#and rather than going the winding routes of deception and manipulation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fic-art-blurbs · 3 years

Text

How “Lost In Thoughts All Alone” Connects To Each Route Of Three Houses

OKAY. SO RIGHT OUT THE GATE. I KNOW THIS SOUNDS MONUMENTALLY STUPID BUT HEAR ME OUT. I KNOW THERE IS 0% CHANCE OF THIS BEING INTENDED BECAUSE INTSYS IS INTSYS AND ALSO THESE ARE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WORLDS BUT THESE VERSES ACTUALLY FIT SOMEWHAT AND IMMA TRY TO BREAK IT DOWN. FAIR WARNING THERE’S GONNA BE SO MUCH STRETCHING THAT YOU’RE GONNA THINK YOU’RE IN A YOGA CLASS.

You can listen to the song itself in its entirety here, I’ll be going by verses and talking about the routes/characters I think each fits. And I’ll be putting this under a read more because I know this is going to be long also @iturbide here’s the essay

Also spoilers

First Verse/Opening Verse - Byleth/Sothis

You are the ocean's gray waves, destined to seek Life beyond the shore just out of reach Yet the waters ever change, flowing like time The path is yours to climb

This one isn’t too difficult to talk about. This is the opening verse of the song, and the first verse Azura sings in Fates. This verse also plays in between almost all of the verses in the song - note I said almost. It also plays at the end of the song. This fits Byleth, and by extension Sothis rather well. Byleth is the driving force behind how each route, behind each character’s growth. They manipulate time, constantly going back in time over and over again, whether it’s to take another path, or to try and save a life. Byleth is the one with the power here, and no matter how many times they go back, no matter how they make time bend to their will, it always flows back - the “Golden Route” so many desire is always out of reach, no matter how many routes they play.

And yet no matter what, you keep going back. Byleth, though I guess at this point I’m talking about the player, is destined to continue trying to reach that happy ending, they’re destined to keep searching for a way to make that happy ending a reality.

The path is yours to climb indeed - as many choose to try and make one, unaware that the path they create is one treaded many times over.

Birthright’s Verse - Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd (Azure Moon)

In the white light, a hand reaches through A double-edged blade cuts your heart in two Waking dreams fade away, Embrace the brand-new day Sing with me a song of birthrights and love The light scatters to the sky above Dawn breaks through the gloom, white as a bone Lost in thoughts all alone

I imagine the white light being referred to here being the reunion scene, and the hand as being Byleth’s. Remember how Azure Moon’s reunion scene left Dimitri shrouded in the darkness, and Byleth in the light? The double-edged blade here could refer to Edelgard herself - he may have been happy to reunite with his step-sister, but it was the reveal of her being the Flame Emperor that “cut his heart in two”, breaking his heart and making him fall victim to his rage. His “waking dreams fading away” to “embrace the brand new day” may refer to his ghosts, how they grow quieter (not quite disappearing entirely, but fading away for now) in the wake of Rodrigue’s death and Byleth’s words finally reaching through to him.

“Sing me a song of birthrights and love” I think could refer to Dimitri’s mindset. He feels bound by his birthright as the future king of Faerghus, and the love he feels for both his family and his country. When Edelgard’s deception is revealed, a good chunk of the reason his breakdown is so bad is due to the fact she seemingly betrayed that love, betrayed the love that was shown to her by his father and her mother. He views it as her willingly betraying them and directly causing their deaths along with Glenn’s and the genocide of an entire country. He feels it is his birthright not only to right the wrongs committed by his country, but to avenge what happened to his loved ones.

The next two lines I think reflect his finally quelling his rage, no longer letting it consume him. That “white as a bone” line I can imagine talking about his path - his intentions may have been honorable at the beginning, but his path is no less gory than the one he wanted the head of.

And the final line? It describes Dimitri for a good portion of Azure Moon. He’s lost in his thoughts, all alone, pushing away his support because he believes himself unworthy.

