I’m going to write another random thoughts post about some unrelated topics on my mind lately. So I’ve been hanging around a fanfiction subreddit to try to promote my Resident Evil fanfiction (shameless plug: here or here) and also to talk about writing with like-minded people, and something I’ve noticed is how the community seems to struggle with people saying they’re clearly amateur or bad writers because they write fanfiction rather than original works. Now of course, this is absolutely idiotic. At the same time, I was in the midst of a nostalgia trip about Dragon Ball Z, when I realized these two topics are related.
A bit of background: the original Dragon Ball (not Z) is loosely based on one of the Four Great Chinese Classics, Journey to the West. The original, original Journey to the West was the chronicle of a monk, the Tang Monk, who traveled from China to India to bring back some Buddhist scriptures. Imagine if you took a cross-country trip and wrote about it. That’s pretty much what that was. Sometime after the Tang Monk wrote this, various authors expanded upon his story and added fantastical and religious elements, which is where we get the Four Great Chinese Classics version of Journey to the West. In this version, the Tang Monk isn’t even the main character; instead, it’s Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. The Monkey King was, well, a monkey, who learned incredible martial arts and mystical abilities and tried to take over Heaven. He was almost successful until the Buddha himself subdued him and trapped him under a mountain. Much later, the Tang Monk was setting out on his journey, and the Bodhisattva Guan Yin recruited Sun Wukong to be one of his disciples and bodyguards. She also recruited a pig and a river demon. The trio, along with a dragon in the form of a horse, travel from China to India, but meet many demons along the way who want to eat the Tang Monk. This is fanfiction. This is an example of authors taking an existing, popular story and adding their own creations. This is an example of those creations being way more ridiculous compared to the original work. And this is one of the Four Great Chinese Classics, which as the name suggests, is one of four novels considered the most important in the entire history of China. Clearly fanfiction is useless, right? I’m not done. Dragon Ball, as I mentioned, is based on Journey to the West. The main character, Goku, has Sun Wukong’s name (Son Goku is Sun Wukong is Japanese), his first weapon, his cloud-based method of transportation, and a very heavy monkey theme. Oolong is that pig I mentioned before. Literally (this time, though, the name’s different). Tienshinhan, the warrior with 3 eyes, comes from the novel. The Ox-King is the same. The setup of Goku and company journeying across the land in search of something (the titular Dragon Balls) is also reminiscent of the original novel. So here’s a fanfiction based on fanfiction that very heavily borrows from the original work while also making massive changes; indeed, as the story of Dragon Ball goes on, it deviates more and more from the setup of Journey to the West. Dragon Ball is also incredibly popular… …but it’s nothing compared to its sequel series, Dragon Ball Z. In Z, we find that Goku is actually an alien, his people are all hilariously stronger than are anyone on Earth, and they serve an even more powerful intergalactic overlord. And it gets more ridiculous from there. By the end of Z, just about any of the main characters could obliterate a entire planet if he chose and they’ve taken down an enemy who once defeated multiple cosmic gods. By the end of Dragon Ball Super, the storyline after Z, we have a being who can destroy multiverses effortlessly. So here we have a story that is arguably one of the most popular franchises to come out of Japan in history – and it’s a continuation of a work of fanfiction. And as a fanfiction, compared to the original work, it’s just so hilariously ridiculous it’s mind-boggling. So no. Fanfiction writers aren’t amateurs who need to rely on other works to get anything done. And even the fanfiction writers who come up with lunatic plots and characters compared to the original work can create something amazing. PS: I’m not actually suggesting people do what Dragon Ball Super did – it’s ridiculous in terms of power escalation and Goku pretty much obsoletes the entire rest of the cast from the original Dragon Ball, which is something I personally don’t like. My point is simply that fanfiction can be great and its authors have been well-accomplished and talented throughout history. Okay, good, I don't have Fire Emblem: Three Houses occupying my entire brain.
