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furry-emblem · 3 years

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a very unfocused analysis on why edelgard stans are mostly lgbt

I am constantly thinking about how Edelgard just doesn’t seem designed to appeal to cishet men. Like the joke is that Bleagles is the Gay House, but everything about her feels deliberately non-hetero. She’s dressed in sharp outfits covering her upper body, with proportions that don’t seem exaggerated. Her poise and the way she effortlessly flourishes her axe exhibits an air of coolness. While titties out =/= character of no substance, Edelgard being dressed more modestly suggests that she wasn’t designed with male-centred fanservice in mind. And she still looks absolutely stunning in her more modest attire (like seriously, I haven’t felt the need to return to cosplay in years but I want to do her academy look so bad).

Edelgard is intense. She does not mince her words and she is constantly evaluating you. Though she tries, she has a difficult time understanding her peers initially. Early on, she talks about how she would sacrifice herself and others in the name of some greater good. She is terrible at communicating with her peers. She has to be seen as infallible. Her heart has been hardened for years and she assumes she has to stay that way. She also assumes everyone mourns the same way she does - which is why she (kind of insensitively) insists you move on when Jeralt dies. Because to her, grief has to be channeled towards action, or else you’ll get lost in it. This attitude is demonstrated time and time again as she presses on. It can make her come off as cold and unfeeling - but look closer, and she’s anything but. Her story is ultimately about her realizing that to achieve her goals, she needs to let people in and allow herself to want things like cakes and tea parties and lazy days in peace. The game leaves the player guessing as to how involved the Flame Emperor was in each Part I event, makes you feel hurt by her betrayal, and leaves you with a choice: do you follow the orders of the woman who tried to make you a god without your consent, or a young girl with questionable morals about to throw the world into upheaval?

Choosing her of your own volition (not for completionist reasons) requires the basic ability to sympathize with a woman’s pain. It also requires the player to read beyond her unwavering will and dubious methods to get a sense of how deep that pain goes and how the theme of humanity relates to her differently in each route. The player must be able to see a young woman’s desperate resolve to change the world so it stops exploiting people and ruining lives. They must be able to accept the fact that women can make the same morally wrong and ambivalent decisions that complicated male characters get to make all the time and still be the one to root for. This is not unique to LGBT+ people, but this population is likely to understand why Edelgard feels so strongly about why she has to change the system.

I don’t think “Edelgard gets undue criticism because she’s a woman” captures the full picture. An important aspect of her treatment by certain parts of the fandom is that she’s a radical woman. Her hatred of the Church and the Crest system resonates way harder with people who have been hurt by institutions that are deeply engrained in our society. Siding with her means siding against the Church - which, while different from real world religious institutions, still invokes language about “sin” and “punishment. Choosing Edelgard will likely hit different if homophobic and transphobic Christians used that rhetoric against you. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that the reason F/F Edeleth is the more popular iteration of that ship because most people who would choose to S-support Edelgard are LGBT+ themselves. This is not a revelation. To anyone in the community, it’s fairly obvious.

Crimson Flower was my first route. I went into the game knowing absolutely nothing. I played it during the last week of 2020 and hoo boy was it cathartic. I felt like I was living out a gay revolution power fantasy, where I could truly change systems of oppression while fighting alongside a group of troubled students I’d shaped the lives of. Through your unwavering support, Edelgard learns that she needs to be human, that she must listen to her friends, and that she’s allowed to enjoy the world she’s creating. I love this character so much. It has been six months since I first played and I am still analyzing her, because there’s so much depth. Yet so many people fail to see that depth and dismiss her as evil, because they never had the will to understand complicated women in the first place.

#interesting analysis #edelgard von hresvelg #edelgard #discussion #fe3h

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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It is a hat.

cihols hat

#fe3h #rhea #seteth #fe3h spoilers

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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The best kind of edelgard critical.

Loungewear Edelgard landing a critical hit on Dimitri

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

#edelgard #fe3h

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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That's very pretty.

Flayn is adorable!!

And you can see more detail like Rhea and Seteth on the full size original picture.

————————————- www.patreon.com/fluttershy520 Hello everyone! This is my patreon,if you like my works, you can support me by patreon, thanks!

#fe3h #flayn #seteth #rhea

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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three houses would have been much much funnier if the other classes independently made promises to reunite at the monastery in 5 years too. like you rock up with dimitri and the boys and claude is already there like. haha uh hi. just like our school days right :) and well hes not an enemy so why not let him and the golden deer stay its fine. and then edelgard fucking shows up,

#that would be pretty funny #fe3h #claude #dmitri #edelgard

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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That entire thing is goddamn beautiful.

The true biggest flaw of Fe3h is Fódlan doesn't have a Halloween. Can you tell me Hubert and Bernadetta wouldn't go all out for Halloween?

