personal headcanon but I genuinely think Edward lives pretty nomadically around reveria. he never strikes me as someone with a permanent home so much as a collection of places he's stayed while chasing away whatever mystery currently has him in a chokehold
archaeology itself is a profession that rewards movement
if you're obsessed with uncovering the past or rather, adventure, staying in one place becomes limiting. the next clue is always somewhere else, the next ruin is over the next hill, the next lead is on another continent.
I can easily imagine him renting rooms, sleeping aboard ships, crashing in research outposts, spending weeks in libraries, then disappearing again at some point. a lot of times in castele, maybe in al maajik, so on and so forth
Edward's curiosity seems too intense to comfortably coexist with a settled life, and thus why mysteria eventually becoming the place he chooses to stay with his crew and the player ingame hits so hard for me
that perhaps for the first time, he has reasons to stay that are as strong as his reasons to leave, that's why it feels so significant to me. A character whose entire existence have may been defined by going over and moving forward for the next discovery finally finds a place where turning around and coming back feels just as meaningful as continuing forward.
well it is not because he has changed as a person. I mean he is still Edward, he is still going to chase mysteries. Mysteria is the first place that we see that feels like the place he wants to be instead of just a place he is stopping at for a little while.
for someone like Edward who may have spent years thinking that every changing place is just a temporary stop that is a pretty big deal. Mysteria feels like a home to Edward, he stays! but there's always another implication that he's still searching for the next answer, but for the most part we see him stay and settle in with his crew, remember adventures together, and just.
a lot of stories would handle this type of character by making them give up the thing that defines them, that eventually all thirsts for knowledge ends up retiring somehow one way or another, a poke on the shoulder is that id say that's not what I see in edward's case
If anything, Mysteria is probably the most dangerous place in Reveria to leave Edward unsupervised, an entire continent that literally vanished from common knowledge. ooc or what you wanna call it if I may but mysteria is archaeological crack cocaine😭😭
That's why I don't interpret Edward staying there as him retiring from adventure. quite the opposite. him settling down in mysteria isn't always the case where he just stops, it's an acknowledgement that he has found a place where exploration is effectively endless.
the difference is that, for perhaps the first time in his life, he doesn't have to leave everyone behind to pursue it. A lesser story might have Edward abandon his wanderlust in order to find a home, what I find compelling is the possibility that he finds a home without abandoning his wanderlust at all
(I don't know why I make this a big deal though even if when all Edward genuinely does endgame is less exciting I mean he does archeological work of course, such as dechipering stone tablets..... and stand outside the guild office for a while if you wanna count that but hey let me have this alr)
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