Last week, Capcom announced Resident Evil 8 (or, more accurately, Village: Resident Evil), which piqued my interest so I've been hanging out on the Resident Evil subreddit again. Given the rumors that RE8 began development as Revelations 3, starring Rebecca Chambers, a few people have wished wistfully for another game starring her. Now I love Rebecca and on a list of my favorite fictional characters, she's way up near the top. But I'd rather not see another game starring her and, in fact, the rumors that she was once associated with this upcoming title have me worried that she is somehow in the final game. Why? In one word: Vendetta. This is the third CG movie meant to expand on the RE universe and it stars Leon, Chris, and Rebecca. Notably, this is the first time Rebecca has appeared in any canon material since RE0/1. I love her personality and occupation as a scientist, rather than a combatant, in the movie, and that's about all I like about this movie. The villain in Vendetta is Glenn Arias. Some time before the movie, the government tried to kill him by bombing his wedding. He survived. His wife didn't. And he vowed revenge. In the middle of the movie, he kidnaps Rebecca, fits her into his wife's wedding dress, and reveals that she looks almost exactly like his wife, so he intends to force Rebecca to marry him. In other words, this movie is playing the damsel-in-distress trope with Rebecca in the straightest way I've seen in decades. Now there's the obvious subjective reason this makes me despise the movie, given what they did to one of my favorite characters of all time, but there's more to it. Let's first talk about gender in Resident Evil; specifically, gender in Resident Evil 1. The first game, released in the late 90s. Jill Valentine is the female lead...but the game never once emphasizes that she's female. It doesn't make it a point that "hey look we've got a female lead look at our attention to gender equality." The characters, her compatriots in STARS, never comment on her gender either. In my mind, this is what gender equality looks like. Gender isn't relevant. We don't emphasize how Chris is a male lead, or how he's great at X despite being male, or how he's great at X because he's male. We never make comments like that for male characters in general, because it's irrelevant compared to things like character development or character involvement in the plot. Jill's an elite member of STARS. She has an (admittedly unrealistic for literally anybody) amazingly accomplished military record. She's the goddamn Master of Unlocking. That's what the game tells us. That's what the other characters comment on - not her gender, because who cares. This is the attitude the first entry into this franchise took on gender. And now we have Vendetta featuring the damsel-in-distress trope so straight that Rebecca might as well be one of those trophy princesses from fairy tales. Next, let's talk about the plot. This subplot with Rebecca looking like Arias's dead wife is completely unnecessary except to allow the writers to fulfill some sort of weird fantasy. Imagine if, in the previous CG movie, we find that Svetlana, the main villain, has a backstory in which she's always been a lesbian, but she was always surrounded by men, so she grew up with the worst sexual frustration. At one point in school, she met a girl whom she crushed on, but then that girl died for some reason and left her heartbroken and even more sexually frustrated. And it turns out that girl's name was...Ada! And now when she meets Ada Wong in the movie, she's excited because she has the same name and resolves to kidnap her and brainwash her into being her lesbian sex slave! And Ada's helpless until Leon comes in to save her, which takes up the entire last sequence of the movie! It's a stupid subplot. It's a creepy subplot. It's something you'd expect to find in a porn parody somewhere, not in a canon movie. And it's completely, utterly unnecessary. The actual movie we have about Svetlana honestly doesn't tell us much about her. She's a power-hungry President. That's...about it. But that's fine - she's got some cool scenes and she fulfills her role in the plot. I've got no complaints. So just leaving Arias's backstory as him wanting revenge because the government killed his wife would actually already be ample backstory for him. We don't need this Rebecca subplot at all. There're some other reasons this movie is rock-stupid, like Leon going through exactly what Chris went through in RE6 with the drunken depression and history of his entire squad getting killed - really, you just lifted Chris's character arc wholesale from RE6 and pasted it onto Leon? Or the idea that the BSAA reverses the zombification of the victims at the end of the movie, something that raises all sorts of plot holes and fridge horror. Anyway, back to my original point: after seeing this abomination, I have little to no faith in the writers' ability to portray Rebecca properly in a game, so I'd rather just them move on to other characters and other plots. Just sort of...forget about her and don't mention her again. That would be more preferable than her arc in Vendetta, which is super sad coming from someone who absolutely loves Rebecca. Don't ask me why I keep coming back to this topic. I don't have an answer to that.