Conquest’s Verse - Edelgard von Hresvelg (Crimson Flower)

Embrace the dark you call a home, Gaze upon an empty, white throne A legacy of lies, A familiar disguise Sing with me a song of conquest and fate The black pillar cracks beneath its weight Night breaks through the day, hard as a stone Lost in thoughts all alone

No I did NOT just pick this verse for Edelgard because of the conquest thing I PROMISE. I SWEAR THERE’S MORE TO THIS THAN JUST THE CONQUEST LINE I PROMISE

ANYWAY I imagined that first line referring to Edelgard marching home and assuming the throne. The Empire is far from a bright place, and she’s embracing it as she declares herself emperor in order to declare war on the church. The “empty white throne” line? It could mean one of two things, if not both. The first thing could be telling her to gaze upon Faerghus’s empty throne, the throne she made empty by killing her step-brother - even if she didn’t remember him being her brother. The second thing could be referring to Sothis’s empty throne, as she’s unknowingly following in the footsteps of Nemesis by killing the Goddess and her followers - first with the death of Seiros, and then the dissolution of Sothis’s crest stone (even if she didn’t directly play a part in the latter, Edelgard’s route is the only route where the crest stone disappears for good). If you stretch, you could also make it so that this refers to if you kill Claude, but the throne of Almyra wouldn’t be empty - it would just be angry and ready for war.

The next two lines could refer to the Agarthans. “A legacy of lies, a familiar disguise” could refer to Patricia and Arundel respectively. Edelgard’s mother was revealed by Cornelia to maybe having a hand in the Tragedy of Duscur and making that image of Patricia as a kind woman a lie - though this is in the Azure Moon route, so this could be handwaved. This line could instead refer to how Edelgard views Rhea and the church - they’ve passed on a “legacy of lies”, hiding the horrific truth behind the Relics and the Crests, claiming them to be gifts from the Goddess. The latter line, “a familiar disguise”, could be about Arundel. It’s revealed that Arundel is actually Thales in disguise, and Arundel is Edelgard’s uncle - someone she undoubtedly would’ve been familiar with.

“The black pillar cracks beneath its weight” could be talking about the weight of Edelgard’s war. Even if the game states that Crimson Flower had no consequences in the end, there are undoubtedly consequences scattered across the land. The newly “unified” Fodlan would be cracking under that weight, with new cracks appearing with every new rebellion, every new attack. Every instance that could tell Edelgard that perhaps declaring war so hastily might have been a mistake.

“Night breaks through the day” can very easily be equated to Edelgard’s war in conquering all of Fodlan. “Hard as a stone” would be her resolve - no matter what route you choose, Edelgard is steadfast in her belief that she is in the right. She never falters, never once wonders if she was wrong. Her only regret when you kill her in Azure Moon is wishing Byleth walked at her side - not regretting her war, regretting that Byleth was not on her side.

And of course, the final line. Edelgard is alone in her thoughts, even with Hubert seemingly knowing everything. She’s lost in her thoughts of conquest, and similar to Dimitri, vengeance. She may not be haunted by ghosts like he is, but she’s certainly haunted by her ticking clock and the deaths of her siblings as they fell in the experiments, one by one, until she stood alone. It could also refer to the ending of Crimson Flower - now that she’s won her war, what now? Stability would not come right away, and the increasing attacks and rebellions depending on certain choices could have Edelgard lost in her thoughts, perhaps wondering for the first time if she should have chosen differently.

((Fair warning, this is where most of the stretching begins - Revelations is strange in that it actually has 2 verses of its own - it has an opening to replace the “You are the ocean’s grey waves” verse, and a verse more similar to the other two routes.))

Revelation’s Verses - Claude von Riegan & Rhea/Seiros (Verdant Wind/Silver Snow)

The path you walk on belongs to destiny, just let it flow All of your joy and your pain will fall like the tide, let it flow Life is not just filled with happiness, or sorrow Even the thorn in your heart, in time it may become a rose

A burdened heart sinks into the ground A veil falls away without a sound Not day nor night, wrong nor right For truth and peace you fight Sing with me a song of silence and blood The rain falls, but can't wash away the mud Within my ancient heart dwells madness and pride Can no one hear my cry?

