyasu, and the two ultimately come to blows, although neither proves able to kill the other. Their conviction is enough to fight, but not enough to kill each other.
Nobuyuki's composure is solid as a rock through the final battles of the era, until he and Yukimura can't bring themselves to kill each other at Osaka Castle, and Yukimura acknowledges that he's about to die representing the Sanada spirit, and entreats his brother to live and protect the Sanada blood, before he starts his suicidal charge towards Ieyasu. This is when Nobuyuki's composure finally cracks as he screams after him, and it's clear that no matter how deeply Nobuyuki believes in what he's doing and how well he puts on the front of a dispassionate leader, it's still tearing him apart inside. 4-2's final movie, however, shows him calmly approaching Yukimura's body, and although Ina cries, Nobuyuki gently encourages to her to smile, as Yukimura is - because he's finally come home to them. Despite the pain of fighting and losing his brother, Nobuyuki knows better than to lose himself in it completely - because now that he's fought for the future, he has to keep his eyes forward and build it.
Powers/Abilities: SW being a hack-and-slash game, characters are not explicitly described as having special powers but are nonetheless able to gently bend the laws of physics over their knee and do some ridiculous things that do not fall under the parameters of "normal human combat performance." Their entire existence can be summarized as "video game stylish," basically.
As such, Nobuyuki is an able combatant, to the tune of "body count breaking a thousand after an average battle;" he's got a couple of flashy limit break type moves during which he's (briefly) unkillable, but from a narrative perspective this isn't treated as anything more than some otherwise normal humans being just that good.
Aside from that, he's the more perceptive and discerning of the Sanada brothers; while not one of the dedicated strategist characters he seems to have solid enough judgment in those matters and doesn't act rashly, and he has a good grasp on politics and how to lead his clan effectively.
Keepsakes/Mementos:
- His weapon. The game calls it "dual katana;" rather than dual-wielding, his two swords are joined by the hilts in the middle.
- The Sanada war standard. Nobuyuki's said to have had his banners made differently than his brother and father, to differentiate his position on the battlefield; he used black cloth and gold paint for the clan symbol.
- General color/clan symbolism: the Sanada are represented by red. The Tokugawa get blue. Doing something with the Tokugawa iconography would probably be fitting; SW doesn't address it outside of the quiz questions in chronicle mode, but Ina was actually formally adopted by Ieyasu, so in marrying her Nobuyuki became Ieyasu's son-in-law, making his Tokugawa ties even stronger than the game indicates. (Other interesting color things: he and Yukimura both dress with a lot of accents in the Sanada red, but take that away and Yukimura's outfit is mostly white, while Nobuyuki's is mostly black. ~it's symbolic~)
- Something representative of Ina? Her personal item in SW4 is her carnation hairpin. She fights with a bow.
- Something for Yukimura: his bandana, maybe. Alternately, there's a flashback where they're fighting with sticks as children, so maybe those? Yukimura wrote a lot of letters while he was in exile, maybe some of those.
- The big metaphor of SW4 is about "the flower and the trunk;" the trunk (i.e. Nobuyuki, as a clan head) must be solid and immovable to provide the flowers a place to grow, while the flowers (Yukimura, and every other warrior) are fleeting, beautiful, short-lived, but new ones will always appear as long as the trunk is intact. There are shitloads of cherry blossoms everywhere to drive the point home. BURY HIM IN PETALS.
Sample: When he felt death's approach, Nobuyuki did not fight.
In another time, or another place, he might've; had death tried to take him years earlier, on the battlefield, during the war - then, he would've given everything he had to keep standing, not for fear of death but for fear of leaving his house unprotected in a time when it needed him the most. (It's been decades, and he still knows he could never have charged headfirst into certain death as Yukimura did. Yukimura was willing to give everything to protect the Sanada spirit; Nobuyuki was willing to give everything to protect the Sanada blood, but there were some things it would never demand of him.)
The Sanada clan needed Nobuyuki's life, not his death.
Needed. Not needs, not any longer.
Osaka was long ago, Sekigahara longer still, and since Hideyori's death (Yukimura's death), the land has finally been peaceful. The Tokugawa have overseen the transition to peacetime with a firm hand, and the Sanada have stood behind them, administered the castles and lands they're placed in, worked to improve the lot of their people. The war is long past and the relics of the war have little left to do, in a time of hard-earned peace - and as one of those relics himself, Nobuyuki finds himself respected, revered by the next generation, to whom the warring states are only stories and hearsay - but no longer needed to assist them in the burdens they've already learned to shoulder on their own.
