#also no i will never go the black eagles route fuck edelgard <3

[mousegard]

for the ask thing

rhea

favorite thing about them

oh god. where do i start. she's so fucked up and she's so hot. she's an absolute mess on every level. my daughter who has every disease. my poor little meow meow. she did everything wrong and i love her for it. she's so bad and it makes me want to clap my hands and rub them together with glee. all of the rest of my answers to this meme are my favorite thing about her

least favorite thing about them

the fandom

aside from that, her lack of relevance in azure moon sucks. i'm glad that at least she got more focus in azure gleam, as much of a cursed route as that was, if only because it just makes it so obvious how incredibly and delightfully toxic rhea has been for fodlan and its people

favorite line

every line rhea gets is just fucking. so good. cherami leigh is perfectly cast in the english dub. her lines are dripping with menace when they need to be, unsettling when they need to be, and vulnerable exactly when they need to be. every fucking line she gets in cf is just so, so good and the voice acting brings it all to life perfectly.

rhea's lines when byleth chooses to protect edelgard in the holy tomb are my favorite. especially the sheer contempt you can hear in "you are just another failure"

chills every time. the truth comes out there. exactly how she sees byleth and exactly how she sees humanity as a whole

brOTP

one of the fascinating things about rhea is that nobody is on an equal footing to her. not seteth or flayn, her fellow nabateans, whom she never answers to for any of the decisions she makes, despite seteth being nominally her advisor. not catherine or jeralt, who were brought under her wing in exchange for their servitude as knights, one of whom was successfully groomed by her and one of whom wasn't and got out while he still had a chance.

honestly cyril is the only human character in the game that rhea doesn't appear to have a purely transactional relationship with, and... he's a child. a child who cleans her room and does chores for her. okay that's pretty transactional now that i think about it.

so, given that rhea doesn't have anyone she can be bros with, my brotp for rhea is...

rhea/catherine. you get the more wholesome ending of a deposed rhea retreating from the world and catherine looking after her, which is quite bittersweet. but you can also be delightfully fucked up with it. imagine if cf ended with the black eagle strike force being routed in fhirdiad and fresh off a decisive church victory over the empire catherine had to live with the thousands of civilians she'd murdered on rhea's orders, with nowhere to go but deeper into rhea's arms. hhhhhhhhhh

OTP

i don't think rhea is capable of having a healthy romantic or sexual relationship with any other playable character in the game (she might have had one with wilhelm, but that was 1000 years ago), but a relationship doesn't have to be healthy to be incredibly fascinating and compelling. that is why my rhea otp is rhea and cf!dimitri. the feedback loop of bloodthirsty revenge they would enforce for each other would be fun to watch... from several miles away.

nOTP

rhea/byleth. like... rhea outright doesn't see byleth as a person (in stark contrast to the other humans in her life, who she at least understands are people and not merely vessels) until the end of ss/vw and tried to erase their entire identity without their foreknowledge or consent. that's not something i can ship. i can fantasize about how fucked up it is i guess but as a ship? nah

also rhea/edelgard is one of those ships which i like mainly for horny reasons but under certain circumstances it goes instantly to squick. and it's a fine line but a line nonetheless.

random headcanon

this isn't so much of a headcanon as it is an interpretation of sothis' characterization through her behavior in 3 hopes, but i believe that sothis felt no affection for the nabateans she created; they were just tools to her, and she cared about them as much as a paperclip maximizer cares about the paperclips it makes. and that makes it extra tragic for rhea, who wastes her entire life after slaying nemesis trying to recapture a maternal love that only really existed in her own head.

gives me real nier automata vibes. isn't that hilarious? doesn't it make you laugh?

unpopular opinion

rhea is the villain everyone accuses edelgard of being. she's a sympathetic and fascinating character, but at the end of the day she's an alien colonizer who spent 1000 years fucking up an entire continent. and she didn't have to be any of those things. you know it. i know it. she knows it

song i associate with them

See these eyes so green I can stare for a thousand years Colder than the moon

It's been so long

Feel my blood enraged It's just the fear of losing you Don't you know my name?

You've been so long

And I've been putting out the fire with gasoline

favorite picture of them

SageOfAnys

frogbians

[everbrilliantheartbreaker]

5, 8, 18!

5. What game would you recommend to someone new to the series?

on one hand, I feel very underqualified to answer this because I haven't played any of the older games, so I don't exactly have the most well rounded opinion. on the other hand, though, I got into FE through one of the new games! so, while I've been told by friends that it plays a lot differently than older FE games, I do think that Three Houses is a fun way to get people interested in the franchise (and also in RPGs, which I also have never really played but now would like to). the game mechanics are neat, I think a lot of the characters are really fun and interesting, and I think the lore and plot are super fascinating. AND it succeeded at making me want to play every other FE game I can get my hands on (*stares at Path of Radiance* some day...)

