#reynaattheend

[raxistaicho]

find it funny the edelcrits are still going after you and this red character. How did u get looped in racist accusations, didn't one of them write that one horrid throuple fanfiction that was racist af to Claude and a total character annihilation of edelgard or is it someone else away from their circle?

Good luck as always

No, you're thinking of Reynaattheend, she's on the same wavelength in terms of analysis of the game, but since she's not on Tumblr (to the best of my knowledge anyways) I wouldn't call her an Edelcrit.

Her fic is pretty dang yikesy though, featuring such wonderful features as,

some Nabateans leaving Fodlan to go "fix" other nations and being the apparent source of all religions (not beating the colonizer allegations at all)

Dimitri being a white savior for Claude

Byleth struggling with her emotions to hysterical woman levels and constantly relying on her two boyfriends to save her from almost getting herself killed (to give an example, Byleth struggles for page upon page against the Death Knight only for Dimitri to show up and one-shot him)

Just... everything to do with Edelgard

The Agarthans and Almyrans, despite their cultures very strongly and clearly leaning Greek and Persian, having German and Japanese as their languages, as though Reyna just thought any foreign language was as good as any other.

Byleth taking measures to hide Rhea's knowing distortion of Fodlan's history.

Sothis's destruction of two city states being lauded as a good thing for which holidays should be thrown (because I guess it was a Sodom and Gomorrah situation where literally every living soul in both cities were evil and deserving of death, meaning double genocide is heroic!)

Characters just swearing constantly because I guess she thinks that makes the fic more mature

Really glad to see people are starting to treat her fanfic with a more skeptical eye, I've done my bit to help push things along there.

[grandpuppylight]

Check out this amazing AU from ReynaAtTheEnd

This not my story but the person who owns it doesn't have tumblr. So I decided that the one piece tumblr fandom needs this in their life. The synopsis is that king finds out the seraphim exit 7 days before marineford. Three hours before the execution is to acure Sengoku gets a call from Egghead. Chaos insues. Chapters 1-20 up now the author does not have an upload schedule. Now for just one interesting insight to the story, the author is making Moria a bigger threat than he already was.

Ch. 1-17 arc 1

Ch. 18-24 arc 2

Ch. 25-33 arc 3

Ch. 34-43 arc 4

Ch. 44- ongoing arc 5

The author has decided to call it the "Age of Emperors AU"

[renaissance-du-dieu-solitaire]

Luffy in a wedding dress, based on ReynaAtTheEnd's fic.

No background version

I'M FINALLY DONE!!!!

Goddamn, trying to design a wedding dress was so stressful!!!😩 Especially when you need to colour it as well... My poor finger has been through a lot these days so I'm glad it's over... However, that's my fault because I decided to do other projects before finishing this one. Procrastination should be my middle name at this point.

There's gonna be a background for it, but at this point, I just want this to be finished before the wedding itself. I'll probably post the background version later...

---

Me: I'm gonna take a rest now that this is do- *closet doors creaks* (Drum of Liberations starts playing)

Me: ........

(slowly turns towards closet)

Me:..... Nika, not you too...😫

Nika: it's my turn now, Artist, shishishishi...

Nika!Luffy in a wedding dress 2, Electric Boogaloo

TBC...

[thesharktanksdriver]

I'm sorry but I'm a real sucker for more King platonic fics, (which is VERY RARE???)

And I gotta ask though, reading ur response on about Black Maria hating Robin, and then seeing King get mentioned,

Well, That's not exactly what I'm going to ask but had Y/N been very hesistant or so to even go in wano? Saying that as they did... yeeted themself,,

(and how did they react to seeing that most of their family figures are just fighting each other to death,, though I think Y/N wouldn't have any err, closer bond to Kaidou due to being forgotten and buried in the depths of their many memories,, )

I LOVE UR FICS BTW!!!! I especially love Determination!, Thank you for making this platonic fic💗💗

Bro I just want more king content in general 😭 he’s such a fucking cool character! I wish there was more content of him and lunarains in general because they’re so fucking cool. If you want a good recommendation I’d suggest summit apocalypse by ReynaAtTheEnd on ao3. It’s chefs kiss perfect so far and I highly recommend it

As for your question! Yes! Y/n was very hesitant In going back to Wano. During Marineford and the timeskip y/n had to essentially hide out not just because of marines but because both Kaido and big mom were desperately trying to find them. So coming out of big cake island and immediately heading for Kaido’s home turf is extremely harrowing for them. But at the same time y/n would follow Luffy and the straw hats to the end of the earth

And more importantly y/n feels as if they owe it to Oden and momonosuke. Oden died for Wano and his people, momonosuke will never be safe and desperately wants to save his home. They owe it Oden the ensure his son and their friend is safe, and even if it’s hard to do y/n knows that the beast pirates aren’t good people even if they were good to them. That doesn’t make up for the fact that they’ve killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people, especially since they let Orochi continue his reign of terror on wanos populace.

But even with this all it’s hard for them. Because they know Sasaki, king, Black Maria, Ulti, whos-who, etc are shitty people but they knew them personally. Saw the humanity in people considered to be ruthless monsters.

As for Kaido…..☺️ well looks like y/n gets to see their old friend who they didn’t remember again because the moment they show up in wano they see their face plastered literally everywhere on wanted posters demanding they be brought alive with a reward too big to count.

