#I do want to say I do not think Edelgard is nearly as villainous as Louis but they definitely have similarities

[puppet-king-louisa]

So the similarities between Edelgard and Louis are interesting but wow actually Zorba and Hubert I’d argue are also super similar.

Fiercely loyal, magical, edgy appearance-putting their very lives on the line for their ambitions, working in the shadows for their liege-

[teaveetamer]

It's like. The tone of Raxie's sporking is completely different. He's often directly mocking characters or the author or the vague concept of edelcrits, rarely talking about writing or storytelling decisions. He's kinda just repeating what's in the text, but mockingly. Like BWIIDT starts her whole thing by talking about the framing used in a conversation, and the ways it shifts and changes topics to absolve YKB of blame. That guy just jumps, nearly contextless into a fic that most people are unfamiliar with (due to it being long, focused on a poly ship, and not recommended as required reading), and immediately starts shutting all over it. It's "this thing sucks" not "here's is why and how this thing sucks".

But behind all that, it's just super uncalled for? Like, where does Reyna come into this conversation? It's obviously in response to BWIIDT's sporking, but BWIIDT started hers because so many people were calling that fic integral to understanding YKB. I really don't see people saying that about Reyna's fic, and I certainly don't see her saying that about her own fic. She's writing it for her own personal satisfaction, and she's very plain about that. It's rude to go into someone's yard and shit in their sandbox

These are different anons but I am combining these. This is the last I want to say about this situation in particular.

To the second anon: yes this is actually very typical behavior for him. BWIIDT actually recommended a bunch of fics a while back and he went and left the authors extremely nasty, snide comments. Literally just because she recommended them. It does not surprise me at all that he would stalk the "villain Edelgard" tag looking for material. I mean that's what he does on Tumblr, I don't see why it woul dbe different on AO3.

I think it really speaks to the very warped mindset a lot of people who still engage in 3H discourse have.

Like they genuinely go into a 3H discussion thinking it's personal. When they're insulted by something it's deeply personal and they assume everyone else must be just as insulted by it. They cannot fathom that people out there do not take the anime chess game as seriously as they do. And they think that the only solution to their hurt is an eye for an eye, to make "the enemy" hurt as bad as they do.

And I think that's the thing this guy just doesn't get about why he keeps getting called out.

I don't continue to talk about what's going on with him because I want to participate in 3H discourse or because I'm mad about video game opinions or whatever he likes to claim whenever he gets called out. I don't care about his 3H opinions. I don't think I've ever even read any of them.

I only bring him up because he has demonstrated, repeatedly, that when he's left to his own devices he is destructive to himself, to the people he targets, and to the FE community as a whole. And, sadly, the only reason he has ever been relevant and the only reason he will ever be relevant is because he hurts others, and instead of reflecting on that he takes glee in it. He justifies it. He enjoys it. He, a 35 year old man, is proud that this is what he's known for. Because he'd rather be known for being a destructive, damaging person than never be known at all. And that says more about him than he wants to admit.

[raxistaicho]

Darkness of the Unknown Goalposts Part II

Don’t worry, we won’t be dealing with Fantasy Invader for long this time :p

No, Shez is heavily implied to be an Agarthan vessel for Arval that somehow didn’t take properly. Essentially they’re the would-be Volkhard to Arval’s Thales. Shez isn’t even amnesiac: Arval is!

Nope, but Edelgard’s haters here really want this one to be true since it somehow means Byleth is an ill-fit for Crimson Flower. I’ve seen them try to argue Edelgard should kill Byleth at the end to fulfill her supposed anti-Nabatean racism.

It paid off with the death of their leader??? That’s a pretty weird missing steps plan, I must say.

Right, because daytime is good in Three Houses and daytime is bad in Three Hopes. Why? Because they tried to argue before Hopes came out that Crimson Flower being the only route that ends at night means it’s a bad ending for Fodlan, so when Scarlet Blaze became the only route that ends during broad daylight, Fantasy Invader and his ilk had to rapidly move the goalposts.

How did the Agarthans lose any harder in Azure Gleam than they did in Scarlet Blaze? They lost commanders just the same. Is it because Rhea’s still alive in Azure Gleam? It’s so strange how FI thinks killing her was Thales’s only goal.

Oh, and about Claude’s route ending at dawn, and Dimitri’s at night:

No, and no again.

No.

...No.

So A, villains are not necessarily evil, nor are they necessarily wrong. But Edelcrits do enjoy their black and white thinking.

And B, if the devs ever did just outright say they envisioned Edelgard as an evil villain, it wouldn’t mean she actually is one, it would only mean that the devs are as bad at writing as Edelcrits have spent nearly four years screaming they are. They did not write an evil individual when they wrote Edelgard, nor did they write someone who was wrong in that Fodlan needed to change, whatever her detractors like to scream.

Also, notice how frustrated FI sounds? He seems almost personally offended about Edelgard.

[kyogre-blue]

CF, let's go!

Immediately more amusing than SS by virtue of the fact that I care about the enemy units. Yes, Rhea looks so cool, Flayn is so cool, Catherine yeeeeeah. Very nice, I'm very happy.

Jokes aside, CF is looking very interesting from the perspective of speculating about 3H's production process.

From what I recall of the interviews, it seems they added CF comparatively late, due to simping reasons. That's interesting in itself, because Edelgard was given a lot of focus in development, given stuff like the early drafts of her also being able to Divine Pulse. But I guess it was only later in that they realized that, yeah, giving her a route would be cool and probably the most unique thing they could do.

Anyway, given its weird development, CF has a lot of strangeness about it. It's the shortest route by a good margin (VW and AM have 10 chapter each, SS has 9 due to Gronder being cut, but CF has only 6). There is only one actually unique map, I believe (Tailtean), but the chapters are reshuffled in completely different order from VW-SS-AM having basically the exact same progression. At the same time, is a very obvious lack of pre-rendered cutscenes and even in-engine scenes to some extent.

So the impression I get is that it was added late, so they couldn't produce certain assets like cutscenes or more than six chapters, but at the same time, they had a lot more passion for it, since they created a unique progression and honestly Edelgard has been emoting more in one scene than the entire Academy phase.

My dudes.... perhaps you should have started from the villain route and just gone full in, instead of the limp-wristed SS stuff, which supposedly was written first out of everything.

Live blogging notes:

I like how Edelgard is in her school uniform during the pre-battle scene in the Holy Tomb, but is then in the Flame Emperor outfit post-battle. Girl took the time to change, I see. It's not really a huge deal, but it's so lacking in attention to detail, sigh.

Man, furious antagonist Rhea is so cool. Very nice.

The Immaculate One is just a still here, where it was always a cinematic in the other routes.

"The monsters that have controlled Fodlan in secret for far too long" Edelgard again attributing things the Agarthans have done to the Nabateans.

We book it. Only respect for Rhea.

Hum... all the BE students escape with us to one of the Imperial army's provisional camps. Except Flayn, obviously. The students give a mix of reasons why they're siding with Edelgard, and they're fine. Kinda mild, but whatever. The music really gets me. Cute bubbly track while everyone is like "well, I wasn't thinking and just ran" or "I have political reasons" and then it switches to Edelgard's imperial march theme, and man. It's really something.

Yeah, Edelgard's anti-Church pitch is kinda... lol. Given that her own henchmen was like "steal all the bones! desecrate those graves! kill everyone!"

"[The Church's] control over the lords of the Kingdom and the Alliance is nearly absolute" L M A O

This is hilarious. Admittedly already more fun than SS.

Edelgard admits to being well aware of how much chaos and destruction she is bringing about based on just her own will. She knows she is the cause of countless deaths. But she still says she wants to bring down the church.

Except, of course, the Church hasn't done anything to her lol Edelgard's manifesto will expose "the foul practices of the nobles from the Kingdom and Alliance" like what tho

Byleth is going to lead a special "Black Eagle Strike Force"

oh ho.... we're exploring a non-monastery area! very nice

Quickly noting: We skip the entire last month of Academy Phase, going from 2/29 for the Holy Tomb directly to 3/30 for the pre-assault camp.

Edelgard B: takes place in her monastery bedroom, which is funny at this juncture. She talks about how she'd like a day to just idle away and eat sweets, and also how without Byleth she would have become a harsh leader with a heart of ice (ok, sure) and how everyone else always treated her as an untouchable princess or emperor, didn't look her in the eye, etc. Ferdinand does not exist, I guess. It's very staple as a concept, but the details aren't really in place for this. At best, you can say this hinges more on her own perceptions -- she never respected anyone else until Byleth enough to let them approach her as anything except pawns and vassals. Self-imposed trials and all that.

Roundup of the kids: Ingrid wants to try to persuade her father to join Edelgard but thinks he probably won't, Caspar's father is leading the "western units" and he'd have had to fight him if he stayed at the monastery, Linhardt calls out that the biggest nobles in the empire stripped Edie's dad of his powers but are now supporting her to smoothly take the throne (weird!), Ferdie acknowledges that his father is greedy and arrogant but feels that he did a lot of work for the empire only to now be disgraced (stripped of his rank and under house arrest), Bernie has less thoughts in her head than Caspar, Felix has like two lines lol, Leonie is just directly with Byleth and no one else, Ashe emphasizes that he can't trust the Church after Lonato and Christophe, Sylvain is kind of mess, thinking of his father, Dimitri, how he might die in the fighting, etc.

