#I feel like seteth is less of a leader and more like Byleth's and Rhea's retainer

[kyogre-blue]

SS is done.

The most standout part: I got the Rhea S rank. It was good. I support it, but I wish there was a gen version and also that it was available on VW. My general impression is that VW actually gives you more chances to ask after and worry for Rhea (plus Claude is a rather meh romance option), so it would be great if I could get with her there too.

In general, I wish VW and SS were just one route. Both have some nice small details, but given how similar they are, I feel like you'd get a better experience if they were just combined.

Checking my VW endgame notes, it seems VW gives you info dump about Agartha, which definitely feels missing in SS, and SS gives you a bit more detail about Byleth's deal from Rhea, which adds some nice details on the Rhea relationship front. Seriously, they should have just combined them.

(Hilariously, Catherine's endcard outright contradicts the paired Rhea one. They are incompatible, but I got both. Additionally, Ingrid's card seems to be written for Crimson Flower, since it mentions Galatea being "seized" and Ingrid needing to push strongly to be allowed to govern it, which comes across weirdly as a post-war in the Byleth-led United Kingdom, especially since the other Lions kids I recruited all got their lord positions without any apparent fuss.)

Overall, not much else to say about SS. Final take: SS and VW are really obviously the same route, but even though SS was supposedly written first, VW feels marginally better in its focus and I enjoyed it more. However, the Rhea stuff specifically is good, and I wish I could get it on VW. Yup.

Final save file time: 95:19. Minus the VW playthrough, it's 44:07, so a bit faster. Specifically post-route split, it's 20:16, so it seems like the part that I finished faster was actually just Academy phase, possibly because I just didn't care much for the BE kids.

Liveblogging notes:

Looking closely at the battle selection screen, it seems Shambhala is at the very eastern tip of the Empire. There's a bit of mountain that stretches down from the Throat across Airmid River, and it seems to be there.

Narration calls it a "sprawling underground city."

Thales was kind of a chump!

Ah, I just realized I forgot to check his X description blurbs. They probably weren't too interesting tho.

The Agarthans are super mad about living underground and not having "light." Thales also name drops Agartha in his battle line vs Seteth and in the cutscene afterwards. Aside from their ability description, I think this is probably the first time their proper name is mentioned. But we uh, don't seem to discuss this much?

Small scene with Nemesis's coffin is missing, I think. Well, obviously because he's not the final boss now. iirc the scene immediately after the month change, with everyone freaking out over Rhea is new instead. It's a little weird because iirc VW gives you more opportunities to express concern for her. Here, the Rhea focus feels a bit less supported.

Seteth didn't realize you already knew that Rhea is the Immaculate One (which you did, btw).

Seteth "long ago" lost the power to change form, but "it seems" Rhea has not. My dude, did you not know... He does confirm that he's also a child of the goddess, which Rhea keeps hidden in VW. Flayn is also counted as one of the children of the goddess, even though she's more like a grandchild. It's a general term for dragons.

Seteth and Flayn press Byleth about taking over as the leader of Fodlan in some capacity, now that Rhea's future is uncertain.

We find the Sword and Bow of Zoltan in Shambhala. I was wondering about whether these things existed, since Zoltan is a dude that got namedropped in a small quest item description a while back. I also have an Axe of Zoltan though I can't remember exactly where I picked it up. No spear?

Just noting that you use Arcane Crystals to repair magical weapons like the Bolt Axe, Mythril to repair sacred weapons like Cichol's Spear of Assal, and Umbral Steel for relics. Mythril is also used on forging the rusted weapons that require A+ professor rank. iirc they're legendary weapons from other games or something like that. Smithing Stones are for normal weapons of all rarities.

On VW, this month was about Nemesis appearing and us going to fight him, but here on SS, that doesn't happen, so the explore dialogue is all about Seteth telling us that we should become the new Ruler of Fodlan and us taking the month to think about it. Everyone around the monastery comments on this, how we should think about it carefully, how they believe in us, how they're thinking about the future, etc. It's... hm. I think it's okay, but it really highlights how much Byleth has not been setup for this role At All.

They're a mercenary who became a teacher via nepotism and while we do things in the story that you could probably read as proof of Byleth's ability to lead, they don't really feel that way, especially since Seteth can end up spending half the war refusing what we suggest. Byleth is also just... not a real character. So them becoming the big deal leader is kinda... yeah.

Anyway, I accidentally ended the month early. But whatever.

Before you tell Rhea your "decision," she gives you exposition about how she made you and Sothis's crest stone is in you. She wanted to see Sothis again and thought she could regain everything she had lost.

Sitri was Rhea's 12th attempt. She "grew up" without Sothis's consciousness and fell in love with Jeralt. But when she gave birth, the child was not breathing and she herself was also "in grave danger." Sitri told Rhea to take the crest stone from her and put it into her baby. Otherwise, both would have died.

Byleth is suggested to be able to house Sothis's consciousness because they have both the crest stone and a body born from a parent with Rhea's blood.

Rhea is aware that Sothis gave you her power and disappeared, which means Rhea's dearest wish did not come true, but she's accepting of that. She basically entrusts Fodlan and the future to you.

And she just flips out in the middle of that.

"White Beasts" appear all over the monastery. They are from priests and knights that Rhea shared her blood and "stones" with. Tho given how JP plurals work, it's impossible to tell if Rhea is meant to have one crest stone or several. Demonic Beasts also run in??

Enemies are Frenzied Church Soldiers with minor crests of Seiros, Altered Golems, White Beasts (cardinal that has transformed and gone mad due to the rage of the Immaculate One) with Blest Crest Stone Shards (bestowed by a saint and wielded as a weapon), and the Immaculate One herself. She has a crest stone of Serios, can recover HP when near a White Beast and is described as having been driven to an uncontrollable anger due to the power of the goddess.

This battle was annoying because of the Classic setting. The whole business with Rhea having a private army of people whom she shared blood with is, hm. But I get the feeling this was done purely to explain her battle having the same mechanics as with Nemesis and the 10 Elites. It's... an interesting tidbit that these cardinals and such exist, but kinda weird that the crest of Seiros is actually this common, especially since they can ALL presumably pass it down to their kids, and I would expect Rhea had done this for more than just one generation.

(funny concept: after a thousand years of Rhea just sharing her blood all over, a good three quarters of Fodlan has some Seiros crest blood and it manifests pretty much at random in people all over.)

Anyway, final blow by Flayn.

OK, enough screwing around. tbh I do like Rhea, so there's some emotional resonance in everyone being very worried about her and having little voicelines about how they want to pay back the debts they owe to her, and her sadness and suffering and all that. It's not the worst.

She mistakes Byleth for Sothis when collapsing in the cathedral.

They did make a mistake: Rhea transforms in her dressing gown without the mantle or headpiece, but she changes back in full archbishop regalia.

The post-battle exposition exposition is kinda... ah yes, all nations in Fodlan are gone, but you see the Church is leading people toward a new... nation? How does this work. Sorry, but I don't see a religious government (??) as a good thing.

Rhea says she had a vision of flying free and speaking with Sothis while near death. She's happy she survived... so am I.

Rhea's wish was for peace, but she admits fault in propagating a false history and deceiving the faithful. And she did a bit of forbidden experimentation on the side, obvs. We forgive her tho.

I wish there was a gen way to save her, without the romance. It's such a good coda, honestly, without the marriage.

I wish Byleth was a more concrete character. Not necessarily a super detailed one, but with at least some grounding traits.

Still, Rhea romance scene is pretty good. WAY better than Flayn. Why can't I do this on VW..........

Endings: Ashe takes over Gaspard as the new lord. Galatea was "seized" what the heck, though Ingrid did rule it. Felix still ended up Duke Fraldarius. Sylvain talked his way into peace with Sreng, good on him. Lindhart "escaped the Empire" but went missing. Dorothea fled with her troupe to a secret location. Petra went to Brigit. Caspar fell on a battlefield. Bernadetta because seriously ill and lived as a recluse. Ferdinand returned to his territory but went missing. Catherine became Guardian of Zanado, but why was she shaking up with MY wife in solitude? Because in the ending card with Byleth, Rhea is still archbishop and assists the leader of the new "United Kingdom of Fodlan." Shamir became Robin Hood. Alois became captain of the knights. Seteth became very tolerant lol

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

I've always seen Silver Snow as a tragedy of sorts. The fact that one of Byleth's students is revealed to be one of the instigators of the crap that happens in White Clouds and by extension indirectly responsible for the death Byleth's father. Combined with the fact aside from Lorenz and Ashe, anyone from a different house and wasn't recruited to Byleth's side are either dead or missing in action, and the fact that Rhea can potentially die; there's just this underlying feeling of powerlessness and despair where your student is causing trouble, and hurting millions of people, and you're not able to do anything to prevent more tragedy or are too late. And I think "Funeral of Flowers" being the final boss theme of the route really exemplifies that. I think the reason why Engage went with SS is because SS is Byleth's story/route. I know the fandom likes to frame it as the "church" route, but in reality I think it's more of Byleth's route.

I don't disagree! I see it as a tragedy as well. This is referring to a not so recent ask I answered and I'm answering this one late for people who need context. I'm just unfortunately a sucker for happy endings at least to some extent (like ex. I'd consider AM a happy ending for the most part, but maybe even just more bittersweet because they never really got answers about Duscur, and the people who knew those answers (the real ones, like who was truly behind it all) are dead). Dimitri got some answers, but more confusing and vague responses than answers for the most part.

Also, I think it's kind of an unfortunate story for Lorenz, too. Ashe aside since his tragedy happens in WC, Lorenz if not recruited was forced to side with Edelgard because that's what his father did, and his father did that to protect their people from invasion. However, in SS Edelgard loses the war, which means Lorenz was on the losing side. As far as politics go, that's not a good look, and even less so for a country that has leadership problems because the roundtable can't stop bickering.

Tbh, I think SS is, in a sense, the Church route because Byleth kind of represents the Church. Just like you could say AM is Faerghus' route since it's the winner of the war, you could say Byleth is the leader of the Church who Seteth, the second in command, follows. I think when people refer to it as the Church route and don't really include the fact that Byleth is the main representative of the route (non-avatar-wise it's Seteth and probably why people don't realize it's Byleth's route) is because it doesn't really focus on a central lord from the Houses themselves, instead giving the Church group more of the center.

In fact, I see people argue that Byleth's route is CS and that SS is the Church Route. I can see what they mean since it's not really Yuri's route specifically and centers much more around Byleth and also Sitri's backstory. SS focuses heavily on the Church's side of things while all the other Houses are just former students off doing their own thing now if they're not with you.

I think IS' intention was for SS to be the Byleth route, but the way it came across to most people was that it gave us Church-based Byleth (like how AM is Faerghus-based Byleth, but we have a main, central lord in that route whereas we don't in SS, so it's more unclear to people). Also, since SS was the first written route, I figure they wrote it to show Byleth's path if none of the students were selected and Byleth was instead more of a representative of the Sothis-based storyline/Church/Rhea/etc.

Engage did a pretty good job of making it unrelated to a defined route though, because all the lords in the DLC treat Byleth as their House's professor. The only indications come from Byleth, which actually makes sense because the three lords represent their own route, but there's nobody else except Byleth to represent SS.

But like I said, since SS was the very first route they wrote, it's entirely likely that it was intended to be Byleth's solo route, i.e. the non-professor route but a member of the Church instead. That is, no longer a professor and not really one to the people around them because the main characters are typicaly the faculty of the Church/Academy, since the BEs are utilized less in SS (likely because they're utilized fully in CF instead).

[randomnameless]

Something you’ll find interesting: if permadeath is enabled and a recruited jeralt dies, byleth says they’re sad they lost him, but at the same time say that now that he’s gone, they’re going to seek out rhea themselves because they want to know why jeralt was avoiding her, they want to find out the truth. So azure gleam does have that even if it’s a crumb at least, and sothis was still fucked writing wise. But it does give weight to the fact that byleth has a stronger family with the church than they did with jeralt. Who knows? Rhea obviously recognised them as Sitri’s (in golden piss but still) so she’ll likely take them in and tell them the truth they want to hear.

This also made me like Byleth more (i didn’t hate them in houses, but i was more indifferent) and it makes me mad that they have a genuinely interesting character aside from backstory that houses shafted for whatever reason. Because we get information like them being curious about the world, getting along with rhea and liking her (she’s the only character to have a pre time skip a support), and even being quite soft spoken and gentle instead of the energetic protagonist types. I’m just disappointed that was only shown in three holes and feh instead of their actual debut game. Is Koei to blame to try to force us as players to want to woo edelgard or why did they make them mute? I would’ve loved to hear them voiced talking to rhea about sitri and the nabateans and having tea and fishing with Seteth and flayn.

Oh really???

AG can possibly still end with Billy at the monastery, becoming a teacher, and maybe Worst Mom having to interact with her children (lel) - it really is the best route lol

Pretty sure Rhea knows who they are, and if Billy's already green, she might even think they're Sothis and come to the realisation that they're 2 different persons earlier than in FE16 too!

I think @renisfan pointed it out earlier, but JP!F!Billy is also more soft-spoken and gentle than what is the "western depiction" that tried to maker her appear more "Badass".

But yeah, as I suspect, the reason why Billy couldn't be more "themselves" or "interesting" in FE16 was because Billy must be able to woo Supreme Leader - thus they cannot really get to know their lizard fam - and also because both games are allergic to Nabatean content - bcs Hresvelg Tea - so Billy being a half-nabatean like being cannot be under the spotlight.

I know I joke a lot about poor Jerry, but the fact that FE16 really tried to hammer the "best dad uwu feel sad for him uwu look we made two mouthpieces to tell you how awesome he was" angle when it also didn't erase the dramatic implications that Jerry effectively ran away with his kid because the kid was "abnormal" - as a result of the heart transplant Sitri asked Rhea to perform/or because Billy is biracial - but never developed about it, bar some half-assed reheated ravioli can "maybe it was a mistake to leave the monastery" before his death...

Only for Nopes to add more on the "deadbeat dad" angle and highly suggesting Jerry, as much as the crest stone, is the reason why Billy was so emotionally stunted...

But we couldn't have a resolution with Rhea and Jerry and Billy, where it would be more or less revealed that Jerry loves Billy and ran away to protect them from Rhea, even if what Jerry feared was only a result of Billy, just like Sitri and Rhea herself, not being human.

