#( don't mind byleth she's just justifying her actions as you do )

[fellstcr]

⚔️ // slumber was a quiet and slow thing. it had stitched her broken from together once , and REVEALED TIME'S FLOW to the form that had come before. clearly in aevum , with a mask donned over her face , traversing the realms of slumber was similar to those such undertakings. a hazy imitation of the city sprawled before the enlightened one as though it were an extension of the haze of TIME'S PAUSE. from here , byleth could see all that connected the dormant with the living. pathways into the mind's eye , and shadowy serpents that clustered around the traps that held them there. with a flaming sword in hand , byleth had cut down the beasts from one glistening dream-orb to the other , freeing the pour souls trapped within from the depths of their own mind's despair.

THERE WAS NO TIME FOR HESITATION.

. . . that was , until she found seiros.

— seeing her , BYLETH COULD ALREADY HEAR IT : scorn upon a scalding tongue . unbridled RAGE for trespassing upon SACRED GROUND. for after all what was more hallowed than the sanctity of the mind ? even with the best of intentions , byleth had learned that her words were paltry upon the tongue and her actions doubly worthless .

but this was not the rhea that had grown to loathe her so. nor was she the rhea that byleth had shared precious time with. she was younger. the SAINT OF PROPHECIES and future deliverer of fodlan's people. easier to read in some ways ... and even more difficult to understand in others.

but byleth recalled the smoke of bonfires and the glitter of light upon stone . green tresses like hers , and eyes that glowed like hers , and songs sung in celebration as dragons soared in the skies above. honeyed wine in a golden cup. the indivisible with his sterling smiles and silver-woven tales. WOULD SEIROS' DREAM BE SIMILAR? did she yearn for those old temples and courtyards and halls?

( from afar , sleep crawlers ghosted over the fields and drew closer to the immaculate's resting place. tightening her grip upon her blade , byleth gauged their distance before turning back to the woman's entrapment. )

maybe she was too much of a STRANGER to encroach. . . but even rhea had welcomed her into her dream of the dancing city of ghosts. as though she had been , and was fit to stray inside of it.

. . . so why couldn't SEIROS ?

( . . . besides , even if she reproached her , byleth could always point blame at the unprecedented circumstances . )

byleth's fingers unfurled , and she pressed against the dream's surface.

@seirosu / hypnum insomnum prt. II (plotted!)

[fantasyinvader]

With the greater themes of ignorance and lies in Flower, it really asks the player what are they doing siding with Edelgard? Are you siding with her because you don't know better or are you deliberately ignoring the things you don't want to see and hear? It ultimately undermines the merit of the route as it is one supported by the player not seeing things properly. The player is really only left two options in the face of the reveals, which aligns with the route split itself.

When Edelgard was revealed as the villainous Flame Emperor, provided you did meet the conditions for a choice, did you a) ignore the reveal and move to support her, or b) accepted the reveal and moved to stop her? White Clouds, after all, did have the units talk about how horrible what was going on was, but then join in on it in Safflower.

And this question really doesn't go away throughout Flower. The route is not just at odds with the worldbuilding, details within it ultimately serve that worldbuilding. In addition, Edelgard is depicted lying to her allies and manipulating them to her own ends from start to finish, meaning that if you believe she's the good guy because of what she has told you it's best to keep in mind that Edelgard is not the most truthful individual. If you pay attention, you'll notice various contradictions between her words and actions as well as her own habit of ignoring what she doesn't want to hear.

At what point does your ignorance go from innocent to intentional? Or do you just stop playing Flower and start another route?

Treehouse might have changed details, but it couldn't change the core of the story. Removing a mention of Edelgard employing an information campaign isn't going to erase the fact we see her do just that during the events of Flower. It's not going to change Rhea dying saying that you don't know what you're doing at the end of a route where Edelgard's final boss theme was playing, and that Rhea's final boss theme is meant to portray her possible death as a tragedy. What the game's actual creators have said is still on record, all Treehouse has done is add another layer of ignorance to the experience.

The player is still supposed to know better. You have people who walked away from Flower feeling that it didn't work as a hero route, indicating they knew something was up in the back of their mind, in addition to players who started with Flower only to realize the truth once they learned about other routes. We've even seen people admit that Edelgard is the villain in light of the Nintendo Dream interview, or got really angry when Safflower was fantranslated and they realized what Edelgard really does after the war.