Hubert says it's not up to Edelgard to bring the students to our cause, which is... kinda wild. Why is it not up to her. Based on the rest of the dialogue, he means the recruited students from other houses, but uuuh given 3H quality, I expect he says this even if you haven't recruited, and also the phrasing is very vague to begin with.

Garreg Mach has never been attacked, so no one really knows how well it can stand against assault. Edelgard is confident in our power "from a mathematical standpoint."

Ladislava leads Edelgard's personal guard. There's also Randolph von Bergliez. His mother married into Caspar's family but this was after his birth. Unclear if this means he's from a previous relationship of hers, or if he wasn't legitimized despite being from a Bergliez fling. That explains one random battle line I got from him when attacking as Caspar on SS.

There's a couple stray comments from NPCs about Rhea turning into a beast (which happened down in the Holy Tomb where only a few people were, so... curious an NPC knows) and about not entirely believing Edelgard but supporting her for now.

Overall battle plan for the assault: Edelgard (+Byleth) leads an elite force that strikes as close to the monastery as possible, planning to draw attention of the elite Knights and Rhea's ire. Meanwhile, the main forces that marched in from the capital will surround and "annihilate" the remaining areas.

Another still of the Immaculate One after the battle, no CG. The entire scene is just one still, headshots of models talking and some filter to show that "the castle" is "crumbling." And that's it, wow.

Without Rhea fighting Thales and trying to save Byleth, she's well enough to flee to Faerghus. Nice!

Dimitri is King <3

Claude "strategically stirs up conflict between Leicester lords in an effort to maintain neutrality" lmao

Sothis is cool with you even after the Edelgard simping shenanigans, I guess.

The Imperial Army is holding the monastery, which is different from the other routes.

Edelgard emotes?? At the reunion with Byleth. WOW

Another still, no cutscene.

Edelgard's dialogue here... has almost the exact same beats as Claude's which is a bit funny.

Recap again that Dimitri is King and supporting the Church, Claude is being neutral, though Edelgard makes it clear this is a negative. His leadership "has thrown the Alliance into chaos."

OK, so Edelgard directly says we're going to eliminate the Church, the Kingdom and the Allaince. We're out to get them all, and the first target is Claude because Riegan has been standing against the Empire. To secure a route for imperial troops into the Alliance, we'll take out the big bridge first. At the same time, we'll take out Judith and since her territory is on the border with the Kingdom, getting her out of the way will be useful too.

[randomnameless]

Edelstans: You guys shouldn't live in an echo chamber.

Also Edelstans: Let's create r/Edelgard to talk solely about her and how she's the hero and how everyone is mean towards her and should be vaniquished enlightened.

Not to mention, it's fandom, not politics. People should have a right to have a safe space, especially when people come to fandom to have fun or have frivilous discussions, not to be shamed, bullied or harassed for not liking a racist pro-genocide imperialist or thinking she's the villain, something the devs agree on.

Fandom is supposed to be fun!

what do you mean you can't be frivolous on redshit, i made a monsterfucking comment about fomortiis and it nearly has 69 upvotes

I immediately thought about redshit, because damn if that isn't an echo chamber - dissident opinions are thrown to the trashcan, with brigading and all.

And I'm like "y so serious" but even on other redshits, people really take their "internet debates" way too seriously.

I'm not saying you can't have serious discussions on fandom related stuff, but there's no need to be an asshat, to shame, bully or harass people.

I'm more and more convinced some people don't want to talk and engage about the media that created the fandom they claim to be part of, but they just want to go full "PvP" and, idk, work on their debating skills (without understanding what "debating" or "discussing" means) and feel good for "pwning haterz".

That's so early 2000s.

[emblemxeno]

I've seen this same thing said before but I gotta say: it is very telling that when Clyde imperialistically invades other lands to expand his influence, does morally bankrupt things to try to kill Rhea (the act of which has no solid motives for doing), and stays an incurious and ignorant asshole who only gives empty words of grief over all the people he unnecessarily gets killed, all while victim-blaming the people he gets killed (Faerghus chivalry bad!! Not me killing everyone!!), this game's rendition of him is called the "bad end route" or the "villain route" of his character by (most of) the fandom, and he's criticized by other characters on his side in any capacity...

...but when Ladelgard had done literally all of those things and worse in 3H, she was a revolutionary and "that's what happens in war" and she had to do all of those things and she's totally not the villain at all (she's actually the HERO!) and literally no character that sides with her as anything bad to say about any of her actions and etc. etc..

I know it's been said that Ladelgard only gets away with the shit she does because Pretty Girl Can Do No Wrong, but holy shit I don't think I've ever seen it so blatantly proven right lmao like damn.

Meanwhile in the mess that's Fodlan, Billy wants to mush the house leaders faces together. Just please Ladle, make love not war- FUCK!!! (Needed to rant, sorry. FE game, please come out)

It is extremely telling yeah. Like, I've seen some pushback against painting Claude as a villain in Hopes (which he unfortunately is cuz they fucked up his writing), but not nearly as much for Edelgard, it's nuts.

[dmclemblems]

oh and just saying, if anyone thinks Edelgard is the only uwu sad backstory villain I have issues with that’s super popular, she’s... really not lol.

but then, how dare I hate the guy who 110% on his own accord murdered a father and threatened to murder his innocent daughter who isn’t capable of even fighting and can only heal small wounds, and then threatened the father’s son too (on his own accord confirmed by second to final villain of the subsequent game)!

also he threatened said daughter twice in the same game who he had zero involvement with so there’s that

he was also involved in the murder of a whole tribe’s men (almost all of them, as I quote the remainder of men being “few in number”.

oh yeah and he nearly killed my cat. twice. thrice optionally. that shit didn’t just stop at one game. no he rly dragged that shit out and made it over two games.

no, i don’t feel bad that you were uwu bullied by the senate in fact i think you actually deserved it for all the people you hurt entirely on your own accord like you can’t blame your boyfriend for that stuff buddy

YOU MIGHT THINK I WILL GET OVER EDELGARD SOMEDAY but it is 2022 and i have not forgiven any of the above so... yeah I don’t justify doing awful horrendous things just bc you had a sad backstory that just ain’t my type

you can like whatever character you want they just may not be for me

[butwhatifidothis]

I know i'ts Reddit but the Three Houses sub is so annoying. You can call Rhea a villain - you can call DIMITRI a villain, and I've seen one of the mods saying Dimitri is a villain on every route including his own - but call You Know Who a villain and everyone loses their minds and will give you a lecture on how she is a "heroic antagonist" in 3 routes and the true hero of the game in the 4th. They all erally think they're being insightful is the thing. And this isnt even r/Edelgard

Well, seeing that I do believe the "Edelgard has C-PTSD" take was originally on the general Three Houses sub (if I remember right - either way I don't think it's on r/Edelgard. Edit: it was the main Fire Emblem subreddit, thanks nilsh lol), that's not the most surprising thing to hear. The prevalence to which people vehemently deny that Edelgard could possibly be a villain is very widespread, and since it's such a blatantly wrong take you get similarly blatantly wrong takes about the other (actually heroic) characters to go along with it.

Rhea's the easiest target, since she's the only actually, genuinely morally gray person of the four characters talked about (the other of course being Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude). She makes decisions that have no right or wrong answers and that end up having large, long-lasting effects on Fodlan. Even with that, however, there are just some things that she couldn't do anything about. Crests were always going to be considered a sign of superiority by humans, for example - they'd already genocided a race for them and had them around for what, a century before Rhea had any power to speak of? Correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers, but in any case it was long enough for multiple generations to come about who also had Crests. Nothing Rhea could have done would have stopped that. However, people look at her actions, hear Edelgard's words shitting on Rhea, ignore the red herring surrounding Rhea, and believe her to be the villain of 3H. Some even make the Agarthans her victims, because "there must have been a reason for the Agarthans to hate Nabateans."

Dimitri also makes incredibly questionable decisions. In post timeskip (in non-CF routes) the choices he makes are oftentimes something that can easily garner a side-eye, to put it nicely. But the thing people ignore about him (and also about Rhea, let's be honest) is that he is making these choices under very mentally unstable conditions. It isn't him not caring about others, it's him prioritizing the voices that he hears - voices that he genuinely believes to be his father, his best friend, his step-mother, and countless innocents - that tell him to behave a certain way, do certain actions, achieve certain goals. Ignoring these voices - especially when, off of CF, they are likely the only "people" he's consistently heard "talk to him" for four to five years - just isn't immediately possible for Dimitri. And then he makes an effort to better himself and shows that while the bad is still a part of who he is, that doesn’t make him bad, just human - he’s in fact one of the most caring people of the cast. But people either completely ignore that and say that he's an evil uncaring villain who just wants to do what he wants, or, erm... the other option. Which is arguably far worse and is inarguably very ableist.