Again, there’s gonna be a LOT of stretching. I think that first verse might not actually be for Claude or Rhea exactly - that verse sounds a lot more like it’s meant for Byleth. Telling them to accept that they’ll not have their golden route, accept that life isn’t just happiness - but it isn’t just sorrow either. And yet Byleth persists.

The second verse though - the first half I think fits Claude more, and the second half fits Rhea more. Though you could argue those last two lines also fit Nemesis emerging from Shambala in Verdant Wind - I don’t think so, but it’s there.

Claude’s definitely got a burdened heart - he’s got so many trust issues that if you could build with them, you’d have a skyscraper. But it’s through his interactions with the Deer, and by extension Byleth, that the walls he put up to protect himself slowly fall away. The mask he put on of a carefree individual silently gets dropped, and by post timeskip, you can see that Claude trusts his Deer - and Byleth, if this is Verdant Wind - with everything. He’s the neutral route in this, he doesn’t choose to fight for either side, his fight isn’t for either side. He’s fighting to destroy the borders between lands, fighting for the truth (in that his route is the one where you learn everything), and for peace, equality. He may be the funny upside down meme to most, but he’s the only one of the three to actually fight for truth and peace, the real versions of both - you don’t get to learn the truth in Azure Moon, and in you only get to see what Edelgard believes is the truth in Crimson Flower.

Rhea’s the one who knows everything. She knows the truth behind the Relics, the Crest Stones, Crests, everything - and yet she stays silent. She stays silent, afraid that more would follow in the footsteps of Nemesis and bring more bloodshed - hence the “sing me a song of silence and blood”. The next line could refer to how no matter what she does, the darker parts of history wouldn’t be scrubbed away. Even if she did succeed in her attempts to bring back Sothis, in an attempt to wash away the dirt from their past, what then? Did she really think Sothis would welcome her back with open arms, with what she’d done to achieve her goal? And the last two lines...those are rather self-explanatory. Say what you will, for a time, Rhea did indeed go mad. She believed herself to be in the right, much like Edelgard did, and became furious when anyone said otherwise. That’s shown in her ruthless execution of those who opposed her, and her downward spiral in Crimson Flower. The final line, “can no one hear my cry?” may refer to how, even if one of her brothers and her niece were there by her side, neither knew what she had become. Neither ever knew what lengths she went to, nor did they know how much pain she was in to have driven her to madness, driven her to the belief that creating and killing at least twelve vessels in an attempt to create the perfect one for Sothis was right. Perhaps if someone had heard her cry, things would have been much different.

Interestingly, this is the only verse to not end with “lost in thoughts all alone”. If you think about it in the terms of Claude and Rhea, this may be for different reasons. Claude is remarkably well-adjusted for someone thrown into war - he gives a “power of friendship” speech during the final fight for crying out loud, if anything, he’s actually grown for the better. He’s not lost in thoughts all alone because he’s learned to actually lean on others for support. In Rhea’s case, her not being lost in her thoughts all alone would be for an entirely different reason - she isn’t lost in her thoughts. She’s not thinking clearly, but she isn��t lost like Dimitri or Edelgard. She isn’t so lost that she can’t command troops outside of “KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM”, nor does she question if she was in the wrong like Edelgard might’ve had the latter won her war at the cost of stability. To the very end, she doesn’t regret her decisions - she may not have made them with a clear mind, but she knows what she did, and she isn’t lost thinking of what might have been.