8. Least favorite lord/protagonist?

Manna out here tryin to get me sent hate mail again, I haven't played very many FE games yet, so I don't really know most of the lords beyond names + faces, but right now my least favorite lord is Edelgard,,, I think she's a really interesting character and an excellent villain and I definitely don't hate her, but the more I reflect on 3H and CF specifically, the more she frustrates me. I could write a whole thing about it but my biggest issue is how much she just. lies and twists everything to suit her narrative. especially the way that she lies to Byleth, who she supposedly loves. there's a lot about how CF treats Byleth that I don't like, and this is one of my bigger issues.

as for protagonists...Shez is probably my least favorite so far. and it's not even that I dislike them; I actually thought that they were an interesting contrast and opposite to Byleth and I really like their relationship with Dimitri specifically. I just don't feel a huge amount of affection for them. granted, their case is not helped by the fact that I. really fucking hate 3 Hopes. I despis e that game it made me so angry. so unfortunately for them my freshest memories of them are from my least favorite route in the game, wherein they are partially (unintentionally) responsible for the reason the route sucked (although the actual reason is bad writing). like I said I don't dislike Shez tho. they're alright and they deserved a better game (everyone in 3 Hopes did).

18. How do you tend to play Fire Emblem? (es. casually, doing Ironman runs, playing it like a visual novel)

hard + classic full recruit perfectionist run lmao i.e. I try to recruit all characters, complete all paralogues, finish as many support chains as possible, and finish main missions with as many surviving NPCs as possible (VW Fort Merceus kicked my ass this time around tho and half the Almyran forces died :/ ) I would kind of like to go back to a more storyline-oriented recruit style tho. I full recruit because I can't bear to kill anyone I don't have to and I still have a lot of supports + end cards I haven't gotten; but, for instance, the first time I played Golden Deer I only recruited Ashe, and the first time I played Black Eagles I only recruited a small group of characters like Felix, Sylvain, and Lysithea. I don't like killing characters, but I do think it would be a nice change to go back to a smaller recruit group where I could focus on completing a set number of supports and sort of play out a storyline with them like I did with those two routes.

[berrymeter]

so the past week all ive been doing is play okami then fire emblem three houses ( and pause for a little while to watch the 2gether episode ) so that’s where my attention lies

[kal-rants]

(Not Really) Quick Thoughts on FE: 3 Houses

Me? Talking about a game that’s been out for almost two years now? You best believe it.

Quick Backstory before I bullet point this shit so I can get it out of my system. I played the game the day it released years ago and more or less finished it in a week. My first route was with Black Eagles and after finishing it was ultimately unsatisfied by the ending and set it down with no intention of doing the other routes. A friend started playing it late 2019 and was fawning over Dimitri and his route. Taking her word for it, I gave the game another go and decided to finally finish it. Took me a while but I finally finished the three main routes and oh boy...

The Houses

I loved all the women in Black Eagles but the guys were meh. Caspar was fun and by far my favorite of them, but Hubert grated on my nerves and Ferdinand was sweet but because I also had Sylvain on my team, I kept confusing the two (based on appearance not personality). 

The general cast of Blue Lions was by far my favorite. Every person in the house was so enjoyable and I actually loved getting the support conversations for all of them (Ashe is my favorite character). My only issue with the house was ironically Dimitri who I could not stand post time skip (a little more on that below).

By my Golden Deer run, I was mostly playing just to complete the game which might contribute to how lackluster I found them. I wanted to kill Lorenz so bad but he was so good at killing people and Ignatz was sweet but was so bad at killing people that I permanently benched him to focus on everyone else (played this one on hard mode). Almost all of their support conversations were fairly one note and after the layered convos of Blue Lions, I wanted more. Claude is incredible though and it became an inverse of my thoughts on Blue Lions.

Bonus: Yuri and Hapi were my immediate faves (even if Hapi was a glass canon on the field for half of the game) while Balthus and Constance where interesting but still meh for me. 

Plot

So I picked Black Eagles house solely because I was interested about Edelgard and I definitely didn’t realize I was signing up to side with the one starting a fucking war. While I loved Edelgard throughout, I found the actual route complicated for me, especially after the time skip where I was taking down people I didn’t want to take down. I was left feeling like I was following the bad guys even as the game tried to say otherwise and it left me with a bad taste. In retrospect, I’m sure the devs didn’t really intend for you to do this route first judging by how little they go in the way of explaining certain things such as Byleth and Those Who Slither In the Dark. Overall, I understood why Edelgard was doing what she was doing, but the game thought that was enough and didn’t even try to convince me why I should side with her outside of that and it only hurt her route overall. Plus, I am still annoyed that Edelgard dealt with TWS in the epilogue and not in her actual route WHEN SHE IS THE ONE WHO WAS ARGUABLY AFFECTED BY THEM THE MOST OF THE THREE HOUSE LEADERS LIKE WTF WHY GIVE THAT MOMENT TO CLAUDE.

