#fodlan meta

[slotumn]

Honestly I think one thing a lot of 3H fans, especially the ones I suspect are American, underestimate is: how badly attacking and taking over another country will sour that population's opinion on you.

Doesn't matter how righteous the cause is. Doesn't even matter if it was a counter-invasion to another invasion/aggression. If you invade another country and bring bloodshed to their soil, people there will fucking hate you. Maybe they'll also blame their leaders for being incompetent or losing too, but they will definitely hate the invaders. Even if they understand that not all the people from the other country supported the war, whichever leader was heading the assault will be despised for decades to come, if not centuries.

And I know canon endings themselves push for this/not everyone wants to see or depict the more fucked up parts of losing a war/people can make whatever fanworks they want and blah blah blah, but the whole "my fave wins (militarily) and everyone on the continent more or less accepts their rule bc they're obviously morally correct" thing is like

no they fucking wouldn't.

They really, really, wouldn't.

[ncfan-1]

Here, have some semi-disorganized thoughts, because the more I think about what’s implied about Lambert and Patricia’s relationship, the more I find myself side-eyeing… Lambert, actually.

(And to be clear, I consider Cindered Shadows and the information that arises from it questionably canon at best, but when it dovetails with what we already know from base 3H, it makes sense to include it. And when you’re talking about Patricia and Lambert’s relationship, you can’t really avoid Cindered Shadows, so here goes.)

First of all, as a disclaimer: I do believe that Lambert was genuinely infatuated with Patricia/Anselma. I’m not denying him that. It’s just… everything that comes after it that feels questionable. Because that doesn’t feel like why he married her, based on what comes next?

[That said, maybe don’t read if you have a particularly rosy view of Lambert. I don’t characterize him as a monster, not by any stretch, but like I said, I side-eye him hard.]

So you’ve got this banished former Imperial consort living in Kingdom territory. And she’s a woman of high rank (at least formerly, but her being the mother of one of the Emperor’s children is still going to be true, regardless of whether or not she is still regarded as one of his consorts), and upper-class Fódlan society as a whole is extremely heteronormative with all of the subordination of women that implies. So on the one hand: she needs to be kept according to her station, and that involves having her married so she can reside over a noble household once again, but the only man of high enough standing to marry her, a former consort of the Adrestian Emperor… is the widowed king. And on the other hand: she can’t be allowed to potentially run amok causing political strife in the Kingdom by trying to regain her old position (we don’t know precisely why Anselma was dismissed and exiled, but based on what we’ve seen of the Imperial nobility, it’s not unreasonable for Lambert and the Kingdom nobility to assume that she would be putting a lot of time and energy into trying to regain her former position, and it’s equally reasonable to assume that they’d want to stop her from doing that in Kingdom territory, since it could cause strife between the Kingdom and the Empire that they absolutely do not need), and the best way to keep her from doing that is to tie her down to a husband who can Control Her, but again, the only man of high enough standing to marry her, a former consort of the Adrestian Emperor… is the widowed king.

This does not feel like a spur-of-the-moment love match. It feels more like Patricia is equal parts charity case and quasi-political prisoner in Fhirdiad, with all of it smoothed over by having her marry Lambert, so that they can both avoid drawing ire from Imperial factions who wouldn’t want them sheltering Anselma in the Kingdom in a position of such high honor as being a part of the royal court (likely a large part of why she changed her name to Patricia in the first place, or perhaps why the decision was made for her that she’d be changing her name), and so they can avoid drawing the ire of Emperor Ionius, who by all accounts loved and favored her, by shutting her up in genteel imprisonment. Give it all a gloss of ‘new queen consort’ to appease the emperor, and give it a gloss of ‘her ties to her homeland have been heavily severed with this new marriage, to the extent that she’s even been stripped of her old name’ to appease those in the Empire who don’t want to see her come back. Patricia’s primary consolation is that her new husband is genuinely infatuated with her, and thus is likely to treat her well.

At least, that must be how it seems to her at first.

And I say all of this because some stuff that we learn about Lambert and Patricia’s marriage just does not make sense if you assume that this was a spur-of-the-moment love match?

First of all, Dimitri says outright in his and Hapi’s B support that “for all intents and purposes, [his] stepmother was completely cut off from the outside world. Suffice it to say few knew that [his] father had taken a second wife.” So first off… that doesn’t sound right for a normal marriage. At all. Even Dimitri acknowledges that the union between his father and stepmother caused a great deal of speculation; even Dimitri, who has a history of white-washing his past to make it all seem a lot rosier than it actually was, grasps that there was something not quite normal about this marriage. You would expect a queen to be engaged in charitable works across the Kingdom, you would expect her to leave Fhirdiad on pleasure trips, either with her husband or alone, but instead, it seems as though her movements were heavily curtailed.

Second, Dimitri states in his and Hapi’s A support that “although she was the queen consort, in truth, [his] father and stepmother were not even allowed the dignity of being alone,” further asserting that Cornelia constantly inserted herself between them. So you’re telling me that Lambert is so ineffectual that he can’t even ask, or use his authority as king to order, that Cornelia leave the room so he can be alone with his own wife? That doesn’t sound right for a man assertive enough to plan sweeping political reforms against the protests of a wide swath of his own nobility. What sounds a bit more like right is that Lambert doesn’t particularly care if he and Patricia are left alone together, and what suggests about the nature of their marriage is that Lambert is perhaps less her husband than he is her quasi-jailor.