Nobuyoshi has taken over administration of Numata; Nobumasa, after years of taking on responsibilities around Matsushiro a few at a time, has taken over most day-to-day affairs, consulting his father only when confronted by a problem he's still uncertain about, and those come more and more rarely. His sons no longer need guidance or examples to follow; they've grown into their own men, and they have his example burned into their minds and hearts, no longer needing it right in front of them to remind them of what they should strive to achieve.
Ina passed years before him, and though Nobuyuki has no doubt that she'd have carried on without him had he been first (because Ina was always tenacious enough to do whatever she had to, regardless of the challenges), he'd hoped to spare her that pain by outliving her - another thing he no longer has to worry about.
He has no further need to hang on for the land, his clan, his sons, his wife - when he finally feels his energy giving out on him, Nobuyuki is out of reasons to worry, and out of reasons to fight. And so he doesn't make a production of it. His affairs are reasonably settled; he puts off a few audiences (not critical ones, of course, because none of them really are, anymore), he has his sons quietly informed, he arranges to have meals sent directly to his room. And after a few quiet weeks, after Nobuyoshi has made the journey to Matsushiro to see him for the last time, after he's given them both some last advice (there are things worth protecting, even if others will see you as a coward for it. protect this peace, protect our clan, protect your family.) -
- then, and only then, does he finally close his eyes and let himself slip under.
(Was it this easy for Yukimura to simply let himself go? Perhaps, in the next life, he'll have the chance to ask him.)
Mindset: Nobuyuki will be coming from a fairly peaceful death after a full life, so the idea of being dead in and of itself won't be a great issue for him. The problem he will have with Monad, rather, is the nature of the place in general and the torment it subjects its residents to - as such, he'll be very interested in the efforts to get to the bottom of things and fix what's wrong with the system. Panic isn't his style; he'll zero straight in on What's Good For Everyone Else without giving much time or consideration for his own feelings about being in a highly unexpected afterlife.
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡:
- Divided loyalties are a big thing in Nobuyuki's story; everything comes down to he and his brother choosing opposite sides, and both of them clearly wish the other could choose differently, but they also both recognize that they've made their choices and they both believe in them strongly enough to fight each other over it (even if neither of them is able to kill the other). It tears them both up but Nobuyuki explains to others - it's because it's so horrible that they have to be able to fight their families, because if they don't bring an end to the war then their descendants will have to repeat that same fate.
- Yukimura is extremely important to Nobuyuki; he's seen having some private doubts about whether he could measure up to Yukimura as a warrior - Yukimura is the one who's always forthright and does exactly what he believes is the honorable course of action. As the clan head and the one who has to consider politics before acting, Nobuyuki doesn't have that freedom, and while he recognizes the importance of his own part, sometimes it seems like he might envy Yukimura that a bit.
- As long as I'm going on about Yukimura and divided loyalties, there's just a tremendous amount of duality and matchy-opposite symbolism going on with these two in general. They also have a lot of bonus objectives to finish bosses together, if you pick them both for a stage. Canon runs hard with the idea that they're unstoppable together and everything goes to shit when they're split apart.
- In general, Nobuyuki is pretty bad at recognizing and acting on his own needs. He puts his clan and his family before everything; he has events with the player character in chronicle mode where he's shown to be a great listener and willing to lend an ear for everyone else's troubles...but never seems to speak of his own. In his 4-2 story, he actively suppresses any displays of his feelings about what's going on, and the player is left to pick up most of what he's feeling through Ina's more open displays and her explanations of his reasoning (i.e. when he pushes straight on to Sekigahara after fighting a hard battle that ought to call for some recovery time, she quickly points out that he's hoping to distinguish himself enough at Sekigahara to give him more leverage to plead for Yukimura's life).
- Every character in SW is symbolized by a pair of kanji that appear when they use musou attacks; Nobuyuki's are "receptiveness" (寛) and "heart" (心). I'm sure there are horribly literal extremes that can be taken here.
- Other stupid kanji things: Nobuyuki's official seal and many things he's signed write his name as 信之; but there are a few things where he instead used 信幸 - in those cases, the same "yuki" in the writing of his father's name. Given that his father rebelled with Yukimura (and Nobuyuki was even advised against publicly mourning his father's death, due to his father's status as an enemy of the Tokugawa), it's quite possible that the use of 之 was entirely meant to show political distance, and he'd have preferred to use the 幸 otherwise? I headcanon it that way, anyway. Write his name wrong everywhere or something, idk.