I’ll be honest, I remember so little of what actually happened in the Blue Lions route which I attribute to me not being able to really get on board with Dimitri since BL is more or less an intimate character focused route for Dimitri’s growth. I’m not here to bash Dimitri, I’m just saying his shifts in character happened a little suddenly and there were other things about his character that were kinda just vanilla for me. I did find it weird that we never actually saw Rhea again even though getting her back was a big thing for most of the characters and you’re kinda left to wonder what even happened to her (another moment given to Claude’s run).

And finally the Golden Deers. By the 3rd time through all pre-timeskip stuff was so insufferable to get through, but the one saving grace was Claude’s insight in all of it. It made it feel different even though the events were the same. Post-timeskip his route really shines as it is able to bridge the gap between the war and the proxy war behind it with TWS. It’s also the only route that you actually get answers for shit that the other two ignore (which thematically makes sense for those routes but still). It is ironic though that this route did more to get me to sympathize with Edelgard that her own route did. It is technically the best route of the three hands down. 

Other

So Rhea. I went in not trusting her because Jeralt mentions to be on guard about her and, since I started with BE, my distrust was proven right since she is trying to rip open your heart to get Sothis back. That hatred/distrust ran through my other two routes up until the last few chapters of Claude’s where we actually get context for what was going on. I was left in a similar position that I was in with Edelgard where I could understand Rhea’s reasoning for doing everything she did, but I still couldn’t side with her considering that she is technically responsible for the worship of Crests and nobility. Also, who builds a church and places yourself on top to be worshipped? Also also, why even place such importance on Crests? I know about the interview with the developers saying she “had” to because of how humans viewed the 10 elites at the time, but I feel like there is another option to build peace between them that doesn’t involve the elevation of Crests. Also racism; really should have done more to prevent that from blossoming in the way that it did.  

So Edelgard. She seems to be a hot topic on Tumblr which tracks so I’m going to traverse this with extra tact. I do love her and overall, I do agree that the system that the Church built had become corrupt. I mean when multiple children have emotional and physical scars of that corruption at school, it’s hard to argue against that. Do I agree that starting a war is the best way to change things? Before 2020, I would have said no, that there had to be another way to change things. But now? I dunno sometimes a system is too corrupt to rebuild off of diplomacy alone and it definitely wouldn’t happen quickly enough in a person’s lifetime. Given Edelgard’s shortened lifespan, I do get why diplomacy would have never worked for her. I don’t think I can ever fully support Edelgard for the war she started and for siding with TWS (I know her reasons but that’s basically making a deal with the devil) but I can’t deny that her goals are admirable at the least. Will her winning said war even change things? Well who knows. That depends on how she implements them afterward. I’ve seen lots of people claim that it’s unrealistic for her to have been successful in changing anything after the war but I don’t know about that. If anything, Rhea proved that she could mold the world however she wanted after her war and if Rhea could do it, then why can’t Edelgard.

Considering the nastiness of racism, I can’t even believe that Claude’s run of “end racism” was going to be as successful as they think. Solid baby steps, maybe? But don’t know how well that’ll actually go in the long run.

Dimitri might have been overhyped or something but I expected so much more than what I got from him. In the Academy Era, he rang fairly vanilla in that he was a kind and honorable guy but not much else. Felix mentions how savage he is, but there weren’t very many hints of that pre-timeskip (that I remember anyway). Obviously he was a ticking time bomb and later Dimitri shows that. And I was totally on board with slowly helping Dimitri become human again, but that’s not really what happened. You’re not allowed to do anything with Dimitri other than get his brief blurb in Explore or toss him into battle. I know why they did it, but because they shut him off from you so completely, I had problems being able to connect with him in the post time skip and ended up rolling my eyes whenever he started talking. It also made his change after Rodrigue died so sudden and it felt v forced for me. They really could have done a better job at it is all I’m saying. 

Ashe and Mercedes had the cutest S-support epilogue and I will die for them. 

Dorothea deserves the world and Yuri and Dorothea making an Opera troupe for commoners is the best thing.

I wanted so much more for Leonie but they stuck so hard to the Jeralt fangirl label that she never really grew beyond that. 

[electricprincess96]

One weird take I seen get repeated by Edelgard fans is GDs are done best in cf. When three of them aren’t in it. Lysithea like Byleth is forced to work with the country and cult that destroyed there family with no mention. Hilda’s death is stupid because it had no consequences. Claude had no plan to reinforce the bridge at all. Edelgard chases Judith down and as her killed. But can randomly spare Claude? Which Claude only asked his dad for just Nader and not the whole army of Almyra that 1/2

Surpasses the Alliance according to the backstory. also in AmSSVW Claude looks for Fodlan allies against Edelgard he doesn’t in cf. There even more pointless here then they sadly already are in the story. Which sucks because I love a lot of them. 2/2

No one is done better in Crimson Flower. Like literally no one, not even the Black Eagles (I go on about the Black Eagles the most because they are always gonna be there in Crimson Flower while the rest are optional and arguably when the likes of the Blue Lions are kept as enemy units in Crimson Flower, that's when they are at their best because it shows their commitment and dedication to their country and their friends).