And we of course couldn't have Jerry, after learning the truth, feeling like a watermelon because even if Sitri wasn't a human, he still loved/s her, ultimately apologising to Billy and to Sitri to have shat on her last choice - with Billy telling him that he doesn't need to apologise, but maybe from now on they can all live together and be a real family, regardless of their race because they love each other, and sit on warm rocks together -

Why?

Because the game dgaf about nabateans, and coexistence between humans and nabateans directly contradicts Supreme Leader's motto, and Supreme Leader can never look bad or be contradicted, because everyone has to learn to love her, so even if she says Nabateans are incapable of human feelings, shouldn't rule over the people because they are nabateans, have no regard for human life or are cruel beasts - we can't have anyone's arc go frontally against her mindset and say that despite the shape of their ears, Nabateans and Humans aren't so different, they have the same feelings and can ultimately live together, hell, through Billy, love each other.

Now, I'm going to drink a cup of Earl Grey.

[furry-emblem]

You know what, after talking about how biases and stuff mess with 3H discourse, I'm going to go over my biases and personal experiences with each major faction leader because I feel like it. I don’t really want people arguing with me on these, but I would like to hear other people describing their experiences with these characters because that’s always interesting to read about. I'm listing the characters in order of how much I liked them.

Byleth

Also known as erotica, keyboard smash, Sothis, another keyboard smash, BoobBoob, and Boobama. I really dislike them. I’ve never been particularly fond of silent or self-insert protagonists. At best, they signal to me that the game isn’t going to bother with its story or character writing (and that’s fine when that’s the case), while at worst, it’s the writers taking the most important character in the story and then throwing their hands up and saying “we don’t need to write this one.” Byleth feels like the ladder and it’s to the detriment of pretty much everyone around them. Like, even considering that silent protagonists are supposed to be characters that the player projects onto, Byleth doesn’t do a good job at this because there’s enough canonical descriptions of them that you can’t really roleplay, but there’s so little going on that they don’t stand on their own two feet. So it’s like having a piece of cardboard dictate the fate of the country. They also primarily function as a wall for characters to exposition dump their backstories onto, which isn’t very interesting to watch. Like, 3H would have been better off without Byleth in it. 0/10.

Rhea

I just haven't had the chance to see a lot of her stuff, so I think I'm missing some of the stuff that makes people like her (and I'd prefer to not have that spoiled for me). Haven't seen her supports or the Church Route, but she just hasn't left me with a good impression. I don't like how possessive she gets of Byleth. Like, it creeps me out a little. I'm also a bit disappointed that you never get to play as her. I want the pope to bitch slap people (except not my people). I remember her being an antagonist in CF felt kind of forced to me when I first played because her reactions felt a bit silly. The problem wasn't whether they were justified or not, the problem was lack of context given and the fact that she was saying stuff like "You will BURN in the PITS OF HELL" while standing perfectly still and making this face >:(. And I just couldn't take that seriously for whatever reason because it felt cheesy and I didn't really understand what was going on. It also soured any endearment Rhea showed towards Byleth to me on future routes because her actions in CF gave me the impression of her being obsessive and controlling of Byleth. Like, she acted entitled to their loyalty, expected them to be something they never asked for, and flipped the fuck out when they rejected. It reminded me a lot of some abuse I've gone through and it made me dislike the character. Now that I have more context on the character, I get why she reacted so suddenly and violently because CF kinda threw all of her triggers at her. It feels like she dug her grave in that route, but she dug it in a way that resembles a Greek Tragedy more than anything else. My second route was Claude's route, which thoroughly disappointed me in terms of its writing. When Rhea was exposition dumping her backstory, I was like "I'm boooored," so that really didn't help my opinion of the character. I also don't really like how she gets damsels in three out of four routes. I still don't actively like the character very much because she left a really sour taste in my mouth, but I understand that I'm missing information and that there are reasons to like her. I'm open to learning more about her, but she just really rubs me the wrong way.

Yuri

I never finished Cindered Shadows and I have no real opinion on Yuri. I thought he was a girl when I first saw him and I think he's fun to play as in gameplay, so I guess there's that. I don't really see myself replaying Cindered Shadows if I even finish it because it lacks a lot of the major things I liked from 3H.

Seteth

Does he even get to count? Like, he's not in charge and Rhea should've probably been the leader of Silver Snow. Haven't played that route yet. I like Seteth. He's got good dad energy and also he's my wife (specifically in Verdent Wind). He's got good vibes. Also, if you kill Flayn in Crimson Flower, his English voice acting when he's like "Flayn Noooo" gets to me. I still really like Seteth. A solid 8/10 for me.

Dmitri

I wasn't following Three Houses advertising at all, so I didn't know anything about anyone going in. I was originally just going to skip him entirely because he looked boring and had shitty hair. So I did his route last. Partially out if curiosity for the character, partially because I might as well do every major route since I'd already done Claude and Edelgard, partially to get to know some of the Blue Lions, and partially because some of Edelgard's backstory is only revealed in this route and I was curious about that. Dmitri's route definitely has the best writing out of any of the routes. I really like how personal the route is and how much it focuses on how one specific event impacted all of the characters in it. There are some big problems I have with the route and Dmitri, like how the game uses psychosis to represent Dmitri being murdery and how him changing his mind felt more like Byleth's decision than his own due to their conversation being pretty bad. But overall, he has the best writing. I'd strongly recommend playing through his route if you haven't just because the writing's rather good there. The reason why he's ranked below Claude and Edelgard, however, is pretty simple: I just don't vibe with him. Like, the hero archetype bores the hell out of me, even when it is subverted like it is here. I also just didn't relate to the character on really any level while I did with Claude and Edelgard. The amount of Edelgard slander in his name also annoys me, but I don't think it really impacts how much I like Dmitri. He's a well written character that I just don't vibe with. I also remember his death in Verdant Wind and being like “wtf was that??” Like, the writers killed him offscreen.. twice. In the same route.

Claude 

I really enjoyed Claude as a character. He left a good first impression on me and I almost picked him for my first playthrough because he’s hot and sassy. Two good traits for any character. I ended up picking Edelgard, though, and he left a good impression on me during CF. I like that he held the alliance together and had a contingency plan for if he lost that battle. When I played his route, I ended up going Hard Mode NG+ Casual and I stuck everyone on a dragon. I did find it funny that throughout the school phase, Claude learns bow stuff repeatedly, then in one of the last months, he went up to me and was like “hey, can you start teaching me in axe and flying?” Which he had nothing in either. Then timeskip happens and he comes waltzing in on a dragon. Claude is where all the good memes in the fandom go. That said, I really disliked his route because Claude felt like an afterthought in it (because he literally was). I don’t like that I got out of the route and it felt like I didn’t know as much more about the character going out than I did going in. Some of that is because I didn’t see a ton of his supports, which is where pretty much all of the character work is. I like how Claude is open minded and actively tries to seek out the truth. So, overall, I found his route a bit disappoint but I still really like him because he’s a fun character.

Edelgard

I fucking love Edelgard. She was my first pick and therefore the character that introduced me to the game, and by extension, the series of Fire Emblem. I picked her because she’s pretty, she looked ready to fistfight god from the word go, and she seemed like the mascot of the game so I figured the writers might put a bit extra effort into her route (they didn’t, rip). My very first playthrough was actually a Normal/Classic run, but I had to abandon the run because literally everyone died four hours into the save (I swapped to Normal/Casual). Edelgard ended up carrying me through my first playthrough. I stuck her on a dragon and she killed literally everyone and everything. In my most recent playthrough of the game, I did CF and made her an archer mage dancer for the memes and that was also a ton of fun to play with. Her gameplay feel had a role in me liking her (like, Dmitri is also very powerful, but it was my third playthrough and I knew what I was doing better by then, so him being just as OP as Edelgard didn’t really influence my opinion on him as much as it did her). 

Besides the gameplay, Edelgard’s probably the major character that I relate to the most. Every character on this list (except maybe Byleth or Yuri, I know literally nothing about Yuri tho) has experience with trauma and is coping with it in some way. Edelgard copes by villainizing herself and shutting off her emotions, but despite that, she’s still a low-empathy person who’s still very compassionate person who cares about others and is trying to do the right thing. She also generally tries to express some amount of compassion to her enemies, even if it’s little more than saying “it sucks that Dmitri had to die.” She’s not as open-minded or as truth-seeking as Claude is, but she still tries to keep herself open to other viewpoints and will readily accept any she deems as valid at a moment’s notice. I just really like that about her because I share a lot of those traits in common with her. I also like the idea of her being someone who’s willing to do evil things to bring good to the world. That’s not something you normally get in a protagonist and I think that’s a cool idea. 

I still found her route to be very awkward, especially with no context. Like, I missed the line where Edelgard’s like “yeah, btw, I’m the Flame Emperor,” so I was just wondering what happened there. It’s an anticlimactic way to end the main plot of the first half of the game. I also didn’t really get Rhea’s angle at all. So the route just felt a lot like “I guess I’m doing this now??” In other routes, I found her deaths to be very hard hitting. The death in Verdant Wind only really got me because I really liked Edelgard and she was my original student and I could feel how much she wanted to make her future a reality and how her failing meant all of those sacrifices she made and the evils she’d done would now all be for nothing. I get that impression with Azure Moon’s ending too. 

Most of my appreciation for the character does come from her support conversations. I like how her chain with Bernie has her trying to learn how to not scare her off. Her interactions with Dorothea in their support chain are kind of sad because Dorothea is trying to show her admiration and love for Edelgard in a way that makes sense to her but then Edelgard’s low view of herself causes her to reject the offer. I really liked her Manuela support too (haven’t seen Hanneman’s but I’ve heard that it’s good). I like how with Manuela, Edelgard learns why people are religious and she that being religious doesn’t make you weak. I like her Linhart support where he calls her out for trying to dictate his life and she responds by trying to overhaul some of her own systems and assumptions about him, which leads to her giving him a role to the empire that also properly accommodates for his needs. I like how with Ferdinand’s supports, he has to learn to let go of their rivalry, but once that does happen, Edelgard takes into account his ideas and roles with them. I think it’s funny that she and Hubert flirt with each other by sending each other credible death threats. Edelgard just has a lot of very good supports. Don’t get me wrong, Claude and Dmitri also have supports that are good (I thought Claude’s support chain with Petra was cute and I really like Dmitri’s support chain with Flayn), but Edelgard’s supports go a long way to paint her as someone who is flawed but still really admirable.

Edelgard is definitely one of my favorite fictional characters, and I’d love to see more characters like her in the future.

[sickly-sweet-imagines]

Can you please do a headcanon post for the 4 route leaders in fire emblem 3h(Edelgard, Rhea, Dimitri, and Claude) falling in love with a random foot soldier?

Of course! Spoiler warning, especially for Edelgard and Rhea’s. I tried to keep it generally pretty vague, but if you want to stay completely blind to any spoilers watch out!

– – – – –

Claude von Riegan

Claude would not be subtle at all

He tries to avoid seeing things as black and white, so to him you aren’t just a foot soldier- none of you are

Of course, with you his view is a little extra special

If he could resist trying to flirt (which he may manage to do- after those five years he got a lot more patient with these things) he’d show his interest through strategies

He’d make a point of keeping you in safer areas or avoid using you as part of a bait for a trap

But at the same time he’d throw you into danger where he knows you’ll succeed so you can show off

He makes a point of shutting down conversations that use foot soldiers of nothing more than pawns

Again, something he’d done before finding himself interested in you, but he doubled down after falling

You may not have the fancy dress of the members of his house, but you’re no less human

He’ll actively seek you out after battles- recognizing you in the sea of similarly dressed fighters

He wants to make sure you’re okay

And if you’d let him he’d offer to let you help him achieve his goals even after the war has finished

Since you don’t have anywhere to rule after the war, he’s more willing to bend for you and take you with him to Almyra

He’s not interrupting your responsibilities by doing it, so why not?

Edelgard von Hresvelg

Hubert was unsurprised to see Edelgard fall for you

Back when she was ‘collaborating’ with those who slither in the dark as the Flame Emperor, she witnessed the way they treated individual life like it was worthless

It disturbed her more than she likes to admit

She has her convictions that she’ll fight for, sure, but she had no desire to lose lives

This made it feel inevitable when she finally found herself interested in you

You’d always come in and update her on statuses, contribute your knowledge of the current situation in the field to strategy meetings... It was all simple things, but those simple things brought her joy

While some of her friends certainly provided comfort during the war, you provided a hope

Talking to you made her feel like this war was worth it- if normal people like you could live without the chains of the church or those who slither in the dark holding you back...

It was worth fighting for. You were a beacon of hope for the same reason you considered yourself nothing more than a foot soldier

Of course, she didn’t realize this hope was affection until it was pointed out

And of course, she couldn’t allow herself things like love until the fighting was done

But she started trying to keep you alive- she protected you from finishing blows in battle multiple times all so she could ask your thoughts on joining her after everything

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd

Of all the people to fall for a foot soldier, Dimitri is one of the most shocking

He lost his stability when the war broke out, everyone knows that

It seemed impossible for him to recognize the helmeted soldiers for the faces beneath when his mind was so shattered

But, in one of his rare moments of true lucidity, he spotted you

He spoke to you, asked how you felt about this war, what it was like for you and other soldiers to be put so constantly on the front lines

If you’d ever be able to forgive him for what he’s done

After that day, he’d seek you out- even when his mind was in pieces and he was barely trying to remain conscious, he’d look for you

Talk to you, relish in your normalcy and your commoner past

You made him feel like less of a monster

The love came slowly for him, he was hesitant to allow his mind any more passionate feelings, especially for a soldier he couldn’t recognize on the battlefield

Once the war felt like it was ending, though, he allowed himself to feel again

And goddess did he

He put passion into you he’d never put into anyone before, he put energy into spending time with you he hadn’t had in years

You made things feel better, and though it would be a long time until he could call himself whole again, if he ever even could... You provided him a reprieve from finding the broken pieces

Lady Rhea

Rhea was hesitant with love of any kind, but this was an entirely new kind of careful

There are so few of her race left, she doesn’t want to risk making a poor choice and losing what’s left

But she can’t help but gaze at you during meetings and wandering around the monastery

The protective way you fight caught her attention

Seteth was nervous about it, but he’s always nervous when the archbishop puts herself at risk

She started talking to you, spending time with you around the monastery, asking to hear your history

It was kind of scary at first, someone so important talking to you

but you slowly warmed up to each other

And the warmer you got with her, the more in love she became

She, similar to Dimitri, feels a lot of guilt with love due to her past and the choices she’s made

But she wants to love you, she wants to spend her life with you

She puts maybe a slightly unfair amount of attention on healing you in battle compared to other soldiers

Not that you’d complain

She asks how you’d feel about living simply together after the war

She’d already been thinking of passing her role down to Byleth, but learning about your simple upbringing made her yearn to live with you

She wants to experience what it’s like to live normally for once, and she’ll spend your whole life together enjoying every second

[butwhatifidothis]

But...Byleth wasn't unemotive because they were a mercenary, they were unemotive because of the fact Sothis hadn't woken up. Like I said, you're injecting a negative viewpoint where there isn't any.

