Fire Emblem!

(wait, she has memory issues? How did I miss that. I have memory issues)

 

The line is a bit more ambiguous about it in English. In Japanese she's very straight up about not even remembering her first love's name.

 

Hi after months I finally finished my first 3H run with Verdant Wind and??? holy shit??? holy shit!!

Spoiler: potentially spoiler-y thoughts

i do wish, however, that this route had potentially explored the idea that, fundamentally, edelgard and claude want very similar things, and what could have happened if they had both just realized that. like, i get that edelgard wants to eliminate the church and the powers that be, and thats valid, but her actions in the end did really throw the country into a vulnerable state (if claude and byleth's paired ending is anything to go off of) that could have been prevented. though, then again, i totally get it, she doesn't really have all the time in the world to get what she wants through less forceful means.

all that said... WHAT THE FUCK, RHEA. JUST. WHAT THE FUCK. OH MY GOD.

 

Spoiler

They do explore it a bit, mostly through Edel-Claude battle dialogue. It's been a bit, but IIRC he basically says "Yo, if you'd talked to me about this I'd have maybe been down, but starting a huge-ass war because you're impatient makes it hard to be on your side in this."

 

Spoiler: spoilers dependent on edelgard's route

Honestly given Edelgard's mental state I don't think the war could have been prevented unless someone fucking killed her.

 

Spoiler

oh yeah I know that! I was more saying that I wish that the VW route had gone the direction of them actually teaming up to achieve the end goal, yknow? Cause it sucks that the only route where Edelgard can survive is her own. But yeah, given her mental state, I don't think it would have been possible without killing her.

 

Spoiler

Ah yeah that makes sense. Though even then I dont really think it could work...Like it sucks and is sad that the only route she can survive on is her own but given her particular damage it feels right that it is. She needs the professor to really be up to anything that isnt the Edelgsrd show.

 

Spoiler

I feel like it was you that touched on it, but just in case it was someone else or in another place, I also think it highlights that the Agarthans tried to isolate her. Like, the Black Eagle Strike Force only comes together and sticks with her if the Professor took her side. Otherwise, even if they remain on her "side" none of them are actually shown as being all that close to her. Hubert is, obviously, and maaaybe Petra and/or Dorothea, but.. even then, there's so much more distance. I doubt the teasing scene at the start of CF could happen in any other route, even if we wouldn't see it ourselves for obvious reasons.

The Agarthans want Edelgard isolated, because that makes her easier to control, easier to push into lashing out, easier to convince to keep going at all costs, and easier to kill once she's done what they want if she still holds ideas above what they deem to be her station.

Like, most of the "generic evil cult" behaviour the Agarthans get up to in White Clouds is pretty much just them doing everything they can to drive Edelgard away from people without openly compromising her identity in a way that can't be brushed off, or exposing Shambala. They see that she could grow close to the Professor (even in routes where Edel isn't your student), and try to tie themselves to her disguise via borrowing the Death Knight, then striking at Remire and, later, Jeralt. Sure, if they can pull off the whole Zarhas (sp?) thing that solves that, but even then it'll stand in the minds of everyone else. (See also: how fast Dimitri blames El for Duscur despite how little it makes sense for her to have any kind of direct responsibility for it. But if you see "her" as behind things like Remire and Jeralt's death on top of everything else, well, it at least looks like she'd approve of that sort of thing, right?)

 

Spoiler

I am not sure if I am the one who did but that is a common way of reading their situation, yeah. And the Agarthans had their work cut out for them given that her reaction to her C-PTSD and how to deal with other people is 'self isolate and trust absolutely no one'. It can create a nice constant feedback loop that keeps Edelgard where they want her.

And yeah given that she is working with them in any capacity and given how little she lets anyone in...unless you're playing CF it is EXTREMELY easy to just go 'Well fuck you Edelgard' regarding her shit. Because I mean. It kind of just sounds like she's making excuses for shit she's OBVIOUSLY involved with. When no she's being puppeted about and she is not fucking happy about the current work situation. Hubert had to fucking talk her into it at all. That doesn't make the shit she does or is guilty of by association ok but like.

it's not like she was like 'yo monica please kill my professor's dad that'll be really great if you could do that kthnx'

 

Spoiler: black eagles spoilers (that I really should have seen coming)

This really shouldn't have come as a surprise to me.

