#also there is significance to which character replaces edelgard dimitri and claude

[bunnyinatree]

As soon as the title of this musical was revealed, I thought, “Just like Fire Emblem…” and I have struggled to sift through the Three Houses tag ever since :P

[image ID: the cover art of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, edited so that it says DAVE MALLOY’S THREE HOUSES. Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude’s faces have been replaced with Margot Siebert, JD Mollison, and Mia Pak respectively (photos taken from their headshots on the Signature Theatre website), while the two Byleths have been replaced with full body shots of Ching Valdes-Aran and Henry Stram (images from photos taken on the set of Three Houses). End image ID.]

[gascon-en-exil]

If we try and remove Byleth from Three Houses, who would likely be their replacement/s in the storyline? In AM, it will obviously be Dedue. But, what about in the other routes?

There's no easy answer that works for all the routes, because while removing Byleth completely undoubtedly would have made the overall writing of Three Houses stronger it would have also required a different focus and some extensive rewriting, especially where Sothis and Rhea are concerned. It'd also need the house leaders to become full PoV characters and also likely controllable in exploration, although that would have benefitted all three of them. Even if Byleth loses their self-insert status (and probably gender variability, in that case) and becomes a recruitable teacher like Hanneman and Manuela who only becomes central to the plot in Silver Snow, that would still require quite a bit of reworking...and would have lost the fans of Avatar dating sims, which has apparently been the most lucrative demographic of FE players for the last decade.

Azure Moon does indeed fare the best without Byleth, helped greatly by it being the most traditional FE story and the one that trims a lot of the fat in Three Houses's undercooked story elements, ex. the Agarthans and the mystery surrounding who and what Byleth is. It's already got the best pacing, the clearest arc for its protagonist, the best relationship between its hero and villain, and the best sense of dramatic payoff in ending where it does. The Byleth-free version would be all about power couple Dimidue, with added focus on Dimilix as a second relationship that begins roughly but develops into one of equal significance. Dedue and Felix would grow into a dynamic comparable to August and Dorias toward Leif in FE5, or Soren and Titania toward Ike in FE9: a pair of advisors with vastly different views of the world and who care for their leader in very different ways and so are forced to come to an understanding. They'd be fully integrated into the plot, allowing them to participate in story moments like Rodrigue's death and the resolution of the Duscur mystery much more organically than they do in canon, not to mention be the ones along with Gilbert and Rodrigue to help Dimitri through his darkest moments. The golden ending is an orgy.

Would IS ever write that? Absolutely not. It'd be too overtly gay, even if the relationships were still only kept to subtext, and there's no plot-relevant waifu bait to be had. Fandom would decry that AM as even more misogynistic than Echoes, and not progressive enough because with no Avatar S ranks Dimitri's queer relationships wouldn't be "canon." They'd be no homo'ed just like Ike/Soren is...which they are now, only it'd be more prominent with no Dimileth taking up such a large portion of Dimitri's fanbase.

I have no idea how this reworked Three Houses would handle the Eagles route split, so it'd probably be better off without one. Silver Snow would follow Byleth as they (she? he? The former allows for a second female lead, the latter delves into magical genderqueer territory with Byleth as the incarnation of a goddess) teach the Eagles and gradually uncover Edelgard's nefarious plans only too late to stop them. Apart from Byleth now having a definite gender, voice, and personality - quite a lot, I know - not much of the actual substance of SS would necessarily need to change. It would certainly benefit from a second pass in the writers' room, Byleth or not, like handling the Gronder rematch in a less awkward way, actually working to develop the antagonism between Byleth and Edelgard outside of two cutscenes, and making the final chapter make any kind of sense and not just "Rhea succumbs to dragon degeneration because you need to fight a final boss, Seteth handwaves the whole thing with a line referencing something that got referenced once back in like Chapter 2." Just...some kind of effort there would be nice.