Canon: Samurai Warriors. (As I already play Hanbei, I will go ahead and note here that he and Nobuyuki have virtually no overlap in canon; although there is one battle they both appear in, they don't interact there and never share screentime beyond that - the majority of Nobuyuki's time in the story occurs after Hanbei is long since dead.)
Gender: male
Age: cries self to sleep in the corner
So: SW follows the normal historical passage of time - the Chronicles games even slap the date on every battle, just in case you didn't already notice that three decades just went by and nobody looks any older. Thanks, video game logic!
Nobuyuki's historical death came at the age of 92. He never looks older than like late twenties in-game (even when appearing at battles where he should've been like nine years old). Thanks, video game logic.
My usual coping method is to try to circle far around discussions of age while crying into my coffee; if it's possible to say that the system could have uploaded his data consistent with an earlier point in his life for whatever reason then I would deeply appreciate having that explanation as a fallback. I do want to keep the historical death rather than BS one at an earlier point because the fact that he lived well into the Edo and died peacefully is pretty relevant to his personal story and all the ways he's meant to contrast Yukimura.
History: On Koei wiki.
Personality: Nobuyuki's story in SW begins and ends with his brother; the things he shares with Yukimura - and the things that drive the two of them apart - are the focus of his narrative and a key shaping force of his personality.
As the older brother, Nobuyuki's always had to be the responsible one - not just in the sense that he looks after Yukimura, but because he's the heir to leadership of the entire Sanada clan. He's learned from a young age to keep his own feelings under wraps and put his family first, because his decisions will have effects that go far beyond himself. That responsibility, initially, is somewhat intimidating to the young Nobuyuki; his earliest appearances are in the Takeda clan's story, where he spends much time listening to his lord's words, pondering his lord's decisions, and wondering whether he'd be able to do so well at coping with the loss of his own brother as Shingen has.
He matures, though - by his later story appearances, he spends less time questioning himself as he takes on greater responsibilites and acts to protect the Sanada clan through its newfound independence with the fall of the Takeda (though he still has his moments of doubt, they're less frequent the older he gets). Where others would say it's over, he understands that it's only beginning; their lords may have fallen, but the Sanada still exist, and as long as they do, he's determined to chart them the safest course to endure through the turbulent times.
As a leader, Nobuyuki is calm and steadfast. He's always polite and diplomatic to enemy and ally alike, and he's a good listener and a comforting presence to his allies; when Lady Hayakawa is plagued by doubts about her ability to fight her dear friend Kai, Nobuyuki takes the time to speak to her, let her know that he's in a similar position of having to fight his brother, and bolster her resolve by reminding her of the importance of what they're fighting for. His chronicle mode events mostly revolve around him listening to the protagonist's troubles while never offering up his own, and having to be dragged out of the castle to convince him to take a break from managing the clan's affairs.
He tries not to take things at face value when there's more to them, a lesson imparted to him by Shingen; as early as the battle of Mikatagahara, he's seen questioning Ieyasu's actions and the devotion of Ieyasu's retainers, wanting to understand the man's motives and what he does to earn such loyalty, rather than simply seeing him as an enemy to be fought and moved on from. It leads him to develop a respect for Ieyasu's actions, even the ones that earn him contempt from the Western Army, and Ieyasu in turn recognizes that resolve and Nobuyuki's ability to look forward to the eventual outcome of their actions, rather than the immediate situation - in Nobuyuki's 4-2 route, Ieyasu and Nobuyuki discuss the possibility of unrest after Hideyoshi's death long before it happens.
Despite his somewhat reserved nature, he's not cold by any means; the depth of his feelings for his wife Ina, despite their marriage having been arranged for political reasons, is fairly obvious - his interactions with her are calm but very warm, in the same way that his earlier interactions with Yukimura are. He's polite and restrained, but it's easy to see how much he loves his family.
His family, indeed, comes before everything - and that intense desire to protect his clan is what ultimately puts him and Yukimura on opposite sides of the battlefield. In the wake of Hideyoshi's death, Japan splits itself mostly down the middle: the Western Army, led by Mitsunari, aims to defend the claim of Hideyoshi's young son, while Ieyasu's Eastern Army supports Ieyasu's bid to take power himself, because a country so newly united needs a strong hand to keep it together through its growing pains - and Mitsunari, they believe, is not up to the task. Yukimura, a close friend of Mitsunari, believes that supporting the Western Army is the only honorable course of action; Nobuyuki, sensing that Mitsunari is both unable to win and unable to command the loyalty and respect of the daimyos, believes that supporting the Eastern Army is the only way to ensure that the Sanada clan survives, and he feels that protecting the clan is worth being thought of as a coward or seen as having a lack of honor. Yukimura leaves, the Sanada pledge their support to Ieyasu, and the two ultimately come to blows, although neither proves able to kill the other. Their conviction is enough to fight, but not enough to kill each other.
