#aside from ferdinand having a character arc apparently

[iturbide]

oof, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.

!! WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS for AG !!

at some point after the timeskip, dimitri and edelgard are fighting for control of arianrhod when thales, having been biding his time since he was ousted two years ago, interrupts, pulls out a crest stone, and somehow uses it to forcibly transform her into her hegemon form from AM. she proceeds to wreck mindless havoc on the fort with dimitri and co. barely escaping.

afterwards, it's shown thales retreated with edelgard in tow (having somehow un-transformed her?) and she's… clearly not herself, uncharacteristically silent with a slightly terrified expression in her portrait. a little later we find out that duke aegir's been appointed regent by thales given the emperor's "condition"—much to the complete detestation of the adrestrian countryside (having fallen to ruin from what, at best, seems to be severe neglect). hubert and ferdinand are reportedly MIA and not heard from again for the rest of the story (they never say they’re dead, but given we know hubert, at least, would literally die before letting edelgard come to any harm, it really doesn’t bode well).

the next time we see edelgard on the battlefield, it’s as mouthpiece by duke aegir for morale and her sentences are notably stilted and simple. then she tells us during the bonus chapter where she's temporarily fully cognizant again (don’t ask—its contrived so that the chapter is consistent with the other two routes) that after un-transforming, her body's been more or less on autopilot while her consciousness has been looking on from the inside, unable to do anything.

during the final battle she's being compelled to fight at thales' side and he revives her a couple times throughout the fight to act as a meatshield (though not transforming her for it??? we never actually get to fight hegemon edelgard) afterwards, when he's dead, she's just kneeling there on the ground looking absolutely lost and, having seemingly regressed into the mind of her twelve year old self, refers to dimitri by her old childhood nickname for him in confusion. to which dimitri is shocked before—in perhaps one of the most bafflingly out-of-character moments in the game, which is saying something—turning away and leaving her there without a word to go reconvene with both his army and the church and alliance forces.

the war is then said to still going on (despite the fact that the adrestria is in shambles, just about every prominent figure is either dead, defeated, or otherwise unaccounted for and the emperor who started it is now mentally impaired) and claude is implied to be about to make a move against the central church. the end.

note that this is the better of AG's two endings and, arguably, the best ending of all three routes (based on both the body count and the fact claude is actually in character for almost the entirety of it).

so. yeah. the writers would literally rather have edelgard outwardly reduced to the mindset of a child and inwardly living out her worst nightmare trapped inside of her own body than for the route to end with her in a bad light. which, for me, is more disrespectful to her character than just killing her outright.

okay I am primarily posting it because I need this to be on my blog for reference purposes instead of stashed in my inbox or lost to the ether but just

good gods

I honestly didn’t think that the character assassination could get much worse after what I’d heard about Golden Wildfire but somehow this ramps it up again you’re absolutely right this is utterly disrespectful for Edelgard’s character

And it doesn’t even make the plot contrivance any easier to stomach.  Thales isn’t responsible for Edelgard’s transformation into her Hegemon form in Three Houses: she transforms seemingly of her own volition as a means of trying to achieve enough power to stop Dimitri and turn the tides of this war (and possibly to clue Dimitri in on the fact that the other power at play alongside the Empire likely won’t fall with her -- a silent warning to stay vigilant for Those Who Slither, who are otherwise unaddressed in Azure Moon).  Thales is dead when she takes on her Hegemon form in Three Houses, and she never uses that form in other routes...so if he had that power, why didn’t he use it in Three Houses?  Given that the Twisted were ousted early, the capacity had to have been implanted well before that, meaning it had to have been possible in Three Houses, so including it here but giving Edelgard a ‘happy ending’ in Three Houses when she openly went against the Twisted at Arianrhod.  They could have -- and arguably should have -- let her finish off Rhea and then exerted full control over her.  It makes the whole CF ending reek of lies, knowing they could just do that the whole time.

(And this is coming from me, who thinks that CF’s endcards came up too rosy given the hard road she likely had ahead after conquering her way through two independent nations.  Even I wanted to see Edelgard do something that wasn’t ‘get leashed to Thales will and forced into the same role of puppet Emperor that her father was chained to.’)

I had heard so many interesting things about Azure Gleam being a good route with solid characterizations, but if they’re doing that to Edelgard I’m starting to question my sanity about what makes for a good route.