Third, Dimitri will eventually admit that Patricia was fairly cold towards him. He states in his B support with Hapi that it was his stepmother who raised him, and Hapi notes that he shares many of her mannerisms. While it’s not fair of Patricia to be cold towards Dimitri, regardless of what the true nature of her relationship with Lambert may or may not be, if her marriage with Lambert was equal parts charity case and genteel imprisonment with a ‘queen consort’ coat of paint slapped on over it, I think it might explain her coldness. Patricia’s feelings towards both Lambert and Ionius are up in the air, but without a doubt, she loved Edelgard, her child. But not only has she been separated from her daughter for good and trapped in a gilded cage called “marriage” clear on the other side of the continent from her, she’s now had her quasi-jailor’s kid foisted upon her to raise, as well. Like I said, it wouldn’t be fair for Patricia to let her resentment regarding her position spill over onto Dimitri, but it’s still a pretty human reaction, and if things are as I think they are, then it unfortunately makes perfect sense that she has little to no interest in being a warm stepmother to Lambert’s son.

That brings us on to Edelgard’s time in Fhirdiad. We know that Lord Arundel, Patricia’s brother, abducted Edelgard and brought her to Fhirdiad during the Insurrection of the Seven, though the reasons for his abduction of his niece are murkier. Dimitri frames it in the Childhood Memories scene in ‘The Cause of Sorrow’ as Edelgard and her uncle being in exile together, and goes so far in his A support with Hapi as to state that Lord Arundel had sought asylum in the Kingdom. Edelgard herself frames it as an abduction, something that was done to her without her consent, let alone her father, the emperor’s, and again, though her uncle’s reasons for doing so are murky, I am inclined to think that Edelgard is in a better position than Dimitri to know if it was an abduction or not, so I am characterizing this as an abduction as well. Even if Lord Arundel was seeking asylum with his niece in tow, he did still kidnap her to do it, and we don’t know his exact reasons. They could be altruistic—Arundel trying to save Edelgard from being experimented on like her brothers and sisters—or he could have done it to seize an advantage over Ionius, as Edelgard was one of only a small handful of his children to have a Crest. We just don’t know.

We know from the Childhood Memories scene in ‘The Cause of Sorrow’, from Dimitri’s own lips, that he and his father visited Lord Arundel and Edelgard when they were living in Fhirdiad. But we know that Patricia didn’t find out that her brother and niece had been in Fhirdiad until after they were both long gone.

What?

Dimitri and Hapi’s A support frames Patricia’s predictably furious reaction as being all Cornelia’s fault. That Cornelia had planted the idea in her head that Lambert had deliberately withheld this knowledge from her, and that in reality, Lambert had been just as in the dark about Arundel and Edelgard’s true identities as Dimitri was. But I don’t buy that? Dimitri states that Arundel was seeking asylum in the Kingdom, and in order to be assured asylum, he would have needed to explain who he and Edelgard were, and spin some story to make this look less like an abduction. Edelgard is stated to strongly resemble her mother, as well; surely Lambert would have noticed.

And even if you believe that Arundel could have lied about who he and Edelgard were and gotten away with it, there’s still the fact that Dimitri found out that Edelgard was A) the girl he had known in Fhirdiad years ago, and B) his step-sister, before he entered the Academy, which would indicate that Lambert had known about it at the time. Again, Lambert is painted as being a very politically savvy man. At no point is he painted as being a dunce. So Lambert absolutely did know who they were, and he absolutely did conceal that information from Patricia. No tricks by Cornelia required! Likely all she had to do was voice aloud the thoughts already fulminating in Patricia’s own mind.

Dimitri dismisses the idea that he did this on purpose on the grounds that he can’t think of what his father would have had to gain from purposely concealing the knowledge from Patricia, but I can think of a few things. Dimitri doesn’t want to see it, because again, it contradicts the rosy picture he’s painted of his past.

The absolutely kindest explanation I can think of is that Lambert is perfectly aware that this is a political powder keg he has on his hands. Regardless of whatever story Arundel spins to him on why and Edelgard are in Fhirdiad, this is an abduction; it was done without the consent of Edelgard’s custodial parent, and thus he has a kidnapped Imperial princess in Fhirdiad. He has to be very careful about how he handles the situation—he could all too easily spark a diplomatic incident between the Kingdom and the Empire if he handles it wrong. It’s possible that he did not want to introduce Patricia to the powder keg out of the fear that she could be the spark that ignited it by understandably demanding that her daughter be given over into her custody.

But even this kindest explanation demonstrates that Lambert doesn’t consider Patricia an equal partner in their marriage. That’s probably not so unusual for noble marriages in Fódlan—again, upper-class Fódlan society is excruciatingly heteronormative, with all of the subordination of women that that implies—but he’s not even thinking about it in terms of introducing her into the situation to try and ferret out the truth of why Arundel and Edelgard are in Fhirdiad, not even thinking about the fact that Patricia’s brother and daughter might let something slip to her. Not only does he not consider her an equal partner, he doesn’t even consider her a useful tool.