At any rate SS with Byleth as an actual character would be more strongly-written for it, allowing them to function as a genuine protagonist. (Alternatively, make Ferdinand the protagonist...but that would resolve in him and Hubert putting on an elaborately-staged musical where they work through their feelings in the middle of fighting on opposite sides of a war. You know what? Give me that version of SS instead. Way more interesting.)

For Crimson Flower, drop the pretense right from the start. Edelgard's your PoV character, she knows she's the Flame Emperor and what she's doing throughout the school year, and Part 1 is about her trying to maintain the façade of a normal student while she's planning a war on the DL. If they insist on keeping some of the mystery, that wouldn't be impossible as it's obvious Hubert is the brains of their operation and he keeps most of what he does hidden from Edelgard anyway. I'm not really sure how to work the waifu hot for teacher angle into a PoV version of Edelgard; as much as I enjoy it from the comedic standpoint of Hubert never getting any because his lady never looks at him twice I think CF would be stronger if Byleth stayed with Rhea and the route didn't bother with working out their relationship to the Nabateans. Just genocide 'em all as Edelgard conquers the continent and convinces herself it's all for the best. She can shed a tear over Byleth's corpse while Hubert brandishes a cleaver with even more relish than usual to extract that valuable Crest stone. The ending is basically the same minus the Edeleth, with it being even more obvious that the shadow war against the Agarthans is going to resolve in Hubert taking his place as the real Manfroy of this story.

And as for Verdant Wind, the whole route would need a rewrite, to give it a more distinct identity from SS and to make it work with a protagonist whose personality and arc revolve around revealing very little about himself to anyone else. Players would undoubtedly find out much more about Claude that way than they do in canon VW, and it'd probably work better if it kept Edelgard's war to the background and refocused hard on the worldbuilding discoveries and how they play into Claude's growing understanding of Fódlan. With or without Byleth, a better-written VW would be vastly different from the canon version.

So aside from the house leaders taking over Byleth's role as PoV characters and exploration avatars I don't see anyone else assuming their exact role in supporting said leaders. Dimitri has an abundance of male love and camaraderie, Edelgard gets all worked up over Byleth but is still completely willing to step over them to achieve her goals (also Hubert is there), Claude would likely see his background and beliefs teased out of him gradually by all the Deer in their own ways, and Byleth as an actual character could make SS all about their Nabatean family and the bonds, magically incestuous or otherwise, they can form with the surviving dragons.

[historyoftheemblem]

Three Houses Direct: JP vs. EN

 While looking at the Japanese version of the new trailer, I noticed that several scenes were different from the English version. (Plus, I caught onto some things I hadn’t noticed in my previous analysis.) VincentASM on SerenesForest gave a similar analysis, so I’ll gloss over some things here.

Differences:

As has been noted by others before me, the house names in Japanese have ruby characters that read the house names in German. (Disclaimer: I don’t actually know German, I’m working off memory of the tweet that mentioned this plus the transcription on the Japanese 3H article.)

Black Eagle = アドラークラッセ (Adlerklasse)

Blue Lions = ルーヴェンクラッセ (Löwenklasse)

Golden Deer = ヒルシュクラッセ (Hirschklasse)

In terms of actual meaning, they’re basically the same; Japanese version just replaces the color name of the English version with Klasse (class). Also as a fun fact, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, Hirsch means deer/stag, but can also mean idiot/jerk (in slang, of course).

This scene is recorded at a different angle between the English and Japanese version. Also, that’s a cozy-looking fireplace, but I hope nobody accidentally drops something in there or loses their balance around it...

The tutoring scenes have a significant difference in their gauges. The English version has no change in expression between Dorothea and Linhardt’s. Furthermore, Linhardt’s gauge is maxed out while Dorothea’s was at 3 maximum, and went from one to none.

In the Japanese version, however, Dorothea’s gauge has a pink, extremely happy face that goes down from 3 (max) gauges down to 2. Meanwhile, Linhardt only has 2 max gauges, only has a moderately happy face, and is also lower-leveled.