[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.

[irandrura]

Now, just for fun, I’m going to list everyone I recruited and give some brief thoughts on each one. If I spend more time on a person, it’s because I found them more interesting, or did more supports, or the like.

I did go a bit overboard recruiting people, but I feel validated by that decision considering the number of people I might have had to kill otherwise. As it is I only had to kill two people I didn’t want to – Lorenz and Caspar; Linhardt also appeared but I was able to avoid him – and while I’m sad, especially since I should have gotten Caspar for the paralogue with Mercedes and the Death Knight, it could have been a lot worse.

I will, however, skip the four DLC kids, since apparently you need to start their supports in White Clouds, I missed them, and didn’t feel like going back. So I don’t have the content there.

Here we go:

Byleth: I covered some of my thoughts on him in the post on Jeralt. I wouldn’t say that I dislike Byleth as such, but because Byleth has no dialogue and has few definite character traits beyond “doesn’t show emotion much” and maybe “likes being a teacher”, there isn’t much to work with. I suppose I find Byleth a serviceable enough player avatar protagonist, but if I were writing fan fiction or anything, I think I would need to work hard to develop a memorable personality for Byleth. As it is, Byleth only works because you imagine yourself in his or her shoes.

Sothis: I was originally quite worried about Sothis, since I thought she might be too sexualised. Fire Emblem has a bit of a tradition of uncomfortable loli characters, but fortunately in the game itself Sothis was not that bad, and definitely walks back the creepiness level from someone like Nowi. Instead it felt a bit more like Byleth was playing the same role as Micaiah, with a child-like fragment of the goddess accompanying him. I suspect other routes do more with Sothis, though, because on this route, you could probably cut Sothis from the game entirely without losing much. Azure Moon seems to be the route that is least interested in the history of the goddess, so I should not judge too prematurely.

Dimitri: The hero of this route, even if he sometimes feels like an anti-hero, or even just a psychotic maniac we unfortunately have to deal with. Of the three house leaders, I think it’s fair to say that Dimitri looks the most like a traditional FE protagonist, but as it shakes out, he might be one of the least. He seems to be quite straitlaced, reliable, and even bland at the start, but a lot of that turns out to be a cover and he goes on a real emotional journey, I suspect to a much greater extent than the other two. I do think his emotional arc goes a bit too fast and the game should have spent more time on it, but it was still a good idea, and I genuinely appreciate just how messed up and traumatised Dimitri is. He has issues, he suffers, he runs off into the wilderness and talks to ghosts, but I like it. I feel like he validates the idea that it’s okay to not have everything together. For him, overcoming his demons was the real triumph, and defeating the Empire was just a coda.

Dedue: He reminds me quite a bit of the Tellius games, with their overall subtheme of selfless service and lord/vassal relationships. Like Dimitri, he has issues, but because he’s such a quiet and reserved person, it can be easy to miss them. I suspect he’s a very easy character to misinterpret as well, both IC and OOC, where the temptation for Westerners to interpret him in terms of contemporary racial politics is going to cause problems. But ultimately I quite liked him, and felt that his faithful service really ennobles the person he serves. My one concern or regret around Dedue is that he isn’t present during the period of Dimitri’s madness, so we never get to see how his dedication to his lord might be tested. Would he enable or even encourage Dimitri’s instability? On the other hand, it seems like the belief that Dedue was dead was a major contributor to Dimitri’s madness in the first place, so perhaps if he’d been around, he would have held his friend back from the brink.

Felix: I like that Felix never stops entirely being an asshole. As time goes by his abrasiveness seems less important, and you get a better understanding of why he feels the way he does, but he’s still a bit of a jerk even to the very end, and that’s part of who he is. I also appreciate that he plays a useful role in being the only Blue Lion who actively dislikes knights and chivalry, so he’s important for the way he can provoke the others into justifying themselves. After all, the Blue Lions are a bit of a knight fan club, and he provides some contrast. Nonetheless, for all his scowling, he is a faithful retainer and can be relied on.