And that’s the kindest explanation. Others include that he just straight-up never took her feelings into consideration, that he never stopped to consider her feelings on the matter for even a moment. Others include that he deliberately concealed it from her because he didn’t want Patricia to be reminded of her old life in the Empire, because he did not want her to reestablish her bonds with her old life. Whether it was because he didn’t want her causing political strife that could endanger the Kingdom, or because in his infatuation with her he simply didn’t want her to leave, that’s not clear. It could be some combination of the reasons I stated above. It could be something else altogether. It could be all of them at once, stitched together into some monstrous leviathan of the ways women are disregarded by their husbands in societies like these, and all of the suffering that derives from it.

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I used to think that Patricia had to be extraordinarily stupid to still trust Cornelia enough to go to her for help after she saw what she was doing to Hapi and was cognizant enough to be horrified by it, but nowadays, I think it’s more emblematic of how desperate she was. She wanted to be reunited with her daughter, and if she wanted that, if she wanted to be Anselma again, then Cornelia was the only person she could turn to for help. She had no support network in Faerghus. Equal parts charity case and political prisoner, she had none of the normal recourse against mistreatment. She couldn’t look to her husband for help. He had already demonstrated that he had no interest in reuniting them. Their marriage was a farce, after all.

And no matter where she lived, Anselma was never more than a pawn on somebody else's gameboard.

[randomnameless]

And this,

This is why real life history or real life events shouldn't be used in fandom wars because you end up with posts that are not only borderline, but downright insulting to real life people, and real life memories of events that should not be used as "gotcha" point to prop pixels!

I know the Fodlan games have a tendency to blame the victims of aggression for "starting the war" by, uh, not offering their heads and lands on a platter when an invader asks for it, but it's a game made by people who wanted to make money and sell waifu merch in a gacha!

This? This thing????

I do not want to make any calls or assumptions about how education is organised in different countries because I don't have enough clues to make a well thought post, and it has never been that blog's purpose, but what the actual fuck?

Is Poster 1 thinking about an uchronia or a real world AU where, the real world nation that lost nearly 20% of its population, had around 90% of its jewish population exterminated, especially by an ordinate system of extermination in camps, that can still be visited today as a testimony of the worst humanity can offer -

Is Poster 1 saying "imagine an AU" where where Poland started the very real WW2??? To make a point about a video game and a bunch of pixels?

Who are the Holocaust deniers, Poster 2, the so-called Mooners or the dude(tte?) who goes "Real life AU : Imagine if Poland who saw 90% of its jewish population being exerminated started the WW2 lol"?

[theia-eos]

Reasons Why I want to nominate Claude's parents as the worst parents of the Fódlan characters

I know, I know, it's a pretty high bar (low bar?), considering the other contenders, especially since only one has a name and neither are seen in either Three Houses or Three Hopes.

However, I would not jump into this discussion without evidence.

Spoilers beyond the cut.

In Three Houses, during his B Support with Hilda, he talks about his parents, particularly how they would raise/punish him.

In case you missed it, he discusses being dragged along behind a horse by his father.

His mother would laugh as it happened.

I know he rationalizes it as having been a brat as a kid, but there is absolutely nothing he could have done that would have justified BEING DRAWN, which was part of one of the most inhumane execution methods of the medieval ages and is only associated with torture historically.

Edit to add: Claude states that there is a trick to make the horse punishment less severe than it sounds. He doesn't state if he learned the trick himself after being drawn a few times, if he was taught the trick by an older sibling who went through the same thing, or another person. We also are given no context for how the punishment was carried out, whether it was on a soft grassy surface with no rocks, or a hard, rocky surface, or the duration of the dragging. Claude's first statement does imply that it happened multiple times ("He used to" instead of "one time he"). We do not know if Claude sustained serious injuries, but any combination of scrapes/bruises/rope burn are pretty much guaranteed simply by the nature of the action, and that alone is worse physical injury intentionally inflicted on a child in the game by any parent on more than one occasion, that I am aware of.

And as if that were not bad enough, we get this little gem in Three Hopes:

Where Nader says that Khalid (aka Claude) was the favorite son of the king.

The favorite.

Let that sink in.

Favorites are generally given preferential treatment by the parents. Look at how Claude was treated again, and now look to his other siblings, like Shahid, who fights and dies trying to earn recognition from his father and to be acknowledged as a good heir to the throne. And Claude has more siblings.

I rest my case.

I will grant Count Varley and Margrave Gautier second and third place in the #1 Worst Father category, but King of Almyra tops the scale in a way that is almost impossible to imagine.

Patricia (Edelgard's mother and Dimitri's Step-Mother) may or may not beat Tiana (Claude's mother) for #1 Worst Mother, and Patricia may take overall #1 Worst Parent from King Almyra, depending on her ambiguous and not yet completely disclosed involvement with TWSiTD, the Tragedy, and what happened to Edelgard/Edelgard's siblings, but otherwise, I feel pretty safe with my nomination.

Edit for clarification: I would have loved to have actually met Tiana or the King of Almyra in either game. Most of the parents in the game are presented as good, but flawed, people. They just also happen to be terrible parents. Claude's parents could be great people, beloved rulers, and well-respected in Almyra. Despite my feelings on the matter, Claude seems to like his parents. That doesn’t mean they were good parents. In fact, I still believe they are the worst parents outside of actual villainous parents. Also, because this entry is a game with more fan engagement than what I usually discuss, I feel the need note that I'm not commenting on their parenting in relation to Almyra or Almyra's culture. I'm just commenting on how objectively terrible it is to drag a child along the ground behind a horse, and to laugh at that child in the process. I'll stand by that opinion.