It occurred to me that most of my comments have come from the Crimson Flower route of Three Houses, the first route I played through, and I thought I should talk about the other routes. So today, we'll discuss the Azure Moon route, which is in many ways the antithesis to Crimson Flower, as Edelgard is the main enemy of Azure Moon. On different viewpoints and first impressions First, I mentioned in my review that people are going to view Edelgard very differently depending on which route they play and, to go further, which route they play first. If we're looking at Edelgard from someone who went through Azure Moon first, she'd be far less sympathetic just by virtue of us not knowing much about her. She's the head of one of the other 2 houses that we don't really interact with and talk to - we can't support with her, so we have no insight into her thoughts or history, and we don't get to hear her opinions on the events of Part I. When she attacks the Holy Tomb at the end of Part I, she doesn't seem out-of-character as I complained so much about in my review because an Azure Moon player doesn't know enough about her character to make that conclusion. Hell, such a player might even accept, at face value, all the stuff I brought up about Edelgard being an idiot due to her actions as the Flame Emperor. For all the player knows, Edelgard is just so power-hungry she's incapable of rational thought. In Part II, it's established that she's the villain. We see her attack the monastery, lead troops at Gronder Field, have a dialogue with Dimitri in which she (1) refuses to end the war peacefully and (2) reveals she forgot him from her childhood, deploy Demonic Beasts (Agarthan bioweapons), and transform into a monster in the final level of the route. Without prior knowledge of Edelgard, none of these really question the notion that she's evil or at least antagonistic. But now let's look at it from the perspective of someone who played Crimson Flower first, like me. We know her backstory - she was experimented on by the Agarthans horrifically so they could implant a second Crest into her and, as a result, she believes someone must tear down the Crest-centric society and belief system on the continent because it leads to stuff like what she experienced. This is why she starts the war and why she opposes the Church. She's not doing this because she's power-hungry or she enjoys sending people off to kill others and die. Right before the battle at Gronder Field, she appears sad. An Azure Moon player would either miss that detail or be confused by it, but someone who played Crimson Flower before would know exactly why. Hell, compare her expression in that scene with Dimitri's memetic "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM" line. When we kill Arundel and save the Alliance, we see her and Hubert taking some small joy in his death. An Azure Moon player would, at best, be again confused at why she's happy at the death of her uncle and a high-ranking member of her Empire. A Crimson Flower player would know that she has a history with the Agarthans (of which Arundel is a member), she pretends to be allies with them because she's powerless to do otherwise for the time being, and she fully intends to destroy them once she can. Someone killed Arundel? Excellent for her. Edelgard's dialogue right before she transforms into the Hegemon monster is (1) telling her subordinate to leave because she might be a danger to those around her after she transforms and (2) fighting through the pain of her transformation because she's experienced worse before. This doesn't fall in line with a power-hungry and remorseless tyrant. At this point an Azure Moon player would either ignore these details or be confused enough to declare the writers made her actions out-of-character. A Crimson Flower player? This all makes total sense. First impressions are important, and someone who goes through Azure Moon first, not knowing the significance of these details, will see Edelgard as a villain and have a difficult time changing that viewpoint even if that player goes through Crimson Flower subsequently. On Edelgard and Dimitri's conflict In both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, Edelgard and Dimitri share dialogue where they clash on their ideals and views. These scenes are perfect opportunities for the writer to explore their conflict - a conflict of beliefs, of ideologies. They failed. In Crimson Flower, Dimitri asks Edelgard how much conquest and death she intends to wreak before she's satisfied. Edelgard responds with, basically "well you do the same thing in response," a terribly dumb answer. One might think, as I did, that she isn't interested in discussing her motivations with Dimitri in that scene, as she knows he won't listen anyway, but in that case, it would've been better for her dialogue to say, literally, "I could explain it to you, but somehow I don't think you'll listen anyway." Hell, just some ellipses would be better than her "no u" response. In