Ashe: He’s just a sweetheart, really. A commoner background contrasts nicely with the others, his lockpicking skill is useful, and he’s just generally very genuine and kind. Plus his appearance and voice-acting sell that he’s a bit younger than the others and on the callow side. I feel like he’s one of the characters who grows most in overall maturity, and his journey towards knighthood is probably the longest. He was a character I relied on a lot and I never got tired of him taking down the boss with a single arrow from halfway across the map. In my playthrough he ended up together with Petra and I am sure the knightly order they create will go on to be fantastic.

Sylvain: I’m a little confused by Sylvain. Early on it seems like he irrepressibly flirts with every girl he sees and always gets dumped, but later on, in part two, he clarifies that girls constantly flirt with him because they want to marry into a bloodline with a crest. It seems like it can’t be both ways? I suppose the best reading might be that Sylvain constantly flirts with strangers, who don’t know his heritage or his crest, while rejecting advances from people who do know about them, because what he really wants is someone who loves him as a person, not as a mere opportunity to increase in social status. For someone who seems so cheery and laid-back on the outside, he actually has some real problems beneath it all. That said, at times I was a bit suspicious of the translation: there are a few opportunities to call him a jerk, and I wonder if those were added, since otherwise his flirting seems like it’s presented as harmless, fun, or even a charming character quirk.

Mercedes: I didn’t think a whole lot of Mercedes at first: the caring healer character appears in a lot of FE games, she didn’t seem to put much of a twist on it, and I found her voice acting a little stilted at first. I suppose, to be fair, a soon-to-be-ordained friend of mine has a similar cadence, so it’s possible, but it did throw me off a little. For the most part I found Mercedes very reliable and my primary healer/mage, but I think a more full judgement of her character will need to wait until I do her paralogue with Caspar. Her family background and relationship with the Death Knight seem key to understanding her.

Annette: The translators and voice actor were clearly having fun with her dorky improvised songs, and I love them. They’re great. That said, Annette didn’t really come alive for me as a character until she got to interact with Gilbert. He’s probably a more interesting character than she is, really, but their relationship is what makes them both start to stand out. Overall I find her likeable and reliable, but, Gilbert aside, not one of the most fascinating characters on the roster.

Ingrid: Again, a quite straightforward character in many ways. She wants to be a knight. She trains hard. She becomes a knight. Okay. I did find it a bit odd that even at the end of the game she still talks about wanting to be a knight, even though she’s spent the last few missions entirely in the Falcon Knight and Holy Knight classes, has battled across the continent at the side of her liege, and has defeated countless enemy champions. Eventually I wanted to ask her, “What more could you possibly need to do before you’re a knight?” There is some drama around marriage and social expectations for her as well, and it surprised me that it took her so long to figure out that she could be a knight and serve her family. Her family don’t want a political alliance through marriage or anything: it is specifically money and resources that they need. Knighthood seems like a career that can bring you great wealth – plunder, ransoms, tournament rewards, etc. – so it seems like knighthood, no less than marriage to a wealthy noble after a crest, could be a path to restoring her family’s fortunes. (Also, she was the one I S-supported, so I suppose the marriage plan worked out anyway. *shrug*)

Ferdinand: Everything about him is laser-focused on this question of, “What is nobility?” At times it got a bit tedious, and I wanted him to just shut up about being a noble for five minutes. However, while he laid it on a bit thick sometimes, what I like about him is the way that his character development seems like it could really change based on which route he ends up in. After Edelgard declares war and dispossesses his father, he has a really interesting choice to make: take up arms against her and join the resistance, or accept her offer of rank and power in the Empire. Since I recruited him at the very last minute, in the last month before the assault on the monastery, I might have imagined him struggling with that choice, and I like to picture him debating the importance of visible rank and status to the nobility that he tries so hard to achieve. I could easily imagine him going either way on that choice, believing in Edelgard’s vision or passionately warring against it, and that to me made him much more interesting.

Bernadetta: Her voice actor was clearly having a ton of fun. The energy she brought to the role made the character very entertaining to listen to. That said, I feel bad for her: her extreme social anxiety is sometimes played for laughs, but knowing that it’s the result of an abusive childhood makes it quite a bit less funny. Oddly my favourite support with her was Bernadetta/Sylvain, mainly because of the supports that I saw, he was the only one who made a serious attempt to respect her boundaries and to communicate with her in a way she would find comfortable. Seriously, writing her a letter and tucking it into a book was quite clever and sensitive of him... even if he ruined it by just walking up afterwards and saying hello.