[randomcanbian]

.

[lunar-renegade]

so I was thinking about the cosmology of fódlan (do they believe in a heliocentric model or a geocentric model?) and then inspiration struck and I made this diagram. Rhea Says Earth Revolves Around Mommy

[themattress]

Fire Emblem Observation

So, there are people who harp on this line as if it's some moral castigation from the developers, proving you chose "the bad route" by helping "the villain". As I've noted before, it's actually just a meta joke: the first completed scenario for the game was White Clouds (Black Eagles) + Silver Snow. Since Crimson Flower is an alternate path from White Clouds (Black Eagles), it by default wasn't the path Byleth was "meant to take" when White Clouds (Black Eagles) was written. And more to the point, it's far from the only line of its kind!

All of these are self-aware lines from the developers!

Rhea's is said in her S Support at the end of Silver Snow, and it's very much the same as Edelgard's "path you were meant to take" line. Again, White Clouds (Black Eagles) + Silver Snow was written first...and at the end of it, Rhea dies. That's the "proper" ending. It's only through direct player action in "accepting" Rhea that she is able to be saved, just as it's through direct player action that Crimson Flower can transpire in place of Silver Snow.

Then we have the other lines, which directly reference the routes you're not currently playing through. On every route but Crimson Flower, Edelgard does lose perspective and become a harsh leader with a heart of ice. On every route but Azure Moon, Dimitri does die a fruitless death on the battlefield by blindly seeking revenge. And on every route but Verdant Wind, Claude's dream is too much for him to accomplish on his own and he retreats back to Almyra without having left an impact on Fodlan at all. It's proof that there is no right and wrong when it comes to how you choose to play the game. There's no "canon". Every outcome is valid.

[butwhatifidothis]

Ever get tired of talking about cans fic? Wanna talk about the absolute missed opportunity that was making sothis a gremlin child and not a milf or even possibly a gilf instead?

Eh, kinda yeah kinda no regarding getting tired of talking about the fic.

Like, the actual act of reading the actual fic? Genuinely ass. Like, I've actually read up to and fully written out the notes for Chapter 62. I tried reading the first sentence of Chapter 63 right afterwards, saw it was a Rhea POV chapter, and went back to reading my otome isekais. That was around late November, and I've still yet to read any more of Chapter 63. The act of reading through something this horrible requires a lot of long breaks in-between sessions of reading.

But! In doing so I also get to talk about aspects of writing, and about 3H in particular, which I love doing. I like geeking out over aspects of writing like characterization, consistency, logical throughlines, character growth, etc. and being able to do so with such a horrible example of pretty much all of that is kinda fun, ngl.

And I also get to see and tackle so, so many of the asinine, horrendous takes that have made this fandom such a volatile space, such as:

Teacher Theory

Edelgard being some poor hapless maiden waiting for her love to save her from her unfair and unjust fate of being "branded" a villain

Dimitri being so toxic and "gone" that he needs to be killed since he just can't "listen to reason" anymore (and that actually him getting killed would make him happier)

the same essentially being said about Rhea

Lonato being a just man during his rebellion, as well as Christophe being just in his attempt to kill Rhea

Nabateans as a race being to blame for all of humanity's problems and so needing to take accountability for all of humanity's wrongs

Claude not actually caring about Fodlan and just wanting to conquer it so he can do better when he goes back to Almyra

Byleth needing to be completely human and needing to reject their Nabatean heritage in order to become happy

Edelgard being the only one among the lords + Rhea to ever care for Byleth

Everyone's best self being found only on CF

the idea that anyone defending themselves against Edelgard's attempt on their life in the Holy Tomb would be the aggressor instigating war against Edelgard

Edelgard caring so much about the people and being the only lord to care about the people

Sothis wanting Byleth to choose Edelgard over everyone else

Everyone making Edelgard kill them

And so on and so forth; this fic has pretty much all of them. In a way, reading this fic and breaking it down lets me have one, concentrated area where I get to dissect exactly how and why all of these takes are either shitty, genuinely disgusting, stupid as hell, or a mix of some/all of those things. And given the fact that Cap'n and multiple people in the fandom want this fic to be taken as meta/required reading, and with this basically being an amalgamation of all of Cap'n's genuine takes on the game (+ those of other Edelstans), going over exactly why such an influential thing is so wrong feels fitting lol. It's a pain to actually have to read through, especially with the pretentious and self-pitying holier-than-thou prose making things hard to actually physically read, but the result of doing so makes it worth it imo.

Buuuut to get off of that: yes, it was an extremely huge missed opportunity that Sothis was a stupid fuckin' loli instead of her actual self. Or, I guess more accurately, that she didn't physically become her actual self after merging with Byleth, or at least become physically closer to it. Full Mommy Sothis is so beautiful from the little we see of her! And the idea of her looking more like how she used to as she gains more of her memories would've been cool to see! And, uh, also, I feel an adult body would make her garb feel less... unfortunate to look at (ngl I get Nowi vibes looking at Sothis and I Do Not Like Nowi's clothing design that much).

I feel there was a lot missed with Sothis tho, and that that's mostly the case because the game more wants the feeling of a mystery to hang around the game more than it does actually writing a mystery with a conclusion. Sothis was seen regaining bits and pieces of her former life as a god, so if she stayed around long enough she could have revealed things to the player that were meant to be hidden. Same with Rhea - she could talk about a lot of the background knowledge of Fodlan's history that could have fleshed out the world so much more. But doing that would "spoil the fun" so to speak; there wouldn't be a mystery anymore, which the writers seemed to prioritize more than actually making the mystery fulfilling to figure out.

