#and mind you the fact that Claude declared war on Faerghus too further proved that Claude didn't even have basic knowledge of Dimitri

[dmclemblems]

an extremely lengthy and massive deduction of Hopes Claude, feat. Faerghus politics and why Hopes Claude saw a slippery slide with its water on full blast and jumped on it without his summer Heroes alt or his swimsuit, causing all kinds of pain and suffering and grief, brought to you by i have nothing else to do except play more Hopes anyway.

so as some of you probably know I’m not a fan of Hopes Claude, but it does prove to me some things: Claude would only ever side with Edelgard in a world where he lacked proper knowledge about Fodlan.

the only chance in the entire world that he would even somewhat align with her goals is a world where he didn’t know what the fuck he was even actually getting himself into, was too young (19 versus 23), and had no idea how to handle foreign politics.

in a world where he does understand Fodlan, is not too young and is far more knowledge about the land’s politics, he sides with Dimitri (AM and intended to do so in all other routes) and does not want Rhea dead.

people are arguing that Claude entertained the idea of Rhea being dead in Houses; however, this only happened very briefly and during an earlier time in the Academy arc. He was 17/18, had not been in the Academy for a whole year yet, and was still extremely iffy and lacked knowledge about Fodlan’s politics and how the Church was part of them.

in a world where Claude grew into adulthood in Fodlan and was able to learn its culture and customs, he also understood that killing Rhea was not the answer and that no amount of bloodshed was going to solve the greater levels of problems.

it’s also worth noting that his trust in Dimitri between both games proves these points. in Hopes, we’re basically dealing with a stunted Fodlan growth Claude who was taken in by Edelgard’s bullshit because he was stressed out and tired of playing defensive against the Empire. he basically surrendered to her by making an alliance with her and just took her concepts about the Church and ran with them because he was tired.

he didn’t have the same trust in Dimitri because he didn’t know him as well, which is shown when he says he doesn’t understand what’s going on in  Dimitri’s head, versus in AM where he very, extremely understands Dimitri’s mindset to the most sensitive aspects of Dimitri’s behavior. how did he know that Byleth could talk to Dimitri and get him to listen? how did he know that Dimitri clung to the dead in the ways that he did? he knew those things because he knew Dimitri significantly better.

I see people saying that not having Byleth with Claude was why he ended up like this. that’s completely incorrect as proven by all three other routes in Houses. the main factor was his lack of being at the Academy for a full year and being able to have five years instead of two to learn and understand Fodlan’s political landscape.

the issue with Claude in Hopes is that he was basically thrown into a defensive war way sooner than he could handle. remember, Claude came from a life where he was a target for assassination repeatedly since for as long as he had any memories. he’s coming from a bad personal environment. on its own Almyra isn’t as bad as people in Fodlan see it as, but Claude’s own life was pretty terrible. couple that with literally running away from home without a word (only his mother knew about it as confirmed in Hopes with both Shahid and their father having no idea where he went and his father being distraught about it enough that he didn’t care that Shahid was causing mayhem in Fodlan) and the fact that he ran away to Fodlan and only had a few months at the Academy before things got messy enough that Rhea had to send everyone home.

then, take him running away from that horrible environment he lived in and couple it with the fact that he had two years there before Edelgard forced him into a war when he and the other lords of the Alliance did nothing whatsoever to her. he had, say, a total of two and a half years tops to get used to Fodlan before he got forced into a defensive war as a 19 year old. on top of that, whether or not you like Shez as a character, it’s not untrue that Shez is the one who planted the idea of overthrowing the Alliance into his head. even though they talked about it at the roundtable, Lorenz stated it was a VERY long discussion and from the sounds of it, it took a whole shit ton of convincing for Claude to be able to become its singular leader.

all of that culminated in what was essentially Claude’s bad ending, leading to him wanting to overthrow Fodlan and “take it for himself”, which as we know is nothing like Claude in Houses. imo all of these factors basically drove Claude to his worst mindset, where he would literally trap their supposed allies (Randolph’s army) and leave them to die, then only a bit more time passing before he declares war on the entirety of Fodlan.

