#I'd make a rant tag but every time i post its some form of unhinged ranting

[threehousing]

storm ily please rant about thropes nonsensical worldbuilding and how they fucked up the noble hierarchy by having too many dukes <3

shyd. shyd.

IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AND I'M SO MAD. LISTEN. LISTEN.

So, in the irl historical uses of the european terms (since Fire Emblem uses European terms, that's what I'm referring to), there's a hierachy to noble titles which tends to be pretty similar across the board. The words differ slightly depending on the language, (some of which have the same root somewhere, which is neat) so like, marquis (french) and margrave (anglification of German markgraf) are different terms for similar positions.

So, using the terms fe does, USUALLY IT'S LIKE (and this is a simplification. I'm not an expert asfgk):

sovereign (I'm disregarding the differing positions of king vs emperor vs archduke here, bc its not relevent for 3 houses. obvs they're different irl, but it is irrelevant here)

(sovereign heir)

Duke

Marquis/Margrave - usually used for a noble with land on a border, so worth extra distinguishment. That's especially true of 'margrave' from what I can tell, but 'marquis' did originate from the same use (medieval latin "marca", meaning "borderland/frontier") i like language. ANYWAY.

Count

Viscount

Baron

Lord (as in 'of the Manor')

Now. NOW. There can obviously be multiple people in the same rank, barring sovereign and heir, but. Thropes did this funny thing where they were like: what if we added new nobles not mentioned at all in 3 Houses, with very promient titles that would imply they are high ranking.

Faerghus? So you got Duke Fraldarius - tracks, the Fraldariuses are the Blaiddyd's right hands - and Margrave Gautier - also tracks - implying the Gautiers and Fraldariuses are basicially the highest ranking noble families in Faerghus, apart from the royal family. Makes sense.

But what if we added a new Duke? said Koei Tecmo, Just to fuck with Storm, specifically?

So KT dropped not just one duke - IFAN - who up until now was never mentioned, which. A duke is pretty fucking important. Important enough to BE LABELLED ON THE PRE-EXISTING MAP, I'D SAY. Anyway. But not satisfied with this, they ALSO said hey. Why not just put a marquis in Faerghus? For funsies. A marquis. A title of different linguistic origin to margrave, but the same status? Margrave, as in, the established Margrave Gautier? Whatever, we worked out a fun linguistic thing with the Empire, which I actually love, but it's the principal of the thing.

So there I am, screaming into my pillow, trying desperately to make some semblence of sense out of these goddamn retcons, which is, we all know, a hopeless endeavour. But it bugs me. It bugs me SO MUCH.

NOT TO MENTION, they seemed to have made "Duke" Ifan's territory so, incredibly tiny. Like. A duke you say??? Sure.

They also added just. So many viscounts. So many counts. SO MANY. DEMOTE SOME OF THEM. Seven whole viscounts - four new ones - and five counts - two new ones - while there are only two barons. Demote some of these fuckers for the love of god. The political power balance is all outta whack.

Adrestia and Leicester were also not spared this. Leicester was gifted just. Too many viscounts (WHERE are the lesser lords? in the basement??). And while Adrestia has the most reasonable balance of barons there are still so. many. viscounts. Like who the fuck are the von Fenjas? von Fenja the fuck up.

I'm not even gonna talk about how it makes NO SENSE for Arundel to only be a "Lord" - he's the regent??? Obvs this is a Three Houses thing, not a Thropes thing, but are they telling me he didn't get a fancy title to go with that fancy land and fancy crown. intsys I'm gonna need 3 pages double sided of your thought process there. I know I know, they didn't think it through that thoroughly bc it doesn't actually matter, but what about me? will someone please think of me, left out in the rain, behaving very exceedly not neurotypical about this game??? 😔

[azure-clockwork]

Way to tell us your groundbreaking original opinion shared by only more than half the fandom in a "better than everyone" tone despite being an extremely surface level analysis.

Like damn, I'm not arguing with you and I'm sorry for the rude sarcasm, but you gotta understand that post like yours keep popping once in a while in the characters tag ( despite having all discourse tag and discourse-prone blog blocked ) when they don't add anything to the discussion. Three Houses is such an interesting game to analyze so if you're going to do discourse, at least get a bit in depth!

Because yes, you're complaining about the discourse but your post is just... participating in the discourse, just in the average "centrist" fe3h fandom way for a lack of a better word. If you hate it so much why add your grain of salt in it? You're the same as the annoying Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude you're speaking about! I mean at least some of them at least provide interesting analysis about the game within rant.