As much as people would LIKE for it to be Crimson Flower is NOT a villain route, as villain routes usually have you as the bad guy. The villainous actions are addressed. Instead you're potrayed about as much (if slightly less with the whole conquest thing) of a hero as the other routes, complete with the Black Eagles becoming the underdog and being short on troops, and Edelgard fighting directly on the frontlines. Sure we can call it the villain route since Edelgards the villain in all the other routes, but it isn't played as if it were one. There's no "Look at the horrible thing you've done!" or "Edelgard's empire crumbled and she was killed in a coup after TWSITD were defeated". or even a "Edelgard's lies get exposed' moment. She's just potrayed as the hero the entire time.

Also, Edelgard doesn't think Byleth is completely without emotion, she thinks byleth is DETATCHED. As in, not showing emotion often. She also agreess if Byleth says that Edelgard is also detached. That entire part of the conversation is brought on because Byleth says they are jealous. The entire thing of "Edelgard thinks Byleth has no emotions" is from a conversation in which Edelgard is GLAD that Byleth os showing emotion.

"I'll admit, I think of you as rather detached, so to hear that you have emotions such as jealousy is... something of a relief."

Also I forgot to ask...where is it STATED or SAID that Byleth WANTS to be a guiding hand for Fodlann? Like I'm not sure where that came from since it's not as if Byleth actively pursues a position of power, it's usually something they just sort of get given at the end of the other routes since Rhea either gives them said position, or is dead and Byleth ends up filling that role

Imma ask this: if being a mercenary was completely fine, if that had absolutely no negative impact whatsoever on Byleth... why didn't Sothis wake up earlier? Why did she only do so right before the lords - who give Byleth the chance to grow - meet with them? If they don't want to be a guiding hand in Fodlan, why don't they reject the leadership position given to them - especially on AM, when Rhea and/or Seteth could take over as archbishop?

It's because being a regular mercenary isn't good for them. It's because there's a consistent theme with Byleth that leadership as well as the Church are good things for their character, as well as for Fodlan - it's in the routes the Church is standing and Byleth earns a leadership position that Fodlan is at its most peaceful in the endings. It's not me being negative when it's this consistent within the game itself that being a leader and having a purpose beyond being a sword hand is what is best for Byleth.

To give the short answer to the "CF isn't a villain route" idea, here's this post I made detailing many of the ways CF is by far the most morally bankrupt route of the four of them, regardless of surface level framing. CF isn't a villain route in that "oh ho look at you, being evil!" It's the villain route because you are actively helping the villain get what she wants. You are the reason Fodlan falls into tyranny. It's your fault, as the player, that Fodlan is engulfed in war again when that isn't necessary in the other routes (where TWS are just taken care of with no need for a "long, arduous, bloody war"). It's because of you that the people of Fodlan must live under Edelgard's cruel leadership, being spied on by the secret police and having any rebellion they try to muster be put down in secret by Edelgard's evil butler.

You say CF isn't the villain route because Edelgard's villainous actions aren't addressed, but I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you with what qualifies as a villain route. You help plunge the continent into war by backing an imperialistic warmonger. You help spread outright lies about the Church. You keep up these lies even to your friends and let them believe the Church just nuked Arianrhod, without ever setting it straight with them. You work with a murder cult hellbent on killing as many people as they can. You comply with someone who is keeping an independent country (Brigid) under her thumb by keeping Petra as a hostage, which she herself refers to herself as on CF. You use Demonic Beasts as "war assets." You invade a neutral nation that's kept out of the war entirely. You help try to finish a genocide against the Nabateans - or, at best, work with someone who wants to finish it. You are the villain.

CF has you as the underdog despite it always being the one with the advantage in the beginning of the war phase because it is deliberately breaking from the worldbuilding of 3H, as said by the developers. Byleth is supposed to stand against Edelgard, not walk with her, hence the warping of the story when they do. It doesn't have to directly, explicitly say it's the villain route for it to be clear that you are not the good guy here.

Like, "you're portrayed about as much (if slightly less with the whole conquest thing) as much as a hero as the other routes-" no! Not slightly less! That is in large part what makes it villainous! You aren't fighting to defend yourself and to take down the one who plunged Fodlan into war - you are the conqueror! You are the one doing the plunging! For completely selfish gains, at that! There's no explicit "wow bitch you fucked up here" because the sign of you fucking up is the state your actions leave Fodlan in. It's Byleth losing the Crest Stone and going back to the beginning of their character arc. Edelgard, the villain, won - she got to have her happy ending on the graves of countless innocents lives she deemed less worthy than her ambitions, and it's all because of you. Edelgard getting exposed and her empire crumbling down is a good thing, which CF is not. You don't get to have Edelgard face the consequences of her actions like you do on the other routes where she dies, because she won. The bad guy won. You helped the bad guy win, so no, you aren't going to get the satisfaction of watching Edelgard fall - you play the other non-villain routes for that to happen. Why should there be? This is what you as the player wanted! You chose to side with Edelgard, even after being shown her involvement with nearly every bad thing that happens in WC, because you wanted her to win! You’ve reapt what you’ve sown!

And imma just ask... why is Edelgard relieved to hear Byleth has emotions such as jealousy? And why does she insist that Byleth is detached if you try to deny it? Why does Byleth have to directly tell Edelgard about them feeling emotions for her to know it - why doesn't she just know already? You never hear this sort of doubt come from Seteth, Claude, or Dimitri on SS, VW, and AM - hell, Claude will even outright say that Byleth has gotten far more expressive lately during tea time conversation! Why is Byleth detached in CF - why aren't they closer to the lord? Why is the lord doubting the connection between Byleth and others in their A support? Why is it only on CF that Byleth is ever called detached during post ts? Why is Byleth not showing emotion often? Enough to make Edelgard question whether they have emotions? 

It’s because Byleth is regressing on the progress they’ve made in being able to emote - they act in ways that are similar to how they act in the beginning of the game because CF is a negative influence on their character. Edelgard calling herself detached like Byleth is not a good thing - Edelgard’s detachment from other people is what lets her sacrifice innocent civilians for her goals. It’s what let’s her believe that her imperialistic dreams are worth the bloody path needed to make them come true. She is not connected to those around her, hence her being able to justify killing anyone to get what she wants, up to and including her Black Eagle classmates (Bernadetta on Gronder). Byleth being compared to someone like that is far from a positive thing, especially when all other routes have them have that connection with others and all other routes having a more positive, peaceful ending for Fodlan than CF. 

I will say though, it seems as though Byleth never seems to explicitly say that they want to be a guiding hand - that's a fuck up on my end and I apologize for that! But it's almost undeniable that that is the intended good path for them, versus CF where they don't have that happen. In the ending cutscenes of AM, SS, and VW, Byleth and the lord of that route (+ Rhea for SS) are bathed in the light (with Rhea being able to live on SS if she is close enough with Byleth), and Edelgard dies in the light. In CF, Byleth and the lord of the route are shrouded in darkness, with only the flames of destruction lighting them, and it's this setting that Rhea dies in. Edelgard can't survive in the light, and Rhea can't survive in the dark - and then the endings that correspond with these two scenarios match as well. The endings where Edelgard dies in the light and Byleth rises to become a guiding hand for Fodlan are the ones where peace is achieved, and the one where Rhea dies in the darkness (the one time Rhea always dies, unlike SS) is the one where Fodlan is fucked.

[gascon-en-exil]

If we try and remove Byleth from Three Houses, who would likely be their replacement/s in the storyline? In AM, it will obviously be Dedue. But, what about in the other routes?

There's no easy answer that works for all the routes, because while removing Byleth completely undoubtedly would have made the overall writing of Three Houses stronger it would have also required a different focus and some extensive rewriting, especially where Sothis and Rhea are concerned. It'd also need the house leaders to become full PoV characters and also likely controllable in exploration, although that would have benefitted all three of them. Even if Byleth loses their self-insert status (and probably gender variability, in that case) and becomes a recruitable teacher like Hanneman and Manuela who only becomes central to the plot in Silver Snow, that would still require quite a bit of reworking...and would have lost the fans of Avatar dating sims, which has apparently been the most lucrative demographic of FE players for the last decade.

Azure Moon does indeed fare the best without Byleth, helped greatly by it being the most traditional FE story and the one that trims a lot of the fat in Three Houses's undercooked story elements, ex. the Agarthans and the mystery surrounding who and what Byleth is. It's already got the best pacing, the clearest arc for its protagonist, the best relationship between its hero and villain, and the best sense of dramatic payoff in ending where it does. The Byleth-free version would be all about power couple Dimidue, with added focus on Dimilix as a second relationship that begins roughly but develops into one of equal significance. Dedue and Felix would grow into a dynamic comparable to August and Dorias toward Leif in FE5, or Soren and Titania toward Ike in FE9: a pair of advisors with vastly different views of the world and who care for their leader in very different ways and so are forced to come to an understanding. They'd be fully integrated into the plot, allowing them to participate in story moments like Rodrigue's death and the resolution of the Duscur mystery much more organically than they do in canon, not to mention be the ones along with Gilbert and Rodrigue to help Dimitri through his darkest moments. The golden ending is an orgy.

Would IS ever write that? Absolutely not. It'd be too overtly gay, even if the relationships were still only kept to subtext, and there's no plot-relevant waifu bait to be had. Fandom would decry that AM as even more misogynistic than Echoes, and not progressive enough because with no Avatar S ranks Dimitri's queer relationships wouldn't be "canon." They'd be no homo'ed just like Ike/Soren is...which they are now, only it'd be more prominent with no Dimileth taking up such a large portion of Dimitri's fanbase.

I have no idea how this reworked Three Houses would handle the Eagles route split, so it'd probably be better off without one. Silver Snow would follow Byleth as they (she? he? The former allows for a second female lead, the latter delves into magical genderqueer territory with Byleth as the incarnation of a goddess) teach the Eagles and gradually uncover Edelgard's nefarious plans only too late to stop them. Apart from Byleth now having a definite gender, voice, and personality - quite a lot, I know - not much of the actual substance of SS would necessarily need to change. It would certainly benefit from a second pass in the writers' room, Byleth or not, like handling the Gronder rematch in a less awkward way, actually working to develop the antagonism between Byleth and Edelgard outside of two cutscenes, and making the final chapter make any kind of sense and not just "Rhea succumbs to dragon degeneration because you need to fight a final boss, Seteth handwaves the whole thing with a line referencing something that got referenced once back in like Chapter 2." Just...some kind of effort there would be nice.

At any rate SS with Byleth as an actual character would be more strongly-written for it, allowing them to function as a genuine protagonist. (Alternatively, make Ferdinand the protagonist...but that would resolve in him and Hubert putting on an elaborately-staged musical where they work through their feelings in the middle of fighting on opposite sides of a war. You know what? Give me that version of SS instead. Way more interesting.)

For Crimson Flower, drop the pretense right from the start. Edelgard's your PoV character, she knows she's the Flame Emperor and what she's doing throughout the school year, and Part 1 is about her trying to maintain the façade of a normal student while she's planning a war on the DL. If they insist on keeping some of the mystery, that wouldn't be impossible as it's obvious Hubert is the brains of their operation and he keeps most of what he does hidden from Edelgard anyway. I'm not really sure how to work the waifu hot for teacher angle into a PoV version of Edelgard; as much as I enjoy it from the comedic standpoint of Hubert never getting any because his lady never looks at him twice I think CF would be stronger if Byleth stayed with Rhea and the route didn't bother with working out their relationship to the Nabateans. Just genocide 'em all as Edelgard conquers the continent and convinces herself it's all for the best. She can shed a tear over Byleth's corpse while Hubert brandishes a cleaver with even more relish than usual to extract that valuable Crest stone. The ending is basically the same minus the Edeleth, with it being even more obvious that the shadow war against the Agarthans is going to resolve in Hubert taking his place as the real Manfroy of this story.

And as for Verdant Wind, the whole route would need a rewrite, to give it a more distinct identity from SS and to make it work with a protagonist whose personality and arc revolve around revealing very little about himself to anyone else. Players would undoubtedly find out much more about Claude that way than they do in canon VW, and it'd probably work better if it kept Edelgard's war to the background and refocused hard on the worldbuilding discoveries and how they play into Claude's growing understanding of Fódlan. With or without Byleth, a better-written VW would be vastly different from the canon version.

So aside from the house leaders taking over Byleth's role as PoV characters and exploration avatars I don't see anyone else assuming their exact role in supporting said leaders. Dimitri has an abundance of male love and camaraderie, Edelgard gets all worked up over Byleth but is still completely willing to step over them to achieve her goals (also Hubert is there), Claude would likely see his background and beliefs teased out of him gradually by all the Deer in their own ways, and Byleth as an actual character could make SS all about their Nabatean family and the bonds, magically incestuous or otherwise, they can form with the surviving dragons.

[iturbide]

GIVE ME A CHARACTER: Would you mind breaking down Seteth? :D He very quickly became my favorite character in Three houses (He was the one to charm me)

I am totally down to do Seteth

How do I feel about this character?

You know, at first Seteth seemed poised to be my bitter enemy.  It’s not about his lack of trust in me -- honestly I was totally on board with that, I was just as confused as he was about the whole “you’re a teacher now” thing;  he was a little mean about it toward Byleth in the monastery, which was unnecessary since it wasn’t like we asked for this to happen, but after Rhea went over his head like that he was probably just irritable.  No, it was the conversation with Flayn in the dining hall where she lamented not being a student and I innocently asked where I could find her if that was the case, and she said her brother wouldn’t be happy to hear me say that.  He will not let me be friends with his sister?  We sir are at war.