Dorothea: Judging from the online stats the game showed on loading screens, Dorothea must be one of the most popular characters in the game, and was deployed almost every mission. This makes it a bit awkward that I never really deployed her at all, or focused much on her. I don’t have anything against her, and she seems interesting enough, but I suppose I already had enough mages and other people were higher priority. Oh dear. Maybe next time. She seems to be a popular choice for the dancer class, but since I made Marianne my dancer…

Petra: On the other hand, I did like Petra a lot, built her as an assassin, and got a lot of use from her. I wonder what her odd speech pattern is in Japanese? Looks like in Japanese she misunderstands idioms, rather than misuses the present continuous tense. At any rate, I really like the role Petra plays in worldbuilding, since her status as an outsider taken to the empire to be educated as a hostage serves to characterise both Brigid and the empire itself. Like Ferdinand, I also think she’s in a fascinating position where she could plausibly end up either pro- or anti-empire. I enjoyed being able to fight for freedom and self-determination, but I could also see her buying into Edelgard’s vision of a reformed empire. That sort of flexibility seems really valuable in a game with different routes like this.

Raphael: Unfortunately another character I recruited only at the last minute and didn’t get to spend that much time with. The fact that I avoided brawlers probably didn’t help. However, from what I did see, I liked that they included a character who genuinely struggles with his studies, and I also thought it interesting that he presents yet another character who wants to be a knight, but for a totally different reason. Ashe has a romantic view of knighthood; Ingrid has a relatively romantic view as well but also thinks of fighting for her ideals; Felix outright hates knighthood and chivalry as a bunch of lies. In contrast, Raphael’s pragmatism is a little refreshing. He just wants to support his family, given his strength fighting seems like a good way to do it, and knighthood promises more stability than mercenary work. Good for him.

Ignatz: And yet another character thinking about knighthood, albeit again for a different reason. He doesn’t want to be a knight as such, but has to because it’s his duty. At times even I got a bit sick of the game constantly talking about knighthood, but the wide range of opinions on it was definitely a good thing. Alas, all Ignatz wants to do is paint and worship the goddess. Sadly I used Ashe as my main archer, so I didn’t see as much of Ignatz as I might have liked. Another playthrough, then.

Lysithea: See above, really. I get the impression she’s a quite popular character, but as with Dorothea, I already had a few mages and didn’t have much need for her. I’m guessing she would have a lot more importance on a route where her backstory with what are presumably creepy Slitherer magical experiments is more relevant? As it is, sorry, I just didn’t see that much. Young, likes sweets, ambitious in order to help her family because she hasn’t got long to live… but that’s about all I got.

Marianne: On the other hand, I did use Marianne quite extensively. She was my backup healer after Mercedes, and she was my dancer, so she was very useful. (Some might say it was cruel to make her dance in public: I thought it might help build her confidence!) Her paralogue also stood out to me as one of the most interesting and fun. At first I thought her self-loathing might be irrational or a symptom of depression, but it turns out that she actually has quite an understandable reason for thinking that she’s awful and that no one should  ever get close to her. Bringing peace to her ancestor and giving her the opportunity to increase her confidence and bloom as a person was very heartwarming. Her character arc gave me some WAFFy feelings, and I enjoy that sometimes.

Leonie: It’s weird to me that a character defined by her relationship with Jeralt, the player’s father, is so easy to miss recruiting. Nonetheless I did pick her up, because I love cavaliers and use far too many of them. Still, most of the other cavaliers were nobles, which made Leonie’s role as a mercenary knight a nice change. I think it might have worked better, though, if I’d known a bit more about the role of mercenaries in Fódlan. Are there mercenary companies? How do they usually find work? It would have been nice to know a bit more about the world that Byleth supposedly comes from, and which Leonie is so keen to break into.

Seteth: I was not a big fan of Seteth at first, but he grew on me, which surprises me particularly since I was on a route that never actually explains what his deal is. I feel like every long-term series fan, on meeting Seteth and Flayn, must have gone “oh they’re dragons”, because they fit that archetype just so closely, but somehow I got through the entire arc without anyone figuring it out. Nonetheless, while he starts off as quite suspicious of you, and even hostile, I enjoyed how further supports gradually humanised him. Seteth/Felix or Seteth/Ingrid, for instance, stood out to me as nice: the older man going out of his way to give practical advice to someone who’s still sorting himself or herself out. He’s a good mentor. I know often the thing people remember about Fire Emblem is the young protagonists and the shipping and so on, but sometimes it’s the older, more mature characters that I find the most interesting.

