I definitely do think, at her core, Edelgard NEEDS to believe she is right leading to her ignoring any inconvenient truths about the world. But I think it also reflects that, deep down, she’s cowardly and afraid.
We get hints of this at Gronder. She’s the only lord there who doesn’t lead her army from the frontline, and as her army collapses she flees. The only reason Dimitri didn’t kill her there was because wave after wave of her soldiers stood between him and her, eventually wearing him down and killing him. Likewise, the Japanese script for her manifesto isn’t benevolent, it’s tactical. She’s not trying to open people’s eyes, she’s trying to drive a wedge between her various sources of opposition and preventing them from uniting. Even with Lonato, where Lonato forced his people to fight march against Rhea and Ferdinand is calling him a monster for doing so, Edelgard says she would do the same thing but then says that it’s wrong to think of the civilians Lonato used as victims because “they died fighting for what they believed in.” And Edelgard herself is revealed to conscript the people of the empire into her war, CF even identifies they are uneasy fighting their faith, but Edelgard goes so far as to execute those who resist conscript. They aren’t fighting for what they believe in, they’re fighting for what she’s forcing them to fight for which aligns with the parley scene where Dimitri calls her own on forcing her ideals on others.
That same scene has her say if the people don’t benefit from her reforms, they’re at fault for being too coddled and unused to relying on their own strength.
For all her talk about strength and how people need to rise based on their own merits, she is fully willing to accept support from others even as, going by the Japanese text, her reforms involve cutting off support for the people under the belief it will make them strong. So we get character endings like Hubert and Ferdinand’s Japanese ending calling them the twin pillars of the empire, Hubert for his ruthlessness and Ferdinand for his compassion, while Edelgard’s own ending with Byleth still mentions those reforms yet Edelgard reliance on Byleth only grows. Hell, Byleth’s ending title, Wings of the Hegemon, would imply that from the view of history Edelgard’s rise to the top wasn’t on her own merits but on Byleth’s support. Other characters have endings that, despite Edelgard’s reforms, they go on to continue supporting the people (and Yuri in particular gets enough power in the shadows to influence the economy while setting up stuff to support the people). And of course, she’s willing to work with the Agarthans even if she wants to keep that relationship a secret (though, again, the endings indicate people eventually learn the truth).
So, Edelgard’s reforms are hypocritical coming from her especially after her speech when murdering Rhea… yet they’re based on the same ideals that Hopes confirms she starts the war over. So, if anything, if Edelgard is going to start a war based on those ideals she needs to implement reforms based on them despite her hypocrisy over the matter. She won through the support of others, disproving her own beliefs, but defaults back to the beliefs she started the war over.
It’s like she rejects any character growth, but this is actually consistent when we look at her death in SS and VW. She is defeated, she lets go of her signature weapon to clutch the Sword of Seiros, she’s looking towards the light and facing Byleth… and she tells Byleth to kill her. That to stop the fighting, she needs to die, that Byleth needs to have the courage to walk their path even if it’s over her corpse, and her last words are wondering what it would have been like if she and Byleth could have walked together. This event happens even in VW, where there’s no relationship between her and Byleth.
Yet, no one wants to kill her. Everyone is begging her to step down, to stop fighting, but she’s the one insisting it can end no other way. That the others lack self-awareness, that they are only fighting her because of the decisions they’ve made, that they don’t know Fodlan’s history, she won’t hand it over even if Claude’s beliefs are similar to her own, that she will fight to her last breath… yet she didn’t turn herself into a monster like in AM. She believed that Byleth and their allies were weak in SS and VW, that she could kill them and turn the whole war around compared to Dimitri uniting the rest of Fodlan against her. And the idea that it’s to end the fighting? There is still the Agarthans to take out, the people who destroyed her family, not to mention how VW’s endings reveal that after the war the Agarthans engineer an uprising of Imperial loyalists that nearly retake the continent. So, the fighting doesn’t stop simply because she dies.
Edelgard sees the light, she’s realizing her beliefs led to her defeat, so she chooses oblivion rather than walking a path other than the one she’s walked down. She’d rather die than reform, she lacks the courage to face what she’s done. So she’ll instead leave Fodlan in the hands of Byleth, the Church and the Goddess, allowing their beliefs to shape the future even if it was in direct opposition to her own beliefs.
By her own twisted logic, Edelgard is not a victim. She died fighting for what she believed in, or rather she died rather than admit that what she believed in was wrong. It’s a very sad and pathetic end to her, tying into how during the classroom bits she prefers to be consoled rather than critiqued when she fails unlike the other two lords.
Claude and Dimitri both have arcs where they realize they were wrong and change.
Edelgard is the student that simply refuses to learn.
And then you look at all the worldbuilding that works against her diagnosis, she ignores it. She ignores that she knows the Agarthans were the ones to destroy her family and made her into a weapon against the Church, she knows her father was their puppet, yet will still keep repeating the lies she has been fed. She knows the Agarthans want her to wage this war, and she still follows their plans so that she may rule the world herself. The worldbuilding contradicts her claims, showing the Agarthans were the ones behind Fodlan’s issues rather than the Church, and the developers confirmed this intentional. That they created Fodlan to support Silver Snow’s story, to support fighting Edelgard rather than joining her. Joining her, in their words, leads to military rule as she still refuses to change. The would didn't suddenly change to accommodate her, the player just joined her in ignoring reality leading to the loss of their enlightened one status.
That’s the truth the player base is too afraid to admit. That Edelgard isn't a revolutionary, she's detached from reality and her route, according to the devs, is about her killing everyone who stands in the way of her goals. Edelgard sees the light, but does not repent. She does not work to help her victims, her death doesn't benefit anyone but herself. She was always a monster with a god complex, in AM she just transforms physically into one, and in SS and VW she chooses to die as one rather than live as a human.
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