But then we get players who encourage ignorance, turning truth into opinions in order to justify their support of Edelgard. It effectively reinforces the theme, especially when they begin trying to twist canon because it didn't align with what they believed it to be, defending someone who lies by spreading their own lies. They choose ignorance because the truth says something they don't want to hear. And if you're going to choose lies over the truth, can you really make a better world? Rather, you just make a world that appears better on a surface level. Scratch underneath that, and the truth is still there.

Silver Snow, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind all end with sunlight, the lighting of Flower's ending is the fires of war in a world engulfed by the darkness of night. The former three routes uphold the Mandate of Heaven and see Byleth retain their Enlightened One status, the latter goes against it and casts Byleth down. The world was built to support Silver Snow's story, which also aligns with the stories of Moon and Wind, Flower still supports the worldbuilding while undermining it's own narrative. And that same worldbuilding shows the Church being the good guys against a corrupt Empire and it's nefarious allies.

That is the truth of the game, whether people accept it or not.

[raxistaicho]

Heggiegard needs to cover dem tiddies

With a title like this, you know it's Fantasy Invader.

Who else could it be?

(Also, by Heggiegard I mean Hegemon Husk Edelgard. "Heggie" is a nickname some of us for her.)

Thinking about the Hegemon Husk again today.

Oh no. He was thinking again.

It's a monster-class unit,

Yup, same as the Immaculate One. This'll be important later.

What is it that Dimitri says in Houses when seeing it?

Ah, yes, Dimitri, one of Edelgard's staunchest enemies, the house leader who thinks with his heart and not his head, and the one who thinks ends don't justify the means. Surely he will give a nuanced, balanced assessment of her activities.

“To be changed beyond all recognition... That is what lies at the end of the ideals you served so diligently.”

Yes, that sounds about right for him: a moralizing condemnation of his enemies, and a hypocritical one to boot given he benefits from and doesn't try to stop his own soldiers using Crest Stones to turn into Demonic Beasts to try to gain an advantage at Tailltean.

And yes, I know Dedue gave that order behind his back, Dimitri still had time to countermand the order and save some of his men. He decided instead to just make the most of it, because at the end of the day his true chief concern at Tailltean was revenge.

Cipher also titles the card version of it as Hegemon Edelgard: At the End of the Ideals She Served.

I can't speak for Cipher because I have basically no experience with it, but almost certainly that was just quoting Dimitri. Also, aren't Cipher cards all in Japanese, or are some of them translated?

And I can't help but feel that this is what is hinted at in Safflower,

I wonder if FI thinks calling it Safflower instead of Crimson Flower is a gotcha? I know he thinks the flower symbolism is spoopy, even though Safflowers have positive symbolism.

where Dimitri calls out Byleth and Edelgard on walking the path of the beast in the Japanese text.

Yes, when the man who destroys everything in his path and is out for revenge says you're going to hell, you should believe him.

Through Chrom Translate: Teacher. Why did Edelgard... choose the path of a beast, trampling on people's lives?

Also, he's still using machine translation, but that's basically close enough so eh.

So, Dimitri calls Flower the path of a beast, while fighting alongside Dimitri results in Edelgard transforming herself into a beast unit for greater power.

And fighting against Rhea involved her transforming herself into a "beast" unit for greater power. I thought Edelgard was the racist one, Fantasy Invader? I mean heck, the Immaculate One looks way more wicked than Heggie:

And that's just in her natural form, her Silver Snow - the route FI thinks is truest - form she's glowing red and looks like she's made of thorns.

I don't think the Hegemon is supposed to represent how far Edelgard will go for those ideals, nor is it TWSITD's corruption of her. I think it is meant to be representative of Edelgard's ideals themselves. Notice how Dimitri and Cipher both paint the Hegemon Husk as the end point of what Edelgard wants, it's symbolic of what she's actually trying to accomplish.

No, it absolutely does represent the first of those things. And given Dimitri accuses Edelgard of wanting to be a goddess, I think we can safely discard his assessments of Edelgard's actions.

Take the flavor text for the card."My progress cannot be stopped. The war's end will spell destruction for one of us. There can only be one ruler of the world..." Is that Edelgard out of her mind?

It's certainly her at her most dramatic!