Flayn: In contrast, I did not find Flayn as interesting as Seteth. She’s a nice enough person, and the enthusiasm of the Flayn/Dedue support was cute, but ultimately I didn’t see that much of her. Mercedes and Marianne were my primary healers, and Byleth had a high Faith skill as well, so I didn’t need another one and didn’t take her along that often. I hope there are more depths, because as it is, I wasn’t that struck by her.

Hanneman: Another character I generally did not take along, so most of what I learned about Hanneman was around crests and his scientific curiosity. I think Hanneman supports my previous speculation that Fódlan might be starting on an intellectual renaissance at the time of the game. He is the Father of Crestology, even though crests have been known for a thousand years. That suggests that the organised, academic study of such matters is in its infancy.

Manuela: Again, not someone I looked at too closely, and her most obvious character trait, her romantic loneliness, could be a little bit cringeworthy at times. I would have to do more supports and look more closely at her to form a stronger opinion. The parts that I found most interesting with regard to her were about her history with the opera. Her relationship with Dorothea seems like it might reveal some more about both of them, but alas I didn’t use each character much.

Gilbert: On the other hand, I did use Gilbert quite a lot, since Dedue went missing for a while and I needed a substitute tank. Gilbert is clearly a loyal man who has suffered an immense amount, especially under the weight of guilt and self-doubt. It’s striking that he abandoned his family and homeland and fled to the church in order to assuage the weight of guilt he felt for the king’s death; but in the end the separation from his family only intensified feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Nonetheless, despite being a man who’s really screwed quite a lot up, he stoically tries to coordinate the Faerghus war effort, even when Dimitri is in his worst state. I was very glad to eventually get the Annette/Gilbert paired ending, as a valuable reminder that even at Gilbert’s age, it is possible to start healing and putting your life back together.

Alois: I really only got the Byleth support with Alois, so I don’t have that much to say. His cheery optimism is a nice change after a lot of the other faculty and knights are either serious or sad, and I enjoy horrible puns as much as the next man, but I think I need to see more.

Catherine: Speaking of cheery knights, Catherine’s rough-and-tumble confidence is also pretty appealing. Unlike the students, Catherine is strong and she knows that she’s strong, with a confidence that comes of years of fighting. What I saw of her personality I generally liked, and I learned a bit about her history, but I’m going to hold off on any further comments until I get some more context for her and Rhea. She is obviously incredibly devoted to the archbishop who saved her life, and in some ways seems to have reinvented her life from who she was before (cf. Dedue, the loyal service theme again), but I think I should need to see a route where Rhea plays a larger role before I come to conclusions.

Shamir: I like Shamir quite a lot, and she might be my favourite of the knights, even though she doesn’t have much to do with the actual plot. Her outsider status is the most striking thing about her: unlike pretty much everyone else, she has no personal investment in Fódlan or its politics, which frees her to focus on the needs of the moment. I would like to know a bit more about Dagda and Brigid, to be honest, but I suspect I’ve seen all there is to see already...

Cyril: Unfortunately I never used him. I can tell that he’s the Est of the game, a young character who probably has excellent growths and can excel in any class, but my roster felt pretty complete by the time I got him, he didn’t seem like he had interesting relationships with other characters that I might want to explore, and he’s so young that I feel uncomfortable making him a soldier. I can completely accept that there might be really good material around him, perhaps especially on the Golden Deer route where Almyra might come up, but as it is I don’t know any of it.

Anna: Yep, she’s Anna. Not much to say. Anna is always the same character, and Fódlan’s Anna doesn’t seem particularly special or unique.

 …phew, that took much longer than I thought. These games and their giant casts, man.

[gascon-en-exil]

FE16 Black Eagles (Church) Liveblogging

Chapters 20-21. The end, for the fourth and final time.

Shambhala is the same as it is in Verdant Wind - moving on.

Chapter 21, conversely, feels at first like a playable postgame. There’s no immediate plot hook, and during exploration everyone is talking about either how the war is over or how Byleth is going to become leader of Fódlan and will be the best ever because self-insert. Seteth even gives you the option to skip to the end of the month, which I took because I’m feeling pretty done with this game for the moment. I just missed a few final grinding opportunities.

