#I keep trying to tell whether the 'I feel safe looking at Gustadolph' was supposed to be a joke or not

[triangle-strategy-notes]

Gustadolph, Thalas, and Erika Concept Art

Concept/reference art for Gustadolph, Erika, and Thalas! Translation notes and image id under the cut.

Translation notes:

"Will you kindly keep your illegitmate hands off of me?!" was probably more directly translated like, "You're a bastard, stop existing in my vicinity." But it was a question and also used some polite language, so I changed the wording around a little to suit that.

"Hair tufts, eyes, and lips are all in the same place" was one I felt pretty uncertain about and ended up going a lot off of context. It definitely seemed to be saying something about hair, and was probably saying something about lips and eyes, but there might have been something about eyebrows or something else in there too.

"Wham" was a mimetic word that meant something more like "violent; holding nothing back."

Image ID:

[id: The first two out of the five images are the full Japanese pages of concept art for Gustadolph, Thalas, and Erika. The first page has their official canon portraits. In the third image, which is a translation of the notes on the first, there is an illustrator's note that reads, "Gustadolph is a beautiful yet terrifying man with long, silver hair. Personally, I find that his design puts me at ease since he has more of a restrained royal look instead of the typical stylish villain look. (Tatsuaki Urushihara)" and another illustrator's note that reads, "I remember thinking the three Aesfrost siblings were spot on from the first rough draft. Erika has a cat-like quality to her. (Yasuaki Arai)"

The fourth and fifth image are translations of the second page. The top half of the page is titled "Commander of Country B" and has several images of Gustadolph. One has a caption pointing to his ruff collar that says, "bird feathers." Another two notes next to his face read, "He's beautiful but rather cold…" and "He's overflowing with dangerous charisma." The second half of the page has pictures of Thalas and Erika. It's titled "Commander of Country B's Younger Sister and Brother". There is a drawing of Erika having thrown Frederica to the floor. Erika's dialogue reads, "Will you kindly get your illegitimate hands off of me?!" and there is a note next to Frederica that reads, "Liberty gets hit and falls down." In another drawing Thalas is holding a sword, both he and the sword spattered with blood. His dialogue reads, "I suppose even the lowly masses have some red blood in their veins…" There is a note between the two of them that reads, "The character sheet said they were an unlikely duo, but since I had already done 'Consortium Merchants' and 'C1 and C2 House Heads,' I decided to draw them as twins." Another note between mirroring portraits of Thalas and Erika's reads, "Hair tufts, eyes, and lips are all in the same place." There are also some small copies of the word "whisper" between them. There is an illustrator's note at the bottom that reads, "Erika and Thalas's setting and plotline never changed much, and even in the trial version they had a nice, simple bully feel to them that made them easy to design. (Tatsuaki Urushihara)" /end id]