Now specifically the Golden Deer, I'll be honest the Golden Deer have like the least amount of chemistry out of the 3 Houses and consist of like the least patriotic members. However let's take a look at them one by one and show how Crimson Flower still manages to fuck them up. But as you mentioned Flower is the only route Hilda can't be recruited to so clearly Hilda is like one of the few people in this game with morals.

Lysithea - Siding with the people who were responsible for her torture and death of the other children in her House. Like I could maybe buy her siding with them at first but Hubert's paralog is literally about bailing out TWSITD, The Flame Emperor is Edelgard and the Flame Emperor was working alongside the likes of Solon and Kronya who surely Lysithea has enough of a brain to suspect might be linked to those Mages who are responsible for experimenting on her. Even if Lysithea never finds out that's really fucking horrible from the players point of view since we know the truth and yet we still choose to have her working with her torturers UNKNOWINGLY

Leonie - Idolises Jeralt but doesn't actually have that much of a personal connection to Byleth so again I must ask... Why the fuck would she side with the people that she KNOWS is working with the people who killed Jeralt just because Player-sensei said so? Like nevermind this "Jeralt's final wish was for her to stay by Byleth's side" that's bullshit. Both Leonie and Alois would never side with the Empire, Jeralt himself says to not trust anything the Flame Emperor says, why start trusting her just because it turns out to be your Pretty Classmates behind the mask?

Raphael/Ignatz - honestly I just get the impression they would both have either stood their ground and fought for their morals (especially since Ignatz is religious and Raphael only cares about protecting his sister, so obviously you'd side with the country trying to INVADE THE COUNTRY HIS SISTER IS LIVING IN 🤦🏻‍♀️) or they would have stayed out of it. They aren't Nobles, but I do get the impression they'd have chosen to fight alongside Claude over Edelgard since as I said Ignatz is shown to be somewhat religious and Raphael wants to protect his sister so he has to protect the country she's currently living in cause um... Invading Armies tend to have collateral damage.

Marianne - Deeply, deeply religious. Sure she hates her Crest I could maybe see her being swayed by Edelgard's propaganda but that doesn't mean that would be a better life for her because in all endings Crest Abuse is a topic that is tackled provides Hanneman survives. So I'd rather Marianne got an ending where Crests are being made more and more redundant AND she didn't have to become a Manson Wife for Edelgard.

Lorenz - Arguably the only one you could say gets a "better" deal in Flower. His family always sides with the Empire and outside of Golden Deer he always does as well only being swayed back to Byleth's army by Byleth themselve. BUT even in Crimson Flower he's never given the Alliance or even the honour of governing what was once the Alliance. The only real time he gets that is in his Claude paired ending so arguably Lorenz best ending is Golden Deer exclusive. Also for all his pomp and circumstance I don't actually believe Lorenz agrees with the war, he shows open distaste at some of his own father's methods to try and seize power within the Alliance why exactly would be favour those same tactics but on a continent wide scale? He doesn't give a fuck about Crests or Crest abuse and he believes the nobility serve a purpose the problem isn't the system it's the people, why would anything Edelgard claims to stand for resonate with him? Sure he gets to keep his titles but that's just because Crimson Flowers endings all make no sense.

So yeah the Golden Deer all get a great "happily ever after" in Crimson Flower..... If your definition of Happily Ever After includes Ignorantly helping a death cult finish genocide on a marginalised race of people all while helping the very people who either tortured you, killed your mentor, put your own family in danger and stand against basically everything you stand for.

[lewlthea]

The Actual Thing Going On With Edelgard Von Hresvelg.

 Spoilers: It’s not fascism, nor racism (at least not in the way people think). Also, actual spoilers for the game.

If there has been a controversial character in Fire Emblem Three Houses, it’s Edelgard Von Hresvelg, one of the game’s main three lords, the house leader of the Black Eagles, the princess and sole heir of the Adrestian Empire, and an antagonist in every single route but hers. She has been a polarizing figure within the community: Some people think she’s an irredeemable monster, others think she’s a misunderstood leader. When it comes to Edelgard, theres hardly a grey opinion towards her; She’s either black or white. Today, I wanna talk about Edelgard’s actions towards the 4 routes, what they actually portray, and how and why the entire discourse towards her was caused deliberately by Intelligent System’s incredible mishandling and mistreatment of the character.

I remember Nintendo’s 2018 E3 conference quite well. I was at with a group of friends, watching at one of them’s house because he had a bigger TV. I remember making jokes about how “there was going to be a new Fire Emblem” because loving Fire Emblem when Intelligent Systems is Like That is a living nightmare.

And then this happens.

Words could not express the joy I felt when the trailer was over. It wasn’t just a new Fire Emblem game: We were going to have another lady lord, and an axe-wielding one at that - something the fanbase had been desperately craving since the recent surge in Hector’s popularity - and for once, it was like when I first found out that there would be a new female character in Shadows Of Valentia with Faye, and it was the tipping point for me to finally buy a Nintendo Switch.

Of course, just like Faye, things weren’t that simple.

