#what this also also also is: Faerghus was handling the Crest system anyway and Edelgard ruined everything

[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

[gascon-en-exil]

I suppose you can call me "villain Dimitri anon" now, but I actively dislike Azure Moon for the narrative perks that you and other fans insist it has, but I can't see. What back and forth does Dimitri have with his retainers that aren't confined to supports? There's just Gilbert, Rodrigue, and Byleth ignoring the one-eyed elephant in the room.(1/2)

What support network does Dimitri have? A bunch of badly abused subjects at the end of their rope who don't have the guts to abandon him or give him a wake up call. Dimitri's redemption in the rain makes zero sense as the scene progresses, and outside of some lip service in a support, he's so cured of any trauma that not even getting the truth about Duscur fazes him. What's worse, this redemption is the main idea of the route. (2/3 now)

The back and forth is in reference to how the army in AM feels directionless and disagrees on whether they should liberate the Kingdom or rescue Rhea first. This gets references both in story cutscenes and in the exploration of dialogue of numerous characters, heavily reinforced by many of these same characters remarking on how off-putting Dimitri’s behavior is. This stands in contrast to CF never questioning Edelgard’s actions even as they’re far more systemically terrible with the work of Hubert and the Agarthans behind the scenes; even VW offers a number of scenes and exploration content of characters questioning and critiquing Claude’s actions. Felix’s mini-arc outside his support line with Dimitri is the clearest example, because he’s the loudest voice of opposition and because if you trigger their supports some of the dialogue changes to reflect that, while Rodrigue plays a predictable but workable role as the doomed mentor figure whose death forces Dimitri to confront how his obsession with revenge is hurting the people he loves.  This is all unfortunately somewhat undermined by Byleth’s presence and the need for self-insert romance, with them supplanting Dimitri’s established support network and worst of all leading to Dedue being killed off by default and then never re-integrated properly into the story lest his intimacy with Dimitri pose an obstacle to the expected lord/Avatar romance (that can’t even be pushed in the same way that Edeleth can in all routes, incidentally, because Dimitri can’t S rank m!Byleth). This is a genuine problem in AM, but curiously it’s one that I see brought up almost exclusively by fans of Dimitri and his route rather than those who hate AM and/or rail against Dimidue as an allegedly racist pairing.

None of the other Blue Lions gets a single meaningful word in in the main story cutscenes. You can get some character development for Ingrid, Sylvain, and Felix in monastery dialogue and DImitri's supports and that's it. Not to mention, gameplay-wise, dealing with Dimitri is just no fun, and there's no choice to get fed up and leave. With all of Crimson Flower's problems, at least you had to actively choose to go on that route. (3/4 now)

I wouldn’t say that’s all that different from how the other routes handle their chorus of minor characters, especially CF which again minimizes any sort of friction the Eagles might have with Edelgard even when she’s outright lying to them. There’s a reason that SS is sometimes cited as a better characterization showcase for the Eagles other than Edelgard and Hubert, particularly for Ferdinand who actually gets to be the contrarian #3 on that route. Gameplay is more subjective, although I’d rank being unable to instruct Dimitri or have him engage in monastery activities for four calendar months is more than offset by CF being exactly that many months shorter than AM or VW. Also, in terms of building characters Gilbert is far, far less of a pain in the ass than Jeritza, and I say that as someone who’s painstakingly gotten every character in the game to all ranks at S+ and all classes mastered over many NG+ runs. Having to pick CF is also an inconvenience that screws with the flow of Chapter 11 since you need to waste a battle weekend going to Edelgard’s coronation lest you miss out on instruction weeks or later weekends doing it at the start of the month. It’s kind of a moot point to argue about this anyway as the Deer have it the best when it comes to unit development, with neither of these restrictions as well as the longest route and no Part 2 exclusive to worry over.