The reunion with him and king is certainly awkward.

Especially with king

Especially after Marineford lololololol

[teaveetamer]

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.

[deathbirby]

hi hi, got any good edelgard critical fanfics reccomendations? rlly enjoyed The only way by ReynaAtTheEnd on AO3, and looking for stuff thats similar. I actually rlly enjoy El as a villain but most fandom stuff often skirts around her bad actions and lumps the blame onto Twisted, so I'm looking for some fics that actually call out and challenge El's beliefs + actions :')

Tbh I don't read much 3h fanfic and when I do it's very niche ships lmao. There might be someone else who can help you with this. Or who knows maybe someone will respond with a 10/10 fic.

All I know is that "godspeed" absolutely trashes Edelgard but I'm not sure about its other contents.

[dragonprincess18]

I've written fanfic for a while, across multiple fandoms, so I feel like I've gone through all the milestones. Stilted dialogue, Mary Sues, plotholes...What I haven't dealt with was having AUs for my own story.

The Dragon That Will Pierce The Heavens is the longest story I've written in a long while, and add in that One Piece is the largest sandbox I've ever played in, it kinda just...happened.

A few of those AUs and crossovers have been started but generally discarded, like Miraculous Dragon (basically a Miraculous Ladybug crossover), or one shots just to get the itch out, like in Moonbeams and Stardust, where I did chapters for Pokemon, Digimon Adventure, Harry Potter and even a modern chapter.

Lately, I've even been collaborating with ReynaAtTheEnd to do a collaboration with her amazing story Summit Apocalypse, which will hopefully see the light of day at some point.

But there are definitely divergent ideas I've had that are too big for me to write, and those are the ones that gnaw at me.

For example...

What if Hikari never escaped Estrella to the East Blue?

What if, when she was about to go over the coral, something happened with the other boat and she had to give up her chance in order to make sure they escaped? Leaving Hikari to be captured and shipped off to Dressrosa, where Doflamingo happily threw a lavish wedding to celebrate finally getting the queen he believed he deserved.

Over the course of two years, Doflamingo believing he broke Hikari down into the perfect doll, not knowing she was secretly coordinating the Tontatta and toys and gladiators to overthrow him.

Then Law and the Straw Hats show up with their own plans, throwing Dressrosa into chaos, and Law ends up chained to the Heart Seat, where he meets the infamous Ice Queen that acts as Doflamingo's most valuable council...Only to learn, much to his surprise, that Hikari has been undermining the Donquixote Pirates the entire time as she frees him from the Sea Prism Stone cuffs.

Having followed the Straw Hats since their assault on Enies Lobby, Hikari knows to just point Luffy in the right direction and let him rip, revealing her Celestial Dragon powers to tag-team Doflamingo with Law while Luffy deals personally with Bellamy before taking over.

In the end, once Doflamingo has been defeated and everyone bandaged up, Hikari is ready to leave on her own when Luffy obliviously offers for her to join his crew instead of be alone.

(Law may be a little jealous he didn't ask fast enough.)

Or...

What if, at the end, Hikari is mentally sent back in time to make things right?

If things ended badly, a la of pop greens and tangerines (which I started and never finished, seriously great but broke me), Hikari regretted leading her loved ones into such a bloody fate and is thus sent back to when she was eight years old.

With Lily to think of, and knowing that her crew and allies are currently suffering through their childhood trauma, Hikari pulls the trigger on her plan a decade early, escaping with the slaves to Fishman Island...Where she meets JInbei, and tells him she's looking for the man that her mother's locket names Eddy. Jinbei, recognizing said locket and seeing her resemblance to a lost friend, then takes her to Whitebeard, who is devastated to learn his love is dead but accepts her daughter with open arms.

Hikari tells him about Rosinante, that he had tried to help her but is in danger saving another child, and they need to go save both of them. So Whitebeard goes with Marco and a whole ship of his men to Minion Island, where he gladly stomps Doflamingo's face into the ground for daring to think he could just buy his precious daughter with favors, and taking in a very confused Rosinante and wary Law, who remembers his 'past' life once Hikari hugs him in tears over seeing him dying from Amber Lead.

Using her memories of stories told by her crew, Hikari carefully leads Whitebeard around to gather the entire gaggle of children that would one day become the Supernova Alliance and their various family and/or friends like Kaya and Nojiko, with Luffy, Zoro and Kid all getting their memories back after Hikari touches them.

No one else ever seems to remember, but Whitebeard and his commanders catch on and get Hikari to tell them the truth, including about Fairy Tail and Luffy's Fruit. That's when the training starts in earnest, only interrupted by visits from Shanks (who was worried about Luffy and then blubbering over meeting his 'baby sister') and Garp (who initially got into a knock-out, drag-out fight with Whitebeard until Hikari disabuses him of the notion his grandsons would be safe as Marines) and even Sengoku (who comes off-duty just to make sure Rosinante is okay and meet his 'grandson').

Luffy decides to set out from Dawn Island as originally planned, and everything is different.

[belletiger]

fem Luffy miko dress

After reading the awesome fanfic The Many (Attempted) Marriages of the Sun Goddess by ReynaAtTheEnd, i decided to do a fem Luffy as a cute miko. I hope you all like it.

