#edelgardiscourse

Edelgard does not change or develop in a meaningful way in the story of 3H, no matter what route is chosen. This is an intentional writing decision as it relates to her archetype and role in the story.

But the ramifications of that are her stans now viewing every character in Fire Emblem Three Houses the exact same way.

So even though Dimitri, Claude, Rhea and almost every other character changes through Byleth's guidance through the academy and the war effort, Edelgard Stans will nonetheless argue through the assumption that they're still the same when Byleth first meets them (as well as sometimes sprinkle in the assumptions/views that Edelgard herself has of the characters she has an opinion on).

So Dimitri is still wishy-washy (they usually just cut the middleman and call him a centrist) and secretly deranged, violent and even racist and a cop.

Claude still wants to murder Rhea/wants her gone and believes the church needs to be abolished in order to open the borders to other countries.

Rhea is a secretive, manipulative megalomaniac and tyrant who must be taken down for Fodlan to be free.

Felix still hates his father and Dimitri and wants to be free of his house, Sylvain and Ingrid hate their obligations to being Crest bearers, Lysithea hates Crests first and foremost, Dorothea wants nobles to vanish, Caspar wants to dedicate himself to Edelgard, Dedue and Cyril see themselves as no more than tools of their white masters, etc., etc.

Because Edelgard Stans' favorite character doesn't change, they subconsciously assume the same must be for the rest of the cast.

That's why arguing with them is a lost cause, because while anyone else is operating with a cast that, by the end of any non CF route-actually, any route really considering CF's explicit negative character development-changes and becomes someone new, Edelgard Stans are operating with a cast that hasn't moved past first impressions and initial character flaws, coupled with their own biases for how these characters should talk and act.

I hate edelgard because her design freaks me out (the wide purple eyes that stare into your soul scare me) and she makes me feel physically ill

we are not the same

Some of her fans:

You are so hardened in your personal interpretation of the story, which isn't even confirmed by the text as the most recent material has Dimitri and Claude both confirm Edelgards observations about the church, that you end up calling abolishing a system of religiously justified eugenics reactionary. You also ignore the cultural context of the game, which is that japanese popculture has used allegories for the catholic church as symbols for repressive religious doctrine for decades now. Fire Emblem itself does not use organized religion as protagonistic institutions outside of church, dragon churches are always institutions of oppression or corruption.

Honestly, I think its okay to say that you like Xander because he is a hunky man and dislike Edelgard because she simply does not appeal to you. But calling lesbians fascists while you honest to god defend just following orders as a legitimate defense makes you look like a hypocrite.

Combining these because even if they're from different people, they're annoying for the same reasons.

First off, I get the feeling a lot of these accusations are because of shits on twitter, and I really don't care what's happening on the Nazi site. That has nothing to do with me, and I take the time to curate my blog so I can yap in my own lane.

Two. Meritocracy and ruling by "just be the best at your job and if you're not the best at your job, then oh well you can't get the job" is fundamentally a conservative ideology that shuts out tons of minority groups in our real world because of abuses by those who attain power, who justify biases against certain groups by claiming they don't work hard enough, when in reality they're mostly just racist, misogynistic, ableist, etc. Meritocracy is not an ideal to be admired and is a corrupt ideology.

Three. You claim I cling to my interpretation of the game's story just after trying to slander me for being problematic for criticizing the route that's supposedly favored by most sapphic and trans women. Fire Emblem Three Houses (2019) for the Nintendo Switch does not give a fuck about queerness.

Four. Someone can be a part of a marginalized group and still be wrong. Edelgard is still an imperialist. She's still complicit in attempted assassination, human experimentation, kidnapping and subterfuge among other human rights abuses. She canonically does not like the Nabateans because they are "inhuman beasts who can only pretend to have feelings or compassion", which is genocidal rhetoric. Being an uncritical fan of her as a character, or even saying she's right in any in-depth philosophical, moral or political way is what's actually problematic.