All bias aside, Claude is the morally cleanest of the four characters. He just deadass doesn't do questionable actions that are nearly on the level as the others. Not to say that he doesn't make questionable decisions, but to butcher up a post I made a while ago: Rhea, Dimitri, and Edelgard have killed someone (for a variety of reasons) while Claude is stealing a Pepsi from a mom-n-pop. But he's initially set up as the untrustworthy one - even I thought that he was gonna be the big bad at first (it's why I chose him lmao). His motivations are shrouded in a lot of mystery and obfuscation, he has an air of confidence about him that is noticeably different from the other characters, he intentionally makes himself look untrustworthy - it's easy to see him as someone who is revealed to be the villain. So when he isn't - when his big bad secret is that he's a mixed kid who wants everyone to hold hands - people don't believe it, the same as when they ignore Rhea's red herrings. Claude is set up in one way, and it is impossible for him to deviate from that way, so he must actually be the villain - along with Dimitri and the darkness in him, along with Rhea and her lies, his fakeness is all that's there to his character.

These three are archetypes of characters that generally are villains. Rhea's kind of character is usually Church Bad, Dragon Bad, Human Good - it's a shock that she's actually a pretty damn good person, especially all things considered (my sis says that she would have just eradicated humans were she in Rhea's position, and I doubt that's an uncommon opinion to have). Dimitri's kind of character is Once Good Now Bad Because Mental Illness Bad - it's a shock that he's able to have the less appealing symptoms of an already stigmatized mental illness and still be shown to be an incredibly good person (this can also apply to Rhea some). Claude's kind of character is usually Evil Halfer Infiltrating The "Good" Side For Evil - it's a shock that he proves again and again to be a really good person (bruh, you would not believe how often this is not the case, especially in fantasy - half-raced NPC's are revealed to eeevil spies that used their half-race appearance to infiltrate the "good" side more often than you might think). Them being good people are subversions of the types of characters they are - and in turn, Edelgard being a villain is a subversion of the type of character her character normally is.

Take down the corrupt church! Fight for people's freedom! Destroy oppression! Get rid of nobility! Cute anime waifu! These are all things that are extremely typical of the hero of a story, especially one like FE. Edelgard is saying all of the right things - when it comes to end goals, in any case. She's confident, she looks like she knows what she's doing, but she also has the special soft side for just the player character where she's cute but oh so lonely. The game subtly pushes you to favor Edelgard - Adrestia is always the first option to chose between it, Faerghus, and Leicester, the loading screens are of BE, she has the most immediately striking design of the three lords.

She has most all of the set up for being the hero of the story... and then she isn't. She's actually the villain. She wants to get rid of the church, in extremely large part, because it's run by a race she hates. She fights for strong people, not for "weak" people who will fall behind in her society of independence (and only humans fall under the umbrella of "people" to her). She "destroys" "oppression" by replacing it with her own. She gets rid of nobility that she doesn't like, and just replaces the people in charge with people she knows - the system's still there, just with new faces. She's the cute anime waifu until Byleth is done being useful to her, then she breaks off the connection and leaves them to fend for themselves (unless they specifically marry her).

For all of 3H's faults, it is a subversive game in these regards, and in ways that can be arguably legitimately commendable. The Church is actually good, the mentally ill aren't "too far gone," the mixed race outsider isn't secretly evil, and the cute girly is the big bad - none of these are really things you see that often, especially all at once. So, the people who liked what Edelgard was saying, grew to like her, wanted to side with her, they see that they've been bamboozled into following a villainous cause of conquest, violence, racism, and imperialism, a cause that doesn't care for the weak, or for the religious, or for the noncompliant, and they plum don't like it. So they fall back on the tired old tropes of fantasy (to be clear these are found elsewhere but they're pretty damn prevalent in this particular genre) - the Church is bad, the mentally ill are "too far gone," the mixed race outsider is an infiltrator for the "bad" side, and the one saying all the right hero stuff is the right hero of the story. All the context for 3H is ignored because they don't like the conclusions it comes to - that Rhea, Dimitri, and Claude are all good people, and Edelgard just isn't. It just so happens that Edelgard is very popular, so this isn't going to stay in just one corner of 3H's fandom

[four-loose-screws]

An Interview with Mr. Toshiyuki Toyonaga about Fire Emblem (Claude‘s Japanese VA), Pg. 7

Chatting As Just a Player

As a player, how did you play “Three Houses?”

Toyonaga     When I started, I planned to complete two playthroughs, and on my first playthrough, I didn’t look up anything at all.  Because of that, I didn’t know things like how to scout the characters from the other classes. Someone told me “It seems like you’re missing something,” and I thought, then maybe I have to raise their support level? But even when I did that, I still couldn’t recruit them, so next I thought that maybe it had to do with stats, and did a lot of trial and error. I only realized that it might have something to do with weapon proficiency (skill levels) and support levels during the latter half of the Academy Phase. Because of all of that, I was filled with wishes that I had recruited this character and that character as I was thrust into the War Phase, and I was filled with regret during the three-way battle. (Chapter 17 and the battle at Gronder)

Because you encountered the other students as enemies, right?

Toyonaga     Yes. I remember thinking “Curse you!!” when Bernadetta attacked from the ballista because I didn’t scout her. Laughs. Having to fight the characters that I wanted to come to my side was really painful as I cleared the map. And so, that was how I played the game. I remember thinking it was a particularly pure playthrough. I also remember thinking “There’s so, so many of these!” as I collected the fallen items from around the monastery. When I think of the lost items, I remember stuff like the fish. Laughs. Fishing was fun too, and so was growing things in the greenhouse… though I forgot about it a lot, so there were some plants that didn’t grow. As you can guess, I ended up harvesting what I planted before the time skip five years later, after returning to Garreg Mach.

Which difficulty level did you choose?

Toyonaga     On my first playthrough, I chose normal classic. I play with the thought process that has followed me throughout the series, that I can’t let anyone die, so I have never once chosen casual mode.

We’d like to ask you about what impressions you were left with when you played normal mode.

Toyonaga     I thought that even normal was hard too! I progressed through the game without utilizing the free maps much at all. I only leveled up by completing the main maps and paralogues, so the War Phase was tough. There were many times where Claude and Byleth did nearly all of the work. I also gave Lysithea Lorenz’s Thyrsus Staff, giving her four range, so there were also a lot of situations where her magic did a lot of work even from far away. There ended up being a huge gap between Leonie and Ignatz’s levels and everyone else’s, and felt sorry about that as I continued through the game.

Did you make Lorenz a physical or a magic unit?

Toyonaga     I made Lorenz a Dark Knight. He was closer to a dark mage cavalry unit. Also, I remember thinking it was kinda cool that Grappler Raphael could attack four times in a row as he punched his enemies with all his might. Marianne fulfilled the role of the healer, and Hilda swung around her axe with great force. However, my Hilda’s defense didn’t grow very much, so I kept it in my mind that she couldn’t go out on many risky missions as I played.

What scenes did you like, or what scenes left an impression on you?

Toyonaga     I liked the mystery of the scenes where Byleth and Sothis spoke in the place that resembled a throne room, that was a sort of spirit world. I also really liked Seteth and Flayn’s conversations.

They’re all characters that are all similar to each other in some way!

Toyonaga     They are. When their allies learned of Flayn and Seteth’s true identities and relationship, a lot happened, and their allies changed a bit… Aside from that, because Claude is an archer, I also really liked being able to hear his conversations with Shamir, as they are both archers. It felt like she was a big sister.

The developers said that this game’s storytelling, and the creation of how noble society functions, among other aspects, were developed with Genealogy of the Holy War in mind, so what sort of impression did that have on you, as someone who has many memories of that game?

Toyonaga     There were many times where I thought that might be the case, that Three Houses was based on Genealogy, but as we talk about it now, I sort of think that might be why it was so easy for me to become fond of Three Houses… They both feature a type of war that doesn't really feel rewarding at all… And questions like “Who’s really behind all of this?” and “Is fighting this fight really what’s right?”, that deepened Genealogy's story, were things I also felt really strongly during the War Phase of Three Houses.

We agree! And you can even play the villain’s side of the story.

Toyonaga     About that, I thought that Hubert and Dedue’s roles were so unfair! They are considered the closest confidants to Edelgard and Dimitri respectively, existing as their right-hand men. The Golden Deer don’t have anyone in that position… Lorenz would never be someone like that.

Both     Laugh.

Toyonaga     Lorenz finally comes to support Claude during the War Phase, but the way that Hubert and Dedue are so devoted because they are right-hand men is really moving, and as men, it’s so cool! Oh, I mean “man,” as in “manly man...”* I could talk on and on like this for five minutes about just one character. Laughs.

(above) Hubert and Dedue both serve their lord without any concern for their own well-being. Also, Mr. Toyonaga also told us that he didn’t choose a different class from the Golden Deer even for his second playthrough, so we showed him scenes like how manly (!?) Hilda acts when she faces Claude as an enemy.

It feels weird to hear your own voice

Did your impression of Claude change after recording?

Toyonaga     My original impression of Claude was that his core personality cannot be changed, but aside from that, he gives off the mood that he has the flexibility to accept the opinions of many types of people… That sort of image. That part didn’t change the entire time we were recording, so after recording, I don’t think my thoughts changed then, either. I just thought from time to time that he says some pretty snobby things. Laughs.

