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Hours after his promotion, it's finally starting to sink in. This is only temporary, for the sake of winning this war and being able to lead this army accordingly, he'd told Princess Elincia even as he accepted what she and Empress Sanaki deemed an honor.
It's not as if he'll be taking over any castles or land or wearing a crown once this is over, he reminds himself. It's only a title with some extra capital and status, it's for military purposes.
But he'll miss being able to tell Princess Elincia he's just Ike when she calls him Lord. Deep down he's still just Ike, still just a novice suddenly turned commander when his father died. Someone who still has a lot to learn about leading even now. As much as Soren and Titania butt heads, he's grateful for both of their perspectives because without them, he'd be lost.
At least the new clothes aren't fancy, just a different colored and slightly more tailored version of his old outfit. He can't stomach the idea of ruffled shirts and pleated trousers, and he couldn't move well on the battlefield in fancy armor.
(To this day he still doesn't know how Gatrie manages.)
"You're still you," he tells the reflection in his mirror, "it's only your title that's different." But that's just it - it's a title. Not a role, not a responsibility, not even a nickname. A title says a lot about a person from first glance. It leads to certain expectations, assumptions. Little things like table manners and speech patterns to big ones like political and social matters, how to handle them.
A Lord. He doesn't own any land, he doesn't rule over anyone, but from here on out he'll be expected to make important decisions about things he still doesn't feel he has the right to. He understands the greater scope of things better than when he started out - the prejudices between beorc and laguz, Beignon's dirty secret, Sanaki's true purpose in sending him on all those missions, bits and pieces of Tellius's history he'd never thought to read about in books.
But knowing history and the greater scope isn't enough. His promotion was a reward for exposing the dark underbelly of Beignon's relations with the laguz, but Ike knows better than to think it ends there. The war with Daein still rages on, Elincia still needs to reclaim her home, and just because the dark underbelly's been exposed doesn't mean this mistreatment of the laguz is going to stop anytime soon.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. They're nowhere near the end, there's still ground to cover. Boundaries to cross, enemies to deal with. While it's better to deal with these things sooner than later, they're not exactly racing against a ticking clock.
We have time.
They march into the heart of Daein tomorrow, and he knows they'll need to be prepared fror anything. Ike doesn't know how to feel about his new title, is sure he won't know for some time, but one thing he's heard from the villagers is that a Lord must protect his people.
Protecting his own is one thing Ike knows how to do.
He smiles at his reflection in the mirror. Even if all his title amounts to in the end is a formality, he'll make the effort to earn it.