I’ve been screaming this ever since I translated the route in Japanese so I wanna take the time to draw attention to this post and also give a huge thank you to the English speaking fanbase for finally acknowledging this after having to endure a year of people calling the Nohr siblings stupid (largely because of people taking events at face value, out of context)
But I do want to tack onto this - yeah Xander (if I accidentally slip into saying Marx during the duration of this post, I mean Xander, force of habit from the Japanese, sorry) praises Garon for being a good father in his youth, but the question remains - was he really?
And the answer, based on the events we’re presented is a resounding, no he was absolutely not.
Firstly, and let’s get this out of the way right now, the Nohr siblings are not the most reliable narrators we have for Garon. They are abuse survivors and because their abuse at Garon’s hands was emotional rather than physical (Xander, at least in the Japanese version (which is where I’ll be sourcing most of my information as I don’t remember the localization too well) jumps in to defend the rest of his siblings in the final confrontation saying that the real Garon would never lay a hand on the siblings), it could take years for them to come to terms with their abuse because of the horrid treatment they received later in life, comparatively (making them question whether the emotional abuse suffered before Garon’s shift could really be counted as abuse vs. the way he treated them as Gooron (i.e. routinely making threats to kill them)), if at all, because of the brushing aside that, oh it was Gooron, not Garon.
The biggest piece of evidence of straightforward evidence to testify for Garon’s abuse, from a Nohr sibling theselves, comes from no less than Xander, albiet in the experience DLC. While in the English it’s kind of almost glossed over - “What I always feared, more than any other apparition or specter… It was the time I ran across my father in the halls at night. If I hadn’t been out of bed for honest reasons, things might have been bad.” - and while the narrative is slightly iffy, it’s still easy to write Garon off as perhaps a stricter than usual father who might have Marx’s problem of looking angry even when he isn’t, and this as a one time occurrence. Contrast with the Japanese -
“…A test of courage, is it. Since I was a child, things like that have never frightened me. What did frighten me as a child… Were the times I saw my father in the corridors at night. At those times… If I still wasn’t back from the restroom, I was sure something terrible would happen…”
That is not something a child should be feeling, ever. There’s a looming sense of urgency and dread that simply isn’t present in the localization, and all from simply glimpsing his father in the halls, even though he was out of bed for honest reasons.
Furthermore, while Fates does have an admittedly screwy timeline - part of it lends itself well to this narrative. More specifically the fact no one knows exactly when Garon turned into Gooron. This places every single one of Garon’s questionable deeds that was simply done “in the past” under scrutiny, and thus questions his moral standing. Was there a time where Garon really was the ideal father? Or are Garon and Gooron not so different - the only difference being Garon never hitting his children?
Then there’s the entire subject of the Conquest ending indeed being able to be read as a metaphor for abusive relationships. For people who haven’t been in/haven’t been educated about abuse survivor psychology/reactions/etc. the climax may seem… strange. But to anyone who has been in that situation, the scene reads strikingly close to home - Kamui calls for the siblings to fight Garon, a literal monster, but Camilla, Elise….. Even Leon, the most pragmatic of the siblings says, no, they can’t, it’s still their father. And Kamui, not knowing Garon, growing up in a kind of abuse, but not being conditioned to both fear and revere Garon constantly, doesn’t know what that feels like. Camilla even says - “Even if we know the truth, it’s not that simple….” It is of course, literal in the siblings’ sense, but becomes metaphorical to a reader who has experienced a friend, family member, or romantic partner lashing out at them and “not being themselves” while still being someone dear to them at the same time.
tl;dr - The story of the Nohr siblings is one of people who have lived in an abusive household all their lives - with blatant abuse being prevalent for years - and forming their lives on the basis of appeasement of their abuser (”if I do [x] then everything can go back to normal again”)
On a personal note, anyone who gloats at Conquest for being “stupid” because of the siblings’ reactions makes me very, very uncomfortable as they hit uncomfortably close to victim blaming the actions of real abuse survivors since all of this (denial, appeasement, etc) is common abuse narrative.
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