...and then came the kidnapping and he basically shattered and I have never felt more sympathy for a character than I did for him that month, because he was clearly out of his mind with worry.  Despite any prior enmity there might have been between us, when he asked if I would do him a favor I didn’t even hesitate to accept, which seemed to amuse him in spite of how ragged he was, because he hadn’t even told me what the request was.  And then at the end of all that when he entrusted his sister’s safety to me?  The person who he had no reason to trust before?

Needless to say I took my duty very seriously.  After which point he just kept growing on me.  Despite being a helicopter parent and really needing to back off of Flayn so she can make up for all the time she lost -- which is a perfectly reasonable (if excessive) reaction to the fact that he nearly lost her along with his wife at Tailtean, and doesn’t want to risk her life a second time -- he’s also much more grounded in reality than Rhea, clearly able to see the toxic consequences of the Crest system the Church upholds and wanting to help the people around him in whatever ways he can, whether it’s seeing them live up to their potential or shake off the yoke of outside expectation.  

...I guess what I’m saying is that he’s a really good guy.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

His wife I guess?  I don’t know if dragons bond for life or not, but the fact that he still thinks so fondly and so often of her kind of makes me think that he, at least, had intended to stay with her to the end, and hasn’t thought about anyone else since.  So I don’t ship him with anyone we physically meet in the game.

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Is it cheating to say Flayn?  Because I love their bond, I love the fact that despite how frustrated she gets with him, Flayn loves him with all her heart, and Seteth’s love for her motivates him like nothing else.  I also really enjoy a lot of his supports, from Leonie teaching him how to fish in earnest and the two of them sharing meals to Bernie providing illustrations for the fables he writes and ending up getting both of them to be more open about their passions.  Seteth is just a really good father big brother figure all around.

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

I do not understand the prevalence of people shipping Byleth and Seteth.  

This is nothing against the people who do of course but I just.  Don’t personally see the appeal.  He’s literally thousands of years older than Byleth and already has a pre-teen daughter.  Byleth is twenty-one.  Byleth’s barely even an adult at that point, since cognitive development continues through our 20′s -- and depending on whether or not Byleth’s growth and maturation shift to a dragon timescale after the Sothis merge, that means they’re not going to be an adult for a good long while. 

(There’s also the fact that Byleth post-merge is to some degree an avatar of Sothis, and depending on whether you see Seteth as Rhea’s direct sibling or not, that’s kind of like shipping him with his mom?)

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

I really wish he could have had a unique role for himself in Silver Snow, rather than the game copy-pasting the progression from Verdant Wind.  I would have loved to see him have a bigger role for himself as the leader in the Church route, something that really brought his personal vision to the fore; I think he could have made for a great advisor, especially since he recognized the flaws with the Church of Seiros’ system, so can you imagine him leading the reforms after the war?  Essentially conceding that Edelgard had a point but showing that there were other, less destructive ways of bringing about change, and potentially managing to strengthen the Church’s position in post-war Fodlan.  I just think that Silver Snow wasted a lot of opportunities to let Seteth shine as a character.

Give Me a Character  

[fireemblems24]

Flame Emperor Reveal Analysis

This game is all over the place with this. This level delivered some of the most intense and emotional moments so far, but doesn’t always capitalize on character development and conflict. 

I’m playing all four routes in Fire Emblem Three Houses mostly blind. Below is spoilers for all four routes (which I’m learning the names of now). And for the first it’s actually 4! 

Crimson Flower & Silver Snow

I lied. Originally I planned on writing a different analysis for Crimson Flower and Silver Snow, but the build up is the same. Only the fallout is different, and yeah there’s a lot to say about how things played out. 

The Black Eagles routes have the biggest advantage for this scene because your main character is the Flame Emperor. It does not hold back. All of your students, sans Edelgard and Hubert, are terrified, confused, and hurt. None of them grasp fully what’s going on when Edelgard takes her mask off and orders her army to kill anyone who stands against her. The voice actors do a fantastic job here: Dorothea, Caspar, Bernadetta, and others sell the mess of emotions the Black Eagles experience, and Edelgard sounds stone-cold and in-command. Her betrayal is the gut-punch it should be. 

The level presents a no-win scenario. One of your students is willing to kill you and everyone else you’re supposed to protect, and Rhea is out for blood. No matter what happens, no matter what you do, you lose. It’s a heartbreaking, emotional mess of a situation the writing sets up. 

Even prior to all this, the dance between revealing to much or to little about Edelgard’s true intentions is fantastic. Where the Blue Lions basically dumps the answer in your lap and the Golden Deer gives little to no hints at the Flame Emperor’s identity, the Black Eagles is the only route where I do not know if I would’ve guessed correctly or had so few clues that I didn’t bother trying to guess. 

Edelgard drops enough hints to guess correctly if you’re looking for them. She always questions Byleth about his thoughts on the Flame Emperor, trying to drive a wedge between the Emperor and the heinous actions the masked knight is involved in.  Likewise, Edelgard constantly asks Byleth if he’d pick her over the whole world. She also makes alarming declarations that tow the line between reformer and despot. All of these actions make sense in retrospect - she was fishing to see who would and would not side with her regardless of her actions. 

The scene in the Holy Tomb builds up to a crescendo, Edelgard is defeated, and Rhea makes her demand to kill Edelgard. It’s a bit telling Rhea needed to go so extreme in order to make siding with Edelgard believable, but it’s counteracted  by the game going as far as making Edelgard an enemy unit who can and will kill her classmates. Both women resort to extremes. Rhea is emotional, hateful, and screaming for blood. Edelgard is cold, calculated, and resorting to using victims of human experimentation to kill her own friends. These are two driven, passionate women exposing their ugliest sides in an emotional scene ripe for fantastic character development and conflict. 

And then . . . the wrap-up. 

Silver Snow

Should you choose to kill Edelgard, you land in Silver Snow. Rhea’s angry rant against Edelgard is fantastically delivered and makes me anticipate further development from her character. Back in Garreg Mach Monastery, Rhea  juxtaposes her earlier scene for a softer one. She implies a willingness to sacrifice her life to protect her home, and asks Byleth to take her role should something happen to her. Rhea’s plan all along was to put Byleth (who is connected to Sothis, who is connected to Rhea, though the details are still unknown to me) in charge. After hearing Rhea call for blood, it’s a sweet scene between Byleth and the archbishop. The problem with it is that every route gets these scenes sans Crimson Flower. It’s two great scenes for Rhea, but not unique to Silver Snow. 

And here’s the weird part - there is no unique content for Rhea outside of a few initial lines when choosing to kill Edelgard. Instead, we get the Black Eagles upset and unsure about Edelgard’s actions, a few wondering how much she planned all along and how involved she was in every horrible thing that happened during their school year. It’s necessary, but there’s nothing stand-out in anyone’s dialogue to bring home a real gut-punch. 

Seteth gets the best unique content in Silver Snow when he offers the Black Eagles a chance to defect to the Empire should they desire. It’s delivered softly with no threat behind it, showing an earnest desire for the students to feel comfortable even if it means they’re going to turn around and try to slaughter him in thanks. Thankfully, none of the students leave. Cyril and Catherine automatically join your team, and Hilda is now recruitable as well to make up for losing Hubert and Edelgard.   

The fall out for choosing to stand against Edelgard is . . . fine. For such a unique event in Fire Emblem (siding against your lord, possibly losing two units you’ve heavily invested in should you not know what’s coming), I expected a bit more drama and flare and a lot more Rhea. However, this is only the start, and it gave what it needed to give. 

The stage has been well set. Everyone’s in a no-win situation. Should they lose, they and everyone else in Fodlan will suffer an all-out, dragged-out war. They’ll lose their school and have to fight against their home country (sans Petra) where most of their family and friends live. Killing Edelgard ends the conflict, but she is their former friend, classmate, and rightful leader. She gives them no choice - fight for me or die standing against me. Neither option will leave Byleth and the remaining students wholly satisfied, so I foresee more bittersweet confrontations coming, and I look forward to it.

Crimson Flower 

Deciding to protect Edelgard lands you on the Crimson Flower path. I have to say, I’ve read and watched thousands of stories and this one scene stands out among all others. 

Never in my life have I ever seen characters react to a situation in a way that makes less sense. Even more baffling is how much potential gets tossed out the window. Stories thrive on conflict and character development and this scene is ripe with potential, but instead of even letting the fruit grow rancid they just . . . act like it never existed. 

After Byleth picks to guard Edelgard, Rhea loses it and is ready to tear Byleth to pieces before turning into a dragon. The Black Eagles and Edelgard all run away and, not long after, make it back to Enbarr safely. How they escaped a rampaging dragon or successfully fled Garreg Mach is hand-waved away. This is the kind of hand-waving I can forgive. It’s lazy writing, but it doesn’t really impede the story. What I cannot forgive is the hand-waving that comes next. 

Edelgard has a brief scene where she tells her classmates her intentions - she wants to rid Fodlan of the Church of Serios’s control, claims that Rhea and her fellow beasts have secretly ruled humanity and held them back, and is going to declare war. She asks who will join her. Predictably, all of them do - except Flayn. Edelgard mentions that Flayn has opted not to stay with the group. 

Hmmm. I wonder why. Could it be Edelgard’s lackey kidnapped and tortured her for a whole month, preparing her for blood experiments at the hands of an evil group of mages who just happen to be Edelgard’s allies? Maybe that had something to do with it. The fact the game presents this is as some magnanimous act is hilarious. I believe Edelgard would let someone like, say Petra, turn away too, but she deserves no “brownie points” for allowing someone who she allowed to get tortured and set-up for a slow death as a human sacrifice to leave and not decide to attack her the home where her father still lives. I think this aspect of Edelgard’s character would’ve hit home significantly harder if someone who wasn’t so throughly victimized by Edelgard’s actions had fled, or you actually saw Flayn leave. 

No one asks about the Death Knight. No one asks about Flayn’s kidnapping. No one asks about Kostas attempting to kill students. No one asks about the students kidnapped and experimented on or Remire Village or Jeralt. No one asks where the Crest Beasts Edelgard is using came from. No one asks about the fact she just tried to kill all of them, or what she’s going to do with the Crest Stones. No one even mentions the Flame Emperor. No one questions the history she spilled on them, claiming the church was behind the splitting of Fodlan despite not even having enough knights to guard their own monastery and needed students to help out at events. 

I could buy the Black Eagles running away with Edelgard. The scene where Byleth chooses Rhea or Edelgard is highly emotional. Things happen quickly and no one is given much of a chance to process anything. Rhea doesn’t give anyone much of a choice by shifting into a dragon. I wish they didn’t rely so much on “Rhea bad” to make any sense of siding with Edelgard, but it is believable. What I cannot buy is how no one questions anything afterwards. 

It’s like the whole cast just forgot the first eleven chapters. No one even mentions the Flame Emperor’s existence. The moment the mask came off, it ceased to exist. Everyone mindlessly believes everything Edelgard says, and no one even asks any questions - not about Rhea, not about the history of Fodlan, not about the Flame Emperor’s actions. Barely anyone bats an eyelash at the idea of attacking their own school and killing former classmates, teachers, and friends. Everyone comes across borderline brainwashed. Did the writers have so little faith in Edelgard’s position they were afraid to even attempt exploring it? Even worse is the strategy meeting is just Edelgard, Hubert, and Byleth - the Black Eagles are no where to be seen. It makes them come across like mindless puppets rather than anyone remotely rational - like pawns arranged on a board required for gameplay reasons than actual characters.        

Never in my life have I seen a story throw away so much potential character development and conflict. The situation here is intriguing. Edelgard’s stance is fascinating, but everything falls short when all that’s interesting about it is getting tossed out the window because Rhea is secretly evil and nothing Edelgard did beforehand seems to matter anymore. I am seriously concerned about where this route is heading, because despite the massive potential, it seems like it cares less about that and more about making sure Edelgard looks good rather than complex and interesting, even at the cost of logic, character development, and by turning other interesting characters black so Edelgard has someone she can look better than in comparison rather than standing on her own ideals.     

Verdant Wind

Am I correct in assuming the fandom consensus is that Verdant Wind had the least impactful Flame Emperor reveal? Because it did. 

Edelgard had little to no presence in Verdant Wind. Outside of pre and post class vs class battle banter, her only scene consisted of interrogating Claude and getting and giving no answers. Claude has no connection to Edelgard and neither does Byleth or any of the Golden Deer. When the mask comes off and it’s her face behind it, there’s no emotional response. 

The fallout is equally lackluster. Claude demands answers from Edelgard, which she refuses to answer, and she warps away. Afterwards, things play out the same way they do on every route. And that’s the core issue here. Claude and the Golden Deer bring nothing unique to this scene. Elements of surprise that Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, her willingness to kill all your units to get crest stones, and her declaration of war is there on every route. Claude’s character and goals have had no impact on the plot. 

Analyzing this scene has brought to light my main issue with the Verdant Wind route thus far. It’s that Claude and friends have done nothing to move the plot forward. Things just happen; no character is making anything happen. You could argue it’s the same for the Azure Moon route, but Dimitri’s clearly defined goals and emotional connection makes it a streamlined story with a sense of forward progression instead of plot points getting dumped in the player’s lap. 

It’s too bad, because Verdant Wind could’ve approached this differently. Instead of Claude getting nothing done and shouting about every relic that showed up, he and Byleth could’ve solved mysteries together a la Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boy. For all of Claude’s questioning everything, very little attention was paid to unmasking the Flame Emperor. Verdant Wind guided its players to look at the wrong mysteries - mysteries that ultimately got no answers while ignoring the one part one was actually about figuring out, and if this was flipped, Verdant Wind would’ve had a much more impactful Flame Emperor reveal. 

I will give Verdant Wind major bonus points though. It is nice to see a character question Edelgard about her involvement in things. Dimitri’s too caught up in his Duscur trauma (which I don’t believe Edelgard participated in) and neither Silver Snow and especially Crimson Flower question Edelgard’s actions as the Flame Emperor, but Claude throws at her all the questions I wanted to hear: what about Flayn? What about Jeralt? What about Remire? So congrats Claude, you’re the only character and the only route that’s holding Edelgard actually responsible for her actual actions. If only she was the mystery you were investigating instead of one that went exactly no where for eleven straight chapters. 