Don't think so, not when Caspar's endings in Flower mention expeditionary warfare, Edelgard is invading other countries following the unification of Fodlan. Arundel also mentions that the world will be under Imperial rule following the war, with Edelgard saying she will do what she can. So ruling the world? That's something Edelgard is going to work towards after she has destroyed all those who oppose her, don't believe in her or support these ideals in Fodlan.

(sigh) No.

And also, now that Houses Datamining's search feature is back up, here's all the times "world" comes up in the 3H script:

Just look at how many times "the world" is used to refer to just Fodlan.

Meanwhile, Claude and Dimitri both have endings that talk about Fodlan improving foreign relations.

Dimitri has one: his own. Dimitri's ending really is just a pile of vague "Dimitri did real good-like" platitudes since his story doesn't really say anything about the kind of ruler he's going to be or what kind of world he wants to create other than, "the weak should be protected from the strong (but never become the strong)".

Likewise, remember her introduction as the Flame Emperor? That she will be the one to reforge the world? We know Edelgard wants to put the world back to what it was, due to the Japanese saying “Let's meet again someday. My name is Flame Emperor... I am the one who will return the world to its original state,”

No. She says return it to the way it should be. This is important, because he's going to try to argue Edelgard wants to return Fodlan to how it was with Nemesis, even though she doesn't in CF. She does not create a ruling class of warrior-elites like he did with his Ten Elites.

Anyways, FI goes on to babble for a little while about how Nemesis's time was really really bad, how Edelgard supposedly sends Caspar on invasions of other countries, and how Edelgard wants to bring Nemesis's days back, and also how,

Then consider that Engage used Nemesis, the guy who killed the Goddess and committed a genocide against the Nabateans to gain his power, for it's final battle...

Nemesis is evil because of his genocidal actions, not because he's a Dark Emblem in Engage. If we followed this logic then Duma, Iduun, and Ashera are the ultimate evils of their settings. And while Duma's pretty fucked up, Iduun's a victim and Ashera has no legitimate agency of her own.

Meanwhile, Dimitri's endings talk about giving the commoners a voice in government

Whatever the hell that means. His defenders like to argue he deadass establishes a House of Commons in his lifetime!

while Claude tells Cyril in their support that he wants to end oppression.

Oh, so incidental dialogue is sufficient evidence for things, then?

All right, there we go: Edelgard improves foreign relations, too.

FI then babbles about Claude for a while, saying he starts like Edelgard before "letting go of his hatred". That's one of his more recent memes: Claude's personality flaw is he hates the Church of Seiros, so I guess he's not ignorant and "animalish" at the start of the story anymore. It has to do with FI needing to twist the game to suit his terrible Buddhist symbolism.

Verdant Wind also uses a lot of the same symbolism that Silver Snow uses to say it's a path of enlightenment rather than one of the beast.

VW uses the same "symbolism" as Silver Snow because it's Silver Snow with a yellow coat of paint slapped over the top.

Dimitri is given the title of Saviour King by the people in his ending which is supposed to represent Oudou, benevolent rule.

Only in Azure Moon, his best route. In Crimson Flower he's given the title of "Tempest King" because he leaves nothing in his wake:

And considering how all the fighting he'd be getting involved in in Crimson Flower is in Faerghus... that doesn't paint a good picture, honestly. Dimitri's such a mindless berserker in CF that he's destroying his own land. See why I argue he's more boar-like in CF than his fans care to admit?

Edelgard represents Hadou, rule through force. Edelgard's ending title is... Flame Emperor, the same thing she called herself at the start of the game, and referred to as a hegemon by Byleth's ending title.

In Crimson Flower, Edelgard reclaims the title of Flame Emperor to mean something better than it used to: the revolutionary who saved Fodlan from divine control without losing her heart. Byleth becomes the hegemon's wings, lifting her out of the dark time in her life.

It's better than a meandering flame, wandering through life without purpose or attachment.

Likewise, her Emperor class also hints towards the Hegemon Husk form. She still has her curved horns

Well done, Fantasy Invader, you've noticed the ironic ram horns in Edelgard's post-skip design.

and clearly visible boobs,

Oh, shit. Don't worry, I can make her SFW! I can fix this!

Okay, we're good now.

she has feathers on her shoulders rather than the wings,

Okay, but the problem here? Hegemon Edelgard's wings sprout from her waist, not her shoulders!

Did FI even double-check the design?