He does. Laughs.

Toyonaga     He talks like that to the professors, to his fellow students in his class… ‘He… He can say nasty things like that?!’ I thought. But I think it’s still a good part about him, or not bad, at least.

So your image for performing Claude’s role was consistent from beginning to end. Does that mean that you didn’t have to do many retakes?

Toyonaga     We hardly did any retakes. I corrected myself on my own when I mispronounced town names that were difficult to say, and things like that, but aside from those physically difficult to perform lines, I don’t feel that we did that many retakes.

So how did you feel as a player when you heard Claude’s voice?

Toyonaga     This much is obvious, but when I first heard my own performance in a Fire Emblem game, it felt weird. And on top of that, I don’t know why exactly, but I wanted Claude to get married and have a paired ending, and I chose Professor Byleth. So I ended up confessing to myself! Laughs.

Laughs.

Toyonaga     I enjoyed the game in a way that only I could. But it was really weird the entire time. Hm, how do I put it… I wanted to express myself in the world of Fire Emblem, and wanted to confirm that I did a great job of that, so I listened really carefully to my own performance as I played the game.

That’s the point you discussed before, that you wanted a portrayal that made the game feel like it really happened in history, right?

Toyonaga     Yes. Was I able to express what I wanted how I wanted? I played the game with that thought in my head. ...And lastly, this is completely unrelated, but as I played the game, I was also thinking “Ingrid sure is really cute!” the entire time. Laughs.

[electricprincess96]

Shfjgkgk honestly edelstans are Edelgard’s own worst enemies... I played AM first, then VW, then CF followed by SS, and AM Edelgard was my favorite villain! She was undeniably THE villain, didn’t seem bloodthirsty for the sake of blood like many bosses but was unapologetically ambitious - which, you know, I can respect in a villain character, especially as a warmongering bi woman cuz,,, lmao when do we get that?? A canon bi character that isn’t just an uwu sweet flower of a woman?? Sign Me Up. (I mean, I don’t like Edelgard after CF because I found her to be a liar and a hypocrite, but that’s just my personal opinion!) BUT Edelstans being... Like That, you know...... fhfjgkkg they’re just making people hate Edelgard more than the usual sort of “oh I didn’t like this character’s actions in the game so they’re not my favorite” shtick you usually see! Which... h. *H*. 😔 rip to everyone who’s unable to enjoy Edelgard thanks to the edelstans, cuz honestly they make me want to spite-hate her!

Honestly take the edelstans out the equation and I'd be like hard neutral of Edelgard, I'd still think her writing sucks but a lot of that I'd be able to throw onto being a problem with Byleth that unfortunately negatively impacted Edelgard's writing because a character who was conceptualised to be the rival character was then forced into the romantic interest role and it doesn't work.

BUT because I'm forever having to disprove "no the teacher theory is not canon and makes absolutely zero sense", "yes Edelgard does hate the Nabateans for the sole reason they are Dragons", "yes she tries to assassinate Dimitri and Claude at the start of the game, she just didn't 5D Chess it well enough and nearly offed herself cause she's a dumbass".

Like... its ok to like a villain (fuck one of my favourite characters from Naruto is Madara, Vergil is my favourite DMC character, these are most certainly not the heroes of the story) but please stop saying everyone who doesn't like her is sexist or homophobic or dumb or shit like that because the more you cry about how your fictional waifu gets picked on the more people are actually gonna start disliking her based purely on her fans behaviour. Like guys she's not real, she can't thank you for defending her honour.

[kendrixtermina]

Like some ppl got the impression that Edelgard has no memory of her encounter with Dimitri - but she absolutely does,  she does mention “that noble from the kingdom” in her godess tower sequence. She simply never made the connection between the little 12 year old kid she met and the young man she later met at the academy. In AM she doesn’t figure that out til the parlay scene, in CF she has it put together by the time they fight judging by her reaction but of course she’d have more ressources when she’s winning. 

  Something that tends to be lost in most takes in the game is how utterly and extremly one-sided Dimitri’s fixation on Edelgard is. 

It’s not even about her - she’s a stranger who superficially resembles his presumed-dead mother figure. He has no family left except his jerk uncle so he gets super fixated on this idea that she’s his “sister” but that’s actually preposterous. 

They share no blood, they weren’t raised together or by any overlapping set of people, Edelgard never even knew her bio mom - they briefly knew each other as kids but even then that wasn’t a family-like interaction heck they had a bit of a puppy crush going. When they were clueless little children a far cry from their ‘finished’ personalities as young adults. Dimitri didn’t learn that she’s Anselma’s bio-daughter until years later when Arundel set about manipulating him. Whatever the extent of her actual culpability or how much she knew, she at least risked Dimitri and Lambert - The last he remembers of her is her leaving him behind in the flames. Is this someone he should be hung up on? It’s natural and understandeable that he is, she’s the only mother figure he remembers, but he’d have every right to be mad. 

Edelgard herself - especially young adult! Edelgard - is a person he knows nothing about, who is the exact kind of person he often says he cannot stand and has opposite beliefs in nearly everything from politics to how to deal with feelings, who never treats him as anything other than a rival and is actually somewhat off-put by him for all that she pities him.

In his route she comes up in several scenes, in hers he is barely mentioned; they simply have no relationship whatsoever. 

We know how Edelgard acts with people she likes, even when they become her enemies - Byleth, Lysithea, Constance, Petra etc. all of whom she laments fighting and tries to win over. Heck, she respects Claude as a worthy opponent though they don’t see eye to eye. Dimitri is just not on that list. 

Sure, she’s sad he died - it’s called not being a complete callous killer machine - after all she knew him, and he’s just an unwitting pawn as she sees it. He’s not a villain, but a tragic ignorant victim of Rhea and Arundel. When she was young and kidnapped by Arundel he was probably the one thing that made that bearable simply because he was there and not hostile. It says a lot about her that she readily admits this during the parlay scene and is fair to him even when they’re about to fight to the death the next day.

I’m not saying this to bash either of them - what I’m saying is that Dimitri’s fixation on her is a symptom of both his loneliness and despair, and his tendency to see things and people in idealized terms. It’s merely an extension of his character flaws, a challenge he has to overcome. 

He’s so fixated because he misses Anselma and the time when he hung out with her as a kid was his last good memory before his entire life went to crap and half the people he cared about got butchered before his very eyes. He’s making a person he briefly knew when they were like twelve into a symbol for this lost idyllic past that he would like to return to. She’s a replacement goldfish, a standin for someone else - Anselma was the one he had a relationship with. Anselma “betrayed” him. 

The tragedy here isn’t that they didn’t grow up being buddy-buddy, it’s that Dimitri was obsessed with her in the first place. it’s that Dimitri hasn’t made his peace with the loss of of his family. The fixation and the ensuing revenge obsession is merely an extension of that, another symptom. 

He has no idea who she even is, as a person,  until the moment he unmasks her in the holy tomb. That’s when he first meets the real Edelgard, and he immediately wishes he never did. 

That’s the problem with revenge sometimes that you make your release and catharsis completely dependent on wether some other person hears and acknowledges you when you screw them over, if you ca even archieve that. In a way it’s giving control to your enemy. I know from my own experience how hard it can be to just let go and get on with your own life because you want them to know they hurt you, to feel your pain - because what? Was ruining your life just ordinary tuesday to them?, but thing is, you can’t make someone understand who actively refuses to hear you or might not even have the capacity. 

A big part of healing is that you’ve got to stop expecting things from people who don’t have you on their priority list. 

And looking at it from Edelgard’s side... how much do any of you still think or feel for some crush or friend from when you where twelve? Unless you’re still friends as adults you probably don’t thiink so much about them and certainly wouldn’t derail your big life plans for them even if you’re grateful for the time you spent together and the role they played in your life at the time

[nicolewrites]

my heart, a spinning arrow

introspective thoughts led to this. i’m tired, but i need to write more claude. 

Rating: T Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Friendship Characters: Claude von Riegan & Byleth Eisner & Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg Words: 3,203

After the Battle at Gronder Field, Claude contemplates the path that has led here and the one that leads forward.

AO3

The fire in the Knight’s Hall is almost burnt to embers. Claude takes a drink from his flask and stares into the flickering orange glow. The flask is almost empty and he pauses, placing it down on the table in front of him as he leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. He stabs the poker into the fire, flipping the log and rejuvenating the fading flames. He places the power back down on the table in front of him and pushes his hands through his hair, exhaling slowly.

He’s wearing only a loose beige shirt and simple trousers. He had dropped his armour off with the smith after the battle and hasn’t returned to pick it up yet. He pulls his hands back and stares at the white scars on his wrists, palms, and fingertips. They seem to glow against the darkness of his skin.

Years of archery have given him rough calluses and more than a few of his scars are from simple mishandling of sharp arrows in battle. He still hasn’t rid his hands of their tremors completely even after years of watching his hand-fletched arrows sink into throats and arms and chests. He’s a master of finding the small gaps in armour, but he wishes he wasn’t.