Azure Moon

What’s interesting here is that the Flame Emperor’s reveal is less about who the mystery person is and more about our protagonist’s, Dimitri’s, reaction to it. And that is core reason behind this scene’s success. 

Multiple users on here told me to play chapter eleven of Blue Lions first, and I’m both glad and upset I listened to them. Glad, because they were all right, this route had by far the best Flame Emperor reveal, but sad because it all went downhill from there. 

The Crimson Flower/Silver Snow routes should’ve had the best Flame Emperor reveal. After all, those are the routes where Edelgard plays the biggest role, but the follow up to the scene is fairly lackluster, especially in Crimson Flower. Azure Moon, on the other hand, did everything Crimson Flower was afraid to - address the elephant in the room.   

Characters in Crimson Flower respond to the situation as if Edelgard didn’t just try to kill all of them, nor do they ask any questions about her actions as the Flame Emperor. Everyone acts as if none of that ever happened, and by not bothering to even mention it, those actions stick out even worse than they would’ve otherwise. 

The opposite is true in Azure Moon. Everyone is unnerved by Dimitri’s violent outburst. Felix jumps at the chance to tell everyone, “I told you so.” No one knows what to do about Dimitri, nor do they really have time to process anything with Edelgard’s war machine knocking on their front door. However, this is the base expectation of a story - that characters respond realistically to what happened prior instead of teleporting to some surreal dimension where Edelgard isn’t working with people who perform human experimentation. 

So what exactly did Azure Moon do to make this reveal so successful? It utilized the route’s unique aspects: Dimitri’s mental instability and desire for revenge, terrible family history, and emotional connection to Edelgard. 

Unlike Verdant Wind, Edelgard has an actual presence and relevance in Azure Moon thanks to her connection to Dimitri. He cares about her like family, which makes her betrayal more personal and automatically more impactful than in Verdant Wind. Even more brilliant here is milking the emotional aspect of what happened. Instead of focusing on “shocking” the reader with Edelgard’s betrayal, it drops hints about her secret identity with all the subtly of a lead brick. 

You know what inevitable, dramatic, and tragic outcome is coming. Edelgard, Dimitri’s only remaining family (outside of an uncle he’s on bad terms with), is working hand-in-hand with the people who caused the deaths of his family which led to the genocide of a race of people and the source all of his trauma.  Dimitri makes it quite clear he’s out for revenge, and that anything related to Duscur triggers his PTSD so bad it seems like a dissociative or psychotic episode. Azure Moon does not build up a mystery, it builds up an emotional conflict - like watching a train wreck that you know is coming and can’t stop. 

And that’s the brilliance of it - this scene isn’t about Edelgard being the Flame Emperor, we already know that, it’s about Dimitri, who this route is about and who the player is emotionally invested in during this version of the story. 

Nor does this game disappoint here. There’s no softening anything to try and make Dimitri look “better.” He has a full-on violent breakdown. It’s devastating. He is succumbing fully to his demons after fighting against it over and over while getting tossed into triggering situations ad nauseam and getting no help in return (after all, therapy, medication, hell even the concept of mental illness simply doesn’t exist). All the signs that the route has built up explode in an emotional scene, and probably thee best cut scene so far with some of the best voice acting in Fire Emblem to carry it out. Every plot thread comes to a head: Dimitri’s lust for revenge, his unstable mental health, the mystery of the Flame Emperor’s identity, etc . . . 

The upcoming battle has more meaning now. It has what is at steak in the other routes - win or lose and the fear of having to kill former classmates - and more. Because it isn’t just about the battle of Edelgard vs the world, but also the battle for Dimitri’s mental health and for his soul. There’s a bit of a catch-22 here, is Edelgard dying really the best ending? Killing her saves many lives, but at the cost of Dimitri’s mental health? What if she dies and he doesn’t kill her, but what if he does? Would he kill himself now that the dead are avenged? Or what if she lives and this drags on longer? No option is good. There isn’t an easy win button by offing Edelgard or taking over the school. Every possible ending is a bad ending. Your lead character is in the middle of a mental breakdown, and giving into his demons and lust for revenge (which is a separate issue exasperated by ill mental health) and the situation only makes it worse and is to dire to properly let anyone deal with said breakdown. The tension, the drama, the sense of foreboding dread, is all so much more here than in all the other routes. 

What makes Azure Moon’s handling of the Flame Emperor so good is that it widely succeeded where the other two routes failed. Verdant Wind didn’t make the reveal relevant to anything Claude was interested in or working towards. Crimson Flower completely and utterly failed to address Edelgard’s actions let alone use that to create compelling tension. Azure Moon did both. It made the Flame Emperor reveal relevant to the route, even made it actually about the main character of the route. Nor is it shying away from conflict and tension, even if it means letting it’s main character fall out of grace and risking the player’s infatuation/admiration/whatever with/of Dimitri by having him succumb to his dark side. Because it’s not protecting him, he’s going to turn out a way better character for it. 

I will admit though, that I think playing all four routes impacted this a bit. It didn’t benefit Azure Moon, but I think this route spoiling who the Flame Emperor is hurt the other routes. Verdant Wind might’ve had at least some tiny smudge of an impact because it’s the only route where there’s very little way to correctly guess who the Flame Emperor is - the only one where it may be truly a surprise. Crimson Flower/Silver Snow does make it a bit more obvious, but doesn’t quite spell it out for you the way Azure Moon does. Here, the player kind of has to be looking for it. Obviously though, you can only learn this once, and good writing could’ve made all the routes impactful with very small tweaks - have Verdant Wind actually focus on the mystery that’s solved at the end of Part 1 (who is the Flame Emperor) and actually have characters react to and get answers about Edelgard’s actions. I also think the choice between Silver Snow and Crimson Flower looses its tension when you go into it knowing you’ll pick both. Azure Moon easily had the best reveal, so I want to ultimately thank everyone who told me to do this one first - you were all very, very right. 

[goldenlionimagines]

Seteth, his human s/o, and Flayn finding out that s/o is pregnant? Finding out, pregnancy, and birth if possible.

 Sure! I loved writing this request.

Strong

Word Count: 2,544

Warning: Spoilers for Seteth/Flayn’s Lore

 Pregnant? Pregnant? Pregnant.

 How did she get pregnant? Long story.

-

 A woman of faith would be the opposite description of what Y/N was. Did she believe in the  Goddess? No. Did her husband at the time? No. But a lot can change in three years. A lot can change when you wake up one night and decide you don’t want to live like this anymore. A lot of it is bound to happen when you aren’t strong.

 So, the next day, when your husband is at work, you pack a bag and leave it in the closet.

 He comes home. He tells you about his day, and about how he wants to try for a child tonight. He tells you about his shitty coworkers who believe in a Goddess that doesn’t exist. He asks you to fix him a drink.

 He doesn’t know how cheap sleeping medication is in the market in town. Or about the man at the market who said the Monastery tends to offer jobs quite regularly, to those in the faith at least. It isn’t the best idea, but it’s the only one that can get you away.

 He’s asleep in the next hour, just as the sun finally sets. A perfect escape for a girl who wants a new life. So, she left, off to a monastery. To seek help from a faith she didn’t know anything about.

 She took her Husband’s horse. A fully black steed, who’s saddle read 1180. It had the current year imprinted, rather than a real name. 

 She rode in at dawn two days later, the first woman she met was a girl named Marianne, who agreed to take her horse. She advised her to look for Seteth or Rhea, who were apparently the leaders at the Monastery. Rhea was the Archbishop. The leader in the teachings of Seiros. She wasn’t available at the time. So…

 She knocked three times on the office door she had been told was Seteth’s. “You may enter.” A calm voice stated. As she entered, it was the first time she had seen a person with green hair, and ears that looked as though they were out of a fairy tale book. “Is there something wrong, you seem surprised.”

 “I am not surprised, my apologies.” She sat down in front of him, looking around the office. He observed the way she looked at the writings of Seiros as though they were alien, and she looked at paintings and such in his office like that as well.

 “Are you unfamiliar with the teachings of Seiros?” Shit.

 “Erm, no, of course I-” 

 “Then what are the names of the Four Saints? Or even the Goddess herself?” Seteth asked. He watched her search with her eyes around the room. “The Goddess is Sothis. The four Saints are Cethleann, Indech, Macuil, and-”

 “Cichol. That one I do know. There was one religious man who tried to talk to me when I  was little, and the only name he got out before my Father dragged me away was  Cichol.” She said. “Both my parents and my husband believed that the faith was stupid, and not to be respected. I never got a chance to learn anything about the faith.”

 “I’m guessing you lied because you want a job here, is that correct?” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but positions here are only offered to-”

 “Big Brother? There are more papers Lady Rhea has requested you look though. They are for trade that the church handles.” A girl walked in with light green and curly hair. She was small. Was she a child?

 “They seem to be endless. Put them with the others.” Seteth said. As she did, he smiled as she exited. “Thank you Flayn.”

 “I can help with the papers, if you tell me what I need to know about them.” Y/N stated. “It would probably be faster than learning about the church, but I could do that while I’m here.”

 “How would you know what you need to in order to fill out the papers? It would take a while to memorize the information that you need to go at my pace.”

  “The girl who just walked in’s name is Flayn. Your name is Seteth. The Goddess’s name is Sothis, the Four Saints are Cethleann, Macuil, Indech, and Chichol. The girl who greeted me outside is Marianne… I can go on. My parents described me as having a perfect memory, because I can read or hear anything once and remember it perfectly.” She stated. “I need a job… more than that, a new life. Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”

 He sighed, looking at the stack of papers, and then back to her. He took a tiny book off his desk, and then looked at one of the bookshelves in his study. He grabbed a medium sized book, which definitely seemed to be a writing from the church. 

 “The small one is recent trades, trade partners, etc. You should have it memorized by tomorrow morning, if you want a job here. The medium book is the church rules, the most basic thing you’ll study while you work here.” He stepped towards her. “There should be a room among the knights that is unused. That is where you can stay while you work here. Tomorrow, you’ll work next to me, and I’ll help you along. If you want this to continue, eventually you will work on your own.” 

 She took the books, nodding. “You won’t regret this.”

 “I pray as much.”

 Seteth didn’t regret hiring her. Y/N did anything he could have hoped. Because of her memory, she didn’t have to shuffle through papers as often as he had done before. Soon, he was getting a chance to work on other things while she handled more of the paperwork side.

 Sometimes, she would ask questions about the faith and church as she learned, and he would answer to the best of his abilities while they worked. He enjoyed talking over the Saints with her, and had mentioned a few times how Cethleann was his favorite. 

 She had met the new professor a few times, as well as some of the students. Despite the fact that the Professor and Rhea would often seem panicked, Y/N had found an overall good quality of life.

 That was, until she walked in one morning to find Seteth after having not seen him in a few days.  He was a mess. Things were flung around his office, and she had used her key to his office to enter. 

 “Is everything alright? What’s wrong?” She shut the door and walked up to him. He looked at her, upset.

 “Flayn is kidnapped. I don’t know where she is. I’ve searched everywhere in the monastery, and now even Byleth is searching for her. What if she’s gone, Y/N? It would be my fault. I didn’t pay attention enough, or do well enough keeping her safe from harm.” He had his hands covering his face, so she grabbed his wrists, holding his hands away from him.

  “We will find her, but you look like you haven’t rested in days.” She said. “What do you need? I  can handle it until they find her.” 

 He looked distantly into her eyes. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes,  and he hugged her. “Lady Rhea is not allowing me to work until they find her. She is right in doing so, as I will not be alright until she is safe.” 

 She hugged him back, though she hadn’t expected the hug. “Then don’t be okay. Just take yourself from it. Why don’t you teach me about a book I haven’t read yet? I always find myself away in the conversations we have about them. Just tell me about one of the saints or something.” She said.

 Seteth pulled away.  He sat down. She sat down across from him. “There’s a story I know by heart, and I guess it’s one you can know too.” He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, and began to tell the story of Saint Cichol, and his wife.

  When he was done, Edelgard had brought Manuela to the infirmary. Flayn was found that day.

-

 Never forgetting is a double edged sword. So is learning. So, when you learn things about a historical figure, and then they start correlating to your boss… what’s the approach?

Major Crest of Cichol. The green hair. The weird ears. The knowledge of all things Cichol and Cethleann. A sister that could pass for his daughter.

 So, the best thing is to make a joke about it while working into the evening.

 “Seteth, are you and Flayn actually Cethleann and Cichol?” She asked. He deadpanned, looking her dead in the eyes. “Wait, you’re not-” Seteth got up, quickly going to the office door and locking it. 

 “You- I-” He sighed. “Yes. We are. I suppose I have given you the information to put it together.” He walked  back to the desk, leaning back on it. “What are you planning to do with that information?”

 She thought for a moment. “Well, nothing. It just makes a prayer I made to the Saints a few days ago seem… a bit out of place.”

 “Oh? You were praying? Well, what did you pray for?” He seemed a bit surprised as she stepped closely in front of him.

 “Well, I prayed that this guy at the place I work would notice me the way that I’ve started noticing him.” She saw a small smirk gather at the corner of his lips. He put his hands on her waist, making her shiver a little. She blushed. “And that I wanted him to kiss me.”

 “Is that all you wanted?” He asked. He flipped their positions around, putting her up against his desk. She didn’t respond, and instead her face got more red. He leaned in, whispering in her ear, “You shouldn’t be thinking impure thoughts about the Saints, Y/N, they may hear you, and then I’d have to punish you for a breach of faith.”

 “Maybe I want them to hear me.” She whispered back.

 Just then, the door handle shook. “Big Brother? Are you in there?” It was Flayn at the door. Seteth stepped away as she unlocked the door with her own key. “I just needed aid with some things.” Flayn said.

 “Excuse me, I was just leaving, Flayn.” Y/N stated, quickly grabbing her things and heading out.

-

 5 years ago, she wouldn’t have thought of this moment. There was really no one more careful than Seteth. 

 They had been living in the monastery with a Prince who was a bit less than there mentally, and his entire crew of Nobles and Soldiers. Therefore, Y/N and Seteth had promised that they would only make each other feel good, even in these stressful war times. And of all the people Y/N had been talking over her symptoms with-

 “The spell confirms it. You are pregnant. Normally, this would be a happier time, but we are in a war.” Flayn said concernedly. “I guess the joy of life is good anyway, so congratulations.”

