#she understands judgement can't be passed on those whose story she doesn't know when she only knows her own

[commandsir]

For the assumption/misconception: ahsoka resents the Jedi

SEND AN ASSUMPTION/MISCONCEPTION ABOUT AHSOKA

partly true. she won't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but there is an angle in here that's not too off base.

ahsoka holds lingering resentment toward a few jedi in particular, but not the order itself – although she bore some for a time after she’d chosen to leave. that remnant faded post order 66 into the pale ghost of a grudge that she no longer deemed important enough to carry with her after the war. in a similar vein, once she learned who had joined the force among the jedi she still resented, the anger did pass.

one exception to that rule was plo koon. the master she’d known the longest that had gently ushered her into safety and brought her to the order had also barely spoken in her defense against the accusations of sedition. hardly a word from the jedi who ought to have known her the best. meanwhile anakin, her master who had known her about two cycles, and padme, who’d known her even less than that, put everything on the line to prove her innocence. although, plo is the first to humbly apologize to her for his and the jedi council’s great error in accusing her. (apart from anakin, but anakin never suspected ahsoka’s involvement in any way.) ahsoka’s memories of her father figure were overwhelmingly sympathetic. the moment of his death was deeply felt and grieved for many cycles after. conversely to resenting him, she misses him well into adulthood.

ahsoka is capable of immense forgiveness and mercy, but she’s no angel. the same girl who compared herself to asajj ventress and offered to negotiate asajj’s pardon is unable to ever fully trust the sight of trandoshans, zygerrians, or pykes again. the same girl who allowed galactic denizens she didn’t know from stardust to speak into her life and affect how she operated as a jedi threatened to brutally torture and maim captives the jedi were keeping for questioning unless they talked, in much the same manner as her master. ahsoka spared and killed. were she offered the chance, she'd have shredded both grievous and tarkin with her own sabers. to say her feelings toward the jedi, a few in particular, were beyond resentment is false. honestly she would have liked to square up with ki-adi and mace windu in particular. many in the council she did not forgive until the time had passed for those feelings to serve her.

to hate the order that forged her would be bordering on idiotic and deny so much of herself she painstakingly improved and enhanced inside it. the temple was her home for almost fifteen years, and a beloved one at that. her grievances lie in extremes. those in the order she harbored ill-will for were, in her mind, the most egregious offenders of the very code they espoused.

but never doubt that her memory is long; no matter what feelings she might release, ahsoka never forgets, even beyond the end of a lifespan. with these offenses kept in mind, she knows how to warn others before history can repeat.

[fantasyinvader]

You know, that thought would just not leave my mind today. Even from the beginning, since the game's launch and people began connecting the dots people have been saying that Edelgard's path is a path of ignorance. That in ignorance she's the hero but with knowledge she's the villain. But the idea that Edelgard's ignorance, or possibly delusions or foolishness, ultimately traps her in contrast to Byleth, who isn't supposed to let the Flames/Poisons cloud their judgement and walks an enlightened path as a result… it just fits so well.

Dimitri's line in the Japanese version, calling Edelgard's path the animal path. The animal path is one based on the flame of ignorance, that because of that they made choices that gave them negative karma.

Ferdinand's line in VW following Gronder, where he says Edelgard is acting the same as Dimitri was. Dimitri, the boar prince/king of delusion. Pigs symbolize the flame of, you guessed it, ignorance.

Edelgard is acting based on information passed down to her by her father, informing her views on the world. However, in a story scene before that Hubert contradicted the backstory Edelgard has already told you while stating Ionius was a puppet of the Agarthans and that Edelgard should have told you this meaning she knows. This would also correlate to how Verdant Wind states that TWSTID manipulated Edelgard into starting the war despite Edelgard herself making it sound like it was her decision.

Symbolically, the above point ties into Edelgard's Crests. It was TWSITD who gave Edelgard her understanding of the world through the Crest of Flames (World Arcana), but in the end it was corrupt knowledge which had a detrimental effect on Edelgard owing to Aymr having the Crest of Maurice (Devil Arcana). As such, Edelgard's understanding of the world, her own knowledge though her Crest of Serios (Priestess Arcana), is flawed. Hopes even went as far as to use Aymr as a symbol of TWSITD making Edelgard their puppet in Azure Moon while the player can unlock it by completing the secret chapter (the supposed "good" route) in Scarlet Blaze.