Because some months before E3 2019, which promised to reveal more info on Fire Emblem 3 Houses, Reddit exploded. All because of someone who goes by the username Thanibomb, who claimed to have leaked info on the game, saying a lot of information about all the characters, some of them very questionable (With things such as Lysithea would die due to her crest complications, and it would cause the major 5-year war, and other things like Claude being the one who shot Dimitri’s eye off), while other info being oddly specific. A part of it that made me particularly chuckle was when such user said that Dimitri would have lost an eye, and would cover it with an eyepatch. I found it so silly and, along with some friends, claimed it to be fake and carried on.

And then E3 2019 happened.

And Dimitri had an eyepatch. 

And still, even after Thanibomb, things remained optimistic. All lords looked nice, they seemed to have their own ideals, their own paths, and no fights were breaking out within the fanbase yet. But then early copies were sent to reviewers. And then 4chan got a hold of one of those. And then the main leaks started. And by the time the game got released, it was too late. The amount of hate comments towards the character was so overwhelming; some calling Edelgard a fascist, others claiming that she was racist, others even saying that she gives racist remarks towards Claude ingame (a blatant lie). A personal favorite comment of mine was how Hubert and Edelgard looked like the perfect alt-right couple. 

(Should I remark that these kinds of comments stopped as soon as they found out that Hubert could A-support Ferdinand, and most of them moved on to fetishize the relationship between the two of them instead. Ironically, before that happened people despised Hubert in general solely because of his unusual appearance and shady behavior, but that was soon seen as ‘nuanced’ the moment he could be paired off with another man.)

And so, a fight between the fanbase begun: (Mostly) Blue Lion fans bashing Edelgard’s character, Black Eagle fans defending her vehemently, and Golden Deer fans between either on any of those sides or just making memes for Joe Zieja’s rally campaign for the GD. Mostly the latter. But that’s beside the point.

A (Kinda) Brief Summary of Edelgard’s Presence In Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, And Silver Snow.

Throughout the game’s second part, unless you’re playing the Crimson Flower Route, Edelgard will always be an antagonist who cannot be spared, and she cannot survive unless it’s in her own route. However, the way she is percieved changes depending on each route you are making, with each route leaving small fragments depicting Edelgard’s past and shaping her character in full scale. 

In Verdant Wind/Silver Snow, Edelgard isn’t the final boss. She is one of the bosses before the big fight. (Nemesis in Claude’s case, Rhea in Seteth’s). She’s one of the obstacles, but not the main one, therefore there is not much insight on her character; However, there is still one element present in those routes that is curiously omitted from Azure Moon that is the reason why she doesn’t really have too much focus, that being Hubert’s final letter.

In both routes, Hubert seems to highly respect Seteth/Claude’s prowess in the war and their cunning mind. (Especially Claude; Throughout both Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower, he commends Claude’s tactics and strategies multiple times). In the letter, he gives the location of where Rhea is confined and asks them to eliminate Those Who Slither in the Dark, the game’s true villains and the ones behind most, if not all the game’s tragic events. Even more curiously, though, is the fact that the letter does exist on the Crimson Flower route, and can be seen briefly on Hubert’s B support with Ferdinand, being the reason of their argument throughout the conversation. Not a single mention of the letter exists in the Azure Moon Route. (Of course it would not make sense for it to exist gameplay-wise due to the player having already murdered Arundel/Thales earlier in the game but. It’s still something to be accounted for).

Speaking of Azure Moon, this is a much more trickier route to talk about. Not only due to the fact that Edelgard is this route’s final boss, but also because all of the things we discover about Edelgard within it are never mentioned in any other route, only brief mentions about the time she spent in the Kingdom; nothing more. 

In here, her time spent on the Kingdom is expanded: Both Edelgard, her mom Patricia and Arundel were sent off to Faerghus due to exile, with Patricia being set off to marry King Lambert. There, she meets Dimitri, and they both become fast friends. By the time she has to leave, Dimitri gifts her with a dagger (Which, in Faeghus, are important gifts that mean ‘to cut a path towards a better future’), and she returns to Adrestia. Some time after she leaves the Tragedy of Duscurr happens, caused by Those Who Slither in the Dark. However, due to a misunderstanding caused by eavesdropping on a conversation between Thales and the Flame Emperor, Dimitri mistakenly believes that the Flame Emperor was behind it all, and once the Flame Emperor’s identity is finally revealed to be Edelgard, she is instantly demonized and called a ‘witch’, even though she openly declares how she had nothing to do with it. This goes on until Rodrigue’s death and Cornelia’s reveal that Patricia was the one behind the Duscurr Tragedy so she could return to the Empire and “reunite with her daughter”. (We never find out about what happened to her and she is not mentioned during the Crimson Flower). Dimitri tries to talk Edelgard off their final confrontation, but Edelgard insists that it is far too late for her to back down for their ideals are far too different, and she refuses to live in a world where the Church of Seiros exists. Dimitri then hands back her dagger (Which she accidentally dropped before the timeskip), and they both retreat to prepare for the final battle.