 “Flayn-”

 “Who is the father, anyway? I do tend to be a bit nosy.”

 Silence. The room was dead silent. She and Flayn were the only ones in that Clinic. They ended up just starting at each other for a little while. Flayn understood that meant she had been doing it with one person. Flayn took a deep breath in, before what came out of her mouth was,

 “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

 “Shh, Flayn, please quiet down. Seteth could-”

 “Flayn? Is everything alright?” Seteth asked down the hall.

 Y/N shook her head at Flayn, and Flayn sighed, turning to the hall and yelling. “Yes brother, everything is okay.” Flayn then turned back to Y/N. “I’ll help you hide it as long as I can. Manuela should know more about herbs that can help your nausea than me.”

 “Thank you Flayn.” Y/N said. “Really. I don’t want to worry him.”

 “Neither do I, but just know that I am a bit… Excited. Even in the times we are in, a little one from Seteth… It makes me happy.” She smiled. “This will not be an easy secret to keep, and I’ll get you appointments with Manuela.”

 “Thank you again.” And Y/N whispered. “I know Seteth is your father. You don’t have to hide it from me.” 

 Flayn giggled happily. “Even better.”

 At first, it was an easy thing to hide. With the nausea medication, and biweekly meetings with Manuels, the baby was okay. Of course when Dimitri got better, Y/N and Flayn decided Y/N was becoming too hard to hide. It was time to let Seteth know, now that the Kingdom’s Prince had taken more pressure off of him. Life had become… As good as it could be for the times.

 Y/N was sitting at his desk. Her legs were on it, and Flayn was sitting next to her, smiling. He stepped into his office, crossing his arms. “This is a surprise. It’s early. And, you both know I don’t like when people put their feet on my things.”

 Y/N laughed. “I just thought the baby may be more comfortable this way.” She smiled at him, as he covered his mouth. Flayn began laughing at her father’s shock as well.  Y/N stood as Seteth came over and kissed her. 

 “I didn’t even notice- You two kept this from me for how long?” He asked.

 “Just a little more than the first trimester. But, it means we’re pretty much in the clear. And, it wasn’t too bad.” Y/N said. “I didn’t want to worry you while things were still happening with Dimitri. So we decided-”“Don’t you two hide things like this from me again.” Seteth motioned Flayn over with his hand, and hugged both girls. “But… I love you both. And it was most probably for the better.” They were all smiling after that.

-

 Manuela saw Y/N coming down the hallway to the clinic. She was leaning on the wall, her eyes barely focused. She came up to her, calling for the nurses in the monastery, and laying Y/N down on a bed. “You’re going to be okay. Seteth is coming back from Embarr soon. Just… Breathe.”

 In… out… pain. Was Seteth alive? In… out… pain. Was he coming? In… push… out… pain. Did they defeat Edelgard? In… Push… out.

 “It’s a boy!” said one of the nurses. All the nurses were talking and happy. They were wiping her off, and washing the baby as well. She saw someone kneel down next to her, and grab her hand.

 Y/N locked eyes with the man, and he smiled. “Sorry, did I miss anything?” He asked.

 “Just the bad parts.”

 The nurse handed Y/N and Seteth their baby. He was crying, so Seteth stroked his head as Y/N held him. “Of course he has green hair and eyes. He is your son. He’s so cute.”

 “He only gets to be cute because he had someone strong to bring him into the world.”

[grimalkenkid]

Miklan, The Demon’s Shield

So, continuing off of my “Jeralt adopts Miklan” AU, the Academy Phase...

Part 3

One morning, right before they’re about to head into the Kingdom for work, three kids approach Jeralt in a rush, asking for help with a bandit group that’s after them.

Dimitri recognizes Miklan instantly and wants nothing to do with this mercenary band, but there’s no time and no other options, so he settles for keeping a very close eye on the ex-Gautier.

For his part, Miklan is worried Dimitri will spill the beans about how he attempted to murder his little brother to the rest of Jeralt’s mercs. He doesn’t want the past four years of camaraderie to be undone by the prince’s accusations. Thankfully, no one has time for that while they’re under attack, and Miklan’s got his hands full watching Byleth’s back. She’d been under the weather the past few days, after all, so he wants to make sure she’s safe.

After the battle, this guy called Alois basically drags Jeralt and his mercenary company to Garreg Mach. Miklan keeps out of Dimitri’s way, but the prince avoids him right back. Dimitri saw how protective Miklan was of Byleth, and he’s starting to become fond of the stony-faced girl as well. Dimitri decides to keep watching, wondering if this Miklan is different than the one he knew.

Once at the monastery, the company is then suddenly left without a leader, as Jeralt is conscripted back into the Knights of Seiros, and Byleth is made a professor seemingly on a whim. Most of the mercs decide to stick around and keep helping Jeralt, but Miklan’s at a loss. He really doesn’t want to stick around where people will recognize him; he doesn’t want to be “the Crestless, ex-Gautier kid” or “the jealous older brother” anymore. He wants to be Miklan, the mercenary. He’s considering striking out on his own -- despite how he hates to leave his found family -- when Jeralt takes him aside.

“Kid,” the old merc starts out, “I know you’re not comfortable here, and I’m not too keen on being here either, but I’ve got a request. Keep an eye on my daughter. Rhea’s up to something, but she’s already sending me out on missions that’ll take me far from here. I can’t watch Byleth myself, so I managed to convince Rhea to let one of my mercs be Byleth’s ‘bodyguard.’ And there’s no one I trust more with my daughter’s safety than you.”

So, of course Miklan agrees. The older mercs haven’t started calling him The Demon’s Shield for no reason, after all.

He’s given a spare room in the servants’ quarters which he’s hardly ever in. Jeralt told him to protect Byleth, and dammit that’s what he’s gonna do! Miklan sticks to her like glue unless she asks to be left alone. During classes, he’s sitting in the corner, watching everyone for signs of funny business.

Now, if only she hadn’t chosen to teach the Blue Lion House... because, besides Dimitri, he also has to deal with Ingrid and Felix...

And Sylvain.

Of course, Sylvain ain’t doing too hot, either. He can barely focus on the lectures, knowing that the man who tried to kill him multiple times is sitting in the same room. His grades start take an immediate nosedive, he’s always on-edge, and Dimitri’s constantly checking up on him, asking if he’s really okay with Miklan being at Garreg Mach. Sylvain tries to play it cool, because he may want his brother to leave, but he wants to get him kicked out even less. Goddess knows Miklan already has enough reasons to hate his guts.

So Dimitri enlists the help of Ingrid, Felix, and Dedue to make Sylvain feel safer. They’ll try to keep Miklan from entering a room Sylvain’s in, place themselves between the two brothers when they have to be in the same location, and make sure that Sylvain never sits by himself in class. It works okay, for a little while.

But one time Sylvain’s heading to the training grounds with Felix, and he’s not watching where he’s going. He walks straight into someone leaving the training grounds, and as he goes to apologize, he realizes just who he ran into. Miklan’s more surprised than angry, but Sylvain can’t tell the difference as his eyes are on the spear Miklan has resting on his shoulder. Sylvain panics and just books it for the dorms. He’s never run faster in his life. He doesn’t even realize where he is until he’s pounding on someone’s door, and Dimitri answers it.

“Can I hide here?” he begs the prince.

And Dimitri lets him. Because he knows the difference between Sylvain hiding from a girl and Sylvain hiding from Miklan.

But that was the last straw for Dimitri. He goes straight to Seteth, telling him all about the history between the Gautier brothers, and demands that Miklan be thrown out of Garreg Mach Monastery, at the very least. Dimitri actually would prefer Miklan be executed, but he doesn’t want to hurt Byleth by being responsible for her best friend’s death. Seteth listens to Dimitri’s concerns -- and agrees that Miklan could be a danger to the students -- but there’s no precedent for this particular situation. After all, Captain Jeralt trusts Miklan implicitly, and Rhea trusts Jeralt’s judgement, but something has to be done.

Miklan is placed under arrest. Officially, it’s for attempted fratricide, but in reality, it’s just to make sure Miklan can’t hurt Sylvain while they contact Margrave Gautier and bring him to the monastery to weigh in on the situation.

Jeralt is upset that one of his men is under suspicion, but he reluctantly agrees that they need to work something out. Byleth, however, is visibly put out... which means she’s filled with a fury borne of loyalty and friendship. She manages to keep it out of the classroom, but Dimitri gets a full dose of her ire during training. The prince accepts this as his just punishment for going behind her back, but he can’t help but feel like he did something horrible when she glares at him across the dining hall. He feels even worse when he sees her taking huge risks out on assignment, risks that wouldn’t even be concerns if she had her Shield like usual.

Eventually, Margrave Gautier manages to get Rodrigue to watch the border for him so he can go to Garreg Mach. He is... less than pleased to see his disowned son in a jail cell, but he just sighs, like it was an inevitability.

Margrave Gautier then joins Jeralt, Byleth, Dimitri, and Seteth (who’s standing in for Rhea) to discuss Miklan’s fate.

(This is turning into a goddamn series, isn’t it? Oh well... To be continued in Part 3!)

[irandrura]

And reading Verdant Wind too:

(same disclaimer applies, reading is not the same as playing, take these as impressions rather than as considered thoughts)

That seemed pretty solid. It’s not as character-focused as AM or CF, which seems like a bit of a weakness, but for the most part it seemed like SS only better. If I do a second playthrough, I’m probably picking VW, because I want to fight the Slitherers and Nemesis seems like a pretty fun final boss.

I didn’t see as much about Almyra as I would have wanted. Indeed, one of the things that stood out to me was... hm, how to put this...

I feel like Claude and VW are mismatched? What Claude is interested in is very different to what the VW story is interested in.

In AM, Dimitri is interested in vengeance and atonement, and so the entire story is about revenge, trauma, pain, moving on, and so on. That’s a good fit. In CF, Edelgard is interested in conquest/liberation and remaking the continent, so that’s basically what you do. What the character wants to do and what the plot asks you do are in alignment.

Whereas it looks like, in VW, what Claude really wants to do is open up Fódlan and make a big harmonious multicultural world - but there’s no room for that in the actual story. The story is about fighting Edelgard and the Slitherers and uncovering the Church of Seiros’ dirty laundry. Thus while I was reading about Claude fighting Edelgard, it was hard to escape the sense that Claude didn’t really care about fighting Edelgard. It was an important and necessary thing to do, but he didn’t have the sort of personal investment in it that Dimitri did. Similarly, in the assault on Shambhala, I couldn’t stop thinking, “Wouldn’t this be better if it was led by Edelgard?” The last few chapters seem they should actually be led by Rhea, or failing that Seteth and Flayn, because they’re the ones with a personal connection.

(In theory Byleth has that strong personal connection, what with having the spirit of the goddess, the Crest of Flames, and the Sword of the Creator. He is the product of Rhea’s schemes just as Nemesis is the product of the Slitherers’ schemes, so there’s an interesting parallelism going on there. However, Byleth cannot hold up a story by himself. He just can’t. Not without being substantially rewritten and given more of a personality. Maybe in an alternate universe, SS would have been a ‘Byleth route’ that gives Byleth the same amount of characterisation as the three house leaders...)

So, anyway, it was hard to escape the feeling that VW’s protagonist and story were just bad fits for each other. Claude wants to be the hero of a different story. This story wants a different hero. That dissonance was hard to resolve.

I wonder if this is encouraging for fan writers? Claude needs a different story to this one. Go write it?

Anyway, the other thing that stood out to me in VW was just how gonzo bananas the Slitherer plot is.

I mean, I’d read a summary of Fódlan’s ancient history, but actually seeing the javelin cutscenes and listening to Rhea’s explanation put a much more sci-fi gloss on it all than I expected. I was still thinking in terms of ancient deities and dragons and mystic powers, and then the javelins were just cruise missiles, the Slitherers had these mad science cloning pods for Nemesis to burst out of, and so on. They talk about Sothis as the Fell Star (Sirius?), and Rhea’s description of ‘the progenitor god’ coming from far away makes Sothis sound much less like a deity and much more like an alien.

So where AM, CF, and SS seemed to stay relatively high fantasy, now I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, is this like Dragonriders of Pern or something? Like, a long time ago ancient aliens came to the planet, uplifted some humans, the humans misused the supertech, something something genetic manipulation crests something cloning...” The inclusion of science fiction elements in fantasy isn’t new, but I didn’t expect it here.

(Heck, Final Fantasy does it a lot. After finding how crests come from slaughtered dragons, I was already comparing Nemesis and the Ten Elites to Thordan and the Knights Twelve in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, but then reframing Sothis, Seiros, and the Four Saints as alien dragons from another star is just... really similar to Midgardsormr and the First Brood. I am shocked at how similar the plot is. Fortunately Three Houses does it with less vore. It keeps the same amount of people toting around bloody dragon eyes for power, though!)

[kendrixtermina]

The "waifu bait" criticism of Edelgard is so dumb given that most of the cast is technically waifu/husbando bait in one way or another, they're all meant to appeal to players as romance options, and she's the only one getting flack for it. (Well, not the only one, there were some people giving Dimitri shit too for being "wish fullfillment for stupid teenage girls who think they can fix a man," but I see the complaint most often with Edelgard.)

Yeah. I mean, you can boink Rhea and Jeritza!

It’s not like satelite love interests aren’t a plague onto anime and fiction in general, but I only ever hear this “you only like them because they’re waifu/bishie” thing directed at characters who very much DO have personality, unique compelling features and plot relevance. 

I’ve also seen this thrown at, say, Evangelion’s Miss Ayanami, as if all the fascinating sci-fi concept stuff and compelling narrative about finding your own worth and making a connection in a cruel lonely world wasn’t there - and at least we do see her through a “main character’s love interest” sorta lens. (I was thinking about how Byleth is actually quite similar, except more proactive with more of a dorky side, and less philosophical/reflective, but because Byleth is the MC we come off with a fairly different impression. )

Meanwhile with Edelgard they really didn’t pull any punches, the whole story is set in motion and dominated by her active choices, most the unique designs/outfits she gets are geared to look elegant/powerful.  (Apart from the usual ‘individually wrapped boob armor would break your sternum’ thing but you’d really have to know physics for that/ could be fixed easily by making the fit more sweater-like), she has a specific discernable philosophy and makes impactful choices, that can genuinely be agreed or disagreed with.

