#**dimitri** is the one who has a greater complex about their power dynamic and thinks it's more straightforward than dedue does

[untitledgoosegay]

one of the weirdest experiences i ever had was flipping through dimidue fic early on and realizing " ... oh some of you guys are here for the power dynamic? like straight-up? you're getting off to the appearance of their relationship? and not the complex interwoven navigation of the personal, interpersonal, and political in an attempt to honestly connect and express selfhood? not the balance of truth, half-truth, and façade? not the struggle to truly express, receive, and understand love, despite the power dynamics at play and the political realities of the situation?"

skill issue. lmao

[kendrixtermina]

Playing CF first is heartbreaking because as you go through the other routes, you figure out just how fated Edelgard and Byleth are to oppose each other. Only one can survive, the other dies. Byleth and Edelgard are the God and Devil of the story, they aren’t meant to have a happy ending except in CF, where at the Holy Tomb Byleth denies fate by making a decision from the heart, not the head to protect Edelgard. And that heartfelt decision is rewarded later when she gets her heartbeat restored.

I’m not sure if I agree on your interpretation of how the decision happens, though I agree on the ‘antithetical’ motifs that are going on vs the “screw destiny!” one we see in CF. 

They’re sort of mirror images - 

Both have the crest of flames, essentially, godly power (though Byleth has some additional perks from having Sothis’ mind inside them and later merging with her), both are the results of dubious experimentation. 

But they’re essentially produced by opposite sides of this shadow war that’s been going on for ages - Byleth is Rhea’s creation and set up as sort of divine messiah, Edelgard was “made” by the Agarthans to be Nemesis 2.0 as a tool to advance their goals. Their “finest creation” whom they made to “burn the gods”. 

Now of course she actually hates them and fully intends to doublecross them as soon as she can safely afford to do so but to the rest of the cast she very much does look like an anticrist figure who’s going against all that’s good and holy in their eyes and of course Byleth the messiah needs to put that right. 

(slightly less so on the GD route where Claude is rather transparently using the church to drum up support, admits in private that he doesn’t actually think that Edelgard is that bad (He just doesn’t trust her and thinks he can do better and to be fair the same is true for her), and is totally onto Rhea’s bullshit -  Lucky for her, Claude needs her alive to interrogate her, but Byleth’s dialogue options are written as very much wanting Rhea back)

As for the decision - it could just as easily be framed as having witnessed the Church’s BS for the whole of part 1 and finally deciding that you won’t put up with the zealotry any longer which is anything but an illogical decision. 

Wether or not on agrees that that’s what they actually are Edelgard & Hubert very much present themselves as the side of reason, pragmatism and big-picture thinking. They’re certainly not without bias but they value and strive toward those things which is the most any human being can really do. 

There’s certainly an element of trust, since Edelgard just shows up under very suspicious-looking circumstances where you could easily think that she’s wholly in cahoots with the bad guys - markedly you can only do this if you’ve extracted her backstory and witnessed the coronation where she swears to her sick old dad whom she ostensibly loves that she will act for the greater good - ie, when Byleth would have some idea why she’s doing this/why she might have good intentions, but even so this is more a question of wether she looks like a real alternative to Rhea’s crummy practices vs. someone you have no reason to think is good.

So what happens when they team up is essentially that these two decide that they got more in common with each other than the “sides” that created them, doublecross their respetive “makers” and throw in their lots with the ordinary people on whose backs the shadow war has been carried out. They choose humanity, and as you observed that’s what they get - in their S support they essentially decide to run away and live peacefully once the reshaping of the world is done. It’s fuck Rhea, fuck Agartha, we’re ending the shadow war once and for all. 

(though I wouldn’t call the other route’s endings “rejecting” humanity per se, they all got their own motifs going on, and the shadow war is ultimately ended in all routes excep AM - and even there just because it could go on doesn’t mean it will. CF and VW are all about Claude’s and Edelgard’s respective visions for the future but AM is more a redemption story, Dimitri’s supposed to be unsuited to ruling because it’s a tale of how he rises to the occasion regardless with the support of his friends... and as for the Church route even the people who like it like it largely because of the family-esque dynamic with Seteth and Flayn than for the plot developments or even for Rhea, though she does have her share of fans, and why wouldn’t she evil or not she’s complex dimensional and kinda sad or pathetic depending on how you see it. )

this is all just my opinion of course.