#but basically: because 3H wants to focus on the war itself and on Fodlan only

[butwhatifidothis]

Sorry if you've already posted something like this before, but how well do you think Claude's routes tackle the subject of dismantling prejudice and racism? Because I've seen some recent discourse that's caused some controversy and it was about how Azure Moon/gleam character's and Dimitri handle that theme better with Duscar. And how Claude is a bit redundant as a character in FE3H as the golden deer routes overall don't end up contributing too much to the overall story rather than lore. My personal opinion is that I do see what they were trying to do with Claude and racism because it was there but because of how undeveloped the writing in both of his routes were the message doesn't come off as strong or a bit naive for Claude. (I do have like 3 more chapters in VW I need to catch up on.)

The outright tackling of it, in the base route itself? Somewhat poorly, negl. But the concept of him doing so itself would not be redundant, imo. The two of them tackle the same core issue - trying to dismantle prejudice and allow for peace to fall between differing people - in two very distinct, different ways.

Dimitri, when all is said and done, has the power and the means to achieve this with the power he has as king of Faerghus. Duscur is a land that, while separate from it culturally, still resides in Faerghus, and it is a relatively small land at that. And Faerghus has been its direct oppressor for years - it has direct power over Duscur. So Dimitri taking up the reigns of king gives him a far more direct means of amending that - it's not a "blink and it's over" sort of thing, but he is ultimately the one with the most power in this situation to be able to fix it. And, as seen by AG, him doing so leads to a lot of progress being able to be made. There's still a lot to fix, but to say he's been king for, what, 2 years max? There's a lot he's been able to do.

Claude, however, is not in that sort of position. For starters, he's not even guaranteed to become king, unlike Dimitri who always would once he became of age (as Rufus was only a regent in place of king until Dimitri was old enough to be coronated). He has to deal with the struggle of attaining the power to be able to make change at all, unlike Dimitri who had to fight Rufus to keep his already attained right to the throne, which immediately differentiates the two stories by a fairly large degree. But aside from that, Claude is trying to amend the relationship between two entire continents worth of people. As king of Almyra, he would not have power over Fodlan - Almyra isn't oppressing Fodlan, like Faerghus was with Duscur, nor does Fodlan physically reside within Almyra. Therefore he has far less direct access to change than Dimitri does - he has to rely on his connections to Fodlan's people-in-charge far more than Dimitri does (who, mind, still does do that, but it wouldn't be to the necessary degrees Claude would have to go to).

The relationship between Faerghus and Duscur and Fodlan and Almyra are fundamentally different, therefore Dimitri and Claude's approaches to the issues of them would similarly be different at their cores. Dimitri has more direct power to change things, but the things that need changing are horrific and involve giving power back to a people who've had theirs stolen from them. Claude doesn't have to deal with a history of oppression per se, but he has to deal with a long-standing feud between two fairly-equally powered continents that he can only potentially have direct power over one of. The stories of how these two fix these relationships - as in, achieving their goals that are, at the end of the day, somewhat similar - wouldn't be redundant because of the important differences they do have.

HOWEVER. That's mostly conceptually. In practice, Dimitri does achieve his goals (or gets far closer to them) than Claude ever does, in either games, because both games cared more to give Dimitri a character-driven story. All Claude was ever given was a bootlegged BE route in both games, with Hopes going further and making Claude himself a bootleg of Edelgard. Not much of a chance for Claude to do much, given those facts lmao.

As well as that, the writers only cared to have any story centered around Fodlan and not much else - Duscur gets a pass for, again, physically residing in Fodlan, but as we can see anything else gets The Boot. Almyra is barely talked about, Brigid is barely talked about, Dagda is barely talked about, Sreng is barely talked about; despite having characters that come from those places (or in Sreng's case, having characters otherwise connected to it somehow), they have almost no information given about them at all, and they have pretty much no narrative focus. Which is somehow better than Albinea or Morphis, who both get pretty much nothing at all.

And not to be a bringer of wild and wacky news or anything, but centering a main character around a place that you deliberately give no information about save for the smallest crumbs... isn't going to lend itself to a good story if you try to make that character's story have much to do with that place. Which is Claude's biggest problem in that aspect of his writing. Duscur is allowed to have an important role in both Dimitri's story (and other characters' stories) as well as the plot of 3H itself (as it's connected to the reason Lambert is dead and thus Faerghus is weakened as much as it is, which makes Edelgard's invasion of it easier) - Almyra is not. Almyra, at its core, is only really allowed to set up Claude's character, but doing anything more with it - directly interacting with Almyra the same way that Duscur is directly interacted with? Not... really. It says a lot that the writers decided to make Claude's paralogue centered around Fodlan and not Almyra in 3H - and Hopes, technically, though for once it is slightly better there by having Almyra at least be involved somehow.

I'll say this, end of the day: Claude was never going to be able to focus any attention on amending Fodlan and Almyra's relationship in 3H in any sort of similar way that Dimitri was able to focus any attention to amending Faerghus and Duscur's relationship given the nature of 3H's narrative priority to Fodlan's issues. And while he did have a really good opportunity to do so in Hopes, that was impossible because for the majority of the game it's his dumbass evil Edelgard-wannabe twin Clyde that's in the game at all. While Claude ultimately is fairly redundant against Dimitri in execution regarding their goals, it didn't have to be on a conceptual level - hope that makes sense lmao

#ask #anon #like even in my VW rewrite it doesn't focus that much on Claude's goal of fixing Fodlan and Almyra's relationship #because 3H's ITSELF doesn't care about doing that - the narrative is almost strictly focused on Fodlan not anywhere else #Hopes tho was just a fat stinky shitpile that dropped the ball like it was hot metal #literally was the perfect chance to focus on the struggles of trying to make that change and instead we got Edelgard 2.0 #which uh spoiler alert is why my rewrite of it is taking SO fuckin' long. i AM going to go down that route for GW #but there's so LITTLE Almyran lore to work around with so i have to make shit up that doesn't sound too far out there #but only minimally - adding outright new shit is a little :/ imo but there's FUCKING NOTHING SCOOB #but basically: because 3H wants to focus on the war itself and on Fodlan only #only characters with struggles that relate to those two things will get off well in the writing quality #Dimitri hits both of those things while Claude ehhh not so much #while Hopes is just ass all over the place lmaoooo