Crimson Flower had a "big picture" war story, Verdant Wind had good character balance and exposed the truth about the player character. Azure Moon was just all DImitri. Not to mention, my own political philosophy and real-world history interests make me biased against Dimiri and his stance. (And no, I'm no fan of dictators, just not of a fan of Fearghus-style feudalism) (4/5)

I do like redemption stories. But I've seen them done better elsewhere. Dimitri's character is interesting, but his route isn't. All routes on Three Houses have problems that I nitpick about, but as thing stand, I can support Claude and Edelgard in achieving their ideals, i cannot in good conscience support Dimitri as king. Nurse him back to sanity, maybe, but put him in charge of other people's lives? No. (end)

Eh, SS is the route you’re looking for if you want the full story of Byleth’s origins and their connection to Rhea; VW’s endgame exposition dump is more about the true origin of Crests and Relics and general worldbuilding which is why I’d call it the big picture route over CF which kicks one of its major antagonists to an offscreen postgame. I also question why you single out the quasi-feudalism of Faerghus when that’s the established standard for all of FE and for most of the fantasy genre overall. Fire Emblem is notoriously reactionary when it comes to its politics, such that Dimitri’s solo ending suggesting the beginning of a participatory government might be the single most concrete move toward democracy of any lord in the series. Even as tiny a step as that is it’s more than can be said for Edelgard not delivering on her rhetoric of abolishing the nobility and...whatever she plans for the church (since she vacillates on whether she’s fine with the Seiros faith but only takes issue with the church or whether she thinks humanity has no need for gods, and the only CF ending that re-establishes the church has it run by the state which is some prime dystopian stuff). Claude similarly suffers in that his plans remain ongoing at the end of VW and lack any concrete shape beyond opening the borders and forcing people of different nations and cultures to interact and get along - a well-intended idea, but not one that will lead to serious change without a lot of work and oversight. 

Dimitri lacks such grandiose ambitions, and once he’s moved beyond his need for revenge his goals center around alleviating the suffering of the Kingdom and of his loved ones, but on a meta level that’s kind of all he needs to do. One of the reasons that AM’s story structure is more coherent and well-paced than that of the other routes is that it’s extremely well-trod ground for IS: “blue lord takes back invaded homeland from red emperor with the Power of Friendship” is the standard FE plot going back all the way to Marth, and Dimitri’s biggest deviation from that model is the somewhat realistic depiction of his struggles with mental illness. That’s probably why many longtime veterans of the series favor AM, because we know it’s the type of narrative IS excels at and we’re not expecting anything more politically revolutionary. Hell, the proto-democratic ending was as unexpected to me as Dimitri’s strong queer notes...which is why I prefer him over the other two incidentally, not because of his politics which are just fantasy boilerplate of a good king being restored to his throne, and there was much rejoicing, etc. There are gender-based readings of AM that I and others have made, not to mention people who enjoy the homoromantic push and pull of Dedue and Felix on Dimitri and how those relationships develop against one another, and I think it’s telling that those unconventional analyses of Three Houses’s most typical lord and most typical route are still more plausible than all the additional motivation and setup you’d have to throw in to make Dimitri a proper villain, or even just an antagonist for the length of more than one chapter.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd #Azure Moon

[dmclemblems]

to reply to your tags on the oudou/hadou post you reblogged: edelgard's fódlan doesn't just have almyra to worry about. there's duscur too, and the only person that wants to give them the justice they deserve has been killed by edelgard herself who doesn't seem at all interested in declaring their innocence nation-wide. also, assuming you don't recruit sylvain, who's gonna deal with sreng? suddenly, they also have an opportunity to break through the border, without house gautier to defend it

I'm gonna put this under a read more just because it's B I G.

You're right! Duscur is very loyal to their own people, and Dedue was loyal to Dimitri, so two things would matter here: either they would hate Fodlan even more for killing another of their people, or they would use the opportunity of a recent war to attack anyway, since Fodlan would have a period of needing to recover its military power. On top of that, you're right that Edelgard doesn't care about Duscur's situation, and the worst part is that she was working with the people who caused the genocide. If word of that got out somehow, like if Dedue survived and told them, like, that's it, she's at war with Almyra who will have Duscur survivors on their side (and I imagine those survivors are very headstrong after the lives they've had to lead since losing their homeland).

Sreng is also a problem similarly, and that's exactly why Dimitri reasons that having the power of Crests is essentially. The implication (if it's not outright just said, I don't remember at the moment) is that the power of the Crest held by the Gautier family is the only thing keeping Sreng from launching a war against Fodlan. If Sylvain isn't there to stop it, I don't think Margrave Gautier would even bother stopping them from invading if he found out Edelgard's army killed his son, assuming he was not also dead.