You can’t swag her into your way of thinking - you can only ally with her under the presupposition that you already actively agree. (See all the people complaining that you cant “criticise her more”, expecting her to be like Dimitri basically even though they are exact opposites. You can only get on her route by making two deliberate choices. I mean they wrote this with your first playthrough in mind, in-universe you’re not there because you wanna complete all aroutes but because you actively chose to join her after she spent a year unsubtly trying to recruit you to her cause)

You don’t talk Claude out of his tactics either. (and forcing it all into this comparision often leads ppl to overlook that he has ambiguities or character development at all, maybe he isn’t vilified but he gets simplified and therefore wronged just as much in the end. They’re not all Dimitri. The whole point of having three or four different potential deuteragonists to choose from is that they’re different)… heck, even if you look at Dimitri, you only get him back to what he really wanted to do back in part I before his black-and-white thinking and exaggerated sense of duty got the better of him. 

With all three, joining them eventually just enables them to get closer to their actual vision. Back when you meet her in Remire, Edelgard outright tells you that “with your power on my side, we could courttail the slitherer’s atrocities much more efficiently”. You don’t change her mind at all; You enable her to use “Plan A”. Same with Claude, who otherwise plains much more defensively both because he has less support and because he’s more jaded. And Dimitri essentially pulls a Sayaka, ie being unable to live up to his own unrealistic standards drive him to lose all hope and become the very opposite of the hero he wanted to be, but you do help him get back to that, or to a more balanced mature understanding of that. 

The best proof of that is that the popularity poll numbers actually went down after the release, ie a lot of ppl who liked her just bc they liked her design were turned off that there’s a specific personality there that isn’t necessarily their type/ a MO they don’t necessarily agree with. Or all those peeps complaining that the S-support was too understated for them. Claude got that too - They’re just not the most open/expressive people in the world, one would think that after playing through their routes you would know and understand that. Whereas Dimitri has been super emotional from day one (which is both his greatest strength and greatest weakness), so it figures that he’d be more conventionally romantic. 

- Hardly things that would happen if she were written to be “blandly pleasant”.  I mean generally speaking she’s not the best as showing her feelings and when she does she’s often pretty blunt at it even with her closest friends (El: ”Hubert! I order you to tell me what it is you’re not telling me!” Hubert: [elegantly weasels out of answering] El: [after he’s left the room] I’m worried about him tho. )

Seems senseless to claim that she’s blandly pleasant when she’s absolutely gotten a love-it-or-hate-it-marmite-reaction all across the board. It also seems to go along with the implicit idea that everyone who likes her is heterosexual boys. I’m neither, and it’s not like heterosexual boys aren’t ever interested in “plot” or “writing” I mean geez. Though I would resist the temptation to fully ascribe it to things like that. 

To an extent it’s simply confusion. “How can they like this thing that obviously sucks? Must be an ulterior motive”, whereas in reality ppl who like her have probably parsed what happened here differently to begin with (It depends greatly on how powerful you concluded Rhea was, ie, wether what Edelgard is doing is a conquest or a revolt. She certainly sees it as a revolt. Even today in the modern day most of us see revolts as legitimate, or at least, if they get overly destructive, as a fault of the bad government. Heck, there are many on this very site who would label all revolts legit by default (”eat the rich”, the more ‘original sin-like’ variants of privilege theory) which is further than I would go )

There certainly are a bunch of ‘cute’ scenes post holy-tomb scene and under the assumption that Edelgard is this my-way-or-the-highway type of person that many have her pegged as I can see how they might think that it “makes no sense” but that’s really down to wanting her not tp step outside of that idea they have of her. I mean even supervillains have silly everyday situations. Bin Laden loved Disney Movies, Hitler loved his dogs. By itself that has nothing to do with morality or likeability. It’s just being human. Supervillains blush, not because they’re not villains, but because they have blood vessels in their faces. It’s only logical that once you get close to someone and get them to trust you, you get to see more of their silly or vulnerable sides. It’s the same with Rhea. (except that the same people argue that having personable vulnerable sides at all makes Rhea good s of course it causes some cognitive dissonance when Edelgard also has them. I’ve yet to see ppl calling “waifuism” on Rhea (whom I would consider a full-fledged villain), and they shouldn’t - it’s characterization.) Same with ppl calling Edelgard a “manchild” for liking stuffed animals and sweets. She’s actually very mature and adult for her age, having some interests that aren’t super high-minded is just realistic and if you looked at her as a full 3D person who can have more than one trait you’d see that. 

This also goes with that tendency of holding up AM as the gold standard complaining about the lack of AM-like plot that they completely miss the different but equally compelling character arcs in VW and CF. That’s not a lack of arc, that IS the arc, it’s just a different arc: We get to see this tough, in-control high-minded character who’d completely given up on the normal life she wanted so much and resigned herself to never being understood finding out that she is very much still capable of normalcy and humanity and finding friendship and love and I think that’s beautiful. It’s my jam. 

And it’s meaningful precisely because it’s a change from only seeing the tough leader guise otherwise. Complaining about that is like complaining about getting to see Claude’s more wistful, dreamy, benevolent, not-entirely self-interest side in VW or claiming that the writing would be better if he were just a straight-up selfish trickster. Actually, if you removed their heroic traits you’d end up with a lot more generic characters. You’d simply get every wild card trickster ever, and every “Nietzschean” villain ever.  It’s the fact that they’re unconventional heroes that makes Claude and Edelgard so unique, compelling and interesting. If you like conventional heroes, Dimitri is right here. Your basic heroic fantasy ‘rightful king returns/ soft peace loving hero’, plus your basic jrpg guilt-ridden angsty protagonist. I mean there’s good reason that these character archetypes are popular. Plus he’s especially well-executed and recontextualized by the contrast to the others, but there he is, enjoy him! We’re not stopping you. 

It’s really Seteth who came up short arc wise. You could have given him an arc, the potential was there, he essentially transistions from protecting himself and his family to taking on his family’s heroic quest and rising up to that, but he doesn’t get like, a scene reflecting on that. Or you could’ve sent them on some mission to actually curb some corrupt cardinals etc, shown them actually reforming the church and realizing that it wasn’t all perfect, after all he very much knows that Rhea herself wasn’t all perfect. 

For all that much of media is obsessed with making characters “hot”, the truth is that if people like them for any reason, they will find them hot anyways, regardless of whether that was the intention. (unless the people in question are aroace, or the character is a literal, realistic prepubescent child)

You don’t have to “make”  a character hot for ppl to find them so.

[randomnameless]

I stumbled across one of your posts from a while ago where, in the tags, you compared Seteth caring more about Rhea telling Byleth the truth than whether or not she was safe at the end of Silver Snow to Kaze defecting to Nohr because of Corrin, in terms of the awfulness of the avatar worship.

While i agree with the former case being bad, i actually think that Kaze's defection is much more well-justified than Seteth suddenly caring more about Byleth than Rhea.

A fundamental part of Kaze's backstory and character is that he feels an immense amount of guilt for failing to save Corrin from being kidnapped by Nohr when he was supposed to be guarding them, to the point of said guilt getting him killed in Birthright if he doesn’t learn to move past his regrets and focus on the present by having a heart-to-heart with Corrin in their A-support; that, coupled with the fact that he only joins after personally witnessing Corrin go out of their way to avoid killing enemy soldiers, which concinces him that Corrin's plan to change Nohr from the inside in order to make it more a more peaceful place is true, makes it less avatar worship and more just a natural development for Kaze's estabilished character, imo.

Where i do think his motivation starts faltering is that the game doesn't really put in enough effort to address Kaze's feelings after Corrin's plan falls through and they have to go to war against Hoshido; the closest it gets to that is having him tell Corrin that siding with Hoshido wouldn't necessarily have been the best choice and that both Nohr and Hoshido think that they're fighting for the sake of justice in Chapter 17 of Conquest: (jp version, translated by fateswartable)

Kamui: ….

Suzukaze: Lady Kamui…

Kamui: Sorry, Suzukaze. Joining me must be painful for you.

Suzukaze: N- No, that’s…!

Kamui: Saizou, Kagerou… And all of the Hoshido shinobi defeated today… If I chose another path, we could have fought together.

Suzukaze: …That’s right. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the right way. Both Hoshido and Nohr too are fighting for justice. That’s something everyone should know. Even brother, surely.

Kamui: Yes… Thank you, Suzukaze…

While Kaze growing to think of Nohr as also fighting for it's own justice through his time living in the country, causing him to choose to fight for it over Hoshido, is an interesting direction to take his character in, it's kinda undercut by the fact that, not only does this development happen entirely off-screen, but that Kaze has no presence in Conquest's plot afterwards; the game never develops or expands on his newfound motivation after Chapter 17, forcing players to just settle for a throwaway line and the fact that he still feels bad for failing to protect Corrin as the only reasons why he's willing to fight and kill his own brother and former allies.

It's underdeveloped, to be sure, but i wouldn't call it a flaw caused by avatar worship, and certainly not as bad as Seteth, out of nowhere, not giving a fuck about Rhea's safety or location and only caring about her insofar as what she can tell Byleth about their origins.

Oh !

TBH, Fates's avatar wanking looks.... tame, compared to FE16 Supreme Leader wanking and Billy wanking.

But it's still... there.

I was re-reading the RD battle/talk quotes from Part 3, where Miccy's army and Ike's army fight, and how some people choose to fight against others for, uh, reasons -

Some Daien people are fighting because their king does, some do because the believe in Miccy and, well, some (Nailah, Kurth and Rafiel) know the truth, and how Miccy can't back down, else her people will die.

Nohr fighting for its own Justice in CQ always felt, well. Corrin saved Kaze, and wants to change Nohr from the inside.

However, in CQ (my mind is foggy?) Nohr is, iirc, invading Hoshido. It's not like a war where someone wants to erase someone else or pissed on a diplomatic proposal asking for reparations for a genocide, nope. In FE14, Nohr kills the Hoshidan Queen, and in CQ, well, conquers/invades Hoshido.

Even if Kaze learnt and witnessed how Nohrians aren't baby eating monsters in their everyday life (save for iago) why and how is them invading Hoshido any form of "justice"? Mc Guffin here and there means Gooron has to sit on the Hoshidan throne to turn into goo - and yet, even if deposing Gooron is the best thing to do to change Nohr from the inside, how can this (invasion to depose) be justified and bought by a Hoshidan as "Justice" and acceptable?

Maybe I'm too used to the FE14 lolcalisation, but Kaze pulling the "justice" card here is oddly reminiscent of Tru Piss Sylvain (I think?) who says they can't reason with the Kingdom they're invading because each party fights for their beliefs like Faerghus just wanting to exist

If Kaze became a green unit like Aerone or Gale (in FE6 iirc?) and died due to Iago Iago-ing or Hans Hans-ing I'd have prefered it to him joining on Conquest because of his guilt regarding Corrin and "witnessing him sparing soldiers". And yet, buying the "everyone fights for their own justice" and choosing Norh is, idk, strange. Maybe it would have been better if, as you said, his change of heart wasn't off-screen...

Coming from FE10 to FE14 was already kind of ultra meh in terms on dealing with the unit that became a turncoat, but FE16 takes it to new heights.

So yeah, I was exaggerating when I compared the Billy worship to Kaze lol, but I thought about it because it's the only pair of siblings I remember where an avatar inserts themselves in an existing relationship and effectively severs it.

Seteth not giving any fucks about Rhea (and to some extent, Flayn too, she's not mentionned in their A-S support, when, maybe shipping googles make a bit biased, his support with Manu talking about remarriage mention his daughter!) is completely wild, but just like everything in FE16, characters, the plot and the lore can be forgotten and torn apart if it means the player can be pandered to, via Billy or Supreme Leader.

[the-tactician-magician]

What if characters from FE3H played Splatoon?

AKA the headcanons no one asked for. Also feel free to add.

Black Eagles Strike Force (BESF)

Edelgard (FlameEmpr) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Dynamo Roller

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: X

Hardcore competative player, plays very frequently and won several competitions

Prefers weapons that do a lot of damage, doesn’t mind the heaviness

Very picky about who gets to be on her team

Hubert (Grimoire)

Favorite weapon: Ballpoint Splatling Nouveau

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: S+

Only plays with Edelgard

But is surprisingly good with how little he actually plays

Part of the datamining community

Always wears black

Ferdinand (vonAegir)

Favorite weapon: L-3 Nozzlenose D

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: S+

Competitive against Edelgard, always trying to one-up her

Picks whatever weapon is meta in order to beat her

A fair and honorable fighter, feels bad whenever an opponent disconnects, etc

Petra (kanaloa)

Favorite weapon: Dark Tetra Dualies

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: S+

Her username comes from a spirit in Brigid that takes the form of a squid

Empathizes with the Octolings and their broken English

Fast on her feet and hard to hit

Krakenslayers

Caspar (CHADspar) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Octobrush

Favorite mode: Clam Blitz

Highest rank: B+

He came up with the team name and won’t accept any substitutes

Always super jumping into danger, despite warnings

Super aggressive player but somehow does ok

Linhardt (zzz)

Favorite weapon: Bloblobber

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: A

Just press ZR and hope for the best

Takes quick naps between matches

Probably can rank higher if he’s more interested

Dorothea (☆DIVA☆)

Favorite weapon: Splattershot

Favorite mode: Splatfest

Highest rank: B

Not great at this game

But loves the idols and the music (Callie is her favorite)

Is also super salty that Callie lost the final splatfest in S1

Plays a lot less once Splatfests ended

Bernadetta (bbear)

Favorite weapon: E-liter 4k scope

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: A

Screams whenever an enemy approaches

A good shot, but panics in bad situations

She somehow does better when her team is losing

Blue Lionfish (BL)

Dimitri (Areadbhar) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Splattershot Pro (with gratuitous MPU)

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: X

Hardcore competative player like Edelgard, also won several competitions

Adept with any shooter type weapons

Gets angry easily and has broken several controllers

Has a terrible fashion sense and uses whatever gear he needs to

Was going to name the team ‘Blue Lions’, but Sylvain said to use ‘Blue Lionfish’ for the pun

Dedue (Pavise)

Favorite weapon: Tenta Brella

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: A+

Is fixated on Dimitri whenever they play together

A defensive player, doesn’t like charging in

He does his best but he’s sadly the worst of the team

Ingrid (Whitewing)

Favorite weapon: Clear Dapple Dualies

Favorite mode: Clam Blitz

Highest rank: X

Expert duelist, can win most 1v1

Whatever weapon she chooses, she gotta go fast

Constantly yelling at Sylvain, blames him for everything

Sylvain (tentaXXX)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Sloshing Machine

Favorite mode: Clam Blitz

Highest rank: S+

Would have a more inappropriate name if it weren’t for Ingrid

A deceptively good player that masks his skills with an easygoing attitude

Could probably get into X rank if he cared more

Is a chronic squidbagger

くコ:彡 (Team Squid Emoticon)

Annette ( (´･ω･`) ) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Soda Slosher

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: A+

A cheerleader, always encouraging her friends to do their best!