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

Have you read A Dimiclaudeleth fic called The Savior King, The Master Tactician, and The Queen of Liberation? Ever since Hopes the Edelstans have been hating on it more than ever. There’s even a recent Reddit thread about it with the OP asking if it was good and many of the people saying no, calling it “biased” and “fetishized”, also like The Emperor and the Goddess, the same people who cried “Harassment!” when it got criticized for the same thing. The lack of self awareness with these people.

I've heard of it several times, but the sheer size and incomplete nature of it is intimidating (← total fuckin hypocrite fjdhsksl). I definitely wanna read it eventually, because dimiclaudeleth is near and dear to my heart.

All I'm gonna say is that labelling a work as a meta, or an analysis of the canon work, invites it to be critiqued as such. But if you're going around tearing apart a fanfic (that's been in the works for, holy shit, three years) and telling people not to read it when all it's doing is sitting there and vibing? You need to do some serious soul-searching. It does speak to a certain lack of self-awareness, though, that people will do the exact thing that's hurt them in the past under the pretense that they're somehow different. Again, I prescribe some soul-searching.

Anyway, I wish ao3 user ReynaAtTheEnd all the best. It sucks to watch people shit all over your hard work, especially when it's something born from joy like fanfic.

[raxistaicho]

Is it true that Reyna put the Edeleth tag on her bashfic for a time just to bait shippers into reading it? I can't confirm it, but i honestly wouldn't put it past her to do that.

Someone said they did do that, but I can't confirm it now. It wouldn't surprise me, Reyna thinks she "deconstructed" Edeleth by having Edelgard act like Byleth belongs with her.

[butwhatifidothis]

If anyone is looking for good fics that criticize Edelgard, I highly recommend ReynaAtTheEnd's work! Their oneshot 'The only way' is a fantastic dialogue between Edelgard and Claude that thoroughly examines just how flawed Edelgard's rationale is. If you want something longer - their multichapter epic 'The Savior King, The Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation' is also great - its a AM+VW joint route with fantastic worldbuilding and fight scenes - plus no Rhea bashing. Hope that helps!

yet again i am recommended Savior King lmaooooooo omg, but The Only Way is really neat! I’d forgotten the name but I recommend it too!

[josephineaetos]

Author's Commentary: Chapter 5 - The Wolf Prince Returns

Summary: New information reveals the fate of Prince Dimitri, and a hectic battle ensues.

I was heavily inspired by the wonderful The Savior King, The Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation by ReynaAtTheEnd to make more of a Blue Lions-Golden Deer path, with some more Silver Snow elements as well, albeit since that's already been done, I wanted to do something new.

I hope you'll all enjoy what's been done with the Blue Lions plot to separate it a bit later.

Also, I brought back Matodey because he's such a complete 180 on Fire Emblem characters that I felt he warranted a second look. I mean, the dude threatens to fucking eat you lmao

Also, polycule time.

A Beaten and Broken Land by EmpressJosephine

TW: Significant Blood and Violence Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses Relationship Tags: Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary/Byleth Eisner; Ferdinand von Aegir/Bernadetta von Varley General Tags: Polyamory, OT3, During Timeskip, Bittersweet, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-typical Violence

Dorothea's heart was shattered the day that Garreg Mach was. Byleth is gone, only her faint memory remains, and she is forced to watch as Edelgard not only desecrates that with her war, but tears apart the land and peace that the professor fought for.

A late-night visit by an old friend leads her on a journey to honor Byleth's memory alongside the rest of the House that she joined so long ago... but in the end, will it even matter?

[renaissance-du-dieu-solitaire]

Fem! Luffy in a cute little sundress. Planning on adding other cute outfits later.

Based on chapter 8 of ReynaAtTheEnd's The Many (Attempted) Marriages of the Sun Goddess

[raxistaicho]

Hey are you the same Raxis that is being called a troll? Reynaattheend posted about burnout from dealing with you or something like that and the fic hivemind seems to treat you like some fragile Edelstan while I think some criticisms have genuinely good points

Yeah, I saw that AN. She was very upset at me for making the tv tropes page for her fic less biased. One of her fans even tried to go to the mods with a complaint, but that didn't go anywhere because I wasn't breaking any rules.

It's a shame Reyna chose to respond to criticism of her fanfic in such a negative way. Any writer who respects their craft should be willing to accept constructive criticism, and I was trying to be constructive with her. I guess she figured because I was an Edelgard fan, my advice was inherently less valuable? Idk.

And thank you! Clearly you aren't the only person who thinks that, given how there's been (relatively) more backlash against the fic since it first started.

[raxistaicho]

Do you have the original comments that were deleted? I get the feeling some unreliable narrator is going on and I just wanted to see from an unbiased perspective as someone who mostly skimmed through it. (Also care to explain what other people were saying about you stalking others?)

Reyna deleted them all, but luckily I shared some of them to a buddy of mine. Here's the ones I was able to find;

[raxistaicho]

Reyna’s not at the end of dealing with Edelgard yet! Edelgard in Thracia, chapter one

So who’s familiar with ReynaAtTheEnd? She (I remember reading Reyna’s a she from some of her mutuals, I’m going to assume that’s accurate, but if not I’ll swiftly correct it) wrote a fanfic called The Savior King, The Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation, a sort of Azure Moon/Verdant Wind fusion fanfic that are all the craze with Dimiclaude shippers, in which they form a polycule with Byleth.