((TECHNICALLY there is one more verse, sung by Shigure in the Heirs of Fate DLC. The reason it’s not brought up? That one is much more context sensitive - the only line I can really think of fitting anywhere is “Endless dawn came but not without a price” possibly referring to the end of the war in every route, with “dawn” here referring to peace, and the price being the countless lives lost in the war. Then again, each route’s definition of “peace” is rather shaky, some more so than others, so it could refer to each individual leader’s goals being reached in their routes at the cost of a war.))

45 notes · View notes

fantasyinvader · 4 years

Text

Now, there has been a lot of discussion about what Edelgard says in the game. In the beginning, I saw some folks try to claim things such as “Edelgard is the only one who tells Byleth the truth” or “the backstory stuff we learn in other routes is not canon to Crimson Flower.” It really seems like there was a willingness to discredit things the game said when it came into conflict the lady in red. I’ve even seen the argument that it doesn’t matter that what Edelgard says is wrong, because she’s doing the right thing. This mindset has always bugged me, since to make the best decisions one must be knowledgeable about the issue at hand.

Now, as time has passed, a lot of people want to simply say that Edelgard is misinformed but doesn’t treat it like it discredits her actions. Granted, there were still folks claiming that Rhea is lying and shouldn’t be trusted. But now we have the Nintendo Dream interview, which revealed that the worldbuilding was done in support of Silver Snow’s story. The idea that Edelgard has been misinformed is tossed around a lot more now, that while she’s wrong it’s because she herself wasn’t told the truth. That other people are to blame, and ignoring the fact that Edelgard is the only lord in the game not investigating what is going on during White Clouds.

But what if Edelgard was not misinformed? What if Edelgard was simply lying? That is what I want to discuss here, since there’s evidence that this is the real truth of the matter.

Let’s start off with the game outright admitting that Edelgard is lying to Byleth during Part 1. Now, you might be asking yourself where does that happen and I’ll admit it’s not in any scene of the game. It instead is inserted into the lyrics of Edge of Dawn, the full version you only hear at the end of the game outside of completing Crimson Flower. The second verse, not the same as the first, that you don’t hear in the opening contains the following lines.

“Then you turn to me and I stop before I know. And the lie upon my lips I let it go. Cross my heart, making vows I know will be betrayed (Know will be betrayed).A sad girl’s pleas live only for a breath and then they fade.”

The Japanese name of the song, Girl of Hresvelg, points to this song being sung from Edelgard’s point of view towards Byleth. Not only that, but the progression of the lyrics paint a picture of the path of the story. First Edelgard wants Byleth to join her, then we get the second verse where she asks (flips a coin for pronouns in this post) her to not take away their hand. This points to Byleth joining the Black Eagle House, working alongside how the game’s loading messages all come from BE-White Clouds and how it is the default choice. But the last verse shows Edelgard and Byleth as enemies, the progression of the song depicting the Silver Snow path. But during that second part, with Byleth leading the Eagles, Edelgard is stated to lie to Byleth and make promises she knows she won’t keep.

This song also has it’s musical cues spread all throughout the game, most prominently in Apex of the World which is Edelgard’s final boss theme in Azure Moon and also plays during the last map of Edelgard’s route. It’s a detail you’re not going to get simply playing Crimson Flower, you need to play (or be aware of) three of the game’s routes for this to be noticed.

Another issue is how Crimson Flower keeps playing at Edelgard is Nemesis 2.0. This is presented as a good thing, as that route presents Nemesis as the hero who fought for humanity so therefore Edelgard must also be the hero who fights for mankind. Right? But if you play Verdant Wind, you end up fighting Nemesis and his unit description goes like this.

“Under the pretense of liberating Fódlan from a reign of deception, this king rallied his people to arms in the War of Heroes.”

Now, false pretense is a redundant phrase since pretense means the same thing. Nemesis claimed he was fighting to liberate people during his war with the Empire and was seen as a hero for it. This is backed up by the memoir in the shadow library, stating that they were fighting zealots, aka the early followers of Seiros. But this is ultimately a false claim, and the real motive was hidden from the people. The Nintendo Dream interview states he killed the dragon-folk for power, not to free the people.