Azure Moon, Dimitri requests a meeting with Edelgard and opens by asking her point-blank why she started the war. Here is an even better opportunity for her to talk about her history, her views on Crests, her views on the nobility caste system, her views on the Church and their propaganda...in this scene, she does have some reason to believe Dimitri will at least hear her out because Dimitri was the one who opened dialogue in the first place. She does none of that. Dimitri's dialogue isn't much better, either. His biggest and best argument is that all the war and death isn't worth whatever future Edelgard wants to usher in; in short, he doesn't believe the ends justify the means. He makes that argument maybe once, then goes on to say that humans are weak and require authority and faith, while Edelgard's meritocracy only favors the strong. This is a stupid argument because the world around them before the war already favored the strong - the strong being people with Crests. And also...between someone who believes humanity has the strength to forge its own future versus someone who believes humanity is too weak to forge its own future, which argument feels more compelling? Finally, Dimitri says that it would be better for the people to rise up themselves to change society based on their own beliefs rather than Edelgard forcing a change from her position of power. So wait...if humanity is too weak to forge its own future, how are they to rise up? Moreover, "the people" aren't a hive mind - if there's going to be a revolution, someone needs to instigate and lead it. How many times did "the people" rise up to clamor for change in the 1000+ year history of Church rule? A history, might I remind you, of children being disowned/killed/married off politically all for the sake of Crests? Edelgard v. Rhea had sloppy execution and Edelgard v. Dimitri also has sloppy execution. I think these writers just don't know how to pit grey characters against one another - admittedly, that's not entirely easy to do compared to black-and-white good v. evil, but that just goes back to what I said in my review about this game being ambitious and falling short. On Dimitri's character arc I found the beginning of Part II fascinating in terms of Dimitri. At the end of Part I, he goes full-on murder-psycho-ax-crazy. In his backstory, his entire family was murdered around him in a place called Duscur. As the sole survivor, he knows the Agarthans were responsible, but he knows next to nothing about the Agarthans. So when "the Flame Emperor" appears, ostensibly allied with the Agarthans, she becomes his one and only target. His rage overflows because he finally has someone to direct it against, and he spends the first half of Part II obsessing over killing Edelgard and brutally murdering anyone else who gets in his way. It's rare in a game where the protagonist is "good" to stay with the hero after the hero falls to darkness. Usually when the hero falls, he just becomes the villain. So I thought this was a great setup for a character arc. ...And then it goes downhill. He spends the first half of Part II being outright hostile to Byleth and everyone else because he feels they're wasting his time. It's actually unsettling. But...why does Dimitri stick around in the first half? Shouldn't he just have stormed off to the Empire intending to kill his way to Edelgard himself? Why didn't he do that in the 5 years between Part I and Part II? He's obviously unconcerned for his safety and not thinking rationally...he has no reason to stay around the monastery. I think it would've made more sense for him to be missing for the first half of Part II (because he tried to fight the Empire himself) and everyone is trying to find him because he's the last hope for some reason. Halfway through Part II, Dimitri's father figure Rodrigue dies protecting him. He tells Dimitri to live for what he believes in as his last words, which partly snaps Dimitri out of his insanity. Umm...how? Dimitri believes in revenge. That's pretty much all he believes in. So he was already living for what he believed in. Why would Rodrigue's words have any effect? After Rodrigue's death, yet another death of a person close to Dimitri, Dimitri decides to one-man his way to the Empire after Edelgard (again, why he didn't try to do this before, I don't know). Byleth stops him and he asks her for guidance - why, I don't know - it's not like he was interested in listening to her before and I'm not sure how seeing one more person die due to an attack from an Imperial changed anything. Byleth tells him exactly what Rodrigue told him and that fully snaps him out of his insanity. Umm...what? How does repeating some words that should have had no effect snap Dimitri out of his insanity? The thing is that many compelling narrative pieces exist to complete Dimitri's character arc. Normally, the trope in this situation is the character realizes his dead loved ones wouldn't want him to hang onto his hate and obsession. Dimitri