Dunno if this counts, but my first run of FE9 I let all my units die so i used Geoffrey, Haar, Largo, and Calil for the last few chapters. Geoffrey and calil died anyways, but largo was my favorite of those. (I knew he had bad stats, really didn’t care about strategy at that point and just wanted to finish the game)
EDIT: also probs doesn’t count, but Brom in FE10. He can get bad rolls, but in most my playthroughs he wound up being like a second gatrie.