So Sothis gets yeeted out of the story halfway through, and Rhea is either an unavailable damsel in distress or a person pushed past their breaking point and thus unable to talk to. That's why Rhea's lore dumps on SS and VW are so rushed and forced - the writers knew they had to eventually get to the end of the mystery, and so held off as long as possible. At least, that interpretation of the writing can exist, given how they've written everything lol

[motheruin]

EREMIYA ( EREMIAH ) AHAVA, has arrived at Garreg Mach Monastery!

#MOTHERUIN ━━━ private roleplay blog for Eremiya of Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ( FE12 ); interpreted & loved by Elix ( 8TEEN / any prns ); affiliated with the Officers Academy as a faculty member.

NOTES ON PORTRAYAL.

with Eremiya being written after the canon events of New Mystery of the Emblem, the likelihood of spoilers appearing in her posts is highly possible. of course, I will tag all of the appropriate posts accordingly. the official tag for any spoilers will be # fe12 spoilers to avoid them.

hired at Garreg Mach Monastery as a counselor ( for the youth and seeking / troubled families ) and a dutiful church attendant, Eremiya arrives in Fodlan for a reason unknown to herself. though her heart yearns for salvation in the light of the archbishop; she is a monster that has not been declawed; the voice of Gharnef demands a second chance from his puppeteer. in the conquest of what? that, she does not know.

though the curse of corruption has been lifted from her mind, Eremiya is not a better person and, likely, will not be for a long time. the duration of Gharnef's hold on her has left a heavy impact on her physically, mentally, and emotionally. she does not understand the weight of her past actions, and after being alienated from the people she once loved, will not know how to fit herself within a community. her words are venomous and there is no denying the disdain she holds for everyone around her. let it be known that the development I have planned for Eremiya is based on time and will only be seen IC gradually.

likewise, Eremiya is a villain that will not be redeemed on this blog. I do not like how her character was handled in NMotE and, in the hopes of writing her properly, will not shine a light on the crimes she's committed despite the misfortune that was her backstory. I do not believe that Eremiya is a good person and would rather forgo any discussions on her "actually deserving more sympathy" or "needing to be treated more kindly". ( re; you being hurt in the past does not mean you can hurt people later and not face repercussions. does not matter if you were brainwashed or corrupted. ) this will be elaborated on in future meta and headcanon posts.

more minor than the previous bullets but I have written Eremiya as being dark-skinned. my actual edits of her FEH art will be posted or linked once they're done but, until then, feel free to ask me for the specific tone / shade her skin is. whether for descriptions, art, or just general knowledge, I do not mind! just remember to not reference her skin being pale or fair or light and we're good!

NAVIGATION ━━━ RULES; MUSE; STATS; INTERVIEW; THREADS; SUPPORT PAGES.

TAGS.

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ to love is to be deemed a ruination ・ 【 𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 】 .

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ a forgotten sanctuary; an orphanage ・ 【 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 】 .

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ to appease the handmade goddess ・ 【 𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 】 . ( all answered asks )

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ in the hands of his puppeteer ・ 【 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 】 .

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ she; who motherhood must mourn ・ 【 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 】 . ( drabbles of the muse )

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ she; the bishop known by her shadow ・ 【 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 】 . ( headcanons or meta written about the muse )

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ love is sacrifice; sacrifice is love ・ 【 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 】 . ( any quotes from literature that are reblogged )

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ the flaw we call memory ・ 【 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐃 】 . ( posts that are reblogged that were not written by myself but contain an interaction with my muse that i want to save )

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ mun; barely ・ 【 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 】 .

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ thread name ・ 【 𝐀 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 】 .

♡ ━━━━━━ ❝ mission name ・ 【 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 】 .

[themoomoorn]

With this nifty color analysis in place, how would you interpret Byleth, Ashen Demon and villain(ess) of a thousand mercenaries' nightmares, having a soft pink as their secondary color? It does apply a bit more to the female, but other than their promotion (Which has divine/royal purple/gold/white as the main combo), all of their options include pink!

And one nifty aspect about Claude that I will always be convinced is a happy accident is that yellow and green are both his colors - enhanced by the fact that green appears to be Almyra's representative/national color. He's heroic when he embraces both colors (even though Barbarossa's outfit is mostly brown and gold) and more villainous when he's sliding towards one...hm hm hmm...

For a second, let's look at how Houses/Hopes uses colour and equipment to foreshadow what each characters role is in the game.

Byleth is the Ashen Demon, and checking around in the Japanese text this is meant to be more of a grey character. So, somewhere between black and white. They have black armor initially, but gain white when they obtain their Enlightened One class after fusing with Sothis. Black and White right there, but there's more. They lose the white (Enlightened One powers) if they fight alongside Edelgard, leader of the Black Eagle Strike Force, against Rhea, whose title is the White One in Japanese, undoing their character arc and returning to how they were at the beginning of the game.