Five. The writers/devs said they wrote Three Hopes with its main characters being intentionally different from their Houses versions because they didn't want to invalidate Byleth's contributions to their development in that game. Plus, context exists. Had Dimitri and Claude known what Edelgard had already been complicit in, they would not be as generous, and there's the fact that they are... still fighting against her in Hopes, and Claude only joins with her because he swallows her propaganda without question, and in Golden Wildfire, it ends with him not accomplishing what he thought would happen by being Edelgard's lapdog. The Empire is still encroaching on the Kingdom in Wildfire, so Claude thinking he can end the war by taking out Rhea is proven wrong because Edelgard is a fundamentally bad person with destructive, imperialist beliefs.

Six. Christianity is not this big deal in Japanese culture that you think it is, how many times must this be repeated. Most religions you find in JRPGs and other JP made games take Christian/Catholic aesthetics and that's literally it. The vaguely/badly written beliefs in these games you attribute to Christianity is present in all Abrahamic religions. They don't do it for some grand criticism of Catholicism in particular, they do it as a catch all for "Video Game Religious Organization."

Seven. Fire Emblem Three Houses is a badly written video game that can't meaningfully justify why killing Rhea would equate to "abolishing a system of eugenics." There is no text in the game that gives a proper reason why this would be the case beyond "Crests from goddess, therefore goddess bad." It's an amateruish, non-explanation.

Eight. "Fire Emblem itself does not use organized religion as protagonistic institutions outside of church, dragon churches are always institutions of oppression or corruption." ????? God, sorry, but y'all are not helping my thoughts on many people not actually being FE fans but instead just 3H fans trying to retroactively push their interpretations of their fav game onto the rest of the series.

There are only three other goddamn organizations in the series that can be called "Dragon Churches", those being the faiths of Duma and Mila, the Grimleal and the Loptr Church.

And guess what? Not only were Duma and Mila not particularly evil, but were going insane from a degenerating mind, but both of these "evil dragon churches" were toppled with the help from, get this, benevolent dragons.

And you know how those organizations started and became evil? That's right, it's thanks to evil humans. Like, what are we even doing here.

Nine. The Church of Seiros is 1) not known to be an "evil dragon church" because the identities of the Nabateans were kept secret because they're victims of genocide and 2) they literally do good things in 3H, like take in Remire survivors, do missions to assist people in need, provide sanctuary, are non-discriminatory towards those of foreign identities and beliefs, etc. But I doubt y'all care.

Ten. I don't even think Xander is the most attractive guy in his home game, I think at least Ryoma and Saizo are hotter.

Eleven. My favorite FE character of all time is Lucina, who's an attractive woman. She herself also is a character with a touch of grayness in her actions, considering she nearly kills Robin until Chrom intervenes.

Twelve. How many times must I make it clear that there's a fucking difference between the positions that Xander and Edelgard are in. Yes, I know, following orders isn't a reasonable defense, but you know what's worse? Starting a war in the first place. Which Xander didn't do, and Edelgard did.

And you know what's worse than that? Not being repentant and penitent about the evil actions you're responsible for. Xander is, and Edelgard isn't.

-No matter how many times I play this game, what irrationally ticks me off is that Alois does the fucking fist pump animation 3 times in a fucking row when talking to Jeralt at the start. It's an indicator of how shallow the production quality in this game is, that they felt the need to reuse animations so much.

-I really do not understand the continued paranoia, not only because it's written poorly (seriously, if you were that worried about Rhea doing something to your baby, you wouldn't still be in Fodlan 21 years later, working as a famous mercenary, AND YOU WOULDN'T COME BACK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, like why do you think Alois of all people could force you???) but also it never reads as him actually being worried about Byleth. If you keep your child ignorant of things, including the workings of the continent they live in, then it shows you're not actually concerned for their safety, you're just an idiotic, frightened jackass.

-Seteth is based for being one of the few people to not trust Jeralt for being an AWOL fuckwad who used a fire to leave when they probably needed his help

-It's actually extremely fascinating that, for as much as the fandom likes to argue about "THE CREST SYSTUM!", the writers blew ass at writing how Crests work.