This route’s final boss is an Edelgard who was absorbed direct power from Those Who Slither in the Dark, and adquires a grotesque, corrupted form. No other character in the canon possess such a thing, and only Edelgard can assume such form. Once she is defeated, Dimitri tries once again to spare her, only for Edelgard to stab him with the dagger, making Dimitri realize that she would never give up on her dream, and finally kills her.

An Even More Brief Explanation of What Does All of This Means.

Okay, all of that info was nice, fun, good, yadda yadda. What does this mean and why was it needed.

Well, for starters, let’s ask ourselves a question: After reading the summary, can you say that you know what drives her to seek out the destruction of the church?

What is her reasoning behind the unification of Fodlan?

Do we get anything out of her other than “Scary dictator” or “An obstacle that had to be sadly removed” or “Under better circumstances... We could’ve been Allies (tm)”?

We don’t. Because Intelligent Systems did not bother to show Edelgard’s motivations, despite her being the villain in almost all the routes.

During Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, Edelgard herself does not matter: she’s solely important because she is threatening the church, she is your scary big bad dictator that you have to beat in order to rescue Rhea, only to find out that in reality she was just a stepping stone to the real villains, Those Who Slither in the Dark. (In game it is said that Hubert came up with this name. In my humble opinion Hubert can go fuck himself because this is the shittiest name I have ever seen and I am tired of having to type this five word long thing every paragraph or so). As soon as you read the letter, suddenly Edelgard, the Empire, and all the questions you had as to why she Did It dissappear because now you have another objective, another goal. 

This is even more offensive during Azure Moon because she is the focus, the final boss, but it doesn’t matter why she did all of this nor what her ideals actually are despite them being the reason why she cannot be spared. The game would rather focus on getting reactions out of the player when the intimidating big meanie does something that makes Dimitri go angry than actually focusing on the clashing of Dimitri and Edelgard’s ideals, why they cannot go back to what it once was, what happened to her to change this way, why did ‘El’ actually die. All you have is a dictator in red which does things for no reason other than “I will destroy the Church and unify Fodlan so I can govern over all of it”. Nothing more, nothing less.

....Of course, you do realize that I have avoided to talk about a certain thing.

So, About That Crimson Flower Route...

If there is a way to truly understand a villain, one must walk on such person’s footsteps. Most people criticizing Edelgard were the ones who hadn’t played her route yet, or had only played Azure Moon and was led to believe that all of Edelgard’s actions are unwarranted or pure nonsense. 

There is a reason why people sing their tune differently as soon as they experience the Crimson Flower.

For starters, to be able to fight for Edelgard, you have to first have her support up to C+, go with her to Enbarr once she asks of you, and then defend her from Rhea at the Holy Tomb. The reasoning behind that is so that you fully understand what Edelgard has gone through and the reason why she cannot agree with the existence of the Church.

The Azure Moon route tells you of Edelgard before she returned to the Empire.

It never tells you what caused her to change after she went back.

Edelgard was part of the crest experimentations caused by Those Who Slither in the Dark, alongside all her siblings. Her father, the emperor, was unable to do anything about it, as the real people in control of the Empire were Arundel/Thales and Duke Aegir. Being the sole survivor of such things to return to society and see how everything is defined by whether you have a crest or not and finding out that the Church, who instead of breaking down such system to favor equality would rather turn the creatures who run it into figures to be worshipped is. Something.

There’s another reason for Edelgard’s sudden betrayal, a more sinister one, and why she feels like everything needs to be done in a quick pace. In her C+ you find out she has a second crest, The Crest of Flames, just like the player. People who bear two crests have a shortened lifespam, however.

When Edelgard declares war against the Church, and to unite Fódlan, it’s not solely because ‘Church bad’: She declares war against the unfair crest system, against the hypocrisy of Rhea’s dragon entourage, and of course, to destroy Those Who Slither in the Dark later on the road.

  However.

Just because Edelgard’s behavior is justified, does not mean she is 100% in the right. She herself admits that the path she follows is one drenched in blood. But there are several times in the game that makes you stop and think for a second that she can still make bad decisions, and that sometimes her decisions might have horrible consequences. One of them is for example to never take away Brigid’s status as a vassal to the Empire and return it back to it’s former glory as an actual country, which shows how the entire Brigid kerfuffle is something akin to colonization. We should also point out that when she unifies Fodlan, in some endings she remains the Emperor, completely missing the point of what she fought for.

Another case that shows one of Edelgard’s biggest flaws is with the Silver Maiden incident.

Edelgard had just conquered Arianrhod, the Silver Maiden, and due to murdering Cornelia, enrages Ariandel/Thales, whom causes the situation above out of a show of power. She knows it was Those Who Slither in the Dark, but she needs to give explanations fast and she can’t reveal their identity or else they would slip away and it would be impossible to locate them and destroy them. So what does she do?

She says it was Rhea who did it, actively lying to her closest allies, one of them being the Prime Minister of the Empire.

For Edelgard, the ends justifies the means, and as long as she gets the results she wants, she will do what it takes. Even by alienation. And that’s a dangerous way to go on.