Overuses bombs

She’s only the team leader because Felix hates leadership

Likes the songs and often makes up lyrics to go along with them

Always booyahs

Mercedes (mercie ♥)

Favorite weapon: Aerospray MG

Favorite mode: Turf War

Highest rank: B-

Not good at this game at all…

Only knows how to spray and claim turf

Still, she loves playing with Annette

Always booyahs back

Felix (L0NE_W0LF)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Splat Dualies

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: X

Only on this team because he refuses to play with Dimitri after Dimitri broke his controller once 

And because Annette is his girlfriend

Always charges in by himself, luckily has the skills to back up such tactics

Will coach the others when he’s feeling nice

Still plays with Ingrid and Sylvain whenever Dimitri isn’t around

Ashe (Decidueye)

Favorite weapon: Firefin Splatter Charger

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: S+

A good shot and a helpful player

Constantly checking the map

Gets nervous in competitions

Got recruited to this team by Felix because Felix can’t stand being the only good player here

Cod-Splattering Stars (CSS)

Claude (insertmeme) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Bamboozler 14 Mk I (with MPU)

Favorite mode: Clam Blitz

Highest rank: S+

Always doing things for teh lulz

Would rather troll people than actually play well

Could probably get into X rank if he stopped memeing

Picks the male octoling with the afro because the hair is funny but secretly empathizes with the octolings for being outsiders

Also grinds out weird gear (like the masks) just for the shock value

Was going to name the team ‘I wish squids were real’ but Leonie and Lys wanted a serious name and Hilda didn’t get the joke

Hilda (pnkprncess)

Favorite weapon: Splat Roller

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: A

Doesn’t like others depending on her

Yet if everyone’s splatted but her, she will do her damndest to hold the line

Is actually pretty good but tries not to show off

Constantly complaining and whining about stuff

Adores dressing up her inkling

Lysithea (Miasma Δ)

Favorite weapon: Explosher

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: X

A really good player, has a good sense of spacing and timing to make her weapons deadly

Always goes for the big, explosive weapons

Call her a little kid and she’ll punch you

Leonie (BladeBrkr2) 

Favorite weapon: Custom Dualie Squelchers

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: S+

Only got into Splatoon because it’s Jeralt’s favorite game

And is surprisingly good at it

Replaced Lorenz because she was better and he was getting on Claude’s nerves

A little nervous to be the only commoner on the team but that just motivates her more

Inkblooms

Lorenz (GLOUCESTER) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Foil Squeezer

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: S

Was on Claude’s team, then got kicked out for Leonie which he’s still bitter about

Still, he tries to make this team work

A boastful winner but takes losing well

Only wears the most fashionable gear

Ignatz (ᴄʜαʀᴛʀεᴜsε)

Favorite weapon: Inkbrush

Favorite mode: Salmon Run

Highest rank: A

Also does well with snipers, but has the most fun with the inkbrush

Spams splat bombs and runs away

Also gets nervous in competitions

Raphael (RAPHROX!)

Favorite weapon: Clash Blaster

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: B

Can’t aim

A very loud player

Likes playing with Ignatz

Still uses sticks

Marianne (dorte)

Favorite weapon: Splattershot Jr.

Favorite mode: Turf War

Highest rank: B-

Not good at this game because of self-esteem issues

Freezes up and dies whenever she’s confronted

Lorenz is trying his best to coach her

Jeralt’s Mercs

Jeralt (Jeralt) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Tentatek Splattershot

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: X

A prominent streamer and e-celeb

Played a lot of Splatoon 1 and although he likes Splatoon 2, always complains about ‘back in the day’ like a boomer

Used to be really competitive back in the day but nowadays just plays with family and friends

His username used to be ‘BladeBrkr’

Thinking of passing the torch to Byleth soon

Leonie used to be a sub for his team until she joined Claude’s team

Byleth (AshenDemon) 

Favorite weapon: Enperry Splat Dualies

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: X

Jeralt’s kid

Rarely talks or expresses emotions, which kinda creeps people out

Can dunk people like nobody’s business

Secretly has a fondness for the Judds

Alois (10tickles)

Favorite weapon: Heavy Splatling

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: S

An old friend of Jeralt

Used to run with the Knights of Seiros until they got too competitive for his liking

Appreciates all the fish puns in this game

Sometimes acts like a boomer with Jeralt, but takes the boomer memes in stride

Sothis (fell star☆)

Favorite weapon: Tri-Slosher

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: X

Who is she??? No one knows. A friend of Byleth apparently

Temperamental and emotional but a very good player

Somehow managed to pick the winning team in all the Splatfests

Knights of Seiros

Catherine (thundrcath) (leader)

Favorite weapon: Carbon Roller

Favorite mode: Rainmaker

Highest rank: X

Loud, confident, always takes the opponent head-on

Likes the feel of rollers but can pick other weapons as long as they do lots of damage

Trash talks opponents a lot

Shamir (Raven)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Splatterscope

Favorite mode: Tower Control

Highest rank: X

Complete opposite of Catherine, rarely talks during matches

Can see you coming from a mile away

Makes it her mission to protect Catherine when she’s running into danger

Flayn (cethleann!)

Favorite weapon: Neo Splash-o-matic

Favorite mode: Salmon Run

Highest rank: A-

Likes the fish and the fish puns

Not super great at this game but she has a lot of fun

The team mascot

Cyril (pointblank)

Favorite weapon: Kensa Glooga Dualies

Favorite mode: Clam Blitz

Highest rank: A+

Used to be pretty bad until Shamir coached him, now he can hold his own weight

Doesn’t use the ‘ouch’ button when he dies, even though he should

Has mastered the art of splatting foes when he rolls

Seteth (Cichol)

Favorite weapon: Rapid Blaster Pro Deco

Favorite mode: Splat Zones

Highest rank: S+

Way too busy to play Splatoon now, only a sub for this team

But he is good at this game

Used to be in X until he fell out due to not playing much

Always makes time to play with Flayn

(Hanneman and Manuela don’t play Splatoon because they’re not interested.)

(Rhea supposedly plays but no one knows her username or has even seen her play. She could probably curb stomp everyone at Garreg Mach though.)

[jo2ukes]

rambling and incoherent thoughts under the cut about how deduebert’s love is too powerful and would, ultimately, save the world :’) (spoilers, obviously)

In a canon-compliant AM AU, if we run with my headcanon that the parley meeting between El and Dimi was largely organized and agreed to bc of the (unlabeled but very much romantic) relationship Hubert and Dedue had pre-war. Dedue, at Dimitri’s request, would send a message to Hubert requesting a meeting, knowing that there’s still unresolved feelings between the two of them and that Hubert may be more likely to persuade El to accept an invitation to meet. Canonically, I think it’s fair to say El has closed herself off to any emotions or opportunity for emotion that would detract from her goal (which requires a certain level of detachment, to be fair. On that note, I also think even in just straight up canon AM, Hubert likely convinced her to accept Dimitri’s request to meet). 

During this meeting, I think Dedue and Hubert would likely have had the chance to meet up alone (while El and Dimi talked) and catch up/engage in pillow talk about the current state of affairs. Naturally, knowing Dedue and Hubert, it stands to reason that they would talk at length about their respective liege’s reasons for doing things. Ultimately, I don’t think either of them would go into it with the intention of doing anything other than what El and Dimi wanted, kind of just accepting this would be a last reunion of sorts and then, ultimately parting ways and dying for their respective causes. BUT through their conversations, I think they’d realize they could orchestrate a truce between the Adrestian and Faerghan armies while still accomplishing El and Dimi’s goals and that the truce would be what’s best for their leaders. 

Now you’re saying, wait, that’s not possible- Hubert would want to keep certain info close to his chest! He doesn’t like revealing his hand- he’s most comfortable operating in the shadows and he wouldn’t let a silly little thing like emotion get in the way! And you’re right! BUT his conversations with Dedue (as well as his feelings) would technically be “in the shadows,” more or less, as he’s clearly opened himself up to emotions outside of strict devotion to El (whether he wants to admit it or not). We also know both he and El realize, tactically speaking, fighting a war one front at a time is easier than fighting one on four fronts (Adrestia vs. TWSID, the church, the Kingdom, and the Alliance). They’ve sort of circumvented this by allying with TWSID and taking them out of the equation for the time being (begrudgingly so). So, the more people Hubert can persuade to join El’s cause, the easier their victory will be, even if he has to persuade others behind El’s back. Hubert is canonically shown to disregard/disobey Edelgard’s orders if he sees a better way for her to accomplish her goals (I’m thinking particularly of one of his supports with Ferdie… I believe it’s their B support where he deliberately disobeys her because he sees a better way). I think this is one of those opportunities he’d find it worth going behind El’s back for the following reasons:

El’s goal isn’t necessarily to conquer Fodlan, she just wants to remove the church’s influence and the crest-based hierarchical society that’s universally accepted in Fodlan. 

 As far as we know, (or maybe just as far as I know) she has no issues with the three kingdoms/houses existing as separate, independent nations. (I haven’t run across any dialogue that suggests this) 

Dimi AND Claude also take issue with the crest-based hierarchical society and seek to change it as well.  As such, that makes TWSID the most direct enemies of her goal because, ultimately, they value crest power and seek to hoard it for themselves (again, unfortunately, she’s had to ally with because she is fighting a war on multiple fronts)

El would be motivated to find powerful allies outside of TWSID so she can cut ties with an organization she clearly detests and who fundamentally oppose the future she wants

Faerghus (and Dimitri) are not direct enemies of the Empire/El’s goals even though they are not directly opposed to the church or the church’s existence. 

In AM, Dimitri doesn’t ally with the church out of any sort of loyalty or piety. In fact, it’s probably more correct to state the church allies with Dimi - he has the army, he has the power, he has the means to help them accomplish their goal of freeing Rhea 

In Silver Snow (and I’m assuming in VW), he allies with the church again, not out of loyalty or piety, it’s simply because in that route the church has the army and the power and the means to help him accomplish his goal of avenging the deaths of his family

This is backed up by his scene in the goddess tower- he explicitly states that he doesn’t really believe in the goddess and feels abandoned by her. It’s not that he hates the church or has any of the information that El has which leads her to believe the church is responsible for the inequality in Fodlan, he just sees them as a neutral party (which of course, arguably, they (or, really, Rhea) are not, he just doesn’t know any better).

Telling Dedue the truth about TWSID, and providing evidence about their hand in the Tragedy of Duscur, means El/Adrestia is no longer an enemy to Dimitri or Faerghus. Dimitri’s anger and focus would be on crushing TWSID, thus aligning his goals with El’s. 

What about the Adrestian conquest of Faerghus? Well, if you think about it, Faerghus wasn’t technically occupied directly by Adrestia, they were occupied by TWSID and other nobles swore fealty to the Empire once Cornelia assumed power. Sure, TWSID took control while they were under command of the Empire/allied with the Empire, but even in the CF route, Cornelia is killed/removed from power in Faerghus, standing to reason that El didn’t really want to give TWSID any sort of power/leadership even when they were allies. In AM, if Dimitri hadn’t killed Cornelia, I think we could safely assume El still would have killed her

Dimitri wants to listen to and understand El, he wants to find common ground.

Even in AM, where he still believes she may have had a hand in the Tragedy of Duscur, the whole parlay meeting is his idea because he has opened his heart to the possibility that he is wrong. His overly compassionate nature (once he finds it again) forces himself to look at options that cause the least amount of bloodshed, particularly for his subjects

Once Dedue knows the truth, I think it possible he and Hubert would work together, likely going against direct orders from El and Dimitri and decide to extend negotiations. Since, at this point in AM, for all intents and purposes Claude and the un-recruited Alliance students (save for Lorenz, rip [we will pretend he was recruited]) are technically allied with Dimitri, Dedue could send word to Claude about the parley. News of Claude’s impending arrival would force El and Dimi to prolong their meeting. Upon his arrival, Claude would play a key role in providing information about the church that neither El or Dimi have (namely that the church/the goddess isn’t responsible for the creation of crests) as I’m assuming he still spends his time in AM/CF routes gathering the same information he would gather in VM route. (He likes to have all the information, after all!)

After the three of them meet, and, after a lot of arguing, I think Dimi’s compassion would win out, and El could be swayed to root out corruption in the church rather than completely destroying it. Rhea would be released from captivity in the Empire on the condition she abdicate her position as archbishop (presumably then allowing Byleth to assume the responsibility, paving the way for the church to become the benevolent force it claims to be. Despite what Rhea does behind the scenes- we know she even keeps HUGE secrets from Seteth and Flayn- the church DOES do a lot of good. If the church starts endorsing the message that crests shouldn’t be used to lord power/be used as a symbol of importance, I don’t think El would fundamentally have an issue with the church any longer).

THEN of course, the three leaders (four, counting Byleth who I think would happily lend the Knights of Seiros as well as their own battle prowess) would be free to focus their efforts on attacking and destroying TWSID, which I think could be accomplished fairly quickly (all things considered) with their united abilities and skills. Afterward, they could focus on shaping Fodlan the way they believe it should be (ie- loose/no borders, abolition of social hierarchies/systemic racism, strengthening ties with regions outside of Fodlan (freeing Brigid, restoring Duscur, improving relations with Sreng and Almyra and Dagda), etc. 

Naturally, Hubert would assume his position as Minister of the Imperial Household, Dedue would take up a role as a delegate to Duscur (and probably still build his school bc i’m very partial to that ending), and the two of them would wed as a sign of good faith between Adrestia and Faerghus (and also because, eventually, the two of them will have to face the facts and admit that they’re hopelessly in love). Eventually, their roles in orchestrating peace would be heavily romanticized and turned into a “star-crossed lovers across the battlefield” type opera that both of them would be far too embarrassed to ever see in person.