literally says he doesn't buy that, so the story has to go another route. That's fine - defying tropes can be good. So what could the writers have done? Well, let’s look at Rodrigue’s scene as he’s dying. Rodrigue shares a memory with Dimitri of his final conversation with Dimitri's dad, King Lambert, before Lambert traveled to Duscur. Lambert says that he thinks the diplomatic mission should be completely safe, but if he were to die, he has hope and faith that his son will grow up to be an upstanding man and king. Slight detour before we continue: if Lambert thought there was any possibility of danger on this mission, why the complete and actual hell did he bring his goddamn family to Duscur? Ahem. Anyway, wouldn't Rodrigue's last memory serve to show Dimitri that his dad wanted him to be an upstanding man and king and not a vengeful, hate-fueled monster? Dimitri literally believes his dad's ghost is haunting him and driving him to kill Edelgard, so Rodrigue telling him about his dad's actual feelings should've gone some way in dispelling Dimitri's delusion. The game doesn't address this. Next: Byleth has some parallels to Dimitri because her dad, Jeralt, dies in Part I at the hands of the Agarthans. Sure, Dimitri loses more people, so to speak, but the parallels of both Byleth and Dimitri losing a family member to some shadow organization and the only tangible target being Edelgard are still there. How does Byleth deal with this? She grieves and then moves on, becoming the one pillar upon which the entire route leans. How does Dimitri deal with this? "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!" This juxtaposition can also go a long way in showing Dimitri that his motivation doesn't require him to become a monster. Byleth has the same motivation and she becomes the exact opposite of a monster. The game doesn't address this. Finally, Felix and Ingrid both have connections to a victim of Duscur: Dimitri's childhood friend, Glenn. Glenn was Felix's brother and Ingrid's fiancé. In one support conversation, Felix chews Dimitri out because he had to deal with his brother's death, but he chose to move on and focus on living his life the best he could. A conversation like that should've shown Dimitri that people close to him who lost one of the same people he did still grew up to become non-murder-psycho-ax-crazy-monsters. Since this is a support conversation, it's not in the main game, so the game doesn't use this in Dimitri's character arc. So...yeah. Dimitri's character arc. Great setup. Not very sensical execution. Lots of potential squandered in its conclusion. Three Houses had been on my mind way more than it should have. Sheesh - first I play Life is Strange and have to deal with that affecting me, and now this.
Anyway, I've been a part of a few discussions on the plot and characters of Three Houses and I just wanted to put a few of my thoughts in writing. I want to reiterate how nice it is to see some people discuss complicated topics like morality - stemming from a video game. I believe video games can elicit thought just as much as can the more "traditional" forms of storytelling, such as books and movies, and this is a great example. Of course, there are the flame wars, but what else is new. Here are a few arguments that I've encountered that I've taken some issue with. Byleth and Sothis are still two separate entities despite merging I had several people take issue with my claim that Byleth becomes the goddess; instead, they interpret it as Byleth and Sothis still being different entities despite having merged after Solon traps them inside that nondescript dark dimension. I can see where they're coming from, but I'll also say the game makes it somewhat ambiguous and, at times, contradictory as to what actually happens. Sothis tells Byleth that they'll become one because of the merger and, as a result, she won't be able to talk to Byleth anymore - except she does, at the end of the five-year timeskip. She does so again if you S-rank her. Rhea tells Byleth that she's "been acting as a proxy for you," where "you" refers to Sothis, implying that she knows Byleth and Sothis are one...but then right afterward, she explains to Seteth that Byleth is a vessel for Sothis, which implies she thinks they're separate entities. I always interpreted it as Byleth literally becoming the goddess because she merges with Sothis. She doesn't have full goddess-level powers because, well, even Sothis doesn't have full command of her powers, given she's got heavy amnesia. Regardless of the interpretation, I still believe the writers dropped the ball on this plot point. One, we've got the ambiguity and contradictions as above. Two...Rhea never once asks Byleth for details on what happened. The girl she implanted Sothis's Crest Stone into just returned from a mission with heightened powers and a different, Nabatean-esque appearance, implying that something involving Sothis happened...but Rhea doesn't question it. Instead, she just decides to have Byleth