Also, as you can clearly see there's very little in common between her emperor and Heggie designs. Heggie has big pauldrons, an enclosed "skirt", those... red lights, the head-back... thing... while the emperor armor has none of those.

and she's bearing a Crest-stone weapon equipped with the Crest of Maurice

You really are your own breed of dumb, FI. Hegemon Husk Edelgard's power derives from her twin Crests of Flame and Seiros. The game is very explicit about this: it has nothing to do with Aymr or the Crest Stone of the Beast.

tying her to the Devil Arcana

Which is no more inherently evil than any other Major Tarot.

which depicts the goat-horned,

Edelgard wears ram horns. Totally different kind of horns, dude.

They aren't even the same animal!

winged,

The traditional design of the Devil Arcana has back-sprouting, bat-like wings. Edelgard either has black feather decorations on her shoulders, or vaguely wing-shaped protrusions appearing from her waist.

boobs on full display

He's also got a bit of a gut on him. Edelgard, on the other hand, is slim.

demon

Baphomet's actually seen as a deity in some circles.

Baphomet.

He got the name of the figure right, at least.

In Azure Gleam, Edelgard transforms into the Hegemon Husk halfway through the route

For about five seconds, then she yields the position of villain and instigator of events to Thales.

and at the end of Scarlet Blaze, if the extra chapter was done the reward is the aforementioned Crest-stone weapon.

Which you get for sparing the goddess's host. So I guess it's a bad thing that Byleth is alive, now?

So, yeah. I think the grotesque Hegemon Husk is supposed to be a visual metaphor for Edelgard's ideals.

No, it's a metaphor for how far Edelgard will go to see them done without Byleth's positive influence. Just as she's willing to make monsters out of people, she's willing to make a monster out of herself. It's the ultimate irony that she espouses a world for humanity while symbolically and literally giving up her own.

But FI never let facts get in the way of a terrible analysis.

[dragongutsixofficial]

Why you should vote Edelgard for the FE3H tournament

Come on. We all love Dorothea. She's an absolute queen and if it were against anyone else, I would defend her teeth and claws.

Now that that's settled, here's a bunch of reasons why Edelgard should wreck her in the finals:

1- Let's start with the obvious: Dorothea is a bisexual icon. Guess who else is ? Edelgard. What's more, the Crimson Flower route is centered on Edelgard leading a war against an oppressive religious system in order to ensure people are judged based on their own actions and not birth or status; so they can rise up for themselves and decide their own fates. This narrative has resounded with a lot of queer FE3H fans, who find it freeing not to have to conform to the standards of a society who would want to lock them into a certain role. 

2- When you see the Fodlanese geopolitical system as mostly dominated by feudal monarchies, Edelgard's project, though implemented by means you might disagree with, is more egalitarian and gets rid of the old privileges, which is always a good first step when you want to get to a democracy. The fact that she's also the only one to want to step down from power once her vision for Fodlan is put in place reinforces that.

3- Edelgard is also an abuse survivor icon. A lot of CF fans find Edelgard's more radical approach to change a nice change of pace- especially regarding religious trauma, but also familial trauma. Edelgard showed that even an abuse survivor who has to do bad things in order to survive, such as cooperate with her abusers, can and still deserves happiness. For irl abused survivors who couldn't just split from their abusers because the situation is not that simple, Edelgard's gradual taking over of the situation regarding TWSITD provides hope that they can do the same in turn. That they deserve it .

4- Edelgard is an amazing antagonist in routes that are not Crimson Flower. And even for people who dislike her, she is a very well written character, whose moral grayness sets the tone for the whole story. Edelgard forces you to think about if the end truly justifies the means, because she is such a multi-faceted character.

5- She is essentially Daenerys and Daenerys deserved better. Don't let Daenerys down like the writers of Game of Thrones season 8 did.

6- It's what Dorothea would want. She simps for the Empress. She would have a musical written about her.

7- Edelgard's route is the only one where Byleth is explicitely given a choice that can radically change the course of the story. Now don't get me wrong this doesn't mean that Byleth is any less "free" in the other routes ; but it does symbolically give them more control over who they want to be for themself, instead of accepting the role that was meant to be theirs. Then again, highlighting the main theme which makes CF an inherently queer route: finding your identity, while making a found family of people who understand you and love you unconditionally for who you are, not what they want you to be. For people that Rhea reminds of some abusive figures in their lives, Byleth's arc in CF was, as such, especially appealing and not at all a bad route for Byleth.