not only is he basically exactly the same as Edelgard by this point, with both of them waging war on every single political power on the continent outside their own country, but Dimitri is the only one who wants nothing to do with it and is just trying to fix his own country while having to deal with the Church pressuring him (Rhea more specifically, because Seteth is far more mellow in his approach. Rhea is more along the lines of “we have to defeat them and kill these heathens” and Seteth is more along the lines of just wanting to make sure Rhea, Flayn and the Church are safe). Dimitri ends up with pressure on every single possible side: the Church, the Empire, the Alliance, and the civil wars in Faerghus that Cornelia and Rufus effectively caused. and, well, on top of all that, he’s got TWS to deal with, so... imo Claude really helped cause a bad ending/future for Fodlan by doing this. he’s basically assisted in helping destroy Fodlan.

what I’m saying is that TWS basically has Edelgard and Claude dancing on strings and helping them completely rip Fodlan apart. a younger version of Claude with less emotional attachment to Fodlan and less understanding of its inner workings is basically no better than Edelgard in being perfect bait for TWS to use and abuse.

tbh, TWS might have actually succeeded in wiping out Fodlan entirely if not for Faerghus and how loyal and emotional its leaders are. while the Alliance and Empire are having a vicious war that leads to Claude descending into the mess we saw in Hopes, Dimitri is stuck between dealing with the Empire and Cornelia, gets captured and is about to give up his life so his people don’t get killed (because Cornelia was using them as mass hostages essentially and was going to kill as many of his people as possible with TWS’ weaponry).

the only reason that didn’t happen is because Felix, who is in charge of the army in Dimitri’s absence, and everyone assisting him drop what they’re doing in the war, leave the defenses to Miklan and head out to save Dimitri. in GW/SB we don’t hear much from the Kingdom because for a chunk of chapters they’re dealing with their own issues, which also reduces the time Claude is exposed to seeing what Faerghus is like and learning that things are not as bad in Fodlan as Edelgard made them out to be. Faerghus is forced to be wrapped up in their own affairs and have no communication with the outside world because they have no chance to be.

the Faerghus part of Claude’s lack of knowledge that was extremely important and what Claude needed to know but didn’t that caused him to go down a slippery slope he couldn’t come back from:

“oh no crests and the system have taken over fodlan aaaaa” Faerghus has been trying to solve that for years and has been steadily and peacefully working to manage that, and it’s very clearly expressed in this game. while they were doing this in Houses too, it was less clear just how deeply into the subject they were going with it within their own leaders/powers. not only does Sylvain’s support with Dimitri discuss very in depth that they’ve been working on it and are still trying to in the middle of a war because it means so much to them, but the fact that Dimitri hired a non-Crest bearer to be a commander in his army is enough proof that they’ve made progress.

now while there was a minor shitshow of boo hoo how could you hire a former bandit as a commander, that had nothing to do with Crests! people were more concerned that Dimitri wasn’t being careful enough in who he hired because of background and history, but Dimitri’s decision was actually, wait for it, the correct answer. hiring someone who was disinherited for not bearing a Crest as a commander in his army was the proof that he hired based on strength, merit and potential. he also was willing to give people second chances and the only people who were aware of this internal concern were people more closely related to the Faerghus Four’s territory.

Seteth, in particular, has a good deal of faith in Miklan’s abilities as expressed at camp in chapter eight. as an outsider to the drama the Faerghus Four know about, all Seteth (the second highest power in the entirety of the Church system) is seeing is a non-Crest bearer with potential and capability leading a unit and being loyal to Dimtiri. while Miklan prefers to act like he’s not really all that loyal and had no choice (as discussed when Miklan is officially established as part of the army and at camp), he could have turned tail and left (especially during chapter nine), but he decided to lay down his life for this and died with more or less a smile/smirk, indicating he was satisfied with his decision and didn’t lament his fate the way he did in Houses when Dimitri didn’t have the chance to save him.

what this means for Claude is that there was an entire mess going on in Faerghus all that time that he was struggling and starting to question how to handle the war on his end. everything Claude lost all faith in was happening elsewhere in Fodlan, and had he had the time at the Academy to see what it was like there, he would have had more time to realize that Dimitri (and thus the future of Faerghus) was someone who was going to turn the Crest system on its absolute head if given the time to do so (and Sylvain is very much a pioneer in fixing that system in BOTH games, which again circles back to Miklan in part of why Sylvain is so deeply part of that change).