The idea for the event comes about during the White Heron Cup, where Bernie expresses that the dance would be a lot less scary if she could hide her face. She and Hubert had just undergone their B support and Hubert is still looking for ways to make Bernie comfortable around him while not sacrificing his own self-expression. Event Planner Hubert, who secretly enjoys parties but wishes they weren't filled with pretention, invites everyone to a "mysterious costume party" and frame it as a masquerade ball. (We're ignoring the fact that in canon he's like "really, the archbishop wants to throw a party right now?"). With the Vestra planning skills passed down for generations, he takes over the dining hall one night and books Manuela and Dorothea as entertainment (Ferdinand also joins, because he will take any and all opportunity to sing). Ideally, he decorates with as many skulls as he could possibly accumulate (”where did this come from?” “*evil laugh* wouldn’t you like to know”) and many candles. Even for Hubert, however, skulls are hard to come by, so Bernie ends up carving faces into pumpkins. Her weird idea is met with delight. The whole scene is slick and dark and the dance itself is held at midnight.

It 100% gets shut down in the middle, but it sure as hell was worth it.

What Everyone in Black Eagles Wears:

Edelgard - *slams fist on table* valkyrie Edelgard!!! She and Hubert make a set of black wings with leftover feathers from the Flame Emperor costume and she uses her armour from class as a template. She is many girls' gay awakening that night.

Hubert - a Dark Falcon Knight costume complete with a black helmet with plummage. It covers his eyes sharply, in red, and his cape trails behind him on the ground.The black feather details are kinda sus, but people go "oh it's just Hubert being dramatic". He's just too obvious to be involved in the Flame Emperor plot, come on now . . .

Bernadetta - of course I'm putting Bernie-bear in a bear costume. She has an adorable brown cloak with little bear ears on top that she made herself. The hood comes down really low, so much so that she put slits for her eyes. After the event she starts attending class like that. Byleth wants to make it the house uniform on the battlefield.

Dorothea - she borrows one of Manuela's old costumes, from one of her starring roles as a showgirl who marries into nobility. There are full peacock feathers circling her and there’s more jewels on it than she’d ever worn in her life. Manuela’s performance as this role was her bi awakening and wearing the costume feels too sacred (”if I sneeze in this outfit I will destroy it and owe the opera money even though the production is long over and Manuela owns it”). Petra notes that Dorothea is reminding her of home, because she looks like an exotic bird. She takes breaks from singing to flirt with the Bleagles girls mingle!

Ferdinand - Dorothea tells him he'll be in her good graces if he comes dressed as a bee. Not only does he oblige, but he goes all out. He wears a black jacket with sharp tailcoats to emulate a stinger, a black-and-yellow striped shirt, a gold vest, and a set of wings. He wears a bee antennae headpiece with flowers attached to it. Dorothea feels a little bad for making him go through the effort but he is genuinely embracing the bee lifestyle and everyone is super impressed with him.

Caspar - he just wears his battlefield clothes. (I made him a grappler in my first playthrough, so I’m imagining him in that beautiful outfit). When asked if he dressed up, he claims that he’s a warrior.

Linhardt - draws whiskers on his face and claims he's a cat. Everyone teases him for being low effort until Byleth walks in, also with cat whisker face paint and no other effort.

Petra - she initially panics because she wants to attend but has nothing suitable. She doesn’t want to wear any of her Brigidian clothes because they are not costumes. Inspiration hits her one day when Byleth accidentally hits her with their trailing jacket sleeves while zooming through the monastery at a speed no one goes at in their everyday life. She borrows a jacket and slumps it over her shoulders, puts her hair down, and tries to keep her expression blank. She even makes a copy of the Sword of the Creator. The costume is a massive hit.

Additionally, consider the following interaction:

Edelgard: It's no use. Nothing I own is suitable for the occassion!

Hubert: Well, save for that one costume.

Edelgard: . . . I am not exposing myself as the Flame Emperor for a party

#fe3h #black eagles

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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Claude best boi.

edelgard & dimitri: spin weapon, do a cute little pose after they defeat their opponents

claude: gives his enemies an archer taunt that basically means “go ahead, cut off my fingers. i dare you”

#fe3h #claude #holy shit that's cool

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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every so often I think of how this one person i know said Edelgard was the least interesting lord, as if she didn’t have both the crest of Seiros and the crest of Nemesis in her; as if she isn’t a direct parallel/foil to like 3 separate characters (Byleth, Seiros, Dimitri); as if she didn’t have the unwavering drive to abolish an oppressive system; as if she wasn’t working with the people who abused her and playing them at the same time; as if her having inaccurate information doesn’t contribute to the game’s theme of perspective and finding the truth in a series of partial-truths; as if her goals aren’t achieved on a partial level throughout each route; as if she doesn’t learn from her friends that their perspectives will make her world the place she needs it to be; as if she doesn’t believe that despite the net good her acts will do, she cannot paint herself as a hero; as if she isn’t essentially a lonely, hurt person at the end of the day -

interest is subjective but Edelgard is the entire fucking game

#i like you analysis #edelgard #fe3h #fe3h discussion

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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You have accurately captured how Rhea feels if Crimson Flower was your first route.