That's cool. We also see Red associated with Edelgard, a colour that the series uses to denote enemies, with her little cape and the names of her routes (though Safflower was done this in relation to the lyrics of Edge of Dawn). Dimitri, while he has black armor after the timeskip, has a blue cap (a heroic colour in the franchise) and his Great Lord design drops the black armor for a whiter set. Considering it's used at the end of Flower, where his mental problems didn't drive him, and at the end of Moon, where he becomes the Hero, the design is meant to show he's the good guy here.

Claude is associated with gold/yellow, usually used for a third enemy faction on a map. This works with his outsider status, but joining the Deer in Houses results in the route being labelled as Verdant. It's green, an ally color, while the House keeps it's association with yellow in Hopes, where Claude becomes a villain in his own right. But considering Claude leaves Fodlan in Byleth's hands and returns to Almyra, it's almost like Almyra is meant to be the true third faction.

We also see their weapons relating to the weapons triangle. Byleth has a sword and beats Edelgard's axe in SS while they're implied to lose their sword at the end of Flower, replacing it with the Sword of Seiros. Sword can no longer beat axe. Edelgard's axe beats Dimitri's lance unless he has help from Byleth, while Dimitri's win sees him as King with Byleth being his ally. We get something similar with Claude's bow, it's outside the triangle and would be at a disadvantage if he was attacked directly. He needs an ally to back up. Likewise, the series has used swords as the heroic weapon often enough while axes were originally enemy only as they weren't seen as heroic.

We put this together and we end up with something like this. Grey/Silver + Sword = Good, Blue + Lance = Good, Bow + Green = Good Ally, Bow + Yellow = Bad Enemy, Red + Axe = Bad.

Silver can also represent the design philosophy of the game. It's Byleth's route, the one most materials push as happening, but you can't save everyone. No matter how much you want to march with Dimitri, join Claude, or get Edelgard to wake the fuck up and see reality, you can't. You can get a good ending, but not a perfect ending where everyone lives. And considering the one war phase that is associated with gold is a villain route, a route that is the antithesis of Wind, the idea of a “Golden Route” is presented as a bad thing because it goes against what Houses was doing.

[slotumn]

Rough idea for post-VW (technically canon divergent but still VW-based) administrative zones for a longfic I'm working on

Adrestia and Faerghus both get chopped the fuck up into multiple provinces because it was mostly Leicesterians drawing the lines and they don't want their former rivals gathering power again; you can see that territories under prominent houses also got chopped up because again, curbing their influence. Galatea straight up disappeared because Leicesterians are petty and they haven't forgotten about the Galatea-Daphnel split lmao

In the early years following unification, Derdriu is the capital because that's the only major city in Fódlan that's not in complete ruins from the war, but eventually they build a new capital at Zanado, both for geographic convenience and to symbolically emphasize Eisner regime's dedication to treating all regions equally. (In practice most of the government jobs were taken by Leicesterians in early years, but that was hard to avoid when again, the war killed off most of the qualified people in Faerghus and Adrestia)

Also in the early years, each province is ruled by governor generals from the central government + roundtable of lords/local representatives from each territory. Once the economy and infrastructure is sufficiently recovered, the province-level roundtables are all combined into a national parliament. The province system remains, however, for various administrative purposes; for example, the national institute of higher learning (successor to Officer's Academy) has a campus on each provincial capital.

Byleth faces a lot of challenges in early years of the rule because nobody is happy no matter what she does; Adrestians and Faerghans took severe wounds to their national prides and are pissed about effectively being turned into Leicesterian colonies, Leicesterians don't like that she won't let them plunder and exploit the other two regions like they think they earned the right to. (She solves most of this by beating up the individuals who have those complaints)

[raxistaicho]

It’s always been so weird to me how Dimitri and/or Rhea-centric (and to a lesser extent Claude-centric) fanfics will absolutely butcher Edelgard’s character and put her through extreme violence as “comeuppance” for her being an evil bitch and yet in all Edelgard-centric fanfics I’ve read the other lords + Rhea aren’t treated the same way. Sure, I can’t say that they’re perfectly characterized and nuanced, but I’ve never read a fanfic with Edelgard as the protagonist that involved the other lords + Rhea getting tortured for the pleasure of the audience. People writing Edelgard as a protagonist give a level of respect to her enemies that people who write Edelgard as an antagonist just don’t have for her.

For sure, some of the stuff the writer of that fic has her go through is pretty goddamn gross (extreme physical abuse, her citizens throw bricks or rocks at her, at one point she gets bits of metal in her eye and her eye is later healed with the meta still in it) and it's clearly just the author venting her frustrations at the character. Now granted, I indulge in some of that myself, but it's more in the form of Dimitri losing arguments against other characters, like so:

“The Flame Emperor was behind the Tragedy of Duscur,” Dimitri said, his voice ragged and his eyes on the ground. “He killed my father! My stepmother! Our knights, my friends, the innocent people of Duscur! All their blood is on his hands!”

Marissa was so stunned that she could only stare at Dimitri in utter shock as he bent over to retrieve something from the ground. “Dimitri,” she said slowly. “That dark mage said he and the others like him created the Flame Emperor. He only said the Flame Emperor was responsible to quiet his protests. Thales is clearly the superior in their relationship.”

But Dimitri was staring at the dagger he’d picked up off the ground. Recognizing this situation for the lost cause it was, she rolled her eyes and left the prince behind. Dimitri might have exposed their position sooner than Marissa would have liked, but Thales and the Flame Emperor had unknowingly handed her a wealth of information.