This isn’t what he had intended when he had come to Fódlan. He had intended to bolster relationships with the Kingdom and the Empire and the Alliance using tricks and pretty words to knock down barriers and open the continent to the world. He had intended to strip away stereotypes and build a new, better world.

Now, instead, he has the blood of his old classmates on his hands.

Claude had hoped, futilely, that Dimitri might just stay dead after the Empire captured Fhirdiad. Of course, he could never be so lucky.

The chilling words Dimitri had shrieked a Gronder, a perfect pinnacle of a madman, still echo in Claude’s ears. Gronder had been kill or be killed and the way that Dimitri had advanced made that clear enough. He had advanced without mercy and cut down soldiers clothed in red and yellow without even flinching. Dimitri’s strength had been formidable and his army was relentless and Claude had known that he could not leave the Kingdom’s king to his own efforts.

It had taken four arrows to even slow Dimitri down and Claude knows, sitting in front of the fire now, that the only reason he’s still alive is because the rest of Dimitri’s classmates had not been as crazy as him.

Dimitri, wounded as he was, never made it to Edelgard before the Adrestian Emperor retreated. According to Hilda, he had certainly pursued her after the battle. Edelgard had at least been smart enough to retreat when she had been defeated, but Claude could not say the same for the King of Faerghus.

He still remembers the way that Edelgard had looked at him when he had flown over her, arrow knocked in Failnaught and aimed in her general direction. He had called her lovely and she had told him to leave.

Claude’s first shot had missed, but his second hadn’t. Only his practiced flight maneuvers had saved his life against her supernatural counter abilities. It had only taken two more shots, one imbued with the true power of his Relic, to send Edelgard on the retreat.

Claude had had the shot for the final blow, a perfect chink in her armour to bury his yellow-fletched arrow, but he couldn’t unsee Edelgard standing in the Cathedral during their time at the academy. She would stare angrily at the statue of Saint Seiros as if it was the cause of all of her problems. Claude doesn’t think she ever knew that he had followed her.

He understands her more than he wants to admit: her anger at the church, at the systems of Fodlan, even her methods to an extent.

In Almyra, conquest is the way of the world. Lords fight and kill for shreds of land and power and brothers and sisters turn on each other for the chance to rule. Claude understands war. It has shadowed him his whole life, but that does not mean that he agrees with Edelgard’s methods.

He does not agree with the fact that it means they must bear arms against people they had once considered friends. He does not agree with the fact that it means that it was him, not some Imperial soldier, who had put Dimitri out of his misery. He will take this secret to his grave if he has too.

Hilda knows because she saw him take the shot and she has covered for him. Hilda claims that it had been a sick twist of fate when Dimitri had pursued Edelgard that had brought the King of Faerghus to his unfortunate end. Her eyes study his face every time she repeats the lie.

Claude should have let him go and get cut down by the Imperial Army. Instead, in some twisted sense of pity and righteousness, it had been an arrow fired from Failnaught that found Dimitri’s throat and put an end to the mad prince. He sees it as a clean ending to an unfortunate life and a neat way to usher Fódlan to a new future.

That does not mean he does not regret it.

He had dropped Failnaught immediately after taking the shot, disgusted with himself, and only Hilda’s insistence that they draw back to the rest of the army had saved him from getting swarmed over by Imperial soldiers. She had carried the Relic almost all the way back to command for him when he had been unable to lay his hands on it.

The flames crack in front of him, drawing him back to the present, and Dimitri’s voice echoes in his head again. Claude wonders if Edelgard knows what he has done. He wonders if she would congratulate him or scorn him for his actions. She would have no right to do either, he reasons with himself.

Not with the way she had left Bernadetta and Petra to die.

Claude himself had never been particularly close to Bernadetta, but she was a quick and accurate shot, he had known that from archery competitions back at the academy. Unfortunately for Bernadetta, Edelgard had been content to leave her on the centre hill to draw fire. Raphael hadn’t even made it all the way to the centre hill before the Empire set it aflame.

Raphael had returned to base after the battle with a stony expression and a bloodied and burned body clutched in his arms. Leonie had helped him bury her and had reported to Claude later that her fatal injuries had come from the explosion, not any of the attacks from the Kingdom or Alliance.

Petra had been quick enough at least to dodge the explosion on the centre hill, but her evasion had placed her right in Claude’s path. His stomach twists and he digs his nails into his scalp as he recalls the shadow of his wyvern falling over the Brigid Princess.

She had taught him to climb trees five years ago and he had taught her to fly on a wyvern. She had not been afraid of him at that moment and it had only been the live or die instinct he had cultivated in himself since he was a child that had let him loose the arrow.

Petra had taken the blow and from him and Claude had had an opening to finish the job, but he had been unable to shoot again. He could only remember the laughs they had shared through his misadventures of falling out of trees and their honest discussion about nature and the nature of gods. She had pulled back, wounded and bleeding, with wild eyes filled with a fear that made him sick to his stomach even now.

Claude wants to yank his own hair out in his frustration. He has been trying to reduce the appearance of Almyrans as war-thirsty villains and he knows that having the princess of a foreign nation be afraid of him will not help with that fact when it comes time for him to claim the throne from his father. It will not help his Fódlan relations either for his friends to see him as the thoughtless killer he looked like.

Although, with the way this war keeps panning out, Claude sometimes wonders if he’ll have any friends left at all at the end of the war. The Golden Deer, once innocent and chaotic and fun, are splintering, shattered by the burdens of the heavy war they’ve been fighting for five years. Claude can see it in all of them: the bone-deep weariness that accompanies every swing of a weapon and every new scar earned.

His friends from the Kingdom are already gone. Gronder Field had seen to that. Annette, apparently, was lost in the five years of in-fighting between the Kingdom Loyalists and the Faerghus Dukedom. Ashe was burned in the fires of Ailell when he fell with House Rowe. Mercedes had fallen to Ignatz’s arrows at Gronder. Sylvain had buckled under the force of Lysithea’s magic. Felix had met his end by Leonie’s spear.

Claude had shot Ingrid out of the sky and left her for Hilda to finish off.

Dedue had vanished into the chaos of the battle, but Claude is not hopeful. One man, alone, who is anger-addled and revenge-filled does not stand a hope against the might of the Empire.

Claude lifts his head, dropping his hands to his lap and stares, dead-eyed at the flickering fire in front of him. The Kingdom will have died with Dimitri. If he fails now, stumbles at Edelgard’s doorstep, then the Alliance will follow the Kingdom down, as history has always dictated.

He drinks from his flask quickly enough that he nearly chokes on the burn of the liquor as he tosses it back. He has run the flask dry by now, drinking away the grief he tries to stave off with a well-timed joke or a sarcastic comment. He wonders if anyone sees through him.

Lorenz, maybe, at the worst of times, and Hilda, perhaps, at his best.

Claude has never been good at dealing with death. As a child, his mother told him story after story to desensitize him to the horrors of combat and the worlds that both of his ancestors originated from. It never worked. Instead, he found himself pitying both sides and grieving for people he had never met. His compassion had never been beaten out of him, as hard as some of his step-siblings may have tried.

Maybe that is why it hurts so much, even hours or days or weeks later, to know that old classmates have fallen and will fall. Maybe that’s why his hands are still sticky with Dimitri’s blood even though he had given the king a death that did not prolong his suffering.

He wants to kill Edelgard. He wants to bury an arrow in her heart and have her fall down dead and he wants the war to be over, but Claude is tired of fighting. He wants to find Rhea and ask her all the questions burning on his tongue, to know the truth of the Church of Seiros and the Relics and the Crest system and the eternally mysterious Professor who rose from the dead after five years of “sleeping”.

It’s as if he summons her, just by thinking of her. Her green hair, as faint as starlight, catches his eye from the corner of the hall where she stands, just inside the door as if she’s waiting for an invitation.

Claude leans back on the couch, trying to hide his weariness as he shoots her a smile. “Teach,” he says in greeting.

She steps closer. “Mind if I join you?”

“Depends on if you brought a drink,” he jokes.

He’s not serious, but the professor pulls her own flask from her belt and tosses it to him as she crosses the room. Claude fumbles, almost dropping it, but he calms his shaky hands by the time she reaches him and sinks into the couch next to him, staring into the fire in the same way that he had.

Claude unscrews the top on the flask and takes a swig. Her liquor is cheaper than his own and he resists the urge to wince as he drinks. He lowers the flask from his mouth and hands it off to her. She drinks easily, without even the twitch of her eyebrow. Claude barely catches the monogrammed ‘JE’ on the bottom of the flask while she drinks and he knows then why it is so easy for her.

“It’s strange to see you without your armour,” she comments quietly, staring at her hands where she clutches the flask.

He studies her face. As always, she is hard to read, but he can at least see the grief that is heavy in her expression. When they had met, she had been a blank slate. Now, he knows her well enough to see the edges of pain that she so desperately tries to conceal.

“It needs fixing. Figured there was no point in delaying when we need to start planning on how we’re going to hit Fort Merceus.”

“Tomorrow,” she says, cutting him off.

He blinks. “What?”

“We can start planning tomorrow,” she finishes. “I don’t want to think about fighting anymore tonight.”

“You know, Teach,” he says, “I never thought you’d be the one to tell me to stop working.”