Oh and also Edelgard Takes a Level in Dumbass and Jerkass, and only generally makes appearances when it’s time for her to get her shit kicked in by the heroes.

Well, Reyna decided to try her hand at giving Edelgard a redemption story, and we all know how wonderful it is when Edelgard haters try to “redeem” her. And she did this by thrusting Edelgard into the plot of Thracia 776, so uhh...

But before we go any further:

DO NOT, I REPEAT: DO NOT, under any circumstances, harass Reyna! I don’t wanna hear about people leaving her insulting messages, folks! I mean it!

EMPEROR. IT’S EMPEROR. Edelgard is never called an empress, Reyna!

From the summary:

Edelgard lost everything - her country, her ideals, her life - to Agartha and to the choices she made.

No, she lost them to Reyna’s hatred for her. And also to Byleth, Dimitri, and Claude being the biggest god-mode incarnations of themselves I’ve ever seen and commanding a kickass army including both the Kingdom and Alliance unified against her, alongside basically all the Relics, and even Rhea and the Immovable. Yeah, Reyna wanted Indech to kaiju it up on Edelgard so bad she wrote him out of character and had him fight on Byleth’s side.

Queen of Liberation was also the story where Edelgard, after being beaten, was captured by Thales, subjected to her trauma again, beaten, tortured, turned into an enslaved monster, and subsequently dispatched like an enemy of the week with no fanfare.

Just so everyone’s aware of where Reyna stands.

Upon awakening in another world ruined by war, she despaired and began going through the motions; only for another cult of evil and a very different dragon god to force her hand - and, perhaps, truly turn her into the revolutionary leader she had wished to be. 

No, she was a revolutionary leader. I know Edelgard detractors don’t like it, but,

Her detractors have long tried to twist things do that Edelgard can’t be a revolutionary because she’s someone in power herself, but Rhea and Seteth don’t appear to have gotten the memo on that.

On to the first chapter proper:

So we open with Edelgard suddenly waking up and trying to work things out. Very sadly, at that.

Consciousness came to her one bit at a time. It was cool, wherever she was. The pain was gone – the spire of the Viskm ramming through her is the last fragmented memory that she has. 

Yeah she died when the Wandering Beast slammed her through a Viskam. Reyna has a weird habit of making her fight scenes grizzly affairs like something out of fucking Akame Ga Kill!, but still permitting Claude to get paragraphs-long breaking speeches in the middle of a fight because Claude is just so awesome~

It didn't make sense. She died, hadn't she? The miserable joke of her life, her broken ideals and woeful attempt to change the world had ended when the Wandering Beast did her a kindness and slammed both of them through the floor and impaled her demonic body. Wasn't that enough? Wasn't it enough, Sothis?! 

Sothis may forgive you, but Reyna never will, Edelgard. Bolding mine, btw, we gotta get Edelgard nice and miserable before everything else begins.

Myson had brute forced the procedure that she and her loyal mages had been looking into and the transformation had ripped her apart and reassembled her into a parody, a sick combination of the myths of the Crest of the Beast and those dragons. 

The word “dragon” doesn’t appear to exist in Fodlan. Demonic Beasts are always called Demonic Beasts, and Nabateans are always called Children of the Goddess. The only instance we see of the word “dragon” comes from the name of the Dragon Claw gauntlet weapons.

Edelgard soon realizes she’s alive and has her free will again, but her body’s too weak to move. She wonders at first if this is some punishment from Sothis, but no, it’s punishment from Reyna, Edelgard.

Thales's horror. The instinctive reminder felt like a joke, making her feel sick as soon as it rushed up. No, she had participated in that horror and turned her nose up at those who expressed their qualms about it. Horror had been too useful to reject.

Time for Edelgard to castigate herself, folks :)

Useful! Oh, it had been so useful in the end, it turned her people against her and reduced her to a monster, a pawn sacrificed to buy a little bit of time. 

Reyna wants to make damn sure Edelgard knows she was never in control.

The suffering had fuelled the machine of war, alright

That “alright” is taking me out, I can’t picture Edelgard talking that way.

– consuming all that she'd tried to build. Maximus Varley, Ladislava, Randolph... everything they had done had only made the Alliance and the Kingdom more determined to defeat them. Had only caused her own people harm; burning in wild fires in front of the monastery, 

Ahh, yes, that was one of the instances of Claude’s ~~brilliant scheming~~

So, see, he had Constance bolting the Imperial forces because Claude’s ~~brilliance~~ in Queen of Liberation generally came in the form of having access to knowledge the actual Claude didn’t have or telling people to do things they were already going to do and being given the credit by the narration, such as when Constance hit some “dry grass” and started a fire:

The problem with this?

This is at the tail end of the Winter. I know it’s Always Spring in Three Houses, but this is meant to be happening in Winter, as all the monthly narration cards show lots of snow. Further, Garreg Mach is always shown to be quite lush, indicating they get plenty of rain there. I’m from California, I know what dry grass looks like :p

Oh yeah, and the people with Crests doing awesome shit is a recurring theme of Reyna’s work, thus proving Edelgard right about Fodlan! 

Ironic.

starving in the fields as the spring seeds died without farmers to tend to them,

Because Edelgard Took a Level in Dumbass and levied farmers who needed to tend the fields.

 subjected to kidnapping and experimentation and stripping of their humanity.