Now keep in mind this is funny propaganda for my blorbo- don't take it too seriously. I might have also missed some things. But in my opinion at least, best girl Edelgard 50000% deserves this win.

 If you do want to add more, feel free to do so ! =D 

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

normally i don't directly engage in discourse or anything and don't rly care to, but one thing the fandom mentions often is how edelgard is generally made for straight men and like... it's very true - true enough that a hint of it had to be completely wiped from the localization for being too suggestive (read: outright sexual).

some of you might have already heard about this before, but i was going back through the nintendo dream interview since it'd been a while since i'd read it again. as always it just aggravates me how literally specific those support lines are when we know the team (via the interview) had "a lot of people" wanting to take edelgard's side. like... it's just not surprising they'd stick a sex joke in there. if there's one thing the loc did right, it was taking that out lol...

it's basically that byleth (both byleths, but frankly female byleth having that line almost kinda comes off as fetish bait which is... perhaps even worse) has a line in their c support where, when they enter her room at night because they hear sounds coming from her room, suggests they entered her room for sex. the term used is yobai (night crawling), which is an old jp custom where unmarried men and women would have sex. the guy is supposed to say something first to make sure she knows (so it's not rape), hence byleth "telling" her that's what they're there for.

edelgard responds with a smiling blushing portrait. her neutral expression is a small smile, and that was uh, not edited at all (and she wasn't given an angry expression in response like you'd expect a character like her to). so basically byleth makes a joke about fucking her in the middle of the night and she blushes. she responds with, "you know what that means right?", followed by "so you're joking. don't surprise me like that", which... can be taken basically in two different ways (like, geez don't shock me that you'd even ask for that kind of thing, or don't surprise me i was hoping for that). mind you her 3D model is giving a knitted eyebrow frown, but the 3D model is also still blushing.

(also, to be specific, in the loc version she's still blushing, but all byleth says is "i was restless", so the blushing portrait literally doesn't even fit. it's just a leftover from the original script. edelgard's response is also a vocally flat and literally confused "what could that possibly mean?", which like... idk buddy, what do you think "i was restless" means??? i mean come on loc team, i know you wanted to remove the sex joke, but her response to "i was restless" being a genuinely confused blushing response in a completely flat tone was bonkers and entirely out of place. there were other things they could've put to tone it down immensely and have it just be a misunderstanding without making edelgard sound like an actual, literal idiot for not knowing what "i was restless" could possibly mean.)

it's just... really unfortunate. the devs could've made a great game without this level of controversy, but they were evidently too horny to do so and had to adjust the narrative so that the "this time female villain" was justified and had other characters, particularly women (wlw is uh, popular... for usually the wrong reasons), obsess over her (then hopes just further cemented that even harder and not just with monica - which mind you, i shipped edelgard and monica as my own little crackship before hopes was even a thing so... lol...).

i know, i KNOW, i KNOW, you are all SO sick of me saying ashnard is RIGHT THE FUCK THERE, but it's SO TRUE (or maybe you're not idk lol). like, he's basically the same character with a different skin, except... since he's not female, he doesn't get the same treatment. the thing is, he shouldn't - he's a bad person, and that's the whole point! so like... why couldn't they make edelgard the same way? well... evidently bc the devs were literally too horny to think about a proper narrative for her (repeatedly pointed out and labeled as) conquest actions.

they cared so much about the game's story and yet... they didn't care enough past uh, this issue to be like hey, this one character existed before who we called a villain, but we can't do the same for the pretty lady bc we like her too much.

like idk, if that was gonna be the case i kinda wish they just made edelgard's role go to a male again, bc they obviously can't handle it? i mean when there's a literal sex joke in there (notably with just edelgard out of all the characters afaik, who can marry both genders of byleth and the line isn't changed depending on gender) and (a lot of) the team got outed in a Dream interview for wanting to side with her, it just reeks of bias of "we don't actually care about her actions or goals; we just like her because she's hot and a strong woman".

it's just... such wasted potential. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

[lananiscorner]

If you had to guess, why are Edelstans so desperate in trying to defend their waifu's honor despite her being a fictional character and therefore won't respond let alone appreciate their defense? I know parasocial relationships are one hell of a drug but you'd think they would stop trying to double down and fulfill a self fulfilling prophecy of thinking they are racists who justify imperialism and genocide.