She lifts her head, narrowing her eyes at him. “I drop by your room almost every day to tell you to get a reasonable amount of sleep.”

“And how much of that is completely hypocritical?” he counters easily.

She doesn’t rise to his jab and takes another drink from her father’s flask. They’re both silent for a moment as she swallows and slowly screws the squeaking cap back onto the top of the flask. She places it down on the table in front of them with a dull thud and picks up the fire poker. She pushes on one of the logs until it crumbles with a hiss and there’s a puff of smoke before the fire starts to fall apart, returning to embers.

“I should have killed her today,” the professor says without prompting.

Claude knows who she’s talking about. “I had the shot and I didn’t take it,” he confesses.

She looks at him, her green eyes glowing silver from the warm light of the fire. She looks almost ethereal in the orange glow. She is stunningly beautiful and always has been, but since her transformation after the Sealed Forest, there is something starkly otherworldly and unsettling about the way that she looks.

“I never would have asked you to,” she admits simply.

“Then don’t attempt to carry the burden of that by yourself,” he argues.

She shakes her head. “No, Claude, when we get to Enbarr, I will kill Edelgard myself.”

She draws the hunting dagger that is at her side at all times and flips it in her hand casually. The hilt is roughly bound in well-worn leather, but the blade is polished steel. She has carried the blade for as long as he has known her, but he has never once seen her use it.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

The three words are simple and chilling. Claude hesitates on his reply long enough that she sheaths her knife and drums her fingers over her leg like she is nervous. She does not look at him. He is unsure of how to tell her that he feels the same. That he felt the same when he killed Dimitri just hours earlier.

In the quiet moment that extends between them, there are so many things he wants to say to her. He wants to tell her about all of his doubts about the Church. He wants to confess his true upbringing. He wants to show her the faded healing scars on his hands and wrists and say which ones were his fault and which were the fault of others.

“Are you afraid of dying?” he asks instead.

“No,” she replies immediately. “At least, not usually.” She flexes the fingers of one hand and Claude swears that they sparkle with yellow light for a moment, but it is probably a trick of the lighting.

“I’m terrified of dying,” he admits. “There is so much left to be done and if I die, where does that leave any of this?”

She looks at him and he is taken aback by the warmth that lingers in her eyes. “I will not let you die.”

His lips twitch at the sentiment. It’s reassuring to hear from her, the woman who is a one-man army all on her own, but even she can’t stop what might happen in the coming days, especially with the plan that has been floating in his brain for several weeks.

“What would the goddess think of such words?” he asks, knowing full well that she knows he does not believe in the goddess like most of his former classmates do.

“I am inclined to believe I have the goddess on my side,” she says simply.

She is still looking at him and he does not doubt her. He never has.

“Alright then, Teach,” he says, nodding. “No dying for me.”

“Claude.”

She touches his wrist and his hand turns into her touch instinctively. Her thumb skitters over the skin on the underside of his wrist and up over the exposed part of his palm. She traces a bruise and a bump on his palm from a few bad draws on the field today and a knick on his thumb from the reigns of his wyvern.

She squeezes his hand and he feels her reassurance and her nervousness in the touch. This is not about the future of the nation: this is about the future of two young people who are just trying to survive.

“Byleth.”

He doesn’t often use her name, forgoing it for the sake of an affectionate and familiar nickname, but the moment calls for it. He tightens his own grip on her hand and nudges his knee against hers. He admires, for a moment, the dark of his skin against the fairness of hers and wonders what it would be like to hold her completely.

“We will be defined by this war as long as we are alive,” she points out, staring at their joined hands. “But we needn’t let it write the path to our future.”

“You lead,” he suggests. “I’ll follow.” When she frowns, he squeezes her hand. “I trust you.”

They don’t talk about Gronder Field or Fort Merceus or much of anything for the rest of the night, but when Byleth finally peels herself away to get some sleep, Claude feels the warmth of her hand linger in his and he can almost imagine a future filled with light instead of one darkened by war and memories of the dying screams of old friends.

It’s a reassuring thought.

[jtavington]

I'm having trouble sticking to any one 3H play through due to choice paralysis when it comes to house and who to recruit. So I thought I would try to articulate what cast I would include for each route if I were novelizing them and try to articulate for myself how I see each route. And just to be clear I'm not saying this is the right way to view any of this, just me thinking out loud. Also, I'm horribly biased in favor of CF and VW ;)

CF: if this route got anymore blatant about the power of love and friendship, it would be an 80s cartoon. Edelgard is our designated tragic villain who would be executed by even an impartial court in Fodlan. But Byleth cares for her student so much that she sees that there's more to her than her actions in part one. Edelgard rewards that faith a hundredfold and the villain becomes a hero while traditionally heroic figures become villains. The ending is like something out of a fairytale, with the woman who never cries finally weeping and her beloved teacher "coincidentally”being restored to life and humanity. It's Edelgard’s route that keeps the friends group together for five years and she who gets the climactic speech about friendship played completely straight without even using it as a distraction. This is the route where the Death Knight can heal and be reunited with his family. This is the route where, frankly, love wins. It's also the route of revolution, where those who have suffered under the system say that time is up for peaceful reform and the route that can be pretty bleak unless you’re willing to put in quite a bit of work.

So... My first rule would be not to break up any found family groups if they can be avoided. The second is to pick up those characters who have particularly suffered under the Crest system. Sylvain, Lysithea Mercedes. And they bring their close friends. So basically the entire recruitable Blue Lions, Lysithea, Alois, and the Wolves in their entirety. Childhood friends and family reunited and I can toss in favorite non-BE ships like Netfelix. Hanneman and Manuela also join to give El much-needed character development.

VW: if you forced me to pick a "true" route, this would be it. It's the route where you finally learn the truth about Seiros and Relics. Like CF, the old order is swept away, if more gently. Claude is an outcast everywhere and so is determined to create a world without outcasts. Existing institutions are subverted rather than destroyed. The people nobody wants, who Fodlan at large would dismiss as hated by the Goddess are the ones who destroyed the devil figure for good. It's a route where the other lords are undone by their own flaws, which is either tragic or justice depending on your point of view. Despite that, it's probably the most cheerful route.

I would include those characters from other routes who are outcasts in some way. Definitely those who are people of color. Petra, Cyril, Shamir. The entire Wolves. Also the scholars Hanneman and Linhardt. Maximum number of Saints encountered: check.

AM: I have a love-hate relationship with AM. The students themselves rival the Eagles as my favorite, as you can probably tell from twisting myself into knots to recruit all of them that I could on CF. But I hate the idea of magic blood and rightful kings, and a lot of the stuff I like about White Clouds was just dropped. So keep that in mind.

But I'm dealing with the route I have, and there’s still a lot to unpack. In some ways, this is CF’s opposite. Dimitri is far from disinterested in the state of the world, but his concerns are more personal than the other two. He wants to keep the social order in place and reform it, mostly by making sure good people are in charge. And since the cost of social disruption disproportionately falls on those least able to bear it, that's not nothing. And it works, more or less. Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix all accept their chosen roles and the world is better for it.

It's also, of course, a story of redemption. Dimitri looks too far gone to be saved, but the potential to be the Savior King is still within him. Recovery is possible for anyone, but they will have to work at it. And yet, there are some things that can't be changed. Arundel’s dying curse that either El or Dimitri will kill each other is fulfilled despite the fact that Dimitri loves her and his best efforts to prevent it. The best Mercedes can hope for is for Emile to die in her arms. Heck, even Dimitri's beloved stepmother who raised him is all but confirmed to have nearly got him killed. Love cannot overcome everything and the scars of the past will never be fully healed, but the world is still worth fighting for.

Caspar is recruited mostly to unlock his and Mercedes’ paralogue, but I’d also be inclined to make him kill Linhardt just to keep the doomed childhood friends theme going. Marianne as well for her depression improving and her supports with Dimitri. Catherine for her support with Ashe, which is a beautiful example of letting go of the past and forgiving even when it's hard. Ferdinand as the best of what the current system has to offer. And Dorothea to give another mentally scarred vet a break. Everybody but Balthus from the Wolves and he isn't out of the question.

Silver Snow: The only route where I was glad I was on antidepressants. Byleth fully embraces the role as Sothis’ second coming and boy do they pay for it. One thing that struck me was that several times they say that they want to run away or otherwise avoid fighting, other people tell them they can't, and those other people are right. Fate cannot be denied and that fate mostly involves people dying horribly and nations falling apart. You spend most of your time looking for Rhea, she finally sees you as your own person and regrets her actions, only to have it yanked away from you by her going mad. No one wants the final battle and yet it must be fought to music that’s a funeral dirge. There's the smallest possibility of light in the end of the tunnel in Rhea's surviving and truly becoming what she claimed to be, but you will really have to work at it.

The snarky part of me says that I shouldn't recruit anyone. If I'm so committed to destiny, I should take what the game gives me and like it. But that's unnecessarily grim and a pain to play. I would pick up Lysithea because Retribution is my favorite paralogue and really fits here. The faculty because why not and I insist on having one route where Seteth/Manuela is a thing. Constance and Yuri only from the Wolves because I won’t force Hapi to work with people she hates that much.