Another issue with Edelgard's Fodlan is that she wants to abolish the Crest system entirely, which again brings us back to Sreng invading. If she were to put someone in power simply for being a good general at war, for example, that doesn't mean they have the power to hold Sreng back. Sylvain, even if alive, may not have been returned to power, and quite frankly probably would not have been because he was originally from Faerghus and has a Crest. It's also worth noting that Sylvain was able to peacefully handle working out the Crest system from their politics. I do agree with Dimitri that in some instances it's a necessary thing to keep around. The only time it really becomes an issue is when you have people like Margrave Gautier, who will disinherit and disown his own child for not bearing a Crest. That, of course, isn't even about politics - it's one man's own decision. While it makes him a shitty person for doing that, it has no bearing on the rest of the nobles and royals and how they handle the system. If the power of Crests gets abused, they need to deal with that on an individual basis. Why risk a war with neighboring territories and all those innocent people and soldiers dead? Why not just fix the Crest system instead of abolish it?

Brigid is another problem entirely, because Petra is a political hostage and I hate how they try to imply she doesn't mind being one anymore in CF. One of my biggest pet peeves with CF is that nobody in the BE class would agree with Edelgard's actions and side with her except Hubert. It's made even more clear that that's the case when Caspar I believe it was admitted he didn't think about it and just followed Byleth. Throughout the entirety of CF, the people who sided with Edelgard did not ever side with her for her but for Byleth, and even recruited characters are the same way. Basically, there's no indication that the characters actually like what they're doing and are just singlemindedly following Byleth and using no brain cells whatsoever to decide if it's what they really want.

In Petra's case, not only is she a political hostage, but Edelgard makes it very strictly clear that her actions are onyl for Fodlan. She has nothing to do with Brigid and doesn't care about it at all. At best, Edelgard might be able to get Brigid as an ally against Almyra, Sreng and Duscur, with Dagda being neutral, but not only do I dislike the notion that it essentially means the political hostage gave in and now works alongside her captors, but would Brigid really want to ally with Fodlan and put themselves in that position in the first place? They would be more likely to remain neutral like Dagda... and Edelgard is all about crushing everyone. It's ride or die for her. You either submit or you die. The Alliance was trying to stay neutral and not get involved but she forced them to make a choice. Not only is Gloucester territory forced on her side in non-VW routes (even though you can recruit him back in AM) because of their proximity to the Empire, but the Alliance was trying not to take sides and she forced them to.

Quite honestly Edelgard should have stopped fighting the Alliance when she realized Claude had brought Almyran troops in. Almyrans are very prideful about their strength and they would not sit back after being defeated by another nation. It doesn't matter if they liked Claude or not: he was still of royal blood and that's still showing that people in Fodlan can and will kill their royals without hesitation.

There's also the fact that Edelgard doesn't even question TWSITD's explanation to her about Nemesis and Rhea. She supposedly hates them and wants to defeat them for what they did to her and her family, but she won't question that they might be lying to her? So basically you have a tyrant in charge of the continent who doesn't even ask questions, takes what she's fed from her actual enemies and starts a senseless war over false information.

I see her actions as extremely petty more than thought out about the Crest system. It looked more like she wanted someone to get revenge on because "why did this happen to me", "oh yeah Crests are why this happened to me so I have to kill whoever agrees with this system". In other words, Rhea, who in charge of controlling that system (which is another story entirely and Rhea wasn't in the wrong for doing so, but Edelgard tries to insist they're basically holding the continent hostage with those weapons even though Rhea willingly gives them to the people they belong to and nobody else because... well... -looks at Miklan-), had to be removed. Similarly, Dimitri, who believed the Crests were there for a reason, also had to be removed, and his country had a good relationship with the Church, so he literally had zero reason to turn against Rhea (like literally, what were his options? Do nothing and potentially ruin his relationship with the Church, or go against the Church and definitely ruin his relationship with the Church? In a war he couldn't just predict oh Edelgard will definitely win this so I should side with her since the Church will be wiped out after this).

Also, let's not forget the fact that Edelgard wants all Children of the Goddess dead simply for being dragons. She doesn't even care that Flayn is a wonderful person. She's a dragon, so, off with her head. So, on top of it all, she's racist (and yes, dragons in this universe count as a race so it's still a variable in question).