Thanks for your ask, anon. Please keep in mind that everything below the cut is just my own personal interpretation of what's happening here, based on my time in this fandom. There's a fair chance I might be wrong about the conclusions I'm drawing, but anyway, here's my 2 cents:

I think the parasocial relationship aspect is definitely a big part of it, but at least as far as the western parts of her stan base are concerned, it also feels a lot like there's a lot of personal baggage attached. I mean, from what I have seen in my year in this fandom so far:

Most Edel/Byleth art/fic involves female Byleth. Male Byleth might as well not exist, even though picking male Byleth rather than female Byleth changes absolutely nothing about their support line or ending and I'm not even sure if it changes any of their explore/event dialogue, but I don't recall any instance where it did during my playthroughs.

Her other supports and paired endings with male characters exist in-game only, apparently. I've seen maybe like... 5 pieces of Edel/Hubert art in the fe3h tag over the course of this year and that's it.

Stanning for Edel usually is accompanied by relentless bashing of Rhea and the church.

"She's sapphic and cute and she wants to hold your hand while obliterating the oppressive church--what's not to love?" is how I've seen multiple of her stans describe their reasons for liking her in a nutshell.

One of the common claims from Edel stans against her critics is that we are homophobic, hating on her for being wlw... which... the only time I ever see Edel's sexuality brought up in Edel critic circles, is annoyance at stans trying to erase her canonical bisexuality.

Some of the animosity against the church is definitely a problem of the localization (which actively made Rhea and the church look more sus in several instances), but a lot of it to me reads like it was written by people who were hurt in RL by assholes who wield religion as an oppressive tool (which it doesn't have to be--affirming churches do exist!), and for whom Edel with all her church smashing and queerness is just the ultimate, cathartic, projecting power fantasy.

And here's the problem with projecting: when you project onto another person or a character, any attack on them feels like an attack on you, personally. It's the fallacy of "they called Edel a racist imperialist + I stan Edel for being an anti-religion queer queen = they called me a racist imperialist = they called me a sinner = they are just like the people who hate me for being queer and having beef with religion", which... is not a great feeling. I've been there myself (not with Edel, but with other characters in other franchises) and learning how to take a step back from that line of thinking and looking at what people are actually saying rather than what you are hearing is one of the most important life skills you can learn in any context. I don't think I've ever seen any Edel critic call her stans racist/imperialist for liking her, but rather for trying to justify her actions, which... yeah, if you're trying to justify racism/imperialism, that is bound to happen. You can like (even love) a character without trying to rationalize away their flaws.

Two examples: Hubert is the best character on CF imo, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go around saying "well actually he had no choice but to kill and bribe people behind Edelgard's back and they were trying to uphold an abusive system so they probably deserved it anyway". Man straight up bribed and murdered people so his queen could succeed--cool motive, flawless execution, still murder. Likewise, Felix is my second-favorite character in all of Azure Moon, but there'll be a cold day in Aillel before you see me trying to excuse his misoginy or his dehumanizing language towards Dimitri and Dedue. I understand and sympathize with the cause for his behavior, but I do not condone it or try to justify it away as something necessary or good.

And sadly, I don't think this fallacy thinking of some (most?) of Edel's stans will change, unless:

the RL people making the arguments change, and/or

their RL experiences change, and/or

IntSys gives us some unproblematic, unapologetically gay/lesbian representation.

It is hard to self-reflect when you are hurting and clinging to what litle representation you can find. In an ideal world, the next original FE game release would include unmistakably queer characters of multiple orientations, who are not also racist imperialists, so every Edel stan who gets really reactionary about criticism of her can look and those and go "oh hey, people don't hate on me for stanning Sappho FE--maybe the beef they had with me really wasn't about me being a sinner, but Edel being someone who invaded and forcibly annexed two sovereign nations and did her best to eradicate an entire race of sentient beings".

Maybe that day will come. Maybe it won't. In the meantime, I will happily keep blocking those of her stans, who try to justify racism, imperialism, and ableism, so that I can have a pleasant fandom experience that won't leave me bitter and exhausted every time I check the tags.

[fantasyinvader]

Hmm... the devs said that one of the themes of Safflower is having a different set of beliefs, but they also said that the worldbuilding was done in support of Silver Snow.

I was thinking about this, and how a few things fall into place.