The more the Flame Emperor showed up, the more I was like "Hmm, they've probably got something to do with the Adrestian Empire, on account of it being the only Empire around" and "Who wants to bet the ****ing Crest of Flames is involved?"

But somehow I did not put those two together, so it was a complete shock when Edelgard admitted to being the Flame Emperor.

But apparently she is!

(Now I kinda feel bad about the time the Flame Emperor asked if I wanted to join her, and I said no. Sorry about the delay, Edie!)

 

All done with the Tellius series replay, and... I love Three Houses, so much. It's brought me back to the series and I love it and all the characters to bits. But boy howdy are the Tellius games good. Even if Radiant Dawn kinda borked Supports as a concept, the overall story is just... good. Well-plotted, intricate politics, and almost everything makes sense at the end. I highly recommend them, or a Let's Play of them since they can be a bit... nastier, in parts, than Three Houses is, what with both casual mode and the Divine Pulse and all that.

 

The Radiant duology are real fucking good games. And before Three Houses I would have said that hands down they are the best written of the series by far. They probably still got the tighter plotting and what not, but I do feel that Three Houses' character work has given them a run for their money. Especially with the lord characters.

them tellius games though. real good shit. hard too. but like in a good way?

I am really bummed by how supports got fucked in RD though. That sucked shit. Since supports have been and remain one of the big reasons I play Fire Emblem games. Thankfully the rest of the writing makes up for it. But like bad supports or a lack of them is a big hit for me.

 

Okay but what fic is this, I need to know for reasons.

 

Probably my biggest FE-related wish that isn't Three Houses-related is to have a remake of the Tellius duology that unifies the system between them and fixes supports for RD. It's... literally almost the only real flaw the game has that feels like a flaw rather than just a design choice (even though, like, someone clearly decided to do it.

The replay really cemented my feeling that Three Houses, for all that it borrows a lot from Genealogy of the Holy War, also borrows very heavily from the Tellius games, especially in terms of plot. The Death Knight feels like a reference to the Black Knight, even if there's obvious differences there, but that's the smallest of them. The biggest is...

Spoiler: MAJOR spoilers for the Tellius games, and a bit for 3H

They're the only two games in the series with the major "villains" being good people pushed to the breaking point because of the actions of people who just want power. Every other game that comes to mind, the big bad just wants power. Edelgard doesn't, she wants to be free of a system that hurt her. Rhea doesn't, she wants her mother back after she was killed by the Agarthans. But the Agarthans? They just want power. That's all.

Tellius, likewise, has Ashera, who is ending the world because Lehran tells her it's irredeemable. Lehran says this and sets up everything in the games as he does because his people were wiped out by Senator Lekain and his ilk to give them a scapegoat for their murder of the Empress, whom they had killed because she wanted to free the slaves and deny the Senators the chance to continue expanding their power indefinitely.

Lekain would fit right in with Thales and the rest, only he's more blatant about everything being for his own self-gratification. Seriously, fuck that asshole.

There's a bunch of other things, too, like being the only entries in the series so far to have a god/goddess that hasn't been retconned into being a non-deity, afaik...

Here's the AU! It involves a coffee shop.
And here's a little series that'll hopefully be continued that's set in a more canonical time that I found after making the post you quoted.

 

Captainflash has done this lovely write up and analysis of Hubert's character.

 

Someone's currently doing an interest check for an Edelgard centric zine. That is. Not specific to Edeleth the ship. Just the character. Here's the tumblr post which has a link to the interest check survey thing. If anyone's interested in that.

 

Interesting.

 

I've just finished Fire Emblem: Three Houses!
...I'm probably going to play another route soon. It's a good game, and I want to play more.

 

I just got fh3h for a late gift and boy am I excited for the Beagles. I've never really wanted to play a FE game until I started reading about El and co here and in other places. but also i have discovered i love the fishing minigame.

 

Huzzah! I really hope you enjoy. Feel free to ask if'n there's anything you wanna know, the urge to tell the new person ALL THE THINGS is e'er present at the moment.

Very happy you like the fishing game, it took up a significant amount of my first run. More than might have been sensible.