Edelgard has scenes in White Clouds where she finds out information that conflicts with her own view, such as her talking with Thales and Thales revealing Nemesis was a bandit. Edelgard points out TWSITD were behind the experiments in such a scene, and in SB mentions she ignored how much influence they had over the nobility while she also revives the local Church branch under her control.

The devs themselves confirmed that the worldbuilding was done to support Silver Snow's story, and as a result Edelgard's claims are meant to be undermined as the players pay attention to the world around them. This mirrors Claude in VW, whose views change over the course of his route, yet Edelgard says that she can't allow Claude to run Fodlan because he doesn't know it's history. Ironically, Claude finds out the most lore of Fodlan by the end and it does undermine what Edelgard believes.

Edelgard is that character who thinks they know it all, ignorant of their own ignorance. Her ideals are based on her flawed knowledge, ideals she serves even at the cost of her own humanity. We get her becoming the Hegemon Husk, framed as the end point of those ideals in Azure Moon after Edelgard has the remnants of TWSITD turn her into it. In AG, instead we have Thales turn her into it and putting her under his control.

Tying this into Eastern beliefs, there's the whole empty thing.Emptiness is not a bad thing as it allows one to be filled. An empty bowl is far more useful than one that is stuffed to the brink and overflowing, and that's what's going on with Edelgard. She believes she has all the knowledge, that her bowl is full, and as a result when she's presented with new knowledge, knowledge that conflicts with her own, it spills out. She believes she's the one with all the answers, the one who should be the teacher rather than the student, the hand of benevolence that people should react out to. As such, she can not see the world for what it really is just what she thinks it is. The Flame of ignorance/delusion/foolishness includes false beliefs that one may cling to rather than discard, and this is what ultimately dooms Edelgard.

It's not like Dimitri's delusions, as despite them Dimitri is the Lord who actually sees things for how they are and it's his core belief that he needs to live to avenge those who died for him that's the problem. Even when Edelgard seems to have character growth in Flower, when she seems to understand that people each other allows them to accomplish great things… this development doesn't stick in the Japanese version. She still goes back to instituting reforms to push people to rely only on themselves. It's this belief she believes she needs to force on people, resulting in her taking more power for herself rather than giving it to the people and supporting freedom. It's why her title in the ending is Flame Emperor, Edelgard either didn't change or she regressed into that position.

I think we can even see this in her death in SS/VW. She talks about how she needs to die in order to stop the fighting, how it's Byleth's duty as the victor, and that in doing so they'll walk holding hands down Byleth path in the Japanese text. And while she's saying this, she's activating Aymr. It makes it look like she's having a moment of clarity, that as she's beaten she realizes just what she's become but also the hold her beliefs have on her. She can't walk away from them, and will go back to fighting if she is spared. So she tells Byleth to put her down, before she goes back to being the Flame Emperor. In a way, those are the only paths where she dies as a human in the Buddhist sense, acting on rational thought and humanity rather than instinct and impulse. She's too far gone in Moon, and reverts in Flower. Edelgard can only die as Edelgard by Byleth's hand, and in doing so her Japanese counterpart walks with them.

It makes her feel like the Death Knight, with the Japanese text making it implying Jeritza doesn't know what happens when he takes over. Emile became consumed by bloodlust after he killed his hated father to protect his mother and sister. Likewise, Hubert became who he was in order to serve the girl he loved which included killing his father. And Byleth can go against their entire character arc in order to support Edelgard. Those two are meant to be foils to the player, reasons why they need to walk the path of liberation rather than become like them.

I guess in the end, Edelgard believed she was doing the right thing but her time at Garreg Mach made her question her path according to the Japanese theme song. She was being presented with information or experiences that made her waiver, but she still decided to follow through with the war and in doing so lost control of herself. She became a slave to her own beliefs, losing herself to them. Even in Flower she ultimately continues to serve them. But even then, those beliefs ultimately came from those who wanted to use her and Edelgard seemingly had knowledge of this. In the end, Edelgard's unwillingness to reconsider her beliefs, to discard what she views as knowledge in the face of evidence, is why she ends up a villain. Even if she dies as herself in SS/VW, so long as Dedue lives her corpse will be dismembered in retribution for the suffering she has caused. At the end of the day, while Edelgard was a villain she was also another victim of the Agarthans and the game seems to be placing the actual blame for the war at their feet. If it wasn't for them and their influence, Edelgard would have been a completely different person, they're the one's responsible for her even if Edelgard's own weakness prevented her from changing the path they put her on.

Edelgard failed herself.