"They are power incarnate, exist within the flesh and are passed down through bloodlines." Good enough start, hereditary powers are a common fantasy staple. Now what do Crests do?

"Crest bearers may excel at magic, display exceptional strength, or any number of boons." ...Okay, so that literally means nothing, because in the ludonarrative of Fire Emblem Three Houses, anyone can excel in those areas. Sure, characters may have better stat growths or skill growths in areas, but those aren't known to the characters (or the player without looking them up) nor do Crests in specific areas relate to those growths or skills. For example, Hanneman has a Crest for weapons, but he's not good at using weapons other than Bows and his strength is terrible. Likewise, Jeritza has a Crest for healing, but he has a bane in white magic.

"Each Crest has its own power, the nature of which is beyond mortal understanding. For now." There are two major problems with this line.

The first is the claim that each Crest has its own power. No, they don't. The effects of Crests in game overlap frequently, like Riegan and Chevalier, or Daphnel and Gautier.

Secondly, the other issue is that the line shows they purposefully didn't do any ludonarrative here, and are weirdly proud of it. "The understanding of how Crests work is beyond our understanding at this point." This is an excuse they made to not bother explaining what these things actually do.

The best you get is Dimitri getting all-around superstrength (which isn't consistent with the game because his Crest only works during combat arts), Hapi summoning monsters (part of which is due to the Slithers) and Catherine... knowing when rain is coming. Even the Crest of Flames, representative of the titular Fire Emblem in this game, doesn't have an in-story function. All it has are more random chance effects than other Crests (which I already establish have barely anything to do with in-story strength) and let's someone theoretically use the Creator Sword (a shared trait for all Crests, and itself isn't a remarkable weapon in canon at all, but I'll get to Heroes' Relics later).

Turning back time isn't even a function of the Crest of Flames, that's something Sothis does.

"Sometimes Crest bearers have descendents who don't have Crests, and sometimes there are Crest bearers with no apparent Crest ancestry at all."

Then what the fuck are we doing here?! Why are you trying to write a system of hierarchy based around something as fickle as gene superpowers, when it's a roll of the dice if someone even gets a Crest???

Compare this to FE4 and FE5, where if you had any holy blood in your ancestry, you got the benefit. Yes, these also weren't known to the characters, but they were consistent, present and impacted unit function. Having minor Fjalar holy blood, for example, meant the character would be naturally better with using Fire magic, as you can see through weapon ranks. You also got better magic and HP growths.

And if your parents had any holy blood, their children got it! If they had major blood, then the first born gets it, with any children after only getting minor! And characters can strictly only have two types of holy blood, hence why Seliph doesn't get Loptous blood from Deirdre.

Crest don't have this, the writers literally just say "fuck if we know, lol" and leave it at that!

"Major Crests manifest their power most effectively, while Minor Crests are slightly weaker." But how do people know this??? Because the characters in the game can't see the random number chances that tell us why minor crests proc less often. How do we know, IN-STORY, why Felix would theoretically be stronger than Rodrigue because the former has a major crest and the latter a minor one? Speaking of which...

"It is said that the closer a person's blood relation is to various saints and heroes, the higher their chance of bearing a major Crest." Assuming the closeness in relation has to do with how genealogically close a person is to an ancestor, there's literally no example of this in this game. In fact, the opposite happens very fucking frequently!

Judith is older than Ingrid, but the former doesn't have a Crest, and the latter does. Sylvain has one but Miklan doesn't. Hilda has one but Holst doesn't. Felix has major, Rodrigue has minor. Rufus had minor, Lambert had major.

They literally had to pull Count Bergliez out of their asses to create ONE example of the supposed dwindling of Crests through generations, and that's in a fucking spinoff! So the writers' own flimsy explanation wasn't even correct! That's not how you write a story, yet you're the omniscient creators for God's sake.

Not like it matters though because the NPC Monk repeats Hanneman's line about Crests being "too mysterious to understand" in order to handwave the devs and writers terrible job at establishing how these major tools are supposed to work. Dreadful storytelling! Dreadful lore!

