Hi everyone!
Just this year I started playing Chrono Cross, then I've found this site, which I thought is very well made and useful! Thank you to the ones that helped making it this way!
Now, I've read many theories about the rise of Porre / fall of Guardia, but a few ideas occurred to me, that I've not seen posted anywhere else, so I will bring them to discussion.
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1- My first thought is about the power of the Porre Army. I was thinking that Serge actually fights some of the Porre soldiers in CC, so this can give us a look at the average power of the Porre soldiers. The ones that Serge had to fight were not very powerful and very easy to kill. In fact, some of them had to ask for (Serge as) Lynx's help because they were having trouble to capture Orlha (and she was alone)! So, I have to conclude that the average Porre soldier is not that powerful in 1020, hence they should be even weaker, or at least equal, in 1005, right? The only powerful soldiers from Porre that Serge has found were Norris, Grobyc and Guillot, but I understand that they were exceptions, so there wasn't a lot of them. Also, probably they didn't have anything like Grobyc and Guillot in 1005 yet, perhaps some initial experiments.
Thinking this way, I don't think that probably Porre army would be able to beat Crono, Marle and Lucca because of their great power. This does not discard the possibility that they were killed by any others means or even off-battle, but I don't see how Porre army could have won a fight with them.
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2- Now the second point is about what happened between 1005 and 1020.
2.1- If Crono and Marle were alive, I believe that the first thing they would do (together with Luca) would be to make a plan to enter through Porre's defenses right to its source of power and destroy it, as they had done previously through their journey. But obviously, this did not happen.
If they are alive and did not take this course of actions, I can only think that they should have a reason to consider better not risking it. For example, they could be ruling what was left of Guardia as king and queen and felt that abandoning their people to try a risky move would be to dangerous to them: if they would for any reason fail, or if Porre would strike another massive attack before they were back, the citizens of Guardia would be left alone and without defenses.
Another theory is that they could have had babies before 1005, and thought that they could not risk their lives leaving their children alone, so they decided to stay behind, taking care of them at least until the time they reach their maturity.
Under this theory, it is possible that after some time they finish building a plan, or wait until whatever was stopping them to end (their children grow, for example), and in the soon future they attack Porre and raise Guardia to the place it was before.
2.2- If Crono and Marle actually die in 1005, we have to consider that Lucca stayed alive until 1015. I cannot imagine how would Lucca live 10 years knowing that their friends were death and do nothing about it! Specially because she had already used their time travelling abilities to save Crono once. And if the cause of Marle and Crono's death was really something outside the normal flow of time, Lucca would surely have discovered this and would try to fix everything in the first place, maybe asking for help from their other friends through time.
I think that maybe she was trying to do something to fix things, but she did not have the Epoch for some reason and could not use any gate, and that is why she was trying to build a time egg. If she succeeded, she would soon use the time egg to fix things and save Crono and Marle, but them Lynx came and killed her before she was able to do anything but an incomplete time egg.
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3- But if Crono and Marle are dead as Chrono Cross is going on, what happens after it is finished? We know something about what happens in the Chrono Cross timelines, but it is possible that the activation of the Chrono Cross by Serge has created a new timeline. If we consider the time rewind theory to the unification of the dimensions (which, personally, I think it is what would really happen), them time would flow normally from 1006 on, without any dimension splitting. If this really happens, and assuming that Crono and Marle did really die in 1005, them:
3.1- As there is no Lynx in the unified timeline, no one attacks Lucca in 1015, so she is alive and continues her research on time eggs. Eventually, she is able to build a complete time egg, so she uses it to come back to 1005 or sometime earlier, fixes whatever happened that was "outside normal flow of time", and saves Crono and Marle. Possibly with the help of Schala/Kid (since we do not really know what happened to them) or someone else (she could ask for Ayla/Frog/Robo's help also). Wouldn't this be possible? Wouldn't this possibly be what Lucca would do? I doubt she would just continue her life knowing that their friends are death and just accept it.
3.2- Another possibility: Belthasar knows everything that happened through the time until 2400AD, right? If really there was something outside the normal flow of time that helped the destruction of Guardia, Belthasar would have the possibility to fix it. Maybe he didn't do anything in the first place, because his first priority was Project Kid and destroying the Time Devourer, and he did need the support of the future Central Regime built by the evolution of the Porre Kingdom, to build Chronopolis. But after the Time Devourer is destroyed, Belthasar could have used his Neo Epoch to start his next project: saving Crono, Marle and Guardia from the events in time that have happened and caused their falling, possibly counting with the help of Lucca to accomplish this (or manipulating her and others to make his new project work, as appears to be his way to fix things).
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Well, what do you think? Does any of these ideas seem really possible?