[raxistaicho]

All flags look the same!

Back to more Analyzer ;D

This is a claim he and Edelgard Critical in general makes pretty often. I searched through interviews myself (I had to because Analyzer never posts his sources for anything...) and the closest I found was:

And this doesn’t really mean what the Analyzer seems to think it means. Silver Snow was written first as the primary means to explore the world, but to say that just because one of the routes where you fight Edelgard was made before the others that it then means that’s the story the developers intended to represent the entire story is fallacious thinking.

The story buildup throughout White Clouds spends nearly all its time expressing why Fodlan is in a pretty shitty state and it all comes down to the Church of Seiros’s failures and Rhea’s lies. Fodlan being reunified and Rhea losing power, no matter which route she does it in, is always treated as a good thing.

Even Rhea agrees at the end of SS!

The worst Three Houses ever says of Edelgard in the routes where you fight her is that she had the right of it that Fodlan needs to change, but that her methods were too extreme. Claude and Dimitri only ever criticize her methods, not her intentions. The game never calls her a stupid little ignorant warmonger as the Analyzer does.

Yup, we all knew it was coming! LoStNiRvAnA!!! The very definition of somebody who knows nothing about Buddhism trying to analyze Buddhist symbolism. That line of argument was debunked years ago but EdelCrit isn’t exactly known for updating their talking points.

Now there’s a pretty meme, exquisite!

I assume the Analyzer is referring to this:

But as usual he never explains what he’s talking about. There’s various other designs, but they all seem to follow the same pattern.

And obviously the Silver Snow flag is:

I... don’t need to explain how the two flags look almost nothing alike, I hope?

Now if you want actual symbolism, the ending mural for Silver Snow is pretty clearly based off a painting of Pope Gregory returning the seat of the papacy from Versailles to Rome:

But obviously the Church of Seiros has nothing to do with Catholicism because not many Japanese people follow Catholicism today :)

Oh, shoot. Yeah, that’s a good one, can’t really argue with -

Sothis! Get off the throne, you gremlin, you’re ruining the symbolism!

As I said above, the lost Nirvana claim is outright nonsense, especially considering Sothis is still with Byleth, as revealed in their S support in Crimson Flower:

It’s only in Crimson Flower that Sothis is attached not to a crude object snaring Byleth’s heart, but to Byleth’s very soul. If anything, Byleth’s continued attachment to Sothis - the source of their supposed enlightenment - is only reinforced in Crimson Flower.

The point about Byleth getting called out comes from the Japanese version of Dimitri’s battle quote with Byleth at Tailltean;

Dimitri: Teacher. Why Edelgard…? You chose the path of the beast 

“Path of the beast” being a Buddhist term meaning Byleth is on the path to a lesser level in the cycle of reincarnation. So what is this? It’s the desperate ramblings of Byleth’s enemy, swearing that Byleth is damned and walking the road to hell. No different from Rhea’s constant shrieking of religion-laden threats at both Byleth and Edelgard.

And we already know from the scene in which he’s executed that, although Dimitri mostly speaks well and has both eyes, in reality he’s got more than one foot on the path to devolving into the boar at the end of Crimson Flower:

So he’s not exactly a great source from which to draw arguments.

The Analyzer then goes on to say that the devs called Edelgard a villain in one of the interviews, and I’ve hit that particular point more than enough times by now, I feel.

So what’d we learn today?

Uhh, the Analyzer is shit at analyzing Buddhist symbolism.

Happy New Years, folks!

[kyogre-blue]

My best guess about the Agartha thing is that it has some combination of boring explanations that are just... not intuitive enough and not satisfying enough to be easy to keep track of.

Agartha's fall is thousands of years ago, and the entire continent seems to have been rendered nearly uninhabitable in the process. So it's not surprising Rhea and Seteth don't think anyone from that period survived and just assume some other evil cult came to power in the interim to manipulate things from the shadows. There can, logically, be more than one evil conspiracy other millennia. And the old time Agarthans were just humans with technology. They must have modified themselves to be bone white and also shapeshifters in the millennia since then, so of course Rhea and Seteth wouldn't have known about this unless they'd caught one doing it in the time between. Etc, etc.

This isn't even like... surprising, but because the Agarthans are the biggest villains of the setting AND get so much focus in school phase, it feels weird to keep track of how little almost everyone involved knows about them until basically the second to last map of the game. And then we can't even talk about it because the story is over now, I guess.

I actually really wonder about the Enbarr timeline, because Edelgard says at one point that the entire concept of nobility was established 1200 years ago, which seems to suggest that it was made by... Seiros? So like, are we supposed to take this as humans of the pre-Nemesis was period just lived in small tribes with little civilization or government and then Nemesis did a genocide, so Seiros elevated her allies into a proper city and nation and class structure and oops this bites her in the ass a thousand years later...??

In CF, Aymr - Edel's weapon - reveals its secrets, you cannot repair it using Umbral Steel, like other relics, but you have to use Agarthium to repair it. It's a made in Agartha relic copy.

Oh, interesting. Well, logically, it should be the same as zombie Nemesis's creator sword copy, since he uh... has one. Somehow.

I know I joke a lot about Edel's beef against Rhea'n'Sothis, tbh, after playing CF the "their ears are pointy they're not like us" argument felt like the strongest, but I'd be curious to hear what you think about it when you'll tackle CF.

I don't even know what to think, tbh.

On the one hand, the writing is SO blatant about it that I find it hard to believe the writers didn't realize that Edelgard was attributing Agarthan sins to the Church, whether she did this intentionally or out of pure ignorance. They had to know, right? It's meant to be irony, right??

But on the other hand, I always remember how, when Claude finally talks about Church Bad to people other than Byleth, they immediately agree with him and it's not even slightly meant to read as him manipulating them. So it's not that he has a bad take, it's that the writers think he's right.

So I feel like they might actually want to sell Edelgard as being right about Church Bad too...? But Edelgard is SO blatantly evil... I don't even know. I hate it.

Ah yes, that cutscene. She lets her feelings for her teacher take over her cold and emperor persona one last time or... tries to sway Byleth to her side until the end ? Or the devs really wanted to hammer the "feel sad for her" to sell more goodies/alts in fe heroes?

Since Edelgard basically makes no effort to sway you to her side before declaring war or during or in the five year reunion, and it's fairly clear she never believed you'd side with her, I don't think she's attempting to get you on her side, at least. (Especially since lol you get this scene even in VW where you have no support ranks on her.)

Seems to be just a "don't you feel bad for her" play, yeah.

I don't see Hubert as going behind her back, but Hubert wanting to spite Thales even in death, to the point of telling us where to find him to kill him.

I have a really sus view of Hubert, so I 100% believe he'd go behind Edelgard's back if he thought there was reason to do so. Not to her detriment, his obsessive devotion to her is real, but I get the impression that he doesn't necessarily think all that much of her judgement in the micro.

It's just... something, that he will spite-help Byleth+Claude (whatever) and also Byleth+Seteth and Church (Edelgard's most hated creatures) but NOT Byleth+Dimitri....? Hubert hates Dimitri more than anyone else, I guess. Or are we supposed to read it as Hubert thinking that, without Thales, the Agarthans aren't a threat anymore?

The route stuff is badly handled, is what I'm saying.

Quickly dumping out the Enbarr notes, since I'm sure the Shambhala section will have a ton of infodumping to note.

I think the only difference from VW is that we run some weird plan where a lot of our troops sneak into Enbarr ahead of the rest of the army moving in. Because uuuuh I guess we're weaker than the united army with Leicester? Everything else is pretty much exactly the same, including Dedue's part and the Edelgard death cinematic.

tbh I think it actually ends up feeling even weaker here? I thought it would fit better, since this is the "you like Edelgard but can't agree with her" route, but since she appears so little and her writing is so bizarre and confused... It actually feels kinda worse, since her dialogue feels incredibly inconsistent.

I thought I'd have some more appreciation for Edelgard after this route, but uh. I don't. Hm.

Anyway, onto more interesting points, I am starting to get the impression that Rhea and Seteth don't actually know much about the Agarthans. I think they might not actually know that the mysterious "those who slither in the dark" are from Agartha (and that's why they have beef), and it's basically explicit that they don't know who helped Nemesis make the Sword.

Which isn't an issue, but it's hard to remember that they know so little in practice.

Liveblogging:

A priestess mentions that they lost contact with all church personnel in Enbarr when the war started.

A soldier mentions that some of our troops have already departed for Enbarr dressed as merchants and traveling performers. We have an entire plan to have small squads sneak toward the capital and link up with the main army. The Empire apparently thinks we have abandoned our plans to invade (after Merceus).

Sylvain didn't think he's live this long (in the war)... bby. He wants to strike down the empire for Dimtri...

Apparently, we think Rhea is in Enbarr because of a soldier from Merceus. I guess Judith only told us that the Empire captured her. I already forgor.

The pre-battle blurb also mentions the troops moving in secret and our surprise attack on Enbarr. I don't recall this from VW. We were already outnumbered there, so I guess here with just the Church and Judith's troops, we're even worse off.