...So, where do I want to go from here? Who is to blame for the hatefest Edelgard is receiving?

Intelligent Systems Kind of Didn’t Know What To Do With Edelgard.

Now hold on. That sounds a bit too harsh, don’t you think? She was the first lord shown in the E3 2018 trailer, they have placed a very big emphasis on Edelgard everywhere hell the game’s main theme is about her, why would you claim that??

Well, first and foremost, I should start by saying that Crimson Flower is the game’s shortest route, with the total of 18 chapters. From those 18 chapters, there is only one cutscene, with most of the route’s major events being shown with either the game’s basic models or still images.

For comparison, Verdant Wind has the total of 8 cutscenes, counting the final one before the timeskip, with 3 of them being unique to its route.

Azure Moon has the total of 5 cutscenes, 3 of them being unique to its route. 

Silver Snow has 4 cutscenes, having 2 unique ones to its route.

The other two main lords have several support options with people outside of their respective houses; Edelgard only has one.

Remember when I said that one of Edelgard’s main enemies are Those Who Slither in the Dark? The game never lets her deal with them personally. You never truly fight them during Crimson Flower.

In a way, the game feels as if while Edelgard is the focus, you shouldn’t side with her. It really makes it feel as if someone at Intelligent Systems just snickered and said ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we could let our players side with/date our villain?’ without even considering or respecting such villain’s motivations, her ideals, and what truly makes a character unique.

In the end, all they truly cared for was if Edelgard was romanceable enough for the player, not if she made sense or was appealing as a character, whether as a villain or a savior.

And considering how the fanbase is behaving towards Edelgard, they succeeded. 

[teaveetamer]

don't roast me but the more I actually think about it, the more edelgard actually wanting to kill the lords in the paralogue makes less sense. not only did she set kostas up for failure(by refusing to tell him the knights of seiros were with them) but she also never tried again to kill the lords. she could have easily had Jeritza murder the nobles with no problem at all. or set them up on a mission the other class went to. her actually meaning to scare off the old teacher adds up to whats shown

Uuuuuuuugh where do I even begin.

1) This is like two weeks after getting to school, so there’s also the possibility that Edelgard didn’t know the knights would be with them when she told Kostas the plan.

2) The lords are never in the same place again outside of the monastery, aside from, like, the Battle of Eagle and Lion and the mock battle in the beginning of the game (and we know that the former had Rhea herself there, so high security, and the latter happened in/around the monastery). They’re all separated on their own missions. The goal of the bandit attack was likely to make it look like a random, unfortunate accident. If Claude and Dimitri separately end up dead then it looks suspicious, like an intentional hit (and who are they going to look at? Edelgard and the Empire, AKA the only heir that wasn’t attacked).

3) This is the same reason why she doesn’t send Jeritza. Random bandits are random. The Death Knight is shady as fuck, and if he’s sent to kill them then people are going to start looking into who sent him and why.

Basically the entire goal of the assassination was to destabilize the other two countries and make them lose faith in the church, which would have made her “glorious revolution” significantly easier. There’s clear, tangible reasons for her to want to kill Dimitri and Claude.

What exactly would scaring off a random teacher would have done for her? We see that she operates just fine around an ignorant actor in that position (since Byleth goes the entirety of White Clouds without realizing that she’s the FE, and Manuela is certainly not in on it in non-Black Eagles routes).

This entire theory is predicated on, like, two throwaway lines of dialogue from Caspar. Otherwise literally everything in the game points to an assassination attempt.

[tk-duveraun]

I finished!

FINALLY! All four routes are complete in FE:3H

 For anyone new here, the ground rules are thus:

1) We love OCs/Self-inserts/???

2) Canon is only what you can explicitly learn in game 

3) Fuck canon

Spoilers below! Spoilery ones! For all routes! I suggest you play in this order:

Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Your Decision Will Drastically Change the Story and then Golden Deer.

( Your Decision Will Drastically Change the Story starts from Black Eagles; have the C+ support conversation with Edelgard BEFORE starting Chapter 11, talk to her, and you’ll see the dialogue)

What the actual fuck is Hegemon Edelgard? From her dialogue just before the transformation, she was expecting it to come, like some blast of magic from the slithery boys, but what? 

I’ve been told that random what the actual fuck final bosses is de rigueur for Fire Emblem, but I am not used to this many plotholes and nonsensical just WHAT.

Also, what the fuck happened to Claude in the Church route? Where is my son? What did you do to my son?

Someone on reddit postulated a post-apocalyptic setting because of the Agarthans and their magitech (funfact “agarthan” is the unobtanium-esque word for people who moved under ground during the apocalypse). I can buy it from the explanation Rhea gives in GD about Nemesis and Slithery Boys.

Since Rhea collected the remaining Children of the Goddess after the massacre of Zanado and built up her forces in Enbarr before the final battle with Nemesis, I think we can assume that’s how the Cethleann, Cichol, Indech and Seiros Crests got into the blood lines.