Not pictured, but EN shows you training Doro’s Reason, while JP has her train her Swordsmanship. (Her two focuses, however, are still Swords and Reason.)

JP version of Linhardt’s training scene also has two female soldiers and one male soldier of some sort (generic Brigands?) in the background. EN only has two male soldiers.

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene, you’ll see that their menus were different on the days these scenes were recorded, and the generics dining behind them have also changed seats.

Mmm... that chicken looks yummy... though that’s a pretty huge chicken leg, isn’t it? Maybe it’s turkey? Fodlan turkey?

Gambit Boost characters are shown in a different order, and possibly a different class for second guy? I assume that the first/third person is Byleth, which means they get some class variety like the others do. Also, given that Edelgard is consistently last on both screencaps, perhaps the person triggering the gambit always shows up last?

Things I missed:

Sylvain, Annette, and Mercedes seem to be in Dimitri’s Blue Lions. SerenesForest has a list of characters and affiliated houses up already, for those who want to double-check who’s where.

It took me a while to get screencaps of this scene, but Edelgard seems portrayed in an oddly... demonic(?) light. Of course, this seems to be playing the cutscene in reverse, and inverted colors for a mystical effect (perhaps an ability to rewind time?), so we won’t know the full context until another trailer or the game’s release.

Also notable is that Edelgard is clearly wielding a dagger here, which she hasn’t been shown to use elsewhere. Not sure if dagger will count as a Fighting-style weapon or a Sword (a la GBA Thief/Rogue animations where they’re equipping swords, but are most certainly not wielding one).

Last note on the final scene:

People have been speculating whether the scene towards the end of the trailer is an indication that the three houses will eventually turn against each other, the actual setting for this scene seems to be more like a melee a trois between the houses after Byleth chooses one: hence, in the first trailer, Edelgard’s “Let’s measure your worth as an instructor”, after which you direct her to attack Mercedes (Blue Lions), and later attack Hilda (Golden Deer).

The trees in Claude’s background seems to indicate Hilda (and the Deer in general) haven’t moved far from their starting spot. Perhaps they’ll wait out the confrontation between Black Eagle and Blue Lions?

[gascon-en-exil]

Crimson Flower lets Edelgard institute all her progressive reforms, and puts a definitive kibosh on both the Agartheans and the dragons. Various other character endings describe the slitherers resurfacing and being foiled again. Dmitri the emperor, and he's a well-meaning lad who probably makes reasonable strides against racism and systemic crest bias, but he largely keeps things going as they were. He makes it very clear that he hasn't thought very hard about his position in the world.

Edelgard, on the other hand, is justified in everything she does by virtue of her circumstances. At no point does she have any options other than declaring war on the continent or dying, because she has been in the clutches of the Agartheans her entire life. They want to use her as a figurehead, but make it very clear that they will bump her off if she steps out of line. She cannot prevent the war, so she instead makes it her own, and rallies her forces until she's can make a move against them.

Dimitri is a hereditary autocrat who secures his family's grip on the entirety of a continent, 2/3 of which he obtains through conquest. Really struggling to see the 'not an autocrat' angle here even if he does some positive reforms later in life. Like we get a fairly decent look at how non-traumatized Dimitri acts in CF and it all sets up that he entered into a political marriage and had a quick child to secure the inheritance. Hereditary monarchy is a scourge even if you have a 'good' monarch

FIrst, let’s get the most obvious thing out the way: there is no evidence that Dimitri has a political marriage and an heir in CF. 

