#and to think Ionius was yeeted from the story for his

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Ludwig :

Together, they managed to reach the heart of the fortress and seize control. As we speak, they hold hostage many key commanders and their families. Angry portrait : They're using the hostages as leverage over our loyal soldiers to force them into their ranks.

-> He BaD

Supreme Leader :

Lord Arundel has the support of a number of influential nobles, including the prime minister, Duke Aegir. And while we have allies of our own, it's likely they'll require some convincing. To that end, we wish to bring our friends here at the academy—their daughters and sons—with us under the supervision of Professor Jeritza.

"It's not using hostages, it's convincing our allies by taking their heirs with us. Pretty different."

The evil lizard lady - who swallowed an idiot and OOC pill here :

It's clear you have thought carefully and planned well.

-> She Pragmatic and has carefully planned her assault.

Given how Ferdie, Bernie and especially Caspar react, I'm pretty sure they weren't aware that, uh, they were used as a means to "convince" their parents.

(if Ludwig managed to defeat the forces that were sent after his head, what would have happened to clueless!Ferdie ? Would he have been used, just like Cat to make Shamir join, to, uh, "convince" Ludwig to bow the knee?)

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Replying to an ask, I was realising -

We know more about Glenn (Govan Fraldarius?), the brother of a secondary character who died protecting one of the primary ones, than about Supreme Leader’s sibling who was the original heir of the Empire.

Supreme Leader, iirc, was born as Ionius’s ninth child, or fifth one? Something like that?

What about the First child, the heir of the Emperor, son of his wife (Supreme Leader mentions how her mother wasn’t Ionius’s wife, meaning he had one, it wasn’t just, Anselma) ? What about said wife?

Ionius was yeeted away in Nopes, but damn if we don’t know jack shit about Adrestia.

Sure sure, we know Leopold’n’Waldemar, yay - but bar the duo of clowns?

Rafiel is the first prince of Serenes, Reyson and Leanne often mention their older sister Lilia, but no one ever mentions Supreme Leader’s oldest sibling? Ionuis’s first child? Supreme Leader’s stepmother(s)?

Why would Ferdie have developed a rivalry with Supreme Leader, if she had older siblings already in line for the throne? Why would Hubert - the Vestra heir - be “given” to Supreme Leader, if the Imperial Heir was already around?

The more I think about it, the less Adrestia makes sense, or at least the Adrestia we were presented with.

I think those siblings really existed, but their absence in the plot maybe mean the “Vestra” tasked with overlooking, let’s call him (it’s a him because it’s Adrestia!) Hans 2, heir to the throne, wasn’t from Hubert’s dad’s line, but from a cadet line? Cadet line had a child “around the age” of Hans 2, so that cadet branch would have become the most important one, had Hans 2 survived, because cadet Vestra would have become the “Vestra of the Emperor” while Hubert would only be the Vestra of the ninth/fifth princess.

Ditto for Ludwig ?

He’d have championned Ferdie to show his talent and might and “nobility” to Hans 2 instead of Supreme Leader, but when Hans 2 was Arundel’d and only Supreme Leader survived, he switched his focus?

In FE Tellius, in FE10, Tibarn talks about it, passingly. But in FE Fodlan, there’s no rumours of a “plague” having befell the imperial family, mainly the “series of tragedies” in Rhea’s book.

Hans 2?

Even Rhea’s dead siblings are more relevant, they appear in the form of relics ! But Hans 2? His existence blows a hole in the Adrestia we know, its political landscape and Supreme Leader herself.

Of course you should compare what can be compared, but when ASOIAF’s Ned goes “this shit should never have been mine to dealt with, it should have been my dead older brother’s”, this is never mentionned in FE16.

We have Rhea feeling as inedaquate, being trusted in this position as the “Guardian” of Fodlan because her mom was deboned, but Supreme Leader never says this regarding Hans 2.

Ionius himself never mentions Hans 2 or his other children.

Tl;Dr : FE16 wrote a story where the Adrestian Empire’s heir is less important to people than House Fraldarius - a vassal of House Blaiddyd - ‘s first son.

GG guys, 10k years of lore.

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It's funny that the “dead siblings” aspect of Edelgard's backstory manages to, in spite of how under-developed and under-written it is, be so wildly contradictory that the only way for it to make any sense with the rest of what we know about her past is to assume that she made all that up in order to gain sympathy points from Byleth; it's almost certainly not what the writers intended, and i don't doubt for a second that Hopes contradicts that theory somewhere, but whatever makes Fódlan make more sense.

Apparently in Nopes they don't know they died or it's just a "rumour"?

Then what, they were all hiding or partying very far away, when their sister became Emperor, over Hans 2's claim? Seriously?