Anyway.

Earth or something, but if you zoom in in Shambala it looks like Cyrillic writing

Sothis comes from Space(tm) 

Sothis makes her children and they chill, sharing their alien tech and maybe introducing magic or something

humans fuck everything up 

Slithery Boys go under ground

Sothis rebuilds the world 

Sothis passes the fuck out in the Holy Tomb (with magitech defenses) 

The Children of the Goddess live in Zanado to not fuck up the humans again 

Nemesis is picked up by Slithery Boys and steals the “remains” of Sothis

Slithery Boys make the SotC, put Sothis’ blood in Nemesis, slap him on the butt and tell him to slaughter everything in Zanado

Slithery Boys make “relic weapons” for the 10 Elites

Seiros collects Macuil, Seteth, Indech, Flayn, presumably also Flayn’s mum and they give their blood to the budding Imperial humans to power them up to fight the Slithery Boys

Seiros defeats Nemesis, but is too weak and without enough forces to take back the other weapons

Rhea designates the relic weapons as “holy artifacts” in hopes they won’t be used against the Church and to keep track of their locations

Why don’t the humans notice that the Archbishop literally never ages?

Flyan tells Byleth “It’s hard to remember after your first sleep.” This implies that CotG regularly do a long sleep kind of thing (see also Indech and Macuil being sleepy shits) so Rhea probably takes generational breaks to sleep and let the humans forget what she looked like.

This is also supported by the fact that Byleth’s mother was only attempt 12 in some 1100 years. Rhea is batshit trying to resurrect her mother, there’s no way there’d be that few attempts in that timespan if she wasn’t sleeping. You could maybe guess that these attempts lived a little longer than humans so she waited ~100 years for one to die before trying again with the Crest Stone, but naps makes more sense. (Note: Rhea is what we’ll call Fantasy Insane, not to be confused or conflated with real life neurodivergence or mental illness)

If Rhea’s story of the Zanado Massacre is correct, why does Edelgard never mention it? She acts like everything Rhea’s done with the Church and over history is all just to grab power.

I see two possible options:

1) She is an incredibly damaged, severely tortured young woman who either forgot about it or believed that Rhea was lying when she told the first Emperor

2) The Slithery Boys have spent generations tweaking the story that the Emperors pass down in order to fit their own narrative

I think it’s more a case of unreliable narrator to create a “villain route” that has a sympathetic leader. Everything about Edelgard’s route is slap dash. Fewer anime cut scenes, worse writing, it’s markedly shorter, etc.

Not to say there isn’t an astonishing amount of overlap between Church and GD, but anyway.

tl;dr: Claude is the best and I’ve already got three damn OCs for this godforsaken game.

ps. Felix’s romance scene was much better than I was expecting, though I still think Felix/Sylvain is where it’s at. Is Felix/Sylvain/Ingrid OT3 too weird with Glenn? It’s too weird.

[memorys-skyscraper]

Now that I’ve done all 4 routes, here’s my hot takes that nobody asked for on all of them:

Listed in the order I completed them:

Golden Deer: fantastic. wonderful. I love my deer kids. Even Lorenz. (sometimes). Claude is so good. The Nemesis map comes right the fuck out of nowhere but the music for that map goes SO fucking hard it doesn’t matter.

Blue Lions: also good. Dimitri being a shithead edgelord for like 4 chapters post-timeskip got old pretty quick but when he did eventually turn around he became v good. Kinda eh on like half of the students? Like Ashe is the light of my life, I eventually warmed up to Felix’s assholery, Mercedes is a sweetheart, as is Dedue, but then Sylvain’s kinda... eh, I found Annette super forgettable, and Ingrid was super racist to Dedue in their C support so I dropped her from my main crew immediately after and never used her again lmao

Church Route: okay? considering this is basically Seteth & Flayn route I would’ve thought I’d like it a lot more but it just kinda felt like everyone was just...... there. y’know? Like all the Black Eagles kids were like “uh...... Edelgard’s big into facism now, so like..... guess we’re hanging out with the church instead.....?” and then Seteth shows up and goes “hey kids wanna help me find Rhea and conquer all of Fodlan while we’re at it? cool” That said the last map really hit me in the gut bc Seteth and Flayn were so upset about killing Rhea (also the music for that map is really something, even listening to it on its own gets me emotional)

Black Eagles: my least fav by FAR. I don’t know how much of my negativity toward this route is just me being burned out after doing the other 3, but literally everyone you talk to in this route besides Hubert and Edelgard just seems fucking miserable. Like there’s just nonstop “I wish we didn’t have to do this........” “I hate killing people I know........” “I’m going to have to kill my family.........” Like I get that the game is trying to tell you that this is the “bad” route but like........ god. Literally at one point Edelgard says something like “I was surprised you sided with me over Rhea, sometimes I wonder if you chose the wrong path” like damn, real subtle. Also no Seteth and Flayn so that def didn’t help.

tl;dr Golden Deer >= Blue Lions >> Church Route >>>>>>>>>> Black Eagles