Nobuyuki's composure is solid as a rock through the final battles of the era, until he and Yukimura can't bring themselves to kill each other at Osaka Castle, and Yukimura acknowledges that he's about to die representing the Sanada spirit, and entreats his brother to live and protect the Sanada blood, before he starts his suicidal charge towards Ieyasu. This is when Nobuyuki's composure finally cracks as he screams after him, and it's clear that no matter how deeply Nobuyuki believes in what he's doing and how well he puts on the front of a dispassionate leader, it's still tearing him apart inside. 4-2's final movie, however, shows him calmly approaching Yukimura's body, and although Ina cries, Nobuyuki gently encourages to her to smile, as Yukimura is - because he's finally come home to them. Despite the pain of fighting and losing his brother, Nobuyuki knows better than to lose himself in it completely - because now that he's fought for the future, he has to keep his eyes forward and build it.
Powers/Abilities: SW being a hack-and-slash game, characters are not explicitly described as having special powers but are nonetheless able to gently bend the laws of physics over their knee and do some ridiculous things that do not fall under the parameters of "normal human combat performance." Their entire existence can be summarized as "video game stylish," basically.
As such, Nobuyuki is an able combatant, to the tune of "body count breaking a thousand after an average battle;" he's got a couple of flashy limit break type moves during which he's (briefly) unkillable, but from a narrative perspective this isn't treated as anything more than some otherwise normal humans being just that good.
Aside from that, he's the more perceptive and discerning of the Sanada brothers; while not one of the dedicated strategist characters he seems to have solid enough judgment in those matters and doesn't act rashly, and he has a good grasp on politics and how to lead his clan effectively.
Keepsakes/Mementos:
- His weapon. The game calls it "dual katana;" rather than dual-wielding, his two swords are joined by the hilts in the middle.
- The Sanada war standard. Nobuyuki's said to have had his banners made differently than his brother and father, to differentiate his position on the battlefield; he used black cloth and gold paint for the clan symbol.
- General color/clan symbolism: the Sanada are represented by red. The Tokugawa get blue. Doing something with the Tokugawa iconography would probably be fitting; SW doesn't address it outside of the quiz questions in chronicle mode, but Ina was actually formally adopted by Ieyasu, so in marrying her Nobuyuki became Ieyasu's son-in-law, making his Tokugawa ties even stronger than the game indicates. (Other interesting color things: he and Yukimura both dress with a lot of accents in the Sanada red, but take that away and Yukimura's outfit is mostly white, while Nobuyuki's is mostly black. ~it's symbolic~)
- Something representative of Ina? Her personal item in SW4 is her carnation hairpin. She fights with a bow.
- Something for Yukimura: his bandana, maybe. Alternately, there's a flashback where they're fighting with sticks as children, so maybe those? Yukimura wrote a lot of letters while he was in exile, maybe some of those.
- The big metaphor of SW4 is about "the flower and the trunk;" the trunk (i.e. Nobuyuki, as a clan head) must be solid and immovable to provide the flowers a place to grow, while the flowers (Yukimura, and every other warrior) are fleeting, beautiful, short-lived, but new ones will always appear as long as the trunk is intact. There are shitloads of cherry blossoms everywhere to drive the point home. BURY HIM IN PETALS.
Sample: When he felt death's approach, Nobuyuki did not fight.
In another time, or another place, he might've; had death tried to take him years earlier, on the battlefield, during the war - then, he would've given everything he had to keep standing, not for fear of death but for fear of leaving his house unprotected in a time when it needed him the most. (It's been decades, and he still knows he could never have charged headfirst into certain death as Yukimura did. Yukimura was willing to give everything to protect the Sanada spirit; Nobuyuki was willing to give everything to protect the Sanada blood, but there were some things it would never demand of him.)
The Sanada clan needed Nobuyuki's life, not his death.
Needed. Not needs, not any longer.
Osaka was long ago, Sekigahara longer still, and since Hideyori's death (Yukimura's death), the land has finally been peaceful. The Tokugawa have overseen the transition to peacetime with a firm hand, and the Sanada have stood behind them, administered the castles and lands they're placed in, worked to improve the lot of their people. The war is long past and the relics of the war have little left to do, in a time of hard-earned peace - and as one of those relics himself, Nobuyuki finds himself respected, revered by the next generation, to whom the warring states are only stories and hearsay - but no longer needed to assist them in the burdens they've already learned to shoulder on their own.
