#I feel like in this situation he'd actually be yelling and be rly upset bc like

[dmclemblems]

"Realistically, if Claude was the sneaky and shady person they tried to make him out to be in Hopes, he would’ve taken Lorenz’s advice and left Edelgard to die." This. 100% but the problem is that even THIS doesn't work! Because if Claude truly cares about - as he claims - having fewest casualties as possible, then WHY ally with Edelgard at all?! The inherent premise is flawed! Not yelling at you tho. I'm yelling at Clyde. His decisions are moronic. End the war by killing Edelgard immediately!

Oh no I totally agree with that. I think it was a mistake to ally with her. I understand that he wanted to reduce causalities and allying with her would prevent the Alliance from losing more people, but I think that it should've been, in both versions (recruiting Byleth or not), his plan from the beginning that it wasn't a real alliance and that he always planned to turn on her.

From the perspective of trying to reduce causalities, I get that, but if I recall, Claude/the Alliance had the upper hand at the time. He could've been the one making demands, but they made him mister nice guy again for this and just formed an alliance to avoid more deaths instead of doing that and giving her an ultimatum.

Part of the issue for me was how back and forth they made him. It's like they wrote him as not being able to make up his mind, but you can't do that when you're involving yourself in a war, and even more so if you're a leader of a faction. You can't just make decisions that will take lives or bring about invasions nilly willy like that.

If he took the route of pretending to side with her to get her guard down, I could understand that. If he was just doing it to actually keep the Alliance from losing more people, I'd get that. It falls apart though when Lorenz points out that the war would be done if they let Edelgard die, because regardless of what Claude thinks is the right thing or whatever his feelings on the matter are, if he allied with her with the intention of just using her etc etc (which he says was the case), then he should've had no problem with her dying to end the war. If he still wanted to fight Rhea, maybe he could've been talked out of it by discussing the problem with Dimitri, but there was literally no reason imo for what he did outside the devs not wanting to kill Edelgard in this game.

Also, to be fair, he could've left her to die without even dirtying his hands. He wouldn't be seen as "responsible" for it if he just so happened to not make it in time. By aiding her he basically gave her the okay to continue the war and causing more people to die. He says he has no issue with the Kingdom, continuously insists he doesn't want to take over the Kingdom or kill Dimitri, but he's enabling her to continue fighting them. He even knows if Faerghus lands were split between them that he'd get the short end of the stick and he also suspected she'd come for the Alliance eventually anyway, so why bother aiding her at all?

To me the whole thing just reads as dev favoritism for Edelgard, because the story could've finished up with them fighting TWS. It's really awkward that Lysithea can be recruited in SB but not AG when she can't even get closure in GW, so you'd think she'd be able to be recruited to the routes that actually deal with the real problem. GW was just written to be VW's exact opposite in every way, right down to the final boss being Rhea for no reason instead of Thales/Nemesis.

It doesn't help that the reasons he wants to fight Rhea seem to be a problem with like... the Alliance itself at best. All the things he mentioned to Dimitri about wanting to fight her for are things Dimtiri has been fixing for two/three years at this point and Rhea hasn't said a single word to him about stopping what he's doing. Seteth is in his army at his camp all the time, so he could've told Rhea what was happening if he thought she'd care. Point being, all Claude's concerns were obviously not things Rhea was trying to control - it was just how the system got used to being and so the people know it and abide by it. If he wanted change, he could've done the things Dimitri has been doing, but also, enough people need to want that change. It's not up to him if he changes things if the majority of people don't want that change. It's not fair of him to just waltz into Leicester and be like oh I don't like this system and even though I didn't grow up here and have only lived here for a few years, I'm coming in and totally turning your entire political system on its head even though it's actually working for you guys perfectly fine.

Point being... Erwin was right about him in this game lol. He was a stranger who just came in and fucked up everything and couldn't be trusted with leadership. By allying with Edelgard even if temporarily, like for real and not faking it, he caused more of his own people to die by attacking the Kingdom, and Hapi even mentions at camp that the Kingdom isn't gonna forget that they invaded them. Couple that with, iirc, the Kingdom being pretty aware that Sreng was suspiciously notified about what was happening, giving Sreng incentive to attack, I don't think they're gonna forget it any time soon. Then on top of telling Sreng, they also killed Matthias of all people, so instead of Claude just trying to distract the Kingdom with Sreng, he assisted Sreng's invasion which will cause more Kingdom citizens to die. It just makes Claude out to be like "well I don't care who dies as long as it's not my people" and that's... not Claude. It doesn't matter if he's a darker, sneakier, shadier person in general - it's still part of his core character that he wouldn't want all those people dying. I can understand "any means necessary" to do what he has to do, but he wants to do those things without a bunch of people dying.

Again though, what he wants to do is another thing entirely. It's not up to him to just walk into another land and change their politics. Having blood from somewhere doesn't give you the right to suddenly come in and be like okay I don't like how this entire continent is being run so I'm gonna change Leicester and then the rest of Fodlan too. Imagine if I just went to a place I had blood from and went "well my blood is from here so I'm gonna come in and change your entire continent now". Like... no lol nobody would accept that. Even the people in Leicester weren't really okay with it and Lorenz said it was like, a long discussion and it didn't sound like it was a good one. It more or less sounded like Claude was forcing the roundtable to accept it. Like GW Hapi said... the Alliance's (basically Claude's in this case) behavior is scummy.