I donât really feel like the text of FE3H actually supports a reading of Edelgard having Slither-experiment-induced amnesia as a reason why she doesnât ârememberâ Dimitri, rather it seems to me that itâs because Dimitri is just not recognizable as âDeeâ to Edelgard in the way Edelgard is as âElâ to Dimitri, for one very pivotal reason.
Dimitri lives his life looking backwards. Edelgard only ever looks forwards.
And of course they do! For Dimitri, his life is very neatly divided into two sections; Before and After Duscur. He had a happy life up until that point, with what felt to him like a complete family that was involved with him; even if he didnât remember his birth mother, he had always had Patricia. He had close friends and was very sheltered; âElâ was someone new and interesting in a life that was pretty stable up until that point. She stood out for that reason, and also because it wasnât long after she left that the Tragedy occurred. Dimitri seems to have fixated on the time when she was present in his life as âThe good times, before everything changed.â He thinks about that time often, idealizing it as a time he wishes desperately that he could return to. Heâs also clearly aware of Arundelâs relationship to him, so he already knows that Edelgard is El, and has known that for a long time before they meet again.
But Edelgardâs life before she met Dimitri as a child was already not that great! Even as a child, she wasnât insulated from the tense social climate in Adrestia like Dimitri was in Faerghus. Itâs unclear if she even remembers having a mother (beyond just knowing facts about her), given how young Dimitri was when Anselma became Patricia, and her father doesnât seem to have been very involved in her life. She has something like a dozen siblings, but they all start disappearing when sheâs very young. For her, Faerghus is just a brief bright point in an unhappy life, and Edelgard as a person doesnât take comfort from thinking about the past. For her, in her cell in the dark with the rats, thinking of better times that are gone is only salt in the wound. She canât go back to that time, so she intentionally doesnât think about it. She doesnât bother looking into who the boy she knew in Faerghus was. She has more important things to do.
Itâs not that sheâs forgotten altogether, or that she doesnât value that time; if you meet Edelgard at the tower on the night of the ball she mentions Dee (not by name, but itâs clear who she means). She also hangs on to the dagger that he gave her for the whole story regardless of route. But what she took away from that was not a memory of an idyllic time when she was happy, like Dimitri did. She took away the advice to use the dagger to carve a future. Edelgard almost pathologically refuses to look backwards. Her eyes are fixed on the future she will cut out for herself. She canât recognize Dee, the gentle boy she doesnât think about that much, in Dimitri, whoâs been broken by tragedy and changed such that even Felix thinks heâs unrecognizable.Â
And I think what reinforces this is that in Azure Moon, when Dimitri acknowledges her as El, Edelgardâs reaction isnât that of recovering a memory, but of making the connection that Dimitri is the same person as Dee. She just had not noticed it until then.
Because to her, it doesnât matter.
She says that to him! It doesnât matter. âDeeâ is part of her past. She is moving towards the future. She fundamentally disagrees with the idea of idealizing the past the way Dimitri does, and cuts it away from herself with intent. I think thereâs something to the reading that, when sheâs beaten at the end of Azure Moon, she throws the dagger at Dimitri to incite him to kill her. The dagger means âcut a path forward,â and Dimitri knows that. Her values of looking forward and not back are clear even in her dying moments, when she has no choice but to entrust Dimitri with improving the world from there forward.
I think it undermines Edelgardâs character to say she âhas amnesiaâ from that time. She remembers. She just chooses not to prioritize that time. Her eyes donât stray to what is to her the darkness of her past. They are fixed on the edge of dawn.
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