If we correlate this with Edelgard, then her own claims she is fighting for the liberation of Fodlan also becomes questionable. As already established, her own theme song outs her as a liar. So is she really telling the truth about what she is after, or is it all a pretense? Considering the fact she pushes for a war of conquest after capturing Rhea in three out of four routes (including Azure Moon, where she tells Dimitri she never lost her heart at the end of their parley. Not that she never lost heart, i.e. be discouraged), or how she invades the neutral Alliance in Crimson Flower (after spending five years trying to get Alliance lords to defect), the idea that she was after the unification of Fodlan under her is likely to be her real goal.

It also should be noted that Edelgard is depicted as spreading misinformation during Crimson Flower. The first is when she says it will be told she’s the one giving the orders, not Byleth because the emperor can’t be seen taking orders (thus subverting meritocracy). The second is after Arianrhod, which she blames on the Church. Taking matters a step further is Bernadetta and Petra’s paralogue. In Crimson Flower, the BESF heads out after we are told that the Church is pressuring Brigid to send them troops. But when we get there, Catherine says the Church is only asking that they don’t support the Empire. Someone is lying here, and when you consider how Petra is a political hostage in the Empire’s care AND‌ how when she’s not Brigid wants to support the Church because fuck you empire, it appears that it is Petra who has been lied to. Making matters worse is Ferdinand’s paralogue‌, which isn’t available in Crimson Flower and not only discredits the idea that Insurrection of the Seven happened simply because of greedy nobles but also has it’s own bit of misinformation within the empire. Duke Aegir, after being stripped of his lands and titles five years prior, is blamed for the brutal rule of Edelgard’s uncle Arundel. His power and authority was taken from him…yet for some reason he is being blamed.

There’s three NPCs in Crimson Flower that really stood out to me. The first was in the temporary camp after siding with Edelgard, who said he believes he shouldn’t believe everything she says. Red flag. The second was a scholar, who talked about going over this histories multiple times in order to find the inconsistencies. Red flag. The third was a soldier after Arianrhod, who was uneasy Edelgard kept her forces in the dark and worried about what else she was keeping from them. Red Flag, especially considering one of her (Flame Emperor) quotes in Heroes.

“You see what I choose to show you.“

Not to mention, she only revealed the truth about Cornelia being a Slither to Byleth AFTER it blew up in her face (and because Hubert let it slip). So let’s review. We get a hint not to believe everything she says, another urging us to find the inconsistencies through multiple playthroughs, and a warning that Edelgard isn’t telling us everything. She’s just telling us what she wants us to hear.

Because it’s better for her case to blame Duke Aegir for the experiments she and her siblings went through. That he and the others wanted to create a strong emperor to rule over Fodlan…after they fought the previous one to limit his power. Or how in her Goddess Tower event (which requires a B support to unlock, meaning one playthrough of Crimson Flower), she says her father was the leader of the Black Eagles and how he met her mother. The problem is that NPC dialogue at the beginning of the game states that an imperial heir hasn’t attended for generations so Edelgard being there is treated as a big deal. And considering how the devs said that the worldbuilding supports Silver Snow and fighting against Edelgard, it looks like during this tender moment Edelgard is the one not telling the truth.

An interesting thing is her supports. They only open up after Byleth obtains the Sword of the Creator, a blade with immense power. Edelgard begins telling Byleth her tragic backstory immediately, compared to other characters who only reveal their towards the end of the support chains. Making matters worse is her telling Hubert in the monastery that she may have found what she needs to make her goals a reality. The second support opens up after Remire village, where you will lose points with her if you don’t say things along the lines of “the Flame Emperor (aka Edelgard) isn’t responsible for this even though she was working with the people who did it.”