sit on Sothis's throne in the Holy Tomb, a sequence that still baffles me because I have entirely no idea what Rhea was trying to achieve. Rhea says that "Saint Seiros" received a revelation from the goddess in that room. This is a complete lie, because Rhea is herself Saint Seiros and is Sothis's daughter. Sothis didn't give her a revelation - she was simply her mother until she had to destroy the Agarthans and heal the world, after which she went to sleep and was assassinated by Nemesis. Rhea raised an army against Nemesis all on her own. Let's suppose Rhea believed that Sothis would "fully awaken" and take complete control of Byleth upon sitting on her throne. Maybe she figured the throne would jolt her memory or something. This would necessitate that Rhea (1) knows Sothis has amnesia and (2) doesn't know that Sothis has merged with Byleth. Rhea doesn't know the former - the only time Sothis comes up in conversation between Rhea and Byleth is in their B support, and if Byleth mentions Sothis in that conversation, Rhea just gets confused and actually decreases support points. Rhea doesn't know about the merger, sure, but that just brings up my point that Rhea should've asked more questions after Byleth returns in Super Saiyan form. Let's suppose that Rhea does, somehow, know about the merger, and thinks that Byleth and Sothis are indeed one, but because of Sothis's amnesia (which she also somehow knows about), Byleth's memories are incomplete. She then hopes that Byleth sitting on Sothis's throne would restore Sothis's memories in Byleth's mind. This would mean Rhea does indeed see Byleth as her mother reborn - just her mother with amnesia. This would, in turn, reinforce my argument that Rhea trying to kill Byleth in the Holy Tomb is idiotically out-of-character. An interpretation I like came from someone who argued that, right when Byleth refuses to kill Edelgard, Rhea becomes completely and utterly taken over by PTSD. She no longer believes she's dealing with Byleth and/or Sothis, but has returned to 1000+ years ago, when she witnessed Nemesis kill her mother and her entire village. It's kind of like how a war veteran might come home but believe he's still at war. Alright, I'll buy that. It's better than the out-of-character business I hate so much. Edelgard's new social order is doomed to fail A few people believe that Edelgard's meritocracy will plunge the continent into a worse state than it was before because of corruption and rebellion from nobles who want to hold onto their power. As such, they conclude that the ending of Crimson Flower is the game's "bad end." Ehh, I don't really buy that. Corruption isn't unique to meritocracies. We actually see corruption in the aristocracy throughout the game, such as with Ferdinand von Aegir's dad. So if you want to say corruption will lead to a breakdown of society in the continent, you'd have to apply that to literally every ending in the game. Rebellion is similar, as in every ending, the continent is united under one banner. There are going to be people who want "independence," so to speak, and military conflicts will happen regardless of whether that banner is the Empire's, the Kingdom's, or whatever political entity Byleth/Claude/Rhea rule over. I will also note that Edelgard isn't interested in ruling over everyone - after she dismantles the Crest-centric, bloodline caste system and destroys the Agarthans, she's done. Petra, in particular, declares independence from the Empire, and in no ending does Edelgard oppose her. She'd be more than happy to let different regions break off to do their own thing if she knows that there won't be anymore Crest obsession and Agarthan string-pulling. This isn't necessarily unique to Edelgard, either. I'm basically just saying that the sociopolitical implications of Edelgard's ending apply just as much to the other endings, so calling her end the "bad end" would mean that you believe every ending to the game is a downer. If that's the case, sure. Edelgard is evil because she sides with and believes the Agarthans Alright, first of all, this seems to have eluded a lot of people, so I want to make this clear. Edelgard openly despises the Agarthans for what they are and what they did to her (and her siblings, and Lysithea, and many others). She doesn't side with them through choice; she sides with them because she needs to put on pretenses to survive. These people have wormed their way throughout the Imperial government, so if she just straight-up confronts them, they'd just destroy her. In fact, the reason she was able to take power so easily is likely because the Agarthans let it happen. Remember, her father had no political power because of the coup led by Ferdinand von Aegir's father. Ferdinand von Aegir's father was actually the one in charge of the Empire. It would stand to reason that, all else being equal, Edelgard ascending the throne would also render her without any political power. But the Agarthans experimented on the Emperor's children, hoping