#it'd make sense though for Ryoma to only become 'Lord' material at the end of BR or in Rev

[randomnameless]

Scrolling through some old posts on a whim and found this, in response to an anon pointing out how stupid it was for Claude to not know about poverty in Almyra:

To be fair, that's also something I ranted about in Birthrout when Ryoma went all "i never knew people in Nohr were starving" because there's no way a crown prince and future heir of a nation doesn't know basic things about his immediate neighbours -

While you went on to point out that it's worse in Three Houses' case because it's a prince not knowing about basic details of his own nation instead of a prince not knowing about basic details of his neighbouring nation, i'd like to add that it's even more justified in Fates' case due to one of the biggest and most consistent issues with Hoshido being it's isolationism and lack of care for the issues of other countries, made even worse by the fact that it's general populace despises Nohrians due to the war:

Azura, in her C-Support with Corrin in Revelation: I suppose the carefree attitude of Hoshido might look like indifference to others. It could give people the impression that Hoshidans are very self-centered. So long as there is peace, the people in Hoshido seem uninterested in the world.

Shura, chapter 19 of Birthright: The day Kohga fell to Mokushu, almost all of my people were slaughtered. I was a child... Chased from my homeland and separated from the other survivors. Even as a refugee, I was denied entry to Hoshido. So I wound up in Nohr. I was exiled and alone. My only choice was to steal or die. You can guess what I chose. I've been here ever since, searching for others like me and trying to stay afloat...

Azura, in a line that was removed during localization and changed into her being the only person to suffer suspicion from the general populace, Chapter 9 of Conquest: But ever since the war started, everyone has changed. After you, a Hoshido princess, defected to Nohr… Anyone who had even a little involvement with the enemy could not be trusted, and a movement to eliminate them began. And the brunt of it… Was directed at me, because I was born in Nohr.

With all that in mind, i actually find it pretty reasonable for Ryoma to not know about Nohr's food shortage; he was born and raised in a country that's, at best, willfully ignorant and uncaring of the issues other countries face and, at worst, actively murderous towards anyone with even the slightest involvement with the enemy nation it's at war with. While his own prejudice against Nohr doesn't go quite that far, it's very consistent throughout Conquest that he doesn't think very highly of it either, calling it's ways treacherous, automatically assuming they tricked Corrin just because she chose to go back to Nohr, and assuming that Corrin was lying to him and trying to trick him to win their duel due to what they were taught while in Nohr (using fateswartable's translations here since Treehouse massively exaggerated Ryoma's grudge against Nohr):

Ryoma, Chapter 6 of Conquest: Like hell I’d give up…! I have to make Kamui come to her senses. Anyway it was you, the Nohr royal family, that seduced her, right!?

Xander: Bullshit…We did no such thing. Kamui, of her own free will, chose us.

Ryoma: Damn…! I know your way of doing things. You always use dirty tricks to torment the people of Hoshido! Defeat me fair and square in a fight and then you can speak of victory!

Corrin, boss convo in chapter 25 of CQ while Ryoma still wrongly believes that they killed Hinoka: Ryouma- please stop fighting! I want to speak with you! There’s more to what happened to Hinoka, so please listen, brother!

Ryoma: Hou…Are you trying to catch me off guard? By seeing the face of the sister that killed Hinoka? Nohr’s ways are treacherous…but it’s a shame. No matter what you say, my heart shall remain steadfast. I can no longer think of you as my little sister! Draw your sword!!! Kamui!!!!!!

Given his own initial prejudice against Nohr, coupled with the isolationist culture of Hoshido, i find it reasonable for him to only bother learning about important military strongholds in Nohr and not bother investigating what life's like for the peasants there, especially since he doesn't hold the country in high regard at the start of Birthright and only softens up to it and vows to help it with it's resource problem once he finds out that most of the people there are starving, meaning he wouldn't have bothered spending any more time researching Nohr than was helpful for the war effort.

Hahaha,

I hope my 2014 -5 ramblings weren't completely nonsensical, I haven't revisited them in a while lol

I still think Ryoma, who's not a random but the crown Prince, should at least have known a bit, even if his country is marked by extreme prejudice and isolationism, about Nohr - especially since Nohr is the country who has tried to invade them since Garon (or Gooron?) was king, and they're fighting since, well, forever.

But taking his prejudice into account, and Ryoma's own faults (he's very impulsive, not unlike his own son?), it sort of makes sense, even if I still think that's not an optimal situation for the next heir to only have the "bcs they're evil/norhians it's in their nature" answer to the usual question "why are Nohrians attacking us".

Granted, 2014-2015 was part of my Jugdral period, where both games took care to have their Lord be explained why the frick they are fighting - it's mostly important regarding Leif, who gets told by August that if Thracians are bandits and targeted the Mansterian lands, it's because they are starving and cannot import food from the North bcs Leif's forefathers and the Mansterians nobles don't want to share food.

So Leif's journey from "Thracian Hyenas!" to "Gods why are those people starving why aren't we trading food with them" to being the King of the unified peninsula, aka both Thracians and Mansterians, felt a regular, normal journey.

Ryoma being blocked at the "Nohrian hyenas" step felt a bit underwhelming in comparison, especially since, unlike Leif, he supposedly received all the education befitting a heir and hasn't been on the run for 10 years.

But ultimately everything boils down to "different games, different situations", and more over, different characters. Ryoma is biased, arrogant and impulsive - and there's no FE8!Seth, FE5!August, hell, even FE13!Fredo to tell him to stop and start being a King or acting as the leader of a State.