#didn't reference a lot of paired endings here bc i have ship claude w bleagles disease. also hopes exists etc so no One True Canon.

[pegasusknightsonly]

this isn't serious meta im just musing take all of this with an enormous pinch of salt

said to rv earlier that my vision of Claude's long term romantic relationships is that they can be authentic or they can be official but it's very hard to imagine him managing both at the same time. political marriage to serve his long term goals? absolutely. a decades long flirtation that only is public knowledge after his death? that works too. i think there are exceptions - Petra, for example, is both a political ally and a genuine friend - but i think part of what makes Claude Claude is that he sees achieving his goals as one thing and pursuing happiness as something very separate. there's scope for the other two lords to be his foils in this regard (& the byleth black hole doesn't help) because they're both unable to separate those two impulses. Edelgard's goals are to prevent future unhappiness of the kind she has experienced: tortured, experimented upon, elevated and isolated due to the circumstances of her birth. Dimitri on the other hand does not have any political goals beyond pursuing happiness and spends most of AM (okay. all of AM) being politically inert and a fairly terrible king because he's unhappy. the end cards insisting that actually it all worked out and the regressive hierarchical monarchy that had made him and his friends so miserable for their entire lives was actually really good and he liked it now and was very good at it is impressive in how it managed to betray every interesting thing in the AM setup. anyway.

obviously i love edcl political marriage i love edcl political divorce even more but god. Claude and Marianne being political peers in public (him leading Almyra, her leading the Alliance) and then lovers in private but never letting anyone know... Claude and Linhardt being scholars together and living together and working together for most of their adult lives but if you ask either of them directly they'll tell you it's just the most convenient option... Claude and Hubert never being able to go beyond risky flirtation because of the weight of their political responsibilities BUT it's the fact that the leader of the alliance is flirting with the emperor's spymaster that makes it so fun... i love CLAUDE i love how everything has to be COMPLICATED. wow