Can we talk about how in Azure Moon, the route about duty and familial obligation, the narrative makes it clear that it sucks shit to be the only person in the core Azure Moon cast to have no familial obligations?
There's a lot of digital ink spilled I think about how the bulk of the Lions are confined by their obligations to their families and territories but there is one character on the Lions who is absolutely free of any familial obligation whatsoever.
And that person is Dedue.
Because his whole family is dead and so they can't expect anything of him anymore.
And the narrative is clear that this is way fucking worse in every way than having to live up to even the shittiest of Faerghus familial obligations.
Dedue is the only Lion who is completely free to do whatever he wants with absolutely no one to have expectations about what he does with his life, and it sucks for him. He has no family to expect anything of him, no friends or neighbors left who are just in his life because of where he was born, no pre-determined career path he's expected to follow, no territory and no obligations that he hasn't chosen for himself. That freedom comes at a steep, steep, steep price. The grief and horror of not having any kind of place in the world but the one he chooses is core to his character. The hatred he experiences because of being out of place and isolated from his home and the cultural fabric he was born into is a constant. Dedue wishes he still had family to expect shit of him.
He's contrasted with Catherine, who intentionally cut off her familial obligations, but Catherine has the option to go back, and places to go, and as Lorenz points out, the privilege of having been born rich and having every advantage to land the prestigious job she has. Dedue did not have any of that, and has no option to return to his family.
The point is, thematically, in the same way Gustave choosing to leave his family and pursue his own desires instead is shown by the narrative as something it was wrong for him to do, Dedue demonstrates that it's actually not so fucking great to be cut off from your family and duty and unable to go home. It reinforces the theme of the route that, sure, you could choose to defect and follow your own path but if you do that, it's going to suck in ways that you simply can't come back from. Dedue didn't make the choice to lose the social role he was born into to go to another country and make his own way in life while the people back home think he's a traitor (as evidenced in his the Duscur leader talks to him in War for the Weak) but that's the fate of characters who defect from Faerghus.
Dedue is completely free to choose his own path. He's only free to do that because he's also alone. And it sucks for him! The trade off is demonstrated right there in contrast with the rest of the Lions and their struggles with their familial duty.
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