The line about the Blaiddyd line continuing almost certainly refers to his uncle Rufus, who is killed in Cornelia’s coup in the non-CF routes but is presumably still alive in CF because she never gets the chance to carry it out. In the Dimidue death scene Dimitri expresses regret for not being able to get revenge for his family among others, so he’s still thinking of family in terms of his slain father and stepmother. I’ve also pointed out several times that Dimitri’s fondness for orphans is noted in story text and in AM’s ending tapestry, such that it’s entirely reasonable to conclude that he adopts regardless of circumstances as a way of diminishing the role of Crest-based inheritance. In CF his circumstances seem to be nearly identical to the Dimidue paired ending where there is no queen in sight and Dedue is a royal consort in all but name. I highly doubt they chose to adopt while fighting a war that’s by now been dragging on for over five years, so the conclusion about Rufus stands (even more so because he’s noted elsewhere to be a shameless womanizer so it’s likely he’s got one or more bastards somewhere). If you’re looking for a hereditary monarch who founds or perpetuates a dynasty, that would be Claude, or Byleth in various VW/SS endings. Quibbling over monarch vs. emperor has little meaning in this context, especially when Edelgard stepping down after an indeterminate amount of time and naming a successor is fully in line with real world dictatorships. Non-democratic systems of government are the standard for all of FE, although the beginnings of a representative government mentioned in Dimitri’s solo ending might be the single closest instance of a significant movement away from that even if it’s only a constitutional monarchy with the heir to the throne a Crestless adoptee. This follows naturally from the years of the timeskip where Dimitri was homeless and in and out of the slums of the Kingdom, where he saw the suffering of the common people firsthand and, as seen in the AM parley, came to understand their needs better than Edelgard ever attempts. In conjunction with Claude’s ignorance of the lives of the Almyran people as seen in his Cyril supports, it’s actually reasonable to conclude that Dimitri has thought about his position relative to his subjects more than either of the other leaders.

And speaking of Claude, Dimitri does not conquer the Alliance in AM; rather, Claude hands it over to him unexpectedly after the Kingdom army comes to his aid and fights off the Imperial army invading Derdriu. If Hilda is recruited in AM her monastery dialogue the next month reveals that the Alliance council peacefully agreed to go along with Claude’s decision to cede their territory to the Kingdom. This is incidentally a much better deal than the Alliance gets in either VW or SS, where Claude disappears either at the end of the game or after Gronder and it’s given to Byleth with no further discussion (and the same thing also happens to the Kingdom in both routes). The Empire at the end of the game is in much the same situation as every other antagonist nation in FE, with no one to rule it following the counter-invasion from the protagonist nation(s) because they’re all dead. Similar to Genealogy the picture does open up a bit depending on who’s alive, with Ferdinand, Lorenz, Marianne, etc. governing their respective territories if they’re recruited. Ditto unseen noble heirs like Holst and Caspar’s older brother who are still around to inherit their titles even with Byleth or Dimitri ruling the continent. As far as the Empire is concerned the two of them are as much imperialists as Marth, Seliph, the Renais twins, etc., a far cry from Edelgard in CF invading and conquering two sovereign nations without provocation, predicated in part on the basis that centuries prior they were part of the Empire so it’s acceptable for her to conquer them.

Now, onto Edelgard. You must be aware that Edelgard chose to ally with the Agarthans at Hubert’s suggestion, and she continues to make that choice for nearly a decade without any attempt at checking them despite knowing all the terrible things that they’re getting up to behind the scenes at the monastery and that they enacted earlier without her direct involvement to destabilize the continent and make her conquest easier, like the Tragedy of Duscur and the death of Claude’s uncle. As myself and others have noted attempting to spin her as a helpless victim of their machinations only makes her look incompetent and terrible in her choice of allies - not just the Agarthans themselves but also known murderers Hubert and Jeritza whom she cannot fully control with one frequently going behind her back and the other openly disobeying her multiple times on the battlefield. This in combination with Hubert’s status as the Manfroy to Edelgard’s Arvis leaves me very much in doubt of the Agarthans being truly eradicated in the postgame. Not only is this unsatisfying for the player, but given Hubert’s use of dark magic and dabbling in the Agarthans’ experiments (plus that he was the one who suggested the alliance in the first place, for all that he grumbles about Thales ordering him around) it’s more likely that he eradicates their leadership and then installs himself at the head of the remaining cult, folding them into his established network of spies and assassins. Hubert is one of my favorite characters in this cast, but he’s anything but trustworthy especially if his primary motivation really is wanting Edelgard to sleep with him when it turns out she never will, not even in their paired ending. In keeping with his status as the pathetic hopeless suitor pining for this game’s headlining waifu despite her overt attraction to the self-insert, sexual frustration is built into his character even if he gets a wife or if he and Ferdinand become the most notorious lovers in Enbarr.