And if you really want to go there, her Crest of Flames she uses to try and form a bond with Byleth over is a fake. Her relic is a fake, using a fake Creststone bearing the Crest of the Beast. Said Crest is associated with the devil arcana, where a man and a woman become more devil-like of their own will by being in the presence of a ram-horned devil. And Edelgard wears ram-horns post-timeskip. So, some definite antichrist/corruption symbolism going on here, along with the idea that there is a falseness to Edelgard.

Lastly, in the Holy tomb Edelgard is flat out accused of manipulating the Black Eagles by the Black Eagles before they fight her there. Or if you choose to go Silver Snow, it’s revealed she had Hubert in the shadows ready to get her the fuck out of there rather than accepting Byleth’s judgement.

So, taking this all together what do we have? Edelgard is trying to manipulate Byleth into joining her, doing so though presenting herself as a victim while also telling her lies, She spreads misinformation for her own benefit even though she damns the Church for it’s false history or when she subverts the ideal she says she’s fighting for. The game keeps pushing that she’s just like an ancient threat that also lied in order to go to war. The devs have said that the worldbuilding was done in support of the route where the player sides against Edelgard, and a lot of things in Edelgard’s narrative are in conflict with what we see/hear/read while exploring the monastery. This likely isn’t a case of alternative character interpretation, but rather the core of Edelgard’s character as she tries to lead you to the route with the theme of taking out those who oppose her.

It’s not simply a case of her being misinformed.

Edit: Also, when you kill Kostas as the Red Canyon

“I should have never listened to that idiot...What a mistake...|

Considering that idiot is the Flame Emperor, and the Flame Emperor is Edelgard, it’s possible foreshadowing not to listen to her.

79 notes · View notes

gascon-en-exil · 5 years

Text

FE16 Golden Deer Liveblogging

Chapters 21-22. Magical ballistic missiles, EDM, and zombies - it’s like they threw every random thought they could come up with at the wall to see what would stick.

Now that I’m finished with them I can say that the Deer do have overall more complicated map design than the other routes (and I know I haven’t done the church yet, but I’m pretty sure all but their last map are reused from one or more other routes), but for these two “complicated” did not mean hard. Chapter 21 reminded me of Shadow Dragon’s endgame, with your army split into the four corners and the boss in the middle, but even with that division and all the same gimmicks from the Fhirdiad chapter of Azure Moon - the giant mechs, the lightning turrets that in this case you can’t deactivate - it was pretty simple to tackle. I got surprised by Thales’s Quake spell killing Raphael from halfway across the map as soon as I opened the door to his room, but that’s what Divine Pulse is for.

And for all that I’d heard bad things about Chapter 22, it was the easiest last chapter of the three I’ve played so far (although I did have three fliers...). You can remove the poisonous swamp covering most of the terrain by killing one of the casters in the north, and killing one in the south cuts off the beast reinforcements. The reanimated Ten Elites were for the most part not very threatening either, and once they’re down Nemesis has only one HP bar and is locked to the attack range of a normal unit. He’s more in line with how FE typically handles its final bosses, in that they’re far from the hardest challenges of their respective games.

Oh, this was something I forgot to nitpick for Crimson Flower, but what is it with this game sticking treasure chests in its final chapters? I could understand if there were a postgame, but there isn’t - and I’m going to wager DLC isn’t going to add one somehow. What’s even the point?

Story/Character observations

Alright, let’s tackle the Agarthans, which is what I’m going to call them from now on in place of Hubert’s stupidly clunky title. After some thought it doesn’t bother me that Shambhala is a metallic monstrosity of LED lighting, robot mechs, and some kind of techno rave backing track. This is for a few reasons: one, that it distinguishes them aesthetically from the numerous other dark cults in the series (particularly the Loptyrians, with whom they share a similar backstory of seeking revenge after being driven underground long ago), and two, that the other characters in the game see their technology as alien and nearly impossible to put into terms they understand. The playable cast consistently refer to the missiles as javelins of light, Lorenz looks upon Shambhala and declares it impressive but not beautiful, and Claude can’t find a word for the Titanus mechs other than “things.” And anyway, repackaging modern technology as ancient to squeeze it into pseudo-historical settings is a time-honored gaming trope. For another recent example, Breath of the Wild provides the same handwaving excuse to all its ancient Sheikah technology - tablet computers with cameras and GPS, laser-touting killer robots, and all.