tbh I think the biggest loss for Claude here is that he didn’t get to meet Miklan and find out that Dimitri had given him such a prominent station in the Faerghus army (and mind you, his absolute trust and Sylvain’s. they left a good chunk of trust in the soldiers left to handle the Empire when they had to rescue Dimitri, which means they all also trusted they wouldn’t be turned on and have anyone betray them for the Empire). that would have been the first crack in his concerns with the Crest system and would have led him with his more curious nature to look more into what was going on in the Faerghus army, and thus, destroying any perception he had that the Crest system was really destroying Fodlan.

ultimately yeah, you could say the Crest system had become an issue... but if Claude had more time to realize people were working on it, peacefully and without bloodshed, he would have sided with those people instead of becoming a huge warmonger, equal to the scale of Edelgard.

what I’m saying is that yeah, I don’t like how Claude turned out in GW/SB, but I can see where it came from and how fucked up it made him that he didn’t spend that time at the Academy. again, Byleth being by Claude’s side had zero bearing on Claude’s maturity. in AM Byleth was never with Claude, but Claude ceded the Alliance to Dimitri and trusted him to care for Fodlan and Claude’s people while giving him the Alliance’s most important possession (Failnaught). he didn’t need Byleth at his side to mature. he needed time and understanding. Byleth did help somewhat by being there because he knew Byleth for a whole year, knew Byleth’s influence on Dimitri on a personal scale in AM (proven in AM chapter 19), and because Byleth naturally had a large part in the turn of events, but Byleth was not a singular reason for Claude to go in one direction or another.

you know at this point im more inclined to say tl;dr miklan’s appointment as a commander in the army could’ve saved fodlan’s future if claude had only met him and learned about his background because claude’s perception of the crest system and edelgard’s nonsense would've been shattered in a heartbeat.

so you know what, i think im gonna say tl;dr dimitri and miklan should’ve been the real mvps but we were robbed because miklan deserved so much more having finally turned his life around no thanks to matthias

...real tl;dr tho, hopes claude (particularly non AG) is literally bad ending claude while houses claude (AM/VW) is good ending claude (CF ending claude varies between dead claude and status unknown claude bc we don’t really learn what happened with him after the game. we just know he went back to Almyra and not if he ever bothered forging relations with an Edelgard conquered Fodlan). ss ending claude is just a big ol’ ??? but i’d assume things worked out in the end bc byleth took over as the leader of fodlan in ss which is exactly what happened in vw so if vw led to good ending claude, i assume ss did too.

#Three Houses #Three Hopes #Three Hopes Spoilers #what this is: A Very Lengthy Post About Two Claudes #(by very lengthy i mean kinda massive) #what this also is: a comprehensive look into why Edelgard and Claude's motives in Hopes are a total failure #what this also also is: why is Claude had had more exposure to Faerghus' politics that he NEVER signed on with Edelgard's war #and THEN made his own war so there were basically two mass declarations of war going at once #and mind you the fact that Claude declared war on Faerghus too further proved that Claude didn't even have basic knowledge of Dimitri #getting cozy with Faerghus would have allowed him to properly assess the Church and talks things out with them #and if that failed he would be able to take it from there but with the help of the lords from Faerghus #and with that he would've had security in that if Rhea tried to harm him that Dimitri could intervene #what I'm saying is that a Claude who didn't have enough time in Fodlan after coming there from his own life in Almyra #is a Claude who was emotionally and politically stunted in his growth in Fodlan and expressed stress and confusion very often #what this also also also is: Faerghus was handling the Crest system anyway and Edelgard ruined everything #and Claude got swept up in Edelgard's bullshit in Hopes #honestly I think the tl;dr of this is that Miklan is kind of the center of proof that Faerghus was doing the right thing #and that Faerghus was the most progressive nation in Fodlan. they were just doing it quietly and internally #and they couldn't have changed anything outside of Faerghus without first fixing Faerghus itself #also I rly hate the whole ''THE CHURCH IS BAD" concept bc like wtf did Seteth and Flayn ever do to y'all... #I hate how so many characters boil down whatever Rhea does to being the fault of EVERYONE in the Church #as if they all knew about everything/had a say in everything bc even Seteth wasn't privy to what happened with Byleth in Houses #even if characters hate Rhea there's no reason to blame the entirety of the Church for that #you'd think people would realize that's discrimination but even a lot of fans just go along with it. siiiigh