to create a powerful ruler that they could control. Once Edelgard, the sole survivor of the experiments, is ready to take power, the Agarthans propelled her to the throne to install that powerful ruler under their control. It's necessary for Edelgard to pretend to be under their control until she has enough power/influence/knowledge to strike back. In the Crimson Flower ending, that's exactly what she does. Even in Azure Moon, where Edelgard is at her most antagonistic, there's a short scene after you kill Arundel saving the Alliance, where she and Hubert characterize it as "a drop of joy." Arundel is actually Thales, one of the leaders of the Agarthans, which means that even Edelgard at her most "evil" hates the Agarthans and wants them destroyed. Next, people think she attacks the Church because the Agarthans fed her lies that she believes. Well, let's go through exactly what these "lies" are. First, she believes that Rhea is secretly a dragon who, along with other dragons, is behind the scenes manipulating the continent's people and history. That's true. Second, Edelgard believes the Church is upholding the Crest system, misleading the religious people in the continent, to further their own power. This is also true. Third, Edelgard believes the Heroes' Relics aren't gifts from the goddess, but are rather man-made weapons that people only believe are divine because the Church says so. This is true. The only statement Edelgard makes that I think is completely false is when she says the Church purposefully broke the Kingdom away from the Empire and then the Alliance from the Kingdom. I don't think the Church did that willfully - they just sort of let it happen and capitalized on it afterward. Edelgard wants to dismantle the Crest-centric social system. The Church created and upholds that system. So, she turns her blade against the Church. She's not doing this because the Agarthans fed her propaganda. She might pay lip service to that propaganda because, again, she's pretending to be allied with them for the time being, but her reasons are her own and are actually based in fact. You might not agree with how exactly she goes about using this information (i.e. goes to war), but portraying her as a mindless girl being manipulated is...incorrect. Edelgard could've just talked to Dimitri and Claude instead of going to war I agree totally with this statement and, in fact, believe this is one area the writers actually succeeded in. They specifically constructed Edelgard's backstory such that she (1) doesn't know the other two would actually be on-board with her plan and (2) never once considers that possibility. Her childhood saw her surrounded by 2 kinds of people. One, sinister enemies: the Agarthans and the political schemers led by Ferdinand von Aegir's dad. Two, people who could have helped her, but were unable to: her own dad and her siblings. She says that she learned at a young age that the only person she could ever rely on is herself. Her character arc involves realizing that she was wrong, because she learns to work with Byleth and her classmates to achieve her goals. So with this backstory, her going to the two heirs of the other nations, trusting them completely after first meeting them and telling them her plan/goals, would be out-of-character, and we all know by now how much I hate out-of-character writing. I'd take issue with it even considering that, had she done this, Dimitri and Claude would've pledged their support to her cause and they'd have revamped the social order without any conflict (except maybe with Rhea). Hell, they probably would've destroyed the Agarthans right away. Edelgard explaining the Tragedy of Duscur to Dimitri would've turned Dimitri's PTSD-revenge-insanity on, except this time, he'd be attacking the right perpetrators. Claude's penchant for information-gathering and tactics would've allowed them to outsmart and trap the Agarthans. We would get the happiest ending possible, but at the cost of plausibility in character motivation. I'll have to let you decide whether that would have been worth it. Personally, I'm a sucker for happy endings, so I would probably have just wished for Edelgard to have a completely different backstory to allow this to happen. But Three Houses isn't that kind of game, unfortunately. I do want to say that, while I do support Edelgard in-game, it made me very uncomfortable in Crimson Flower when I was part of the aggressors. Usually in video games, I'm defending against an aggressor, but Edelgard's army is the one that's actively attacking and invading other nations. I also felt terrible attacking the monastery afterward, with the Church characters lamenting that I'd just betrayed them. So I'm not totally on-board with starting a war and I absolutely get the idea that Edelgard should've found another way. It just so happens that she believed she couldn't. And barring her war, society wouldn't have changed on the continent. |
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