-This is a blatant example of the nobility imposing their values and desires onto the church seen as early as chapter 1, yet most of the fandom continues to ignore it in favor of claiming the relationship is the other way around. And the people who say that are the ones who always tell others to "learn how to read and understand the facts of the story."

-Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English. English version makes it sound like the missions are unknowingly compulsory, whereas the JP version calling it volunteer work makes it seem more like anyone who ends up working for or getting educated at the monastery knows what they're getting into.

Or at least they should, but characters like Dorothea are still like "oh is BATTLE really part of the church's teachings at this officer's academy for military combat??? 🤨🤨🤨"

Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English.

Am I understanding this correctly? Is Edelgard implying in the JP version of this dialogue that the best Kostas can do is "kill enough people to bring to hell with him?"

If so, damn, she really does not give a fuck about the lives of the people at the monastery, including her own classmates.

Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English.

So they changed "Lady Rhea is pushing a lot of things onto me" to "Lady Rhea won't allow it." ???

The JP one is implicative of the fact that the current captain is older and can't do shit anymore, which is exactly what Jeralt confirms and complains about in monastery dialogue the chapter before. So naturally Rhea is putting a lot on Jeralt's plate, he's the de facto captain of an elite group of knights again.

Well, yes! It is out of pragmatism.

I just personally think pragmatism viewed through a moralistic lens matters a lot on whether it like... works.

Even in the comparison you offer, while I do agree that Rhea is also responsible for hiding important information that had a ripple effect on Fodlan's history, I think it's still important to note the differences.

Rhea did it out of the belief that the origins of Crests would lead people down to become more power hungry and corrupt and murderous, most likely hunting down the last of her family. She spun a lie to try and influence Fodlan's people toward a direction that such powers are granted by chance and it should be considered a sacred duty to use those powers for good. It backfired eventually because people are people and just because some scripture says it, doesn't mean they'll follow. Regardless, the lies she told were anchored by a genuine moralistic belief.

Edelgard lying about Arianrhod though? That wasn't done for anything beyond covering her own shady allegiances. She'd lose support if it came out that she'd been allying with people like the Slithers (though to this day it begs the question why the fuck no one realized it already when they sided with her, and if they did, why they never give an explanation for why they don't care anymore), doubly so for having weaponry that can wipe out entire locales. And yes, that is a pragmatic choice. But it's one that's also attached to selfishness. In her dialogue, she's not taking account how the choice to lie about what happened will affect others in the future, she doesn't care about that. She lies simply because she requires full control of the narrative until her main goal-killing Rhea and conquering Fodlan-is done.

So like, yes, both Rhea and Edelgard lied for pragmatic reasons. But there's vastly different undertones to each that shouldn't be discounted.

Rhea is criminally underutilized and the slitherers are not a good villain but the game is very consistent in the church having to change or be removed. But I think the game suffers alot under being created around the conflict between Edelgard and Rhea and inserting the 3 Kingdoms plotline into it. I think it does alot of its political subtleties and character writing better than fates though and I like the historical references. At the same time I think alot of people don't understand the references or don't want to acknowledge them. But you could maybe enjoy the game more if you would get out of the mindset of Edelgard being completely wrong about the church? Nothing in the game backs it up and the DLC expanded on the dirty deeds of the church.

I would have loved if the game focussed more on the moral dilemma of Edelgard having to start a war for change but sadly the game wastes alot of the runtime on white clouds and kept CF to short. And Silver Snow lacks Rhea to give us a perspective on everything and to evolve. That are the real issues of the game. At the same time I think Edelgard being the attacking Lord makes the story more interesting. If she was on the defensive it would be boring because she would be just right for me. Her morals of wanting to abolish the noble caste system, remove the church from political power and allow humans to dictate their own lifes are just the once that seem to align the most with modern morals so she needs this edge. I also think the other three routes don't offer enough uniqueness. They are basically the same with only Azure Moon standing out. I would compare it to if Fates hat four routes but three of them are just Birthright with different siblings. It would make birthright more boring and discourse alot more annoying because birthright fans would weaponize this against Nohr fans. Like they do in 3H discourse.