If I ever got to a character physically torturing Dimitri, I'd be going too far and I should hope my fans would call me out on it.

And yeah, I mentioned this before, but it just feels like our side gives better respect to the other than we get in return. We (at least mostly, anyways, there's obvious bad-faith types in any group) don't question that Dimitri or Rhea's fans believe they're the character the game presents them as, and yet in return they act like Edelgard's a secret genocidal tyrant who just wants to rule Fodlan.

[randomnameless]

What do you think about the fics where children of nabateans and humans are either humans or nabateans?

Fics are fics so it's basically the author's interpreration and fantasy being written, but as far as personal taste goes, it's not really my cup of tea!

Where's the fun with fantasy settings if you can't come up with mixed blood humans who sekritly (or not so sekritly) descend from some sort of other race of beings and got super powers from that deal ?

I think I ranted about it in a french post some months ago about this but it was kind of salty.

The only setting in FE where half human children were developped is Tellius with the Branded and... well, let's not go there, after all, it's the verse that tells you that racism is BaD, but miscegenation is also BaD...

In Elibe, fwiw, bar having weird mystical powers and longer lifespan than humans, but shorter than full blooded dragons, hybrids aren't generally developped (and that's taking into account Al from the manga).

That being said, in the particular context that is Fodlan and some characters' pov about Nabateans, their blood and a general discussion about what is "humanity" used to "other" sentient beings that are despised because they are "others"...

The "kids are either humans or nabateans" isn't really something I'm fond of.

But hey, fics are basically someone's takes on canon and there's no point about arguing headcanons !

Like, even with half-lizard Lycaon AUs, some people could try to explain his "died from a sudden illness" in different ways : he can be inherently prone to sickness because he is a half-lizard, or, in my hodgepodge of an AU, the "dies from a sudden illness" is a cheap cover up story to hide his assassination, at the hands of members of his dad's family because they wanted the throne and because he was a half-lizard.

We basically have two different takes, coming from two different people about a thrown away line, which creates, in substance, two differents AU/HCs/fanfics!

So, to reply to your question anon, it's not the HC i came up with and not one I like because of all the racial implication and tensions Fodlan, as a setting, has regarding coexistence.

But I'd be really pissed if anyone went to comment on a fic to say the author's headcanon is "wrong".

Now, if we're talking about people claiming to write meta or to comment canon, it's another story - but in the end, the canon answer is "10k years of lore" so we're pretty much quickly entering headcanon territory, and when people try to pretend their headcanons are canon, that's how you end up with 5 years of discourse lol

[aurheatum]

@iyusiia

Headcanon prompt / open

Despite clearly drawing inspiration from FE4 and its divinities, godliness in 3h is explicitly linked to motherhood in Fodlan (differing from Naga's depictions in both Archanea and Jugdral).

Sothis is above all the land's progenitor goddess - the emphasis on her femininity and maternal side explicit in the text that shows up in the Fodlan magic circle.

Image: the localized text (right) and a new translation (left) using the exact romanization and wording that shows up in-game whenever white or black magic is cast. Source.

Rhea wants her mother, the Goddess, back; this is the reasoning behind much of what happens in Three Houses, including Byleth's own origin. But does Rhea want to be a god, herself? Much less a mother?

I don't think so. She states at the end of SS "I wished desperately to be held in my mother's arms once more", very clearly placing herself in the role of child when it comes to Sothis (funny, she can only admit to this when she knows it is no longer possible).

Here's a much harder, question, then, is Rhea a mother despite her own wants? Let's dig in!

As her new FEH unit aptly puts (in both her Japanese and English title for it) Rhea is quite literally the matriarch of the entire Seiros religion. Even if it is, as hinted, based on what the Sothis religion looked like while the goddess was still alive it was created by Seiros, named after her, and has been strictly guided by the same archbishop for a millennia now.

She is also the creator of twelve living beings or vessels - ending with Sitri (and this is not to mention her altered golems, all named after people dear to her). Textually, there is no doubt that as a creator to one who "loved as a human" and someone who, to use an alternate translation of Sothis' magical circle, was indeed "a creature who possessed a heart", Rhea is a mother, even going so far as to say that is exactly how Sitri viewed her.

It is telling though, isn't it, the way she phrases it? While she acknowledges she was a mother figure to Sitri, and even admits to affection toward her* -- nowhere does she ever say she considers Sitri her daughter.

She would never truly be able to admit that, after all; to be a mother is simply not something Rhea can ever comphrehend because it would put her as equal to her mother ("I have only ever been acting as your proxy" she tells Byleth when still convinced they will awaken as Sothis).

And yet, despite it all, she has indeed become one in her single-minded pursuit to bring the dead back to life.

Post canon would she ever be able to come to terms with all this? That's a little bit out of the range of my portrayal I have to say, but probably only in her endings where she goes to live with Catherine in Zanado and actually has time time to unpack all of the lies she's told both the world and herself.

*I want to add that, in her own weird, winding Nabatean way, I do think Rhea at least considered Sitri to be family or special. I went into this more in another meta but never added what really sets it apart to me: the reason she gave Sitri a private open casket burial and preserved her body, in my opinion, is because this is something she never could do for the rest of her family (tfw ur either a pebble or sword). It is one of the highest forms of love an eternally grieving woman like Rhea can give.

