#edeldiscourse

eh, to be frank im not that found of her as shes written even putting aside the discourse and well a part of that is personal taste [i like my villain protagonists more on the eccentric side of things to say the least] it also just comes down to how i find her kinda boring. there are interesting threads that could be picked at there, how despite her overt demenour shes really rather childish, how shes wilfully misinformed to the point of constructing an elaborate personal narrative to make herself feel better/more secure in her beliefs, her 'only i can fix it' mindset inherited from so many red emperors of the past.

In a sense shes the manic pixie dream girl of red emperors in terms of the fire emblem meta narrative and that should express itself in a character with a lot of rather interesting quirks to her behaviour and story. But it just never gets there, and sadly her most interesting point as a character is when shes wearing the flame emperor mask which i so desperately wish had kept through her presentation as consistent characterization as opposed to being a separate persona on which to hoist all the 'bad karma'.

cause the flame emperor is interesting, that fascinating paradox of petty childish and insecure behaviour [hey, i know my allies just killed basically everyone in this village but that was toats not my fault so you shouldn't blame me and i'd be really sad if you did], combined with a brutal intimidating leader dragging her followers along through brute force and deception [i dont wanna play with you anymore kostas so im just gonna let you get killed, mkay.]

Not strictly disagreeing, just ya know. Sometimes a plothole isn't a plothole its an intentional choice to leave information out or ambiguous, and part of critical analysis is recognizing when that is and isn't the case.

for instance, is the tragedy of duscur and if dimitris adoptive mother culpable in it a plothole? no, its pretty clearly suppose to be an ambiguous note left unresolved as part of dimitris own journey as a character. a sad reminder that he'll never really know the full truth of what happened there, but that he needs to keep moving forward regardless for the sake of those who rely on him. even the fact that we get presented contradictory information on the matter is a deliberate writing choice to emphasize its place in the story.

But as you did touch upon, Lelouch also faces consequences far more often than Edelgard does; these force him to reevaluate himself and understand that he's fucked up. Euphemia, Shirley, Nunnally (when he believed she was caught up in Tokyo when the bomb exploded). Lelouch suffers consequences and makes himself into the martyr to die so that the world can lay the blame on him and unite with peace after. None of this is true of Edelgard, who never learns or grows in any route ever. (2/2)

Not much to add there outside of yes i did indeed miss the most obvious difference there. idk, i wanted to focus more so on the idea of foils and how edelgard really just doesnt work as one for dimitri or anyone really because of how hollow of a character she is. lelouch and suzaku were just a strong example of a foil i could think of in that moment.

no, in many ways edelgard is basically discount senator armstrong from mgr. all the hollow rhetoric and faux intellectualism of armstrongs crony politician facade, but unlike armstrong where it was indeed a facade theres not much else to edelgard other then the hollow facade. [plus shes not nearly as much of a hilarious blast]

Like the fact that she turned against TWSITD? Pretty cool! We now also have confirmation that she knowingly and willingly allied herself with these people who experimented on her family and countless others in Three Houses proper despite probably not needing to. Even if it was primarily Hubert’s idea she still went along with it.

Her appointing Duke Varley as head of the Southern Church and a puppet ruler that the Church tried to assassinate? Reinforces the fact that conquest was a big part of her goal and that she didn’t see the other two countries as legitimate. She very much forced the Kingdom into either letting her control them via puppet Archbishop or facing her in battle.

Don’t think this is necessarily good or bad either, but I love that the game is still establishing her as ruthless and self-determining while making her feel more independent of TWSITD. I actually really love this because it feels so... Holy Roman Empire of her, which had very similar power struggles historically.

certainly hes morally opposed to bretonnias actions, but he cares more so in the general sense that he thinks bretonnia is doing wrong rather then the specific sense of caring about japanese issues in the code geass universe. this he makes clear by burying the japanese revolutionaries under a mountain landslide that wipes out a good portion of a city with it, before planting bombs on their surviving leaders and blowing them up as a false flag operation to incriminate bretonnia.

which is to say, lelouch is kinda a flashy ass who doesnt think about the long term consequences of his actions so long as they produce short term immediate benefits. thus well lelouches efforts and plans produce short term improvements and immediate sweeping gains, by the end of r1 hes destroyed a large portion of tokyo through brutal street fighting, the black knights have gotten their asses kicked hard and reduced to a partly number with most of its leaders dead or captured, hes ruined the lives of all of his friends in the process, and season 2/r2 opens with lelouch having lost so badly he and most of his friends have been mind wiped to not remember a thing and think he has a brother instead of a sister ontop of being closely monitored by the upper ranks of the bretonnia military and government.

certainly its not a be all end all kinda quote mind. just that i suppose with edeldiscourse still circling about, the quote really reminded me about that whole can of worms. more so in how a lot of people tend to jump on the idea that edelgard is self sacrificing, which is what she tells herself to justify her actions, compared to her actual actions which are inherently selfish in the context of the story because they hurt the very people shes claims to be doing it all for.