Sorry to annoy you again but I think this is something you are very wrong about. But I also think alot of people are stupid to put Fates and 3 Houses against each other. Of the modern fire emblems both are very similar in what they are trying to do and how they try to push the series into an experimental new direction. Awakening is great but you can feel that while they tried to push the series into a new direction it was also made as a possible final entry. Engage feels very weird and seems to be an attempt of getting the gacha players into buying a switch. Only Fates and 3 Houses feel like they are trying to expand what the series does.

Well no, my potential enjoyment of 3H is also ruined by it being a very poorly designed game with tedium baked into its gameplay loop.

There's over-focus on the monastery which is a drab hub world, a very half baked calendar system, the simple yet drawn out motivation mechanic, the entire skill experience mechanic, the class mastery and class trees being badly designed, the constant repeat maps and enemy layouts, and the graphics and presentation (text box sizes, backgrounds, load times, animations) outside of voice acting and sound being subpar.

The game part of Fire Emblem Three Houses is really not good.

But for the main part of your post, no I wouldn't say my potential enjoyment of the game is ruined by thinking Rhea is good and Edelgard is bad.

The fact that three of the four routes ally with the church at all is mechanical proof that the devs intended for that to be the default position. The devs themselves admitted that Edelgard was written to be the villainous figure in this game, with the subversion being the fact that she started out as your lord character and was also a girl, two things never done yet in the series. The devs themselves also admitted that the reason why CF is as easily accesible (and possibly why it even exists) in the first place is because some others on the team started really enjoying her. There's also the fact that the game was written around Silver Snow's lore and story as a base, with everything deriving from that.

So the foundation of 3H's structure is to align with Rhea and the church against Edelgard. And that's because Edelgard's morals, like her predecessors in her archetype, are nonsensical and make for poor justification for her war and attempted imperialist conquest.

Edelgard's accusations are either baseless or completely contradicted by the CoS's teachings that we, the player, can read in the game itself. Rhea herself does not have the political or social capital to dictate how nobles govern their territories or do their inheritance. She is not personally forcing children into marriages, saying people without Crests are lesser, or saying any foreigner is bad.

She told one lie a thousand years ago to cover up her family's identity and because she was basically forced to capitulate to the norms at the time, that being that Crests were seen as good things and the Elites were heroic figures. There is no evidence, by the devs or the game itself that she forced nobles from then on abuse their families and status, or that she had the power to stop it once it got out of hand. Rhea has the power to decide punishments and judgments for people who individually attack her, and to assist nations who call for her help. And that's it.

The only things that people bring up to claim that Rhea is an oppressive tyrant are Edelgard's accusations (again, baseless and fundamentally untrustworthy given that she's also a canon liar), the noble children in the game bitching about their lives (that the audience interprets as being Rhea's fault because of abuses in the goddess's name that she has no control over), and known and caught criminals and terrorists being executed for crimes they were in the middle of committing calling Rhea a bad person.

That's it.

3H's writing flaws, however, do not help support this foundational structure because, as you say, it sidelines Rhea. She is never in a position to directly counter the claims because that would throw a wrench into making Edelgard a viable protagonist to follow. Rhea can only lore dump and reflect in hindsight, never properly given a chance for actual moment-to-moment development since the writers for the stuff beyond Silver Snow didn't care.

And personally while I agree that both 3H and Fates were both experimental in ways that certain other titles weren't, experimental or ambitious does not correlate to good.

While the sales say otherwise, 3H is a regressive and half-baked video game with nothing really anything groundbreaking-or good-in its story or writing beyond a zoomed in lens on character psychology.

Fates itself was ambitious because it was the first major multi route experience, with a narrative written by someone explicitly outside of the team; its faults come from being limited by the hardware it was put on, and a localization made by a team who tended to not be good at their jobs. A fanbase that delights in misunderstanding everything behind its development or characters does not help (there's still people who think the entirety of Fates was split into the "serious" Team A and the "fanservice loving" Team B when that was explicitly only about the damn skinship minigame).