So now we've got a brainless, racist tyrant in charge of Fodlan, surrounded by enemies on all sides where she puts all her friends back in power even though they have Crests and Dorothea gets to stay a commoner despite her accomplishments. Like... wow... yay... Great future, Fodlan...

Literally all of this could've been solved with a meeting between Rhea, Seteth, Dimitri, Claude and perhaps Edelgard when they were all rulers. If they talked it out and figured it out, Edelgard can't even use her "I'm not going to live a long life" excuse because she did live to become a ruler, but all she did with that time was slaughter thousands of other people, both directly and indirectly.

Yes, I understand it's FE so ofc the war has to happen somehow, but it's the fact that Edelgard is written so poorly as both a villain and a leader. Again, she won't even question what people tell her and even more so should question her actual enemies but doesn't, and she immediately decides killing all other leaders in Fodlan is the only answer (including the beginning of the game where she tried to have bandits kill however many nobles they could, as Kostas literally mentions).

We don't need a Golden Route where everyone survives and they all team up or something, but Edelgard's route finishes with her, as per the ending we see, with zero consequences which makes no sense. You have Dimitri insisting he's going to spend the rest of his life making up for the pain he caused in those five years (even though, strong reminder he would never have done any of that if Edelgard hadn't started her war which gave TWS the opportunity to run him out of his homeland), and Edelgard meanwhile takes absolutely no responsibility for the lives lost because of her war and nor does she care. She's proud of what she did and that's potentially the worst part of it all.

Like, again, I understand it's FE so it needs a war, but the game tries to establish her as a tyrant but a... good person tyrant. It tries to let us play the villain route but keeps slamming on the brakes and trying to make her uwu have a crush on her teacher and draw her. They similarly make Dimitri pretty evidently have a crush on Byleth (especially in the Academy phase), but he's not handled as a character intended to play a certain role and then failing to play that role in a story driven game (which compared to some other FE games, this one is very story heavy).

It's not even just that I think Edelgard is a terrible person; it's that IS just didn't commit to her being a terrible person even though the signs were all there. It feels like they just didn't want to make her evil because she was a pretty female lead and very strong, because that's especially the way it comes across in some of her supports. In SS we have Rhea, who did some bad things for understandable reasons both politically and emotionally, but she pays for her actions in all routes - even in her own route, arguably the worst so in her own route. Rhea can only get a possible redemption if you get her S support, but Edelgard is treated like a savior in her route despite being the aggressor. She's treated like a savior who did no wrong and never has to face up to her actions or behavior, but Dimitri, Rhea and Claude all do, even though she's the worst of the bunch.

I would be okay with the route more if they actually admitted that Edelgard was wrong even in her own route. I would be more okay with it if they didn't make it seem like Edelgard was some badass who deserved applause for insulting Dimitri for his mental illness (cough calling him the King of Delusion which is literally a result of his mental state) before killing him. To me she's an entitled brat who started a war simply because she had the power to do so, because as I said, her first reaction to the story she was told was to kill everyone in power and abolish the Crest system. Forget diplomacy - she just wanted to kill people. To me, that's not a sign of a good person or a good leader. Not a single leadership related quality about her tells me she should be in any kind of power.

TL;DR there are a lot of variables in play here that make Fodlan's demise extremely clear to me if Edelgard succeeds. Whether it's Byleth (VW/SS), Rhea (pre-timeskip) or Dimitri in charge, the continent is still reasonably at peace or very much so. Rhea's rule wasn't perfect, but it was controlled and in a way that brought sustainability. Edelgard is not a good person and I hate that the narrative of CF keeps trying to make her out to be. Like... seriously, there are irredeemable people in the world who are just horrible people. It exists. CF should have just gone through with it instead of trying to make her look like some hero who smiles proudly and tells her army to cheer after killing a good man who also happened to be royalty from another land. Like... that's pretty psychotic ngl lmao.

#JD Ask Replies #garlandgerard #Don't even remember my old ask tag so ripperoni to whatever it was bc it's this now lol #also lol I'm so sorry this kinda turned more into a rant about how bad of a leader she is too #and that being a factor in Fodlan being Oofies for good #But like seriously some of this shit is exactly why CF ended up being such a mess #and it doesn't help that the route was the shortest so it was a mess crammed into a small span of chapters