Plus, if you look Edelgard actually does rather than what she says she aligns more with what the Agarthans want than the stated goals of her own propaganda. She completes their genocide of the Nabateans and unifies the continent with Agarthans in positions of great power. On the other hand she doesn’t eradicate the nobility as a whole but only replaces those who would oppose her seizing absolute power, which goes to support that it was the Insurrection of the Seven and not the Agarthan experimentation that truly shaped her worldview and motivations. The stated reasons she wants to destroy the church are provably incorrect - she knows they didn’t create Relics or Crests thanks to secret Imperial knowledge passed down from Wilhelm, and she must know that they aren’t all-powerful as the Empire disbanded the Southern Church completely a century before the events of the game with apparently no pushback from Rhea or anyone else - and one must therefore conclude that she instead targets them because they, like the Imperial nobles she replaces and like Claud e and Dimitri defending their nations, would oppose her solitary rule of the continent. It’s just awfully convenient that this goal also accomplishes the Agarthans’ main goal of killing or driving into hiding all of the remaining dragons. Saying that the war was inevitable because the Agarthans were slinking around setting it up to happen doesn’t absolve Edelgard of the responsibility of choosing to ally with them and playing right into their hands, especially when her conquest only noticeably improves her own situation, and possibly Hubert and Jeritza’s now that they have a license to kill, torture, etc. for an entire continent. All of the other Eagles go on to inherit what they would have inherited anyway, and all the reforms mentioned in the CF endings are the same or better in endings for the other routes only your side didn’t start a war and complete a genocide to bring those about.

[gascon-en-exil]

Oh, I’ve thought of something I can do as regards final(ish) evaluations of FE16. Last spring I made a personal tier list of the series’s lords, and I’m now familiar enough with the four lords of Three Houses to add them. Using the same categories as that earlier post:

S Tier - interesting, narratively engaging, and (usually) fun to use

Dimitri (probably above Micaiah, definitely above Eliwood) - It is so strange to me to see Dimitri end so high up overall, because going into the game there was a lot riding against him. Marth and his various imitators have never interested me much, and Dimitri’s post-timeskip design is so distastefully haggard that I guessed that he’d be distinguished from that lot in ways I didn’t care for either. But like Eliwood before him Dimitri makes the earnest all-loving hero work, splicing it with a lot of background trauma and even more moral greyness that gets to look and feel off-putting for a good half or more of his Part 2. Placing the onus for Dimitri’s change of heart on Byleth’s personality-deprived shoulders is a big letdown, more so when you realize just how much the writing of Azure Moon has to contort itself to make it happen, but at the end of the story he’s well on his way to recovery regardless with the potential for some happy years ahead of him that do not necessarily involve Byleth in any major personal capacity...which is more than you can say for Edelgard. He doesn’t want to conquer the continent but gets the whole thing dropped in his lap anyway, and we can hope he acquits himself better than the likes of Ephraim or Ike when placed in similar situations. And speaking of Ike, I like him less now that Dimitri exists as a same-sex-inclined male lord far more to my personal taste. He may have the marriage endings that Ike pointedly lacks, but not even the game can write around the bond he shares with Dedue without (sometimes temporarily) killing one of them off. Also, lance lord - not as sparkly as light magic, but he’s got some of that too if you’re determined enough.