For starters, Edelgard believes she is the hero because of the story she was told by her father, and uses that to justify her own actions. However, Edelgard's father was an Agarthan puppet and Edelgard seemingly is ignoring that, just like how she ignores Thales telling her to her face what the experiments were for. Azure Moon has Dimitri say she ignores her victims, while Hopes has she herself say she ignored how much influence the Agarthans had over the Empire.

Now go back to the worldbuilding. Even in Safflower, the game keeps dropping information that contradicts Edelgard's narrative. Do you ignore stuff like Hanneman mentioning the war assets, or that Edelgard orders an attack on a neutral nation while wiping out any of it's leadership that doesn't surrender to her? Or is it a matter of the player not being aware of stuff like Lorenz saying the nobility only pays lip service to the Church, the Southern Church being dissolved a century prior, or Apex of the World being Edelgard's final boss theme and not Rhea's

In the Japanese, Dimitri calls Edelgard's path the Animal Path, one of the evil paths in Buddhism, leading to a realm of suffering due to evil actions. It is also defined by the poison/flame of ignorance, something that needs to be extinguished within oneself in order to achieve Nirvana which is also the name of Byleth's personal class that they lose at the end of the route. Likewise, that poison/flame can also correlate to incorrect beliefs. According to a Buddhist dictionary, it is defined as such:

“One of the three poisons, or the three sources of vice and suffering, the other two being greed and anger. It is also interpreted as delusion, illusion, ignorance, or error, and indicates the unenlightened state that causes one to take the false for the true and the seeming for the real, and thus prevents one from perceiving the true nature of things or from discerning the truth.”

Adding onto this is the fact Edelgard is shown as a liar throughout her routes. She knows how to use propaganda, withholding information from allies, spreading misinformation as well as creating an image around herself in order to further her own goals. Hopes even has her say she couldn't even trust herself, and by the end of Safflower her own allies are uneasy about how she's keeping them in the dark after Arianrhod. Keep in mind how Edelgard says she's waging this war for her ideals, ideals formed from what her father told her, her father being a puppet of the Agarthans and how they manipulated her into starting this war according to Verdant Wind. Bonus points for how in Verdant Wind Claude realizes the Agarthans were trying to feed him information as well.

So this idea that Safflower is about having a different set of beliefs seems to be routed in the greater theme of ignorance, either innocent or intentional. But really, it leans more towards the latter considering the events of White Clouds and how the player must choose to align herself with Edelgard in spite of them. The player deliberately ignores the story thus far to side with someone working with those you've been fighting against, in addition to seeing and learning about the tragedies that happen in order to help Edelgard's war effort. The player ignores that, then it begins revealing the route's lord figure is a manipulative liar while giving evidence to contradict her story. But even then, the player still presses on.

Is this really heroic? I don't think the game is saying so, especially when Azure Moon does it's thing. If Edelgard started the war for her ideals, it only makes sense to sit down and actually talk to her about them and it's at this point that the game actually addresses them. It lays out that her ideals benefit the strong and will only create more victims, but Edelgard's devotion to them leads to her deliberately ignoring the consequences of her actions. It's actually ironic that in Japanese Hubert tries to call Dimitri out as “the king who saves people by killing them” when that's exactly what Edelgard is doing, Really, it's a reoccurring element in Moon that people can do horrific things in their own interest yet still act like they are the good guy.

So the supposed heroism of Flower is based on ignorance, believing what your lord tells you in spite of the red flags, and just declaring you're doing this all for a good reason. Yet people were upset when the Japanese script revealed that Edelgard consolidates power to impose her will upon victory, because that was the very thing they were fighting against. The endings also indicates various hypocrisies from her, from creating her own false history to continuing to push her ideals in spite of seemingly going in on people supporting each other, to her sending troops to march on other countries. Her S support, the closest you can get to know her in line with Verdant Wind's message about doing that to clear up misconceptions, in Japan even has her say she's been a dictator. The more you get to know Edelgard, the more villainous she is supposed to become in contrast to her initial appearance.

Really, the game is about realizing and accepting Edelgard is the villain. Ignorance is not an excuse, it just shows a flaw in your judgement. Just because she says she's the good guy doesn't hold up to her actions, and even then she's not someone to be trusted. And her ending is so overt about this the translators tried to tone it down. And even then, the game's own creators flat out told us that Fodlan was built around supporting the story where the player doesn't side with Edelgard and instead fights her. That really informs the game's morality despite the translator's attempts.