To be fair to Byleth, Rhea gave her the sword

Commission info

#im laughing #this comic is great #fe3h #byleth #rhea #petra #i also like how you drew rhea's face #it has angry grandma energy

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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

Byleth

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

Rhea

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

Yuri

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

Seteth

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

Dmitri

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

Claude

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

Edelgard

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

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

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

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

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

#fe3h #fe3h discussion #byleth #rhea #edelgard #claude #dmitri #yuri #seteth #I feel like seteth is less of a leader and more like Byleth's and Rhea's retainer #but whatever #I like all of the three major house leaders #byleth and rhea are the only two characters here that I dislike #and with rhea there's a heavy dose of ''i haven't formed my entire opinion yet''#i think i'd like rhea better if I could make her punch people in the face #like that would be a pretty strong motivator to get me to play silver snow #dick slam rhea would be the mvp of life #a solid meme capable of maybe even outmeming claude in my eyes

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furry-emblem · 3 years

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I feel like 3H discourse gets fucked over a bit by people not taking into account that characters will say inaccurate information (without it having to be a plot hole). Perspective is a huge theme in Three Houses and characters are going to make, sometimes, dramatic actions based off that misinformation.

Like, Dmitri accuses Edelgard of being involved in the Tragedy of Duscur, but, she was like, 12 when that happened. It's a lot more likely that Edelgard was being experimented on or recovering from experimentation during that point in time considering that the Tragedy happens not long after Edelgard and Dmitri last see each other.

Likewise, Setheth accuses Edelgard of trying to become a false goddess when that's not even remotely close to her goals.

Edelgard makes a ton of false accusations and misconceptions about Rhea. She accuses Rhea of being a power hungry inhumane tyrant who has no regard for life outside her own when that just isn't remotely accurate.

And then there's Claude, literally the only major faction leader that cares to uncover the truth and nuances of everyone's decisions. He's literally the only faction leader to not act like his version of events is the definitive truth. He acknowledges that he and Edelgard are fighting for similar things: a system overhaul of Fodlan. He also doesn't oppose the Church because he's learned enough about it to want to keep it's institution in place. That's why he's the only faction leader that can survive in every route (I'd consider Seteth and Rhea to share the role as Church Leader since Seteth leads the Church Route but Rhea's the one actually in charge of the Church). Claude is also the only leader that doesn't make any false claims about other factions. I said a while ago that Claude would make the best ruler and this is why.

But going back to what I said earlier about discourse, this impacts discourse drastically because people can just pick whichever version of events they prefer and there's probably a character who claimed it went that way. The plot also doesn't seek to clarify events one way or the other in any route. So even if you've played every route, it's up to the player to make judgment calls on who's speaking out of their ass.

Between all the relevant character and plot details the game hides behind supports, endings, and other easily missable content and the fact that no two characters interpret the series of events that happen in the plot the same way (due to coming from various background, being present for some stuff but not others, having different priorities and biases that will cause them to interpret different things in different ways, etc.), no two players are likely going to interpret the events of 3 Houses the same either.

So, if you want to talk 3H, please acknowledge that none of the characters should be taken solely on their word, especially when describing major things. With the examples I gave earlier of misinformation in the game, it makes sense that Dmitri would place the blame of the Tragedy of Duscur almost entirely on Edelgard because he doesn't know about the Agarthans or Edelgard's history with them. It makes sense that Edelgard has a lot of misconceptions about the Church because once you start completely rewriting and erasing history (and the Church does openly censor literature, which is shown in Claude's route), any possible "true story" is more likely than the story you're giving. Alongside that, Edelgard is getting most of her information from the Agarthans and a very private source only accessible to the Imperial Family. It makes sense that Seteth might assume that Edelgard is trying to become a false god because he's been helping lead a religion based on lies for centuries. When you're trying to understand some part of Three Houses, you have to think about where that information came from, what factors might be biasing that information, and that there might be some detail that shines a new light on that information somewhere else in the game that you're missing. And that's generally a good philosophy to have when processing any information.

That's something I like about Three Houses. I like how you have to sort through a ton of biases and misinformation within the game to understand the story. If you let your own biases get away from you too much, you're going to miss the larger picture. The game let's you know exactly where everyone is coming from in some way and (almost) everyone is given a sympathetic eye in at least one route. And (almost) everyone is viewed as irredeemable in at least one route.

#fe3h #edelgard #claude #dmitri #seteth #fe3h discussion #there are a lot of factors that makes 3H not a great game for discourse and this is one of them

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