Because Edelgard Took a Level in Dumbass and Jerkass and kidnapped rando citizens to turn into Demonic Beasts instead of using prisoners or something.

Hey, I’m not saying the latter would be any more moral, I’m just saying it would be the smarter move, meaning the kind of evil pragmatic Edelgard her detractors believe in would go for it.

Edelgard angsts some more:

She had presumed so much. You would think that an emperor would be immune to fanciful thinking. 

Fight Reyna’s control, Edelgard! D: You’re better than thiiiiiiiiis.

After everything she'd experienced, she had thought that her perspective had changed enough that she was. After seeing the rot in the world, she should have been more clearheaded, not less. After seeing her siblings suffer and die, Justine holding on only to be a prisoner in her own body.

...It should have made her care more about the people who's lives she was responsible for, not less.

She does care, Reyna. Stay mad.

That was why she forced herself to use the Agarthans, threw her whole kingdom into the chance of changing that system for good -

Empire, Reyna, Edelgard’s not in charge of a Kingdom. Dimitri is.

...and became the reason her people suffered instead.

It’s funny how the actual Edelgard comes to terms with this before her war even starts, but because that doesn’t leave room for Edelgard being surprised by her ineptitude and castigating herself we need to just edit that out of her brain so she can feel bad, as Reyna wants her to.

This is true despair, isn't it?

Was this what Dimitri felt after the Tragedy? What Byleth felt, after Kronya and Thales were able to kill her father, because she had given the, them easy access to the monastery?

(weak laughter) Reyna, you really are on the Edelhater best hits collection.

Thales and Kronya would have gotten in even if Edelgard weren’t around, Solon already proved that.

Then, Edelgard starts thinking about Dimitri! Oh boy.

Her step brother. How had she forgotten...? 

...Trauma.

He...had remembered her, hadn't he? That's why he had hovered around her, had acted protective in a way she had found bizarre and patronizing coming from a stranger – because he hadn't been a stranger. 

Edelgard, honey, that didn’t happen. Dimitri in Queen of LIberation doesn’t think about you. It takes until the week after Flayn’s kidnapping - a full half a year around her - before he starts thinking about the time he shared with her. Everything before that? Dry and clinical, no thought for his time with you or any thought about you.

Even after his own pain, he'd remembered her and cared; her pain had taken all those memories away and left her feeling nothing. 

Even when Dimitri isn’t around, we have to be reminded how great he is.

We could have destroyed Agartha together, Edelgard thought in a shining moment of clarity, coming out of a sleeplike moment yet again. Him, I, Byleth. Even Riegan, infuriating as he would have been to deal with, we... together, we could have...

It’s a ~~moment of clarity~~ for her that she could have just talked things out worked with Byleth and Claude like a good girl.

Sad. Sad and pathetic. Why was she only realizing this now? 

Because defeating the Agarthans wasn’t your objective, Edelgard. Overthrowing Fodlan’s oppressive Crest-based aristocracy was.

Edelgard asks Reyna Sothis why things gotta be this way, then,

She doesn't expect a response. Edelgard expected less than nothing, really; the active goddess was with Byleth, after all. 

Oh yeah, Sothis doesn’t fuse with Byleth such that she can’t talk anymore in Queen of Liberation, because it’d be off-brand if she wasn’t around to convey her Nabatean wisdom against Edelgard’s cause, but she DOES grant Byleth her... life force or some shit to give Byleth a powerup.

Look, Reyna wanted Byleth to get her shounen mid-season powerup, and she also wants Sothis around as a mouthpiece for how great the Nabateans are. She gets things both ways and you can suck it!

Why would [Sothis] have any sympathy for her at all? Naming her children monsters and ordering their deaths, 

That thing Edelgard doesn’t do!

allying with the Agarthans who hated her.

I wonder how Reyna feels about Sothis having no problem with Byleth going CF?

It’s implied Sothis reaches out to Edelgard, and she falls into unconsciousness. Edelgard wakes up in what is described to be akin to a peasant house somewhere, then,

“...poor dear.” A woman murmured, her hand brushing along Edelgard's forehead again.

“I just found 'er on the side of the road...” A man – no, a boy. Maybe Ashe's age, his voice heavy with an unfamiliar country lilt. “Couldn't see any sign that anyone was comin' back for her, so I couldn't just leave her there...”

“Must have been running from bandits, or Lifis's pirates.” The woman decided. “Or even the army. She's not old enough to have been in one of the Hunts, do you think?”

OH NO, did Edelgard get saved by Ronan? Did she get saved by Mekkah’s favorite RNG meme unit? Probably-Ronan and his mom talk a bit, Ronan implied Lifis’s goons might’ve sexually assaulted her, but his mom assures him there was no sign of it when she bandaged Edelgard’s wound, then she namedrops Heim and the gods.

Heim? Gods, plural? The people of Fodlan would have prayed to the Goddess and her alone. Oh, Sothis had done something to her all right. Brought her back to life and dumped her in some strange place...?

I’m sure we’re gonna see Edelgard take umbrage with the Jugdral gods, but given they’re distant except in times of great peril she probably wouldn’t really care about them.

“I've just about got the tea ready, Ronan.

Oh no T_T

Imagine getting saved by a low-tier scrub unit whose only notable trait is he might move around and attack a lot or he might do nothing valuable on the turn.