Now, when Thales’s secret Plan B is revealed to be an army of corpses led by Nemesis and the Elites, all complete with replica versions of their Relics, that’s classic Fire Emblem right there. It’s specifically a callback to Jugdral’s Deadlords, which saw later revivals (pun intended) in spirit if not always in name in Blazing Sword, Awakening, and Fates. Odd how the Elites manage to be less threatening than the Deadlords of Genealogy and Thracia even with fake versions of legendary weapons....

The jury’s out on whether Byleth being named ruler of a united Fódlan in this ending is more or less stupid than Corrin becoming ruler of Valla (plus territory from the other two nations arbitrarily gifted to them) in Revelation. At least Fódlan is in the position of needing a ruler and not an empty, desecrated country in another dimension where the laws of physics are kind of screwy. Of course Byleth is unqualified, but everyone loves them and Rhea (whose fate in this route is uncertain, but it never says she dies?) probably put in a good word with everyone. Make no mistake, it is still stupid, but in my opinion there are fewer leaps of logic required.

As for Rhea, she surprised me by spilling her true history and the origin of the Relics and the Crests in this story, and even that Byleth has Sothis’s heart/Crest stone inside them. The whole spiel doesn’t absolve her of the large-scale deception she’s been perpetrating for centuries and I can absolutely see why she’d step aside in the epilogue after blowing her cover to someone with Claude’s particular ambitions, but it does make her more sympathetic. It also puts an even worse spin on the entirety of Crimson Flower, with Edelgard instigating her rebellion based on a bunch of misinformation that she never learns about because she kills Rhea before the truth ever becomes known. But at least she gets Byleth’s heart beating? Not that I care, naturally.

If Verdant Wind makes Edelgard’s crusade and death seem utterly pointless, it’s even crueler to Dimitri, dying offscreen in a feral rage and leaving his vassal to carry out his vengeance. Dedue’s fate - destroying Edelgard’s body, then leaving for Duscur or parts unknown - is approximately equivalent to Finn wandering the Yied Desert after the war, except he would have nothing to come back to even if he ever does*. In hindsight I’m glad I played these three routes in the order that I did, because with each one the scope of the story has gotten successively larger. That’s not to say that Verdant Wind’s story is more satisfying than the other two, but it’s got the narrative space to look beyond the heavy personal dramas of Dimitri and Edelgard.

In the end I still don’t buy that Claude is selling exactly what he claims to, and that he doesn’t have some further scheme to control Fódlan himself after the credits roll - hell, several of his endings including the all-important S rank with Byleth imply just that. But I think that’s part of his charm, witty and inspiring even as he’s manipulating everyone around him. Claude is unique among FE lords; what a shame he’s straight.

(But if you asked me if I would rather have not had all the heavy subtext surrounding Dimitri in exchange for a romantic S support between m!Byleth and Claude, my answer would always be no. Even setting aside that Byleth is a non-entity to me, I don’t see Claude’s big ambitions not including a wife with whom he can produce heirs to rule over whatever the scope of his eventual dominion turns out to be - and Three Houses already features two instances of Byleth not being allowed to be a homewrecker.)

Speaking of which...Alois’s S support. It’s not even slightly romantic, or interesting. Their ending in Verdant Wind doesn’t see Byleth marry someone else, but that only means it’s about as romantic as their paired ending with Gilbert.

*There’s room for a fix-it fic where the ginger warlock NPC who tells you what happened to Dedue tracks him down in Duscur after the war, and the two of them establish a rapport where Dedue learns to love again and ginger warlock learns to love being a size queen. Hey, if everyone’s going to stan the hell out of that unnamed gatekeeper the sky’s the limit right?

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

14 notes · View notes