Incidentally, I noticed I had Sothis as an option for S rank in some of my other playthroughs but not this one. I thought she didn’t have any requirements, but it seems like she does?

Silver Snow’s endgame though...whew. There’s a lot of heavy-hitting monsters that deal magical damage, and the Immaculate One seemed a good bit tankier than her Crimson Flower incarnation. She’s also got a very long range AoE attack she can use every turn, so overall she’s a bit more dangerous than Hegemon Edelgard. I’m only going off of Normal of course, and my playthrough of Azure Moon was rougher than the others being my first, but if I had to rank the final chapters in terms of difficulty it would probably be Azure Moon = Silver Snow > Crimson Flower > Verdant Wind.

Looking through the extras afterward to see if I missed anything apart from supports, apparently there are two music tracks that require you to be using the Japanese audio? The one of Rhea singing after the ball, and the credits, at least according to GameFAQs

Story/Character observations

Once again, it’s the former Eagles who carry most of the unique emotional heft for this route. I still don’t care about Caspar’s father dying offscreen (either in battle or by offering himself up for trial and execution, it’s not really clear) even though Dorothea also cries over him. Bernadetta reveals that the reason she’s much more confident in Crimson Flower is because Edelgard had had her father placed under house arrest, but after her death on this route he’s been released and she asks Byleth to either have him arrested again or exiled. I am...not touching that, with all the wank over Bernadetta. On a lighter note, Ferdinand wonders if his huge hole can ever be filled - the hole in his heart, that is. In light of his acknowledgement of Hubert last chapter, I’m going to guess that he might not be only talking about the end of the Empire here.

The ginger warlock concerned for Dedue returns. Someone write a crack fic about them, or at least draw some porn.

A cleric NPC says that Byleth will be canonized after all they’ve done. In case this route making your self-insert a pope and supreme leader of an entire continent weren’t enough, you also get sainthood!

The content of Rhea’s big reveal is rather different here than in Verdant Wind, less about how Nemesis and the Agarthans violated her kin and more about the many different ways in which she and Byleth are related...one battle before you can marry her. Nice of her to lay out the incest so neatly.

But speaking of Nemesis...the game makes no attempt to explain why he’s resurrected upon the destruction of Shambhala in Verdant Wind, but not in Silver Snow. On a Doylist level I absolutely understand the difference in these routes’ final bosses, but thematic resonance aside it’s still weird. It doesn’t help that there’s zero build-up to Rhea’s transformation into the Immaculate One either, as if she develops sudden onset dragon madness because she realizes you still need a final boss.

It’s a little obscured (some references were lost in translation, from what I’ve read), but I finally got my answer for my question about Tomas’s lines about the church’s cardinals way back in one of the game’s first chapters. The White Beasts that support the Immaculate One in the final battle are identified as cardinals in their class description, and as Seteth explains the highest ranking members of the church drank Rhea’s blood and received pieces of Crest stones so that they would transform when she did. Good on them for working in such a blatant allusion to the Eucharist, but it could have done with more setup than around two lines in the last chapter. Also, Tomas knowing something about the cardinals would seem to imply something. Were the Agarthans aware of these blood rituals? Is this where they got the idea to use Crest stones to turn people into Demonic Beasts - or did Rhea get the idea from them?

In the end I’m not sure why the fandom sometimes refers to this as Rhea’s route when the main figure is clearly Byleth. I’m also not sure why they used two cutscenes to develop the antagonism between Byleth and Edelgard only to ignore them otherwise. Edelgard just doesn’t matter to anyone’s emotional arc in Silver Snow, and while that’s true of all the house leaders and their followers (minus Dedue, still carrying out his and Dimitri’s tragic Verdant Wind storyline half offscreen) it was surprising coming from Verdant Wind where I expected more out of her. It’s as though the game expects the player to assume that Edelgard is emotionally invested in Byleth in all routes regardless of anything they do. In summary, Silver Snow is essential for understanding who and what exactly Byleth is and how they relate to Rhea, but it’s largely superfluous otherwise. 

That wraps up my first full run of all the main story content of Three Houses. I’m not quite done liveblogging however - I’ve got some notes for the things I’ll have to pick up on future playthroughs.