Her body aches faintly, but otherwise the bed she's on – while rough and wollen – is comforting in a strange way. No hard operating table, no too-soft mattress that felt increasingly like an embodiment of hypocrisy.

This is some weird tense jumping, I have to say.

Also we’ve just gone full on, “Yet you participate in society. Curious!”

Edelgard mostly just pretends to be unconscious and wangsts while Ronan and his mom care for her.

Edelgard could count on two (three, three, Dimitri had-) 

Again, Edelgard didn’t remember Dimitri and Dimitri was too busy gushing about Claude to remember her.

people after her sibling's death and her father's crippling 

Crippling? Oh no, does Reyna believe in that nonsense “Ionius tried to give himself the Crest of Flames!” theory that’s supposed to “explain” why he looks so sickly?

who'd given her companionship and kindess. And where had that gotten them? Hubert died because of her 

No, he died as collateral damage to Reyna’s punishment of her.

and she spurned Byleth for the sake of her vision because how could she understand when she was hosting the goddess -

Byleth didn’t care about Edelgard either.

Edelgard gets up, Ronan and his mom mention she’s in in Iz, in Thracia, neither of which Edelgard knows, naturally, then asks her where she’s going:

“You wouldn't,” Ronan reassured her. “We're a small village; I doubt most Thracians could point us out on the map.” Thracians? A people who's name she'd never heard. But what else did she expect after dying? “We're right up on the ocean; most of us are fishers, and nobody important lives for miles. We're on the way to some important places, but you'd be in for a bit of a hike to get to them. Were you headed somewhere specific?”

Edelgard thinks briefly of some things she might tell them, and dumps them all immediately. She didn't have a life to go back to; she was a failed conqueror, a villain in a cautionary tale that would last in Fodlan for all time, a... a pawn of greater evil. She felt so numb when that thought circled her mind. Empty and hopeless.

“Not really.” She said with a slight shake of her head. “I had been captured by cultists, and in my efforts to get away from them, fled for as long as I could in a random direction. I lost any sense of where I was, only that I got away.”

This whole fic is going to be Edelgard lamenting her actions and coming to Jesus, isn’t it.

Also, this is some weird tense.

Also also, Edelgard describing the Agarthans as cultists is kinda contrived so we could bring up the Loptr Cult.

Ronan and his mom immediately assume the Loptyrians targeted her for their Child Hunts, thinking maybe they branched out in age, and I have to wonder how well common people knew the Loptyrians were involved? Obviously they’d know the Grannvale Empire was behind it, but the church? Idk.

Anyways, Ronan’s mom promises Edelgard is safe because,

“We aint got no Belhalla bootlickers or Travant's sycophants in Iz. They won't know you're here and none of us are gonna talk.”

First off, what medieval peasant would know the word “sycophant”? Also, considering both Grannvale and the people of the Manster District hate the Thracians, I seriously doubt Trevant has many fans at all in northern Thracia.

Edelgard asks why they’re helping her, and she’s gobsmacked to learn it’s just because they think it’s the right thing to do, because evidently Edelgard in this universe has never considered doing a kind thing for the sake of it, pleaseignorehersupportstheyruinReyna’spoint.

Edelgard offers to help Ronan and his mother around the house in repayment for their help and we get this,

“Oooh...” The mother's brow furrows, wanting to refuse but unable to resist the offer of an extra pair of hands. “You're a kind girl, Edelgard.” Edelgard nearly chokes on absolutely nothing, thankfully managing to pull up her solemn mask in time. It would be rude to laugh in this woman's face over her misplaced compliment.

After seeing how often butwhatifidothis got mad at how self-loathing Edelgard is in The Emperor and the Goddess, it’s ironic as hell that Reyna is doing the same thing in this fic. Just for wildly different reasons.

Anyways, Ronan and his mom just urge her to rest for now.

The twosome leave the room... allowing Edelgard to bury her face in her hands and tangle her fingers tightly in her hair, and wonder what all of this was supposed to mean. Why hadn't she just been allowed to die? Why did she have to live when her ideals had failed her and her empire? 

Your ideals didn’t fail Adrestia, Edelgard, the deck was just stacked inordinately against you because Reyna had a point to make in the previous fic.

Was this some kind of messed up trial?! 

Ahh, yes, I can totally see Edelgard calling something, “messed up”.

What is voice, Reyna? What is voice?

Then we end the chapter with a whopper:

She gritted her teeth and lifted her head out of her hands. And that's when she noticed that the strands between her fingers are a vibrant heather brown. Not white. Her heart almost stopped in shock. After a second, she reached inside herself and tried to pull power from her unwanted Crest, from the blood of the Goddess.

Nothing. It's gone. The Crest of Serios was still there, dormant and lethargic to her calls, but the Sword of Damocles that had hung above her...is gone.

Edelgard slowly ran her fingers through her hair, restored to its natural colour, and slumped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling with wide eyes.

 You are no one's pawn now. What will you do?

Edelgard never was anyone’s pawn outside Reyna’s fic.

I’m a bit curious why she left the Crest of Seiros intact. I could guess it’s better because it’s “natural”, or maybe Edelgard needs to turn to Jesus embrace her Nabatean origins, or something. Guess we’ll find out, huh?

