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icharchivist · 10 months

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Imagine being King Carl who overall is a decent and reasonable leader (at least I can't think of anything pointing to the contrary off the top of my head rn) and getting attacked by the King of Wales because he was driven insane by literal hell demons while grieving his mom but then he just magically got better and now everyone wants to hop on his dick because he's a gacha game bishounen

(i'm assuming both asks are related)

I mean King Carl enhabled Isabela so much so it poisoned his whole country while also focusing his knight forces on hunting Siegfried and protecting Sylph rather than protecting the people. I get what you're getting at, but him being a bad King at the start of the story is the reason we're here to start with :sob:

LIKE Aglovale did commit crimes, he committed treason, infiltrated an enemy country to make it implode from the inside, and his only motivation for that was indeed "demons driven insanity bc he wanted to see his mom again :(", i'm not defending Aglovale here, his crimes were Really Bad.

If anything Aglovale's "redeeming quality" is that his whole villain arc only lasted a few months, since The Union of the Countries (Savior of Dalmore) happened a bit after the One Year Anniversary of his reign and others timelines hints we have here and there establish that.

I'm not intending to dunk on King Carl (i didn't intend to turn the previous jokey post into a meta lmao esp since the point of the plot was superficial beauty), he's currently doing his best to be a better King and rights his wrongs.

But the Feendrache storyline starts out with the notion that Carl was a bad king due to how he basically enabled Isabela and defended her and turned a blind eyes to her acts. The Plot also condemns him for not taking enough precautions to make sure no one would try to take down the country after Isabela was first taken down.

It's the whole crux of the conflict of Lancelot's base 5*, when we learn that the people of Feendrache don't trust the King anymore because it has been the neglect of the King that had led to poisoning the land and countless of attacks on the land without properly offering protection to the people, and that it really brings conflict for Lancelot because he is torn between his blind duty to the kingdom (a coping mechanism he developed to "not be like Siegfried" at a time he felt betrayed by him), and the fact he cannot actually defend the King while the people are right to be upset at the King.

Which is why the resolution of this FE, set right after 4KoaFK, is that Lancelot takes in Percival's advice that it's not blind devotion to his country, but to the values of his country, that he should stand for, and if the King isn't going to follow those values, then Lancelot has to argue with it. And the resolution comes from Carl coming to Lancelot and telling him he totally agrees he has been a terrible king and he had driven Lancelot in a corner where Lancelot couldn't even advise him and as a result, he left himself and the Kingdom vulnerable.

whenever *you* agree about Carl's responsability in all of that or not is one thing, but the story is pretty much blaming Carl for most of what went wrong, he is NOT framed as a good king in the first few events, it's only in BFAF that he starts to take initiative that makes him respectable by his knights and such work as a contrast to Aglovale who is losing his sanity at this point.

Because we spend most of the story with the knights it's easier to see what was the direct harm caused by the actions, and as such we see Aglovale and Isabela as the ones who hurt us because of Aglovale's and Isabela's actual harmful actions and the vague consequences of "war" in general. But there's an aspect of long lasting consequences that ends up being different especially on a politic level.

Aglovale still took good care of Wales during the war, it shocked Percival at the time. Aglovale always had the opinions of the people by his side, and since him hurting the others countries was temporary despite the conniving approach to it all, Aglovale remained to the eyes of his people, a good King. Carl did NOT take a good care of his people during the calm time of his reign while he was being manipulated by Isabela, and it's something that is put in focus a lot.

And I think it's worth discussing because the Dragon Knights storyline is, to me, the pinnacle of "paying the price for the sins of the past", the storyline. And it goes for all of them, Aglovale is also paying the price directly of what his father had started with the whole Otherworld dealing for example.

Feendrache meanwhile is set up to constantly having to pay the price of how Isabela manipulated the Kings at the time.

Whatever is going to happen with the Merlin storyline, we know for a fact the starting incident is that King Josef apparently promised to help his kingdom, and then he left them to be destroyed. The possibility that it's Josef taking that decision by himself sure is there, but it's also extremely likely Isabela was involved. It doesn't change the fact that if Isabela manipulated the King, the King enabled a situation that led to a mass genocide.

as long as King Josef and King Carl have done Isabela's bidding, they endangered countless of people on a more political scale than personal scale.

And once again i don't mean to be defending Aglovale, because he still did fucked up shits, but framing Carl as someone who is mostly a chill king and stuff is, imo, going past the actual consequences of how him "being chill" for a long time meant "neglecting his people who were being slowly poisoned because he turned a blind eye to his advisor's behavior".

Especially considering how much the Dragon Knights storyarc is building more and more toward having to actually face how much the sovereignty in place has blood on its hands that they will have to answer for. (which is also the conflict of Grandcelot's FE, with the fairies specifically asking Lancelot if he's going to be able to keep defending his country when realizing the basis itself is unforgiveable and built on blood.)

I really like this saga a lot especially for the way those themes are unwinding so i can't just let say "Carl is mostly good we only like Aglovale because he's pretty" yaknow.

Also i concur on the idea that Aglovale is "the most reasonable king", he's really Up There nowadays, he's a very good king to his people, but during Savior of Dalmore he was constantly picking fights up with Dalmore for how Dalmore abandonned them midwar, which was so funny considering Dalmore were on their side because Wales drove a war against them to start with lmao. Savior of Dalmore literally conclude with Aglovale having to apologize for his defensiveness toward Dalmore, and for his crimes toward both countries. Carl is actually the one who's the most reasonable in this event.

Anyway, nuance and all.

But once again the previous post was literally just about who was the prettiest in the room, didn't expect that "prettiest" could be interpreted as "therefore the most right and forgiveable of the people in that room" yaknow.

#ichareply #ichafantalks gbf #ichablogging 4kishi #anonymous #also remember how Feendrache didn't allow low born people to join its military #Lancelot and Vane were legit exceptions until Lancelot reformed everything #Percival himself gets super upset at that because Feendrache basically used to disregard its people a lot #it's not really clear where Wales stand on that #but considering how offended Percival is well.#still. Feendrache being badly administrated is the core of all the issues now #as they're NOW working on adminsitrating it better #ya feel me

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