I don't really understand the obsession the devs had with making Adrestia a muddled mumbo jumbo -

we are told Ionius tried to centralise power on itself, the lolcalisation tried to erase it but we're in 2023 : Ionius wanted to get rid of the consort kin system, women feel like they can't inherit a thing, the Emperor (at least the one during the Southern Church incident) takes very badly any "revolts" and get rid heirs he doesn't like, personally appoints people, Ionius erased Hyrm (to the last blood descendant!) and sent his army and funky mages to Ordelia - outside of Adrestia!

Some nobles like to hear young women "sing" and if they can't pay for "singing lessons" they will pay for young men instead.

Adrestian Nobles, unlike their northern barbarian counterparts, stay holed up in their capital, and rarely return to their duchies/lands/territories.

The devs, from this, tried to paint a land where corruption is rampant, a sort of epitome of decadence complete with ASOIAF's "if you need to say you're the king chances are no one thinks you are the king" with Ionius's bids to centralise power on himself, in a nutshell : this Adrestia is rotten, the decadent version of the one sang about in praises or mentionned in old legends.

And yet, even if they describe the land as completely bonkers and everyone more or less is in for their own hide... Adrestian Nobles, the very same ones we're told hired Doro to hear her song, cannot be depicted too badly, because, hey, we're working with them.

Sure, we don't hear Leopold and Waldemar went to the brothel - i mean to the Opera - to hear popular young songstresses sing. But Leopold'n'Waldemar were depicted as corrupt nobles, only in for their money or own gain as the reason why they sided with Aegir to get rid of Ionius, and from what we know of Leopold, he wasn't picking roses and daisies in Brigid too.

And yet, because they magically became allies of Supreme Leader, all the issues that could be laid at the feet of Imperial Nobles, especially theirs as the most important nobles of them all, are... absent.

No one ever asks Leopold'n'Waldemar were are the other imperial children, or why they betrayed Ionius. No mention of Leopold, the Minister of War and a seasoned fighter, having personally trained Hans 2 or maybe acknowledging his talents as a warrior - or lack of compared to Supreme Leader's, no, nothing.

Asking Leopold why Caspar isn't his heir, even if he doesn't have a crest, since he shown great abilities to fight? No, never.

In the end, we see those crap nobles, but we never tell anything or do anything with them. Ionius was yeeted away in Nopes (maybe because including Ionius in the story, who was betrayed by Leopold'n'Waldemar, wouldn't have worked with the idea of making them Supreme Leader's allies) and Aegir is never given any voice to the chapter, or when he is, it's to be a living retcon - he wanted to take part, just like Leopold'n'Waldemar, in Supreme Leader's MAGA war, when he rebelled against Ionius who centralised power on himself? To MAGA? - because nothing should "taint" our vision of the heroine.

FE16 already teased Supreme Leader's version of the Insurrection being horse dung when Hanneman told Hubert he doesn't know what Vestra Sr rebelled, and how Vestra Sr rebelled because there was something, rather, someone, more important to him than eons of loyalty to the Hresvelg family.

Is it the same "reason" that made Arundel, when he was still Volkhard, put his niece to safety - in the kingdom !!! - with her mother, before being Slithered.

Those clues, complete with the Ferdie paralogue in SS - of course unavailable in CF - reveal that while Ludwig is a piece of slime, he isn't the piece of slime depicted by Supreme Leader (that'd be her Uncle) ; hell, all of Ludwig's actions (both in that paralogue and the experiments on the Hresvelg kids) were done by Thales, with Ludwig as his scapegoat.

So why? What is the truth behind the Insurrection, and behind Ludwig's role?

Is Adrestia deliberately "opaque" to make "the world look deeper" than it is, or because it's supposed to imply Mole People slithering around made the thing "way too complicated"?

Or is it because the more we learn about Adrestia - and what led to Ionius being deposed - the more we realise Supreme Leader's words are, at best, misguided, at worst, straight out lies?

But in the process of "muddling" everything, coherence and consistency was sacrificed, Hans 2 disappeared and the plot dgaf - heck people don't know what happened to the other imperial children, and no one every bats an eye at this, especially since the Emperor was not the first, nor the second in line (and Supreme Leader isn't supposed to be like Ashnard who might fed people who ask those questions to Rajaion, or just straight out tell them the truth before laughing).

I still believe they exist, but since Jugdral, the FE series had issues writing "missing royal siblings" having any signification to the plot - bar being a late hour "Falchion with legs" - even if I HC that Julia isn't killed when her unit dies in the 2nd gen because the Imperial Army recognises her and captures her to return her to Arvis (they rescue her from those Isaachian barbarians!)

And yet, again, compared to Glen, Hans 2's absence stings, and it's, again, an example of coherence and logic being sacrificed for the sake of parasocial relationships.

It sucks.