Based on the map close up during the pre-battle exposition, it looks like Enbarr was built on the delta where a river forks into two, with both ranches leading into the sea on the west.

Oh, Dedue is here! AC lied to me :( (/jk)

The music for his entrance is uh... imo it's a bit too heroic, given that he's here because Dimitri ended up like that.

He came after Gronder field, so... two months ago, since there was Merceus in between but not anything else. He gives us info on the inside of the castle (layout, presumably) and tells us that Rhea is at the palace.

Edelgard's axe, Aymr, is described as "a Crest Stone weapon designed to Edelgard's specifications, allowing her to use Raging Storm."

Edelgard's class, Emperor, is "With unparalleled defense, Edelgard appears as an unstoppable force in the legendary armor of the Adrestian Emperor." Note that her armor is a boobplate. So like... did they modify it for her, or....

Edelgard is so confusing. Even to the last, she goes on about how determined she is to "free this world" from the "vile grasp" of the "false goddess and her minion." But like... Edelgard has NO basis for beef with Sothis or Rhea. It's so puzzling and empty.

Dialogue with Seteth: He tells Edelgard to return Rhea and release her grip on Fodlan. Edelgard says that if we strike her down, "they" will return. So she can't permit what we desire (????? what? like, you'd assume she means the Agarthans, but everything else points to her talking about the Nabateans). She also knows that Seteth is a child of the goddess and thinks he can't be permitted power over the people. This is SO wild.

Anyway, to get this dialogue, I let Seteth get the last hit. The Edelgard death cutscene makes equally little sense on this route, btw. Edelgard was going "fuck you guys, I didn't think you'd make it this far, but I don't care and I'm never giving up" in the battle, but now she's all "you must strike me down to move forward, I wanted to walk with you..." GIRL WHAT

Hubert going behind Edelgard's back to write us a letter where he's basically entrusting the future and Fodlan to us is like....... l m a o This was whatever on VW, but on a route where we are the Church and those lizards Edelgard hates so much... god.

Anyway, Seteth apparently didn't really believe the Agarthans were behind all this, or else even around at all. He's very shocked and unhappy about Hubert's letter.

OK, unlike VW, where Claude is there for the info dumps and Rhea holds at least some stuff back, here she has no reason to hide anything. And she says she does not know where or how Nemesis got the Sword of the Creator. They only guessed that someone must have given him this power and tried to investigate it, but they never found the answer. They only NOW surmise that it was the Agarthans. ...hang on, do they even know that "those who slither in the dark" are from Agartha....

Felix and Sylvain are together at the monastery, cute. Felix even calls Dimitri by name when talking about defeating the Empire and the Agarthans to let him rest in peace.

Catherine backstory: She was born in House Charon in Faerghus > was called Thunderstrike Cassandra > attempted Officers Academy, was saved by Rhea as a student > was implicated in "a plot to kill the king" (seems to be Duscur) > fled to the monastery since she felt it was safe > Rhea hired her > and had her execute Christophe when he tried to assassinate Rhea, though the charges given publicly were regarding Duscur.

Is that right?

Anyway, next time: Shambhala

[azebraslife]

TWSITD was bad for 3H’s narrative

Hopefully Three Houses’ DLCs will add some meat to TWSITD, but as it stands, I think their inclusion is overall detrimental to 3H’s writing. I have grievances with the narratives of many FE games, for that matter, for making a single group (usually religious, though not in TWSITD’s case) be the driving force behind most of their games’ villains. In TWSITD’s case, they’re so cartoonishly evil and have such a hand in nearly all of the game’s problems (dating back more than a thousand years, even before Seiros and Nemesis’ clash), it detracts from the gray morality that the game tries to depict.

Edelgard probably gets the worst of it, because their involvement splits her story between that of a strong-willed individual who came out of her traumatic experiences willing to do anything to see her ideal future come to fruition in her (shortened) lifetime, and a helpless girl who’s little more than a puppet for her abusers, forced to do their bidding until she can bide her time to strike back -- which is only after she’s achieved everything they want out of her (aside from her own death).

I don’t think those two aspects have to be mutually exclusive, for that matter. But its handling in 3H is bogged down by the way TWSITD is completely brushed aside for Crimson Flower’s ending while the Church of Seiros, which ironically doesn’t even have a strong hand in the things they’re accused of, takes the brunt of CF’s narrative villainy. The game never delves into the implications of having to live with Arundel (the disguise of Thales, TWSITD’s leader), and how Edelgard was very likely influenced by him, if subconsciously. Instead, CF just rolls with the idea that Edelgard is both morally and logically correct, and TWSITD are the lesser evil to be dealt with when the time is right.

If CF’s epilogue talked about her tumultuous rule and the difficulties of ruling a united Fodlan, I think it would be more palatable. But no, it's a golden ending that completely ignores the heavy implications that she’s become Seiros II. It also ignores how the Insurrection of the Seven was a response to Ionius’ consolidation of power -- and considering the fates of House Hrym, which attempted to leave the Empire in response, and House Ordelia, which provided aid to Hrym, the nobles have a decent reason for believing Ionius could become a tyrant. (In fact, Hanneman suggests to Hubert that his father’s participation may have been to protect House Vestra.)

On top of all that, due to Arundel’s involvement in the Empire’s retaliation against Hrym and Ordelia and in the Insurrection, it’s easy to draw TWSITD’s connection to them. The crest experiments on Lysithea and her siblings were test runs for the experiments on Edelgard and hers, and after the success in Lysithea, TWSITD were satisfied enough to sell the knowledge of their results to Duke Aegir as, perhaps, a solution to the dwindling number of Crest-bearing children.

The premise of doing unethical experiments to resolve their Crest issue would actually be fine narratively! Arguing that unethical scientific and technological progress is needed to spur growth would fit right in place with a story that has us inciting a 5-year-long war in the name of overturning a corrupt social order. But... that doesn’t happen. Edelgard, who is among those who suffered the most at TWSITD’s experiments and sorely wants payback, is ironically the one who has to turn a blind eye to it and let it continue. It’s also undermined through Hanneman, who achieves the fruits of his Crest research (granting and removing Crests) regardless of the route he’s on, without the bloody death toll TWSITD leave behind. He’s also basically sponsored by Garreg Mach (and by extension, the Church of Seiros), so it’s not like they oppose Crest research as long as he isn’t looting bones and hearts and blood for it.

Any argument that the Church of Seiros is suppressing technological advancement is undermined by Shamir and Claude, neither of whom were raised in Fodlan. Both question the large emphasis on religion in Fodlan, but never its technological state. There are no accounts of Almyra or Dagda having significant technological advancement, nor evidence that Rhea cares enough to try and suppress it in foreign countries to keep up appearances in Fodlan. (Which is a real accusation I’ve seen from pro-Edelgard fans.) It’s only TWSITD (and Rhea in CF) who possess any fancy technology, and TWSITD are only interested in using their tech to destroy things. Inconsistently, at that; what determines what they can target? They can target Arianrhod and Merceus, with a veiled threat of nuking Enbarr, so... why didn’t they just use it on any capital and throw the continent into bloody chaos? They develop this whole convoluted plan for revenge on Seiros, that eventually backfires them on every route (arguably even in Azure Moon, where they aren’t dealt with directly, as Arundel gets taken out far sooner than he expected).

In that regard, TWSITD’s chaotic evil nature make Edelgard’s arguably well-intentioned objectives (besides her whole beef with Faerghus’ and the Alliance’s very existences) a lot muddier. It’s quite difficult to argue a virtuous cause when you’re working with a group that wants all of Fodlan to collapse on itself through infighting. Cornelia belittles Edelgard, praising her for being a good girl and doing exactly as TWSITD wants. After we kill her, Arundel punishes Edelgard by nuking Arianrhod, destroying a key fortress and a significant number of their own troops, logistics and morale be damned. Edelgard, who isn’t in a position to reveal TWSITD as the cause of the attack, is left little option but to lie to the people and pin the blame on the Church.

And on the subject of Cornelia, TWSITD’s gambit with the Tragedy of Duscur is ridiculous. We aren’t given details, but if Cornelia was already one of TWSITD when she arrived in Faerghus and “cured” the city of its plague, they’ve been setting up Dimitri for basically his whole life. (You could also safely assume, if the premise is true, that the plague itself was orchestrated to give Cornelia soft power.) They destabilized an entire country just for the sake of pitting Dimitri against Edelgard, and it worked.

In all honesty, I think TWSITD’s involvement in the Tragedy of Duscur was a bit of a mistake. What happened could be removed of their influence and it probably still would’ve happened (the crux is that noblemen believed Lambert was too radical and was steering Faerghus in the wrong direction). Making TWSITD involved turns the tragedy into, as Dimitri says, a “sick farce” wherein all the pieces they’ve laid down move in the exact script they had in mind.

Long in short, TWSITD take away a lot of agency, turning events that would otherwise be natural results of political conflicts of interesting coming to a head into an elaborate scheme to destroy Fodlan from within. If TWSITD had a reduced presence in the story or were doing dangerous things for a more neutral cause, and if 3H was willing to take a leap of faith and make non-golden endings (let’s be real, all of 3H’s route endings are poorly written in this regard), I feel like the narrative would be stronger for it.