[latinokaeya-moving]

thinking maybe i was going somewhere when i wrote a note in my isidora fic speculating that maybe one of the reasons her foil relationship with claude works is bc of how interesting it is to look at them in terms of how the both of them are treated differently as these supposed ‘foreign’ entities within fodlan n how that could be analysed through a more meta political lens of the difference in perception when a racialised person is primarily seen as an invading threat vs when a racialised person is primarily seen as a source of extraction of resources/labour

[dmclemblems]

One thing that is bugging the hell outta me is why Clyde's thought process of "getting rid of the Church will disincentivize Edel/gard from further attempts at getting to Leicester" makes no sense to me on a meta level. Like, as players of 3H.

Edel/gard is (supposedly) only trying to conquer the Alliance to create a beeline from the Empire to Garreg Mach, right? That place that Edel/gard... already forced Rhea out of at this point in time... and has complete control over on CF when she does the same thing there. Without needing to conquer Leicester first.

Was there, like, just an explanation I missed as to why Edel/gard doesn't just set up base at Garreg Mach and have Hubert take care of Adrestia's rowdy nobles with his Forceful Persuasion Tactics? That thing she shows no care about him using, and are shown to be pretty damn effective? In 3H she had no need of conquering the Alliance other than imperialism being her motivation so it made sense there, but Hopes gives her an explanation that isn't making that much sense to me? Unless I missed something lol

Also in SB! She conquered GM before attacking Leicester. In the sense of needing to reach GM in the middle of the war it would be good to have Leicester territory under her control so they could come and go as they need to, but that's the only reason I can think of for her to use as an excuse or a secondary reasoning other than conquering Fodlan itself (which is of course her goal, so attacking Leicester serves both the purpose of conquest and getting her a quicker route to GM). Like, conquering is still her goal in Hopes, so all I can guess that that is is something helpful that made her decide to attack Leicester first and with a stronger force (that that is is, lel, English).

I assume she didn't set up base at GM because she was needed in Adrestia or at the respective camp at the time to command her forces, but that is of course just speculation on my part and wasn't confirmed within the game). Even if Hubert could manage the nobles, I imagine she would want to be present to rally her forces. Also, technically, she's safest in Adrestia.

If she remained at GM, I think it would be a logical thought that Rhea would attempt to get it back and thus that could put her in danger at any time. As long as she's residing in a location that's a taken base from her enemy, there's always the possibility that they'll attack to get it back. If she was with her own troops and not directly within taken enemy territory for a long period of time, it spares her the risk of an enemy locating her because they won't know exactly where she is at all times. If she stayed in GM, all her enemies would know exactly where she was if it got out even once.

Imo it doesn't help her to be stationary in a place that she already conquered, because that opens her, personally, up to attack much easier. If she gets attacked and is killed, the war is over. If GM gets attacked and retaken because she wasn't there, she's still alive and continuing her war, so the possibility of recapturing GM remains. No matter how many times GM gets retaken by the Church, as long as Edelgard is alive and she has enough troops left, she can always have the chance of getting it back, versus staying there and playing defense and offense at the same time.

Normally she is defending GM at the same time as attacking the other territories, but losing the defense matters a lot less when she wasn't lost in the process. If she's not there, the war goes on and the Church can reclaim GM, but they'll always be aware that she's still alive to attack again. Now that puts them on the defensive and she's not in a bad position, but they are. They know they'll be attacked at any time, but they don't know when. She's be in the same situation if she remained there.

Technically using Leicester as a quick method to get there would make sense, so my guess is just that it made it easier to reach GM if and when needed. Since she took over GM already, I would think she'd want to be ready to reinforce it if the Church attacked to get it back. It would make sense that she'd want to still reinforce GM with more troops even if not including herself personally, so she'd want an easier method to get there.

Basically she wants to conquer Fodlan anyway, so attacking Leicester first with a heavier force than she attacked Faerghus with would give her double benefit (conquer+beeline). Also, Faerghus was dealing with Cornelia at that time, so not only were they occupied with TWS, but that spares Edelgard's necessity of sending more troops to attack them. Someone else is already attacking them, which makes her job easier enough that she can focus more on Leicester (which is noticeable because she attacks all of Leicester, versus only really attacking the western front in Faerghus. She didn't reinforce the western front either until after Cornelia was dealt with, which the latter would've freed up a lot of Faerghus' fighting force).

As far as I understand it, it just had more benefit to try to overtake Leicester aside from just conquering Fodlan (thus attacking it harder than Faerghus at first), since she'd already taken GM and it'd be easier to reinforce it in case of attack if they had Leicester under their control. Staying in GM as per my personal speculation was a lot more of a risk to her safety, especially when she could try to overtake Leicester and go through it to reach GM quickly as needed. Doing it this way would keep her safer while also keeping GM within reach.

Also, if Claude was allied with Edelgard and defeated Rhea, GM wouldn’t be at risk of counterattack anymore. It would, in his theory, make her figure that GM is safe and she doesn’t need to conquer Leicester to get there because she can pass through freely now and/or doesn’t need to fight for GM anymore (presumably, i.e. they might still raise their weapons to avenge Rhea and retake the Church, especially with Seteth still alive). Basically, it’s like, “if you need Leicester to get there to fight Rhea at any point, if we kill her now you won’t need to conquer Leicester to get there”. It somewhat works... if you don’t consider that Seteth might rally the Church again or that Edelgard is actually going to try to attack them again anyway for conquest.