A Tier - fun unit and may have interesting character potential, but I’m less invested in exploring them

Claude (between Hector and Lucina, approximately) - Delightfully broken as a unit, and even though I could do without the persistent fans that insist he’s got to be bi while ignoring that Dimitri already very much is that’s not so different from the issues I have with the fanboys of Sigurd and Hector and their spiritual successors. It occurs to me that, for all that his naked manipulation of the game’s self-insert is completely unlike anything we’ve ever seen before in a series protagonist, Claude effectively blends a bunch of traits from past characters and still comes out feeling fresh (and maybe just a little evil). He’s got Lyn’s biracial backstory, Quan’s ambitions of conquest with good PR, Lewyn’s wind association and carefree façade, Ike’s simplistic takes on how to fix racism, and the collective no homo-ing ability of the entire cast of Awakening. I like how he’s the quiet political threat waiting in the wings once Edelgard and the Agarthans have been dealt with in Azure Moon and Silver Snow, but it’s a threat the game never belabors since one supervillain house leader is more than enough. That he exists as such while also being the lord with the most effective in-game press and a clear, morally-driven goal in mind is nothing short of remarkable.

B Tier - either overwhelmingly average, or with both strong positive and strong negative aspects that balance each other out

Edelgard (above Corrin, if I’m being charitable) - Ugh. I was tempted to put her lower, but to her credit she is more compelling than Marth and the like. Too bad that half of why she’s so compelling is the inconsistency of her character; the way in which Edelgard is crippled by the game’s writing (a contractual requirement for female lords) is that it asks her to be both an imperialistic, dictatorial villain and a personally and politically sympathetic antiheroine. If only she’d been allowed to be a pure villain character she would have been fantastic, and I might have even ranked her above Claude. Her traumatic past feeds into her motivations such that it allows her to think that she’s doing the right thing even though she’s not (important for any well-written three-dimensional villain), and the revelation in Verdant Wind that her crusade was based almost entirely on false information adds to the dramatic irony and the inherent tragedy of her character. It is my personal belief that Crimson Flower is best approached by following Hubert’s example and going full Evil Overlord with it, and then it becomes so much easier to handle an ending where Edelgard has been set up by the very people who destroyed her family and childhood to throw Fódlan into chaos and replace the continent’s oldest institution and all its former governments with an alleged meritocracy where all her friends - most of them nobility - get to rule everything and she probably won’t live to see it all collapse. But no, on every route you’ve also got to deal with her bizarrely-expressed attraction to Byleth, and this just drags her overall presentation down even as it’s trying (very awkwardly) to humanize her. It’s little wonder that Edelgard is so polarizing, and I can’t say I’m a fan.

D Tier - OP unit, terrible character

Byleth (above Robin) - Like Edelgard, Byleth suffers because the developers couldn’t stick to one script on what to do with them. They’re less of a self-insert than previous Avatars on account of significantly limited customization options, and yet (in theory) more of one because the player can now choose dialogue options at points in the script, usually to no meaningful effect. They’re a mute amnesiac thrust into the role of teacher at a military academy, which lends itself to all sorts of wacky school shenanigans in fandom and allows the player to superimpose a personality onto a mostly blank slate - at least until Byleth is revealed to be the mortal vessel of a goddess and the child twice over/grandchild/sibling/parent of one of the game’s major players who they incidentally also have the option to sleep with. I’m not sure who Byleth is meant to appeal to, really; fans of Avatars will dislike their preset characteristics both as a self-insert and as a unit, while fans who dislike Avatars (like myself) will hate how the writing forces them to be important to the plot and to other characters’ arcs even outside the whole dragon/goddess angle. I would place Byleth over Robin, however, for two reasons. One is that their plot significance is telegraphed from the very first cutscene and not held off until the game’s final chapters, and that on three of the four routes they are clearly secondary to that route’s house leader in overall importance. The second is that their lack of a proper voice unlike all the other characters makes it less irksome than it otherwise would be for me to have to use f!Byleth to bang most of the male cast. In a game that almost completely flubbed its self-insert M/M options and left all the good stuff to Dimitri’s harem and a few miscellaneous guys, I’ll take what I can get.