Now that’s the end of the chapter, but before I let ya go, there’s the Author’s Notes:

So! ...I woke up today and wrote multiple pages of this after figuring that I disliked Edelgard too much to write it. 

Disliking her didn’t stop you dedicating entire chapters to Edelgard and her laser-guided karma in Queen of Liberation, Reyna.

Clearly I underestimated my desire to 

make her suffer more

write this plot and all the thematic parallels within. Some readers felt that I was too harsh on Edelgard in The Savior King, 

GEE, YA THINK?

Time to show you folks what Reyna thinks is a fair portrayal of Edelgard.

But as a warning, some of this shit gets pretty brutal and if you don’t want to see Edelgard’s in-depth, lovingly-described suffering, scroll down a bit.

That’s one of the Ten Elites calling her a fool. Yeah the Ten Elites are in Queen of Liberation btw, can’t have a Battle Shounen without a recurring miniboss squad!

Ditto.

Also none of the Ten Elites would call Seiros a hero. They didn’t even know why she was fighting them!

Here’s Edelgard getting bricks tossed at her by rioting citizens, and of course all she can do to restore order is scream “I’m your emperor >:(” at them.

With an added helping of the same rioting citizens telling Edelgard how fuckin’ amazing Claude and Dimitri are!

Here’s Edelgard getting a brick dropped on her by the citizens of Enbarr while she’s getting epically pwned by Byleth’s god mode army at Enbarr. Because medieval peasants will just trust that the invading army has their back :)

Here’s Edelgard getting PWNED by Failnaught so bad that metal bits get stuck in her eyes.

~~Bonus round~~ The metal shards get healed permanently into her eye :)

You know whenever I feel like maybe I don’t portray Dimitri or Rhea as fairly as I could in On Black Wings, I can just remind myself I stick to them losing arguments or losing battles they canonically do lose. I don’t fucking torture them physically while I’m at it.

We’re not done yet!

Of course Lysithea has to also pwn the fuck out of Edelgard, dropping an Abraxas bomb on her (who the fuck gets Lysithea to A faith?) and of course she had Thyrsus because this is a Battle Shounen fanfiction and as such the only way to make Lysithea look impressive is to have her use the Relic everyone staples onto her and have her drop TEH BIG MAGICZ.

And of course, even the Agarthans have to get in on saying Edelgard’s a gigantic fuck up and Thales should’ve totally went with Claudlouch vi Yagami-Britannia instead.

...”Just as planned” is a short-lived catch phrase of Claude’s. I told you Queen of Liberation reads like a shounen.

Anyways, we’re not done yet.

Here’s Myson planning to place Edelgard under mind-control once they take her back to Shambhala.

And here’s Edelgard again being subjected to her childhood trauma by being shackled underground once again.

Here’s random Agarthans insulting her as though she’s not around. One of the random Agarthans is named Matt.

MATT.

M A T T.

Oh but of course Thales has only praise for god-mode Claude:

“There were other factors involved, of course. That boy Riegan... Solon had spoken a number of times about inviting him into the truth, yet in the end he found it all by himself. From what I've learned from our spies that were able to get close to him from time to time, he created this Alliance, he planned the attacks and counterattacks...he knew about our partnership with her before he even knew it was her behind the mask; not by yet another act of stupidity on her part, but solely through guile and extrapolating from what little that deserter was able to tell him.”

Here’s Odesse beating Edelgard.

Here’s Odesse beating Edelgard again, and also calling her such lovely gender-charged insults: “Bitch, useless bitch, pig, inbred cretin”.

In German.

Yes, German is used for the Agarthan language in Queen of Liberation.

You see, the Agarthans may all have Greek-originated names, named their tools after Greek figures, and use Cyrillic, a script derived from Greek script, but eh, what’s the difference, when you get right down to it, they’re both from Europe!

This isn’t even the worst case of Reyna carelessly using one language or culture as a replacement for another: she has Japanese serve as the language of the very obviously middle-eastern inspired Almyra.

The fic that’s supposed to be about racism being bad has racist elements in its narrative, how ironic.

Anyways, back to Reyna’s treatment of Edelgard.

Here’s Edelgard realizing she was a foolish foolish girl and being told what by some rando Agarthan kid.

And to top it all off, Thales turns her into the Hegemon Husk and she’s summarily dispatched without much fanfare like a Monster of the Week.

And to finish it up (though there’s plenty more I could share), here’s Edelgard having a Villainous Breakdown because zomgCLAUDHLID!!! beat her:

As I (paraphrased) put it in a comment,

That’s not Edelgard. That’s Dimitri playing the role of Edelgard and constantly breaking character.

Content warning ends here!

and while I still feel her portrayal is grounded largely in canon

You had Edelgard behave like an idiot who derided Dimitri as a worthless madman and scorned Claude for being mixed race. The only semblance of Edelgard’s pre-existing character in the sad caricature you crafted for Queen of Liberation was that she waged war on the church.

But yeah, this creature isn’t Edelgard. At least not the Edelgard from Three Houses. It’s the one Reyna wanted to fight, a foolish would-be tyrant duped into war on behalf of the Agarthans who then folds and fails like all the red emperors to come before her. A fool who has a breakdown and is punished for the things she did so that Reyna could feel oh-so-superior for having bested her.