Nobuyoshi has taken over administration of Numata; Nobumasa, after years of taking on responsibilities around Matsushiro a few at a time, has taken over most day-to-day affairs, consulting his father only when confronted by a problem he's still uncertain about, and those come more and more rarely. His sons no longer need guidance or examples to follow; they've grown into their own men, and they have his example burned into their minds and hearts, no longer needing it right in front of them to remind them of what they should strive to achieve.
Ina passed years before him, and though Nobuyuki has no doubt that she'd have carried on without him had he been first (because Ina was always tenacious enough to do whatever she had to, regardless of the challenges), he'd hoped to spare her that pain by outliving her - another thing he no longer has to worry about.
He has no further need to hang on for the land, his clan, his sons, his wife - when he finally feels his energy giving out on him, Nobuyuki is out of reasons to worry, and out of reasons to fight. And so he doesn't make a production of it. His affairs are reasonably settled; he puts off a few audiences (not critical ones, of course, because none of them really are, anymore), he has his sons quietly informed, he arranges to have meals sent directly to his room. And after a few quiet weeks, after Nobuyoshi has made the journey to Matsushiro to see him for the last time, after he's given them both some last advice (there are things worth protecting, even if others will see you as a coward for it. protect this peace, protect our clan, protect your family.) -
- then, and only then, does he finally close his eyes and let himself slip under.
(Was it this easy for Yukimura to simply let himself go? Perhaps, in the next life, he'll have the chance to ask him.)
Mindset: Nobuyuki will be coming from a fairly peaceful death after a full life, so the idea of being dead in and of itself won't be a great issue for him. The problem he will have with Monad, rather, is the nature of the place in general and the torment it subjects its residents to - as such, he'll be very interested in the efforts to get to the bottom of things and fix what's wrong with the system. Panic isn't his style; he'll zero straight in on What's Good For Everyone Else without giving much time or consideration for his own feelings about being in a highly unexpected afterlife.
G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡:
- Divided loyalties are a big thing in Nobuyuki's story; everything comes down to he and his brother choosing opposite sides, and both of them clearly wish the other could choose differently, but they also both recognize that they've made their choices and they both believe in them strongly enough to fight each other over it (even if neither of them is able to kill the other). It tears them both up but Nobuyuki explains to others - it's because it's so horrible that they have to be able to fight their families, because if they don't bring an end to the war then their descendants will have to repeat that same fate.
- Yukimura is extremely important to Nobuyuki; he's seen having some private doubts about whether he could measure up to Yukimura as a warrior - Yukimura is the one who's always forthright and does exactly what he believes is the honorable course of action. As the clan head and the one who has to consider politics before acting, Nobuyuki doesn't have that freedom, and while he recognizes the importance of his own part, sometimes it seems like he might envy Yukimura that a bit.
- As long as I'm going on about Yukimura and divided loyalties, there's just a tremendous amount of duality and matchy-opposite symbolism going on with these two in general. They also have a lot of bonus objectives to finish bosses together, if you pick them both for a stage. Canon runs hard with the idea that they're unstoppable together and everything goes to shit when they're split apart.
- In general, Nobuyuki is pretty bad at recognizing and acting on his own needs. He puts his clan and his family before everything; he has events with the player character in chronicle mode where he's shown to be a great listener and willing to lend an ear for everyone else's troubles...but never seems to speak of his own. In his 4-2 story, he actively suppresses any displays of his feelings about what's going on, and the player is left to pick up most of what he's feeling through Ina's more open displays and her explanations of his reasoning (i.e. when he pushes straight on to Sekigahara after fighting a hard battle that ought to call for some recovery time, she quickly points out that he's hoping to distinguish himself enough at Sekigahara to give him more leverage to plead for Yukimura's life).
- Every character in SW is symbolized by a pair of kanji that appear when they use musou attacks; Nobuyuki's are "receptiveness" (寛) and "heart" (心). I'm sure there are horribly literal extremes that can be taken here.
- Other stupid kanji things: Nobuyuki's official seal and many things he's signed write his name as 信之; but there are a few things where he instead used 信幸 - in those cases, the same "yuki" in the writing of his father's name. Given that his father rebelled with Yukimura (and Nobuyuki was even advised against publicly mourning his father's death, due to his father's status as an enemy of the Tokugawa), it's quite possible that the use of 之 was entirely meant to show political distance, and he'd have preferred to use the 幸 otherwise? I headcanon it that way, anyway. Write his name wrong everywhere or something, idk.