#kkm

The way Conrad and Gwendal react to Wolfram’s death hurts me so bad the same way Gwendal and Wolfram’s reactions hurt me. The brothers are so conditioned to tragedy and death they don’t give themselves the time to mourn.

Shori crashes out in anger at the sheer fact Yuri could get hurt but the three brothers don’t really understand him.

But I mean it makes sense to me

Gwendal knew his brothers were soldiers, he knew one day there was a possibility they would die and he would have to stay strong and keep going.

Conrad has seen so many people die on the battlefield and because of war. Julia died and left him so why wouldn’t the same happen to his brothers?

Wolfram screams once for Conrad’s death and moves on because he waited in the castle for news of his death constantly during the war.

It hurts me even more that it feels like Conrad and Wolfram and Gwendal are so passively suicidal. They don’t care about if they live. They only care about their kingdom and yuri.

It’s framed as a romantic moment and it is in some aspects but it’s horrifying to me the way Wolfram was willing to let Yuri kill him for the sake of his uncle’s political approval.

It’s horrifying to me how many times Conrad restates that he’s willing to die for Yuri and how it comes off less and less like it’s for Yuri and more that he’s a walking ghost.

Gwendal tries to get himself killed for the kingdom as well. All again for political reasons and for relations with other countries.

Their lives as keys…as soldiers…being taught that they had no value unless it was helping the kingdom the shinou…

Conrad trying to die for a country that didn’t even want him…Wolfram trying to die for a man who is constantly flippant about his feelings…Gwendal wanting to die as a tool when no one wished for him to do so…

In the anime one of the truest horrors of war they depict is how what all their lives are built around. Its built around war, their country, their ‘god’

Everyone is constantly trying to live but the shadow of this fucking war the originators the shinou it won’t stop haunting them.

They have to play mind games with family and watch them tear each other apart.

In the anime, all of them barely have friends. When they do it’s people at the castle, their king, their fellow soldiers,

None of them for a second think about what they are leaving behind if they die because they don’t think they have anything or they don’t think what’s left behind will be worse off without them. That’s fucking horrific

They also rarely wear anything that isn’t their soldier uniforms and I understand practically it for the animation but in my soul I feel like they would’ve worn them all the time anyway.

What identity did they even have outside of it?

They cling to their roles and their commands and the definitions assigned to them.