#i think Miklan aka the posterboy against Crests™ realizing his own agency in the world

[slankyyy-vs-the-world]

Edit: I cleaned up this ramble I typed on my phone and polished some of my points to make more sense and generally to make my thoughts more coherent. Addendum: with the Miklan-Stans and Sylvain-Stans, of fucking course most woobiefication always share the same take of ‘Let’s blame Matthias for everything because he is the sole root of my Gautier Blorbo’s mental anguish hundred-fold!!!!’

I’m more lenient with fanon during the 3Houses era since at the time, the game didn’t even give Margrave Gautier a name, he was at most a vague concept left up to fill the blanks. When Hopes came out and we got more Matthias characterization and context for the situation of Gautier-Sreng, sucks that people chucked it all out of the window to just make the flattest interpretations ever. Which sucks because I absolutely adore Matthias as well (how Gautier enjoyers look when I roll up loving ALL Gautiers that is not just Sylvain) and he gets cartoonishly flattened to be this horrible awful abusive father in a Post-Hopes fandom.

Matthias is a man destroyed by loss; who believed in the same starry-eyed future that Lambert did, who tried to bring that future to fruition. Even after he lost not just the love of his life but his second unborn child in a violent raid by Sreng forces, Matthias still tried to broker peace with Sreng (methods of brokering peace were dubious since he brought home a child political hostage). He become cold and closoed off after his first wife died, doing a complete 180 in his personality from being a talkative and friendly guy to the Margrave who's fixated on ensuring the border is secured. After Lambert's death—it's clear that he gave up on ever reaching that lofty future Lambert got him to believe in. This man is deeply good to his friends, he's loyal to his country and shares a close bond with Rodrigue—but for the life of him, he cannot ever express how he truly feels to the point where Sylvain says that his true emotions/thoughts could fill a whole library. Matthias has completely closed himself off from other people, being dubbed as the Wall of Ice because of how little he lets people see of him; all to the detriment of his sons. Yet Matthias grieves, my god does he grieve deeply for Miklan—despite putting up an exterior of indifference, he wishes to avenge his death in Azure Gleam, Rodrigue comments how he holds so much regret for how Miklan turned out. He is also very aware that he has not been the greatest father, yet he cares deeply for Sylvain as well and sees so much of his younger self in him; it literally talks Rodrigue chasing after the man to get him to apologize to Sylvain.

Which that’s just really boring to reduce him from all of that nuance—because it cleans up the very messy family situation of House Gautier into nice clean boxes; people say that they love messy and complex families in media but then immediately jump to make the one character the villain while everyone else was a hapless victim of circumstance.

Yes, this criticism against Matthias fanon applies to Miklan content as well, same thing I said about Matthias fanon pre-Hopes era also applies here too. Disclaimer for Miklan: he ultimately made his own choices and actions—Miklan could’ve and should’ve made better choices instead of trying to murder Sylvain and abuse him for all of their childhoods. Again, I cannot stress this enough—that doesn’t negate his horrible actions of choosing to abuse Sylvain, choosing to blame Crests™️ (and ironically, choosing to allow himself to be defined by Crests), choosing to become a brigand and burn down villages for fun.

Miklan and Sylvain are both two sides of the narrative coin that demonstrates how the influence of Crests amongst the nobility are deeply detrimental to Faerghus and Fodlan. It's a lot more fair to lean into Miklan's worst traits because he doesn't have any good qualities in Houses (aside from being a capable commander) and Sylvain mostly talks/downplays about how Miklan's severe abuse towards him. But at the same time, I don’t think Miklan was exempt from the same aspect as Sylvain in regards to Matthias’s extreme devotion to serving his duty as Margrave nor is it totally fair to compare Miklan to Caspar (an Imperial noble whose House does not have any duty to defend a hostile border) and Holst (a Leicester noble whose House does has a border to defend, who has Fodlan's throat to help fend off that hostile border unlike Gautier, and Leicester not having as harsh terrain as Faerghus does).

People who talk like Crests™️ held a gun to Miklan’s head and made him do all of those things are dumb!!! And I do not Like that take at all!!! But there has to be some middle ground between a) Miklan was a helpless victim of circumstance who cannot be responsible for his actions or b) Miklan was just a horrible person and his circumstances don't matter at all since similar guys like Caspar and Holst werent well-shoving brigand brothers. I think there's merit in exploring how House Gautier was shaped by military necessity to defend a hostile border and Matthias’s grief about losing his beloved wife, had helped shaped Miklan for the worse rather than taking one of those two extremes. Say what you want about Hopes, but I’d argue that the writing for the Gautier family and the other two men of Gautier is way more interesting than the scraps we got from Houses actually. Like guys, guys—the fact that none of the men of the Gautier family have a clear cut figure who is the most 'moral' or even can be whole-hardheartedly be considered a 'good' person, that's what makes all three of some super compelling and interesting actually. Their family situation is so scarred by external factors such as the being able to defend a hostile border from a foreign invading force, being raised in the most desolate locations of all of Fodlan, being a House founded by a military need who's passed down the job for 200 years, needing any advantage they get to do that job effectively—and all three of the Gautier men choosing to pick the worst possible choices in their shared yet respective shit situations to cope? Way more compelling than just making one of the two Gautier men the certified Cause™ and/or making Crests™ the sole cause. In conclusion? Free my man, he DID do all of that—that’s why I find him interesting.

Honestly, speaking as one of the fifteen Miklan fans on here, I think it’s objectively funnier if Miklan-Fans and Miklan-Haters cannot be told apart in the same way that Sylvain-Haters and Sylvain-Fans cannot be told apart. Like, the more I look at the two of them - the people stanning these guys aren’t actually that different with how they stan their respective Gautier blorbo:

Both respective Gautier sons gets reduced to helpless woobies who he’s a victim of the Crests™️, therefore he can NEVER actually be held accountable for any of his destructive actions towards others, it’s 100% solely someone else’s fault that he’s just like this (Sylvain with Miklan & Miklan with Matthias) disregarding personal agency, and both get used as no.1 talking points in the fe3h MMA power slap fights

Personally as someone who adores both of them, it’s hilarious to read through a post dogging on Miklan and/or Sylvain, agreeing with most - if not all of the points made that conclude that he ruined his own life with his own shitty actions, and proceeding to boot up tomodachi life where I enrich my Miklan and Sylvain miis with cool jackets, interiors and yummy food. Honestly, Miklan’s and Sylvain’s shitty actions and shitty behaviour is what makes both deeply interesting characters, but sucks that people wanna make them into sopping wet webkinz plushies.