i was over at my friend's house a long time ago, and i saw someone playing melee. i didn't even know that a sequel to SSB64 EXISTED, but i saw roy and marth being played. i saw them and immediately thought they were SOOO COOOLL. they were easily the selling point of the game to me, since i wasn't THAT into SSB64 (i loved it, but i wasn't crazy about it).
then flash forward a few months, i got 1st place in some local spelling competition, and my mom asked me what i wanted as a reward
and i immediately responded that i wanted a gamecube and melee
when i first got the game, i played link. he had a sword like roy and marth, but he wasn't even half as cool as them, but i supposed he would suffice while i unlocked roy and marth
i initially defaulted to roy just because he has fire and because all of his attacks seemed better than marth's at the time... mostly because i spammed f-smash a lot and didn't know how to tip, so roy gave me more success. also, i thought roy's up B was way better because it had multiple fiery hits, whereas marth's just had some weak little smack (once again, i didn't know how to sweetspot his up B, obviously)
i mained roy until i got into competitive melee, where i instantly dropped him for marth the minute i saw the tier list cuz i found out that marth was actually good and roy was actually terrible. i liked both of them, so i figured i'd just pick marth cuz i knew it'd pay off more in the long run. i figured that if the competitive community said that roy was terrible and marth was good, they actually knew what they were talking about. the only thing i knew is that i knew nothing, and that it would be silly of me to try to defend roy being a good character.
my original competitive main was marth, but i ended up maining fox (and falco, but mostly fox) for like 2 years before marth called me back <3