Edelgard is not the strawman you crafted for your fanfiction, Reyna. She’s a compassionate revolutionary who makes the hard decision nobody else is willing to make. Graceful and strong, capable of out-planning Claude (recall that in the actual Three Houses, the real Claude, who can lose things, admits that Edelgard was fooling everyone) and beating Dimitri in a fight. And in the end, she’s poised and accepting in defeat.

Reyna doesn’t want that Edelgard. Much like most of Edelgard’s detractors, Reyna doesn’t like the Edelgard that actually exists in Three Houses. She wanted the strawman she could beat and feel good about beating, so she crafted this sad creature for her fanfiction and tried to pass it off as the original. And then, for all that she said she felt bad for having put her through torture at the end, she still did it. With loving detail, with determined consistency, and with zero mercy she heaps just about every indignity and torment one can imagine upon this fictional character. And why? 

It’s fairly normal for a villain to undergo some suffering and breakdown once their karma houdini warranty expires, but I’ve never seen such karma run for so consistent a length, nor go so far, as to compare to what Reyna does to Edelgard. She could also have done it to express why she thinks Edelgard will fail in Crimson Flower - which would likely to be actual excuse if asked - except if that’s all she wanted she could have had Thales express how doomed Edelgard was to the heroes instead - as a way to puff himself up, for example. But no, Reyna wants it all expressed to Edelgard’s face, to punish her and put her in her place.

You don’t write torture in the vivid detail Reyna did out of obligation, folks.

This story will be quite different in that regard, as you can probably guess by the premise!

Really? So far it feels like much of the same, only instead of other people calling Edelgard a stupid failure, this time she’s doing it to herself.

I really wanted to like Edelgard. She makes me sad as much as angry because she's so close to being a really good complex character, but the writing really fell down on her parts. 

Might’ve helped if you actually understood anything about her and didn’t try to simplify her into a tyrannical racist who just wanted power.

I guess a part of me really wanted to give her a chance to be that character, and develop into something more.

Oh boy, can’t wait to see what Reyna’s ideal Edelgard is. It sure won’t involve cunning or guile, given her standard method of making a character look smart is to beam knowledge into their heads or provide them an OC to give them information they wouldn’t otherwise have, and she writes her fight scenes like something out of a Battle Shounen.

There will only be minimum references to The Savior King and the events thereof, and they'll be fairly spread out.

Please let that be true.

As a final note, here’s some choice excerpts from the comments:

I feel like I should reiterate that I think that Edelgard had immense potential to be a very complex and very interesting figure

“So I simplified her and made her a stupid villain.”

but that potential got lost in how selfish and self-serving she is in the games proper. 

As I put it in a tweet that surprisingly blew up:

Imagine taking Edelgard, who only wanted a normal life but instead dedicated the entire rest of it in painstaking  service to the people of Fodlan, who honestly believed her path would end with her alone and maybe even hated by all, and saying she's SELFISH. Good god.

Anyways,

Her backstory is very tragic, and with a little tweaking in regards to the Seven's role in it - emphasizing religious zealotry on their part, have the Agarthans step back to let the nobles seem like the instigators - would have made it perfect.

Reyna thinks Edelgard was unjustified to target the church, so that’s another thing she didn’t understand about Three Houses.

Edelgard targeted the church because the church upholds Fodlan’s obsession with Crests, which was the root of her and many others’ suffering.

I will go to my grave insisting that Edelgard could have been a great character. 

She is, stay mad.

I still dislike her portrayal in the games and very much dislike how Three Houses and especially Three Hopes coddle her and refuse to let anyone criticize her meaningfully

That’s because it’s never in doubt that she’s right about Fodlan’s broken status. The only thing that’s ever in question is her methods.

And here we go with the usual “nobody says she’s bad to her face enough times!”

They almost certainly were!; though I think Arvis was a better realized character than Edelgard in the games proper.

I swear, Edelgard haters insisting that Arvis was so great has made me like him less. I mean, in the end he was just a man with a complex over having lost his mother and really just killed Sigurd out of petty romantic jealousy. His big plan to reform the land has few details beyond, “I will be a better king than the past one” and, unlike Edelgard, he was genuinely being used by his dark mage allies. Also, there should be no situation that sees Arvis involved in any of these events as he never goes anywhere near Thracia.

Lastly, from someone who isn’t Reyna:

The bad thing about this (for Edelgard) is that she just literally ended up in fire emblem HELL. I've played every single FE game, and short of Fates: Lunatic Conquest, with no DLC to boost your exp. This world right here, is the absolutely most horrifyingly painful one to survive in.

Thracia is definitely gonna be a hell of a culture shock for her.

Does this person think Edelgard is unfamiliar with suffering?

Uhh, so yeah. That was bad! I’m just going to take this as a prelude to what the entire rest of the fic will be about: Edelgard hating her past actions, regarding herself as a failure and a pawn, and learning to embrace True Justice by basically learning she should have done things the Dimifan Headcanon way by embracing God and giving to the needy without disrupting anyone’s lives too much. We might even get to see some more abuse heading her way if Trevant, Manfroy, Veld, or Raydrik get their hands on her. I’ll consider it a home run if Reyna somehow fucks up Leif while she’s at it, and considering her earnest love for god mode protags that don’t screw up unless it’s dramatic and said screwing up doesn’t take too long to get undone, she probably will.

It’ll be terrible. And we’ll go through all of it :)