At least tag your post the next time, because even some of the worst lord stan have the decency to do that.

Sorry you got my rant, but your post was the drop that makes the ocean of badly tagged similar takes overflow my discourse limit. Three Houses discourse sucks hard in every form it takes. Still, have a good day at least.

Okok I did say I was asking for this so, fair

First, sincerely, how would you like me to have tagged this? This is an honest question to which I don't actually know the answer, and I'll go back and edit the tags cuz I don't want to bug more people (and kinda the only reason I'm replying because otherwise I feel like engaging is kinda not what I wanna be doing with my life nor yours, but sadly my brain doesn't shut its trap once I start thinking so I feel compelled to share with the class). Actually, you can skip the rest of this if you don't wanna bother lol

Secondly, I just wanted to be funny because I think that accusing fire emblem characters of war crimes is amusing. I recognize that the Geneva Convention sorta breaks apart the moment magic or crests or dark beasts or gambits come into play, and it's also not what people mean when they say 'Dimitri did war crimes' or 'Edelgard is a war criminal', but I think its hilarious to do anyways. When I see people making arguments about characters and using the term 'war criminal', roughly half of my brain starts laughing about how teeeeechnically using that one gambit with the poison barrels counts as criminal, regardless of if I agree or disagree with the argument made. And I'm memeing on myself here too (or at least trying to): "Jay is gay for Edelgard" is a truly terrible justification to base decisions of morality on . I'd argue that picking a house/the church based on attraction to the lord/Rhea is a sillier motive than a numerical tally of official violations of the Geneva Convention.

I really didn't want this to come across as Discourse tm because I don't want it to be; I just wanted turn my own desire to make a list of every single 'technically a war crime' into something semi amusing, because nobody actually wants to sit and read far too many words about how technically if you recruit and deploy Cyril to rescue Flayn (which is before his 15th birthday by like a month) that makes you a war criminal.

If you want my actual opinion (because making you scroll back thru my blog to read the unhinged rants I came up with while deciding between crimson flower and silver snow would be kinda a dick move), fe3h is a messy, morally grey game regardless of your chosen route. You have to make rough choices, kill your friends and former students, and stand by while everyone, including your allies, does terrible things. For me, I bonded really hard with most of the cast fairly quickly because white clouds let me feel like I was doing the worlds best job teaching my kids. And then you have to kill them. You cannot save them all. It broke me a little. The first student I killed, perma-killed, with the music dropping out and all, was Hilda during the Deirdru fight against her and Claude. It was an accident; she died on enemy phase, and I was out of Divine Pulse charges. She wasn't even a requirement for victory. That was the cost of taking Deirdru; that was the cost of waging war. I lay awake that night thinking about how if I had a different sword equipped I couldn't have counterattacked her from 2 tiles away, or if I had done less damage, or tanked a hit, or--

I'm not arguing that every route is equally morally reprehensible, but I think it matters quite a bit that every route makes you complicit in some terrible things. For several reasons, I'm a big fan of crimson flower (I Do Not Like The Church and I also agree with all of the characters who would like to do away with the nobility and crest systems), but that's tempered by the weight of the actions of Those Who Slither. I am continually unsure of just how much I feel the weight of TWSitD's actions falls on Edelgard herself, and I vacillate between "she didn't really have any other options to cause any kind of change from her position, so an uneasy alliance with TWSitD was the lesser of two evils" and "she bears a significant chunk of responsibility for all of their actions, including Jeralt's death". And I have similar, albeit often less strong thoughts about the rest of the characters. Nobody is operating with the full picture, the characters are all massively blinded by their emotions, and everyone makes choices between what they think is the lesser of a few evils. While the exact number of war crimes is irrelevant because whoops, the Geneva Convention doesn't exist in Fodlan and war crimes aren't the only immoral things you can do, thinking about what means are justified by which ends and who bears the responsibility for what acts is actually a really important part of the game for me.

I guess at the end of the day, I walk away from this game believing the war should not have had to happen. But the world doesn't run on shoulds and should nots (in Fodlan or irl), so the best we can do is make choices based on what we do know, and to do our best to help people with the tools we have. I personally land on crimson flower in the end, but I think the real beauty of Three Houses is just how hard it makes that choice.

Ok, I'm done blabbing; just tell me how I ought to tag this to avoid bugging people and I'll be on my way. I mean this sincerely: have a nice day yourself, and sorry to have annoyed you!