#Edelgard's mindset will never be something I can agree with because there ARE people who have fucked up similarly as bad

[dmclemblems]

@randomnameless

randomnameless replied to your post “Edelgard is basically Alvis.” Okay, I beg to absolutely differ. At...”

They'd be more similar if Arvis knew Manfroy was hunting babies and yet he's still working with him to unify the continent. Allying with people getting rid of foreign rulers to unify the continent isn't a good thing. Allying with people you know they experiment on humans to create your beast squad is, imo, way beyond that, like cartoonly evil.

Hard agree. Alvis was willing to allow the Sect to continue living in peace under his rule if they didn’t do what they did. He outright told Manfloy he wouldn’t be helping him with those things in gen 1. When Manfloy still took action in gen 2, he proved his point and went against him. Even at the cost of going against his “son”, he still did it, and it’s very clear Alvis loves his family so much.

Alvis wanted to unify the continent, but he didn’t do it at the expense of allying with horrible people that were going to end up being a threat to the continent and his ambitions if they achieved their goal. Both the Lopt Sect and TWSITD, if achieving their own goals, would have threatened Alvis and Edelgard’s goals respectively. Alvis, understandably, sees a conflict in that and realizes there’s no point in achieving his goals and possibly dying for them if these people get what they want in the end. It would make everything he did meaningless and make him unifying the continent pointless if they just destroyed it in the end or enslaved it to Loptous. Edelgard wouldn’t have needed TWSITD’s help if she had Dimitri and Claude’s assistance, and she’d be even luckier with Claude because then she’d get the help of two continents.

Killing other rulers to “unify” the continent isn’t even unifying it. It’s conquering it and forcing it under your rule, which is a total power move. It has nothing to do with truly unifying anything. Alvis didn’t kill Cuan, either - that was Thracia and the Lopt Sect’s doing, latter being based off FE5. Calf wan’t in the best shape and Thracia went after the country after Cuan died. When that battle was over, Alvis immediately stepped in and had the empire take control of it because not only did it make it so the Empire had the final say on Manster, but he knew the people would suffer under Thracia’s rule because Manster and Thracia were longtime enemies. He basically tried to save Manster a lot of grief by sending someone to take over there, and that was probably his intention. Obviously that isn’t how it worked out, but that was a combination of nasty politicians from an icky family (and for fuck’s sake they had Blume and Hilda there eventually. yikes) and again, the Sect. Verdane had no ruler and basically became bandit ground. TL;DR Alvis didn’t run around killing other rulers. He took advantage of being able to unify the continent as much as possible, yes, but not by killing people. He still did his best to make things peaceful, and Thracia ruling Manster would not have been peaceful for Manster.

It’s a huge difference, yet again. Alvis will do whatever it takes to unify the continent with common sense and not doing something that could jeopardize everything he’s doing. Edelgard knew the risks of her alliance and they warned her via javelins of light that they had the real power, ultimately. She put herself right in their trap. She knew the risks if she personally had been experimented on, so imo, she has no excuse for what happened. She’s lucky she didn’t kill Claude in Verdant Wind because if she had and then she was killed, TWSITD would’ve won. Claude is the reason they were stopped. Similarly with Silver Snow and Seteth & Rhea, Edelgard nearly risked everyone’s lives and the entire continent by allying with them.

Yeah, Alvis made some mistakes, but nobody is perfect in a position of power when they have to make those kind of decisions and he was in a tight spot. Edelgard put herself in that tight spot. The difference is, again, that Edelgard won’t take responsibility for it (which is something even Rhea does in VW and SS). Alvis will, and yet he’s the one doing the lesser amount of damage in the long run and had the better intentions.

[vanquishedvaliant]

not to dig into the disk horse again and not to be predictably negative about dimitri more than I need to

but I’m just really offput by fanart / fanfic that places Dimitri and Edelgard as “happy siblings!” in an alternate setting like. I *understand* the desire for happy harmless AUs, for everything just works fics. I don’t agree with them, but I get why it exists. But this particular framing is just... so reductive and dismissive. such a dimitri-centric framing of that relationship that completely ignores any of edelgard’s feelings about that time of her life in exchange for dimitri’s projection of family onto her

Like, the sibling relationship thing wasn’t ever something Edelgard thought of .... literally ever. It’s certainly something Dimitri believed in for what its worth, but from Edelgard’s perspective they weren’t tragically separated siblings. She met him when she had been forcibly abducted to another country and he ended up being a friend and a support to her; but it was never a sibling relationship. Not to her, and not to her mother. Only to Dimitri. 

Patricia was at best a trophy wife in an unfortunate political position and at worst a forcibly restrained prisoner forced into political marriage who was desperate to get out of her situation to see her family; her true love the emperor and her daughter El. Even Dimitri himself realizes in his own story that his perception of his mother had been whitewashed by his optimism and she had actually been quite cold to him.

And for El, Dimitri was a boy she met that gave her an undeniably great gift; friendship during a tough time, a dagger to defend herself, and a mindset that she’d carry through her difficult life. But he was never a brother to her, not in any real way. Frankly it’s almost less annoying when people ship them instead.

She doesn’t remember him specifically because what the situation was for her was traumatic, her and her family used as pawns in a game, followed by torture and pain and death and revolution that all came from one source; one culture that Faerghus was a great contributor too. All she was able to keep from her time with the boy in Faerghus was the dagger and that drive to cut her own path, but in a way that he never imagined, and would never approve of, reforging it and making it her own. 

So why would Edelgard long for that life? Why would Edelgard pine for a half-sibling that she never had, never knew, and a family that was never real? Why, when she huddled side by side her 10 other siblings and watched them die 1 by 1, leaving all their hopes on her? Who staked her entire live on making that mean something, who built the foundations of her soul on a way to right those wrongs? To undue the abuse done to her father, to her mother, to her brothers and sisters. Her heart is already so tied to her true family already.

Why would she want to go back to where it started, in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, and live a pretty lie that never was, and never could be? No, Dimitri wasn’t a sibling to her in that sense, and he couldn’t be. Not when the only thing he was ever able to really give her was the strength to leave him and survive on her own. Without him, without anyone else. When even when they meet again years later, the only way that they can ever meaningfully come to terms is to fulfill their ideals and move on without the other still breathing.

That’s not tragedy or a dream life taken away from them, that’s consistency. That’s the course of their lives and the interaction of who they are as people. The alternative- that there was ever any family to long for, that there were any good memories to have; It’s just cleanly polished make-believe projected from a naive, foolish boy who doesn’t understand a thing about others. Who wants them to go along with the way he sees things, who wants everything to be perfect- but never really questions why they aren’t, why they can’t be. Never sees the bigger picture through the immediate moment. Of course he’d believe in them as siblings. He never doubted, never looked past the curtain, because he never wanted to. But she was backstage the whole time.

So those happy little scenes of Edelgard and Dimitri holding hands and making cute little sibling jokes- that’s all Dimitri. Just a dream of his. And though they draw her likeness, they copy her mannerisms, they try to depict her laughing and smiling, there is simply nothing of Edelgard there. It’s just a picturesque ideal, haunted by the ghost of a girl that he never once understood.