Thanks for visiting! My name is Nyx, I'm 28, and I post whatever I find interesting at the moment and have no guarantees as to what content winds up here. Have fun!
okay, but not enough people know the details on this. people at pride were upset about gay rights in australia. so they decided to sail 200 miles into the coral sea just ‘cause and put a rainbow flag on a fucking empty island out of spite. and i’m talking empty. no inhabitants. zero. it was a flat piece of land with a bit of dry grass. now it has a camp site and a post office.
they have a declaration of independence that talks a bit about gay rights and then just flat out copies the “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” part from the american declaration of independence. and here’s the best part: the founding group actually elected their emperor. he was originally going to be called the “administrator” of a republic. their website, however, says that “upon legal advice, his title was changed to that of Sovereign on the grounds that under Australian law a defacto prince trying to claim his crown cannot be charged with treason”. so they made it a kingdom and he now claims to be a descendent of edward ii.
everything about this is glorious and everyone should know about it.
Highlights from the timeline via wikipedia as this thread is from 2017:
As previously mentioned, the idea originated at Pride (Brisbane 2003) in reaction to punitive anti-marriage legislation
“On the 14th day of June 2004, at this highest point in the Coral Sea, Emperor Dale Parker Anderson raised the gay rainbow flag and claimed the islands of the Coral Sea in his name as homeland for the gay and lesbian peoples of the world. God Save our King!”
The campsite/capital Heaven was named after the London nightclub
War was declared on Australia in September 2004
The aforementioned stamps were issued in July 2006 “with the aim of creating a high and distinctive reputation amongst the philatelic fraternity”
They were never recognized legally/internationally as a micronation (and in fact Anderson refused to attend a conference in 2010 because they weren’t actually trying to be a sovereign nation)
In Feb 2017, Abetz was objecting to the flag of a “hostile nation” being flown
The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was dissolved in November 2017 (when same-sex marriage was legalized)
On Fodlan's Greatest Monster that Did Nothing Wrong
Alright, let's talk about Fire Emblem: Three Houses for a moment in the very timeliest of takes on a game released nine years ago. In particular, let's talk about Edelgard. I have thoughts.
What I'm going to say will have been cobbled together from a bunch of things I've said separately and elsewhere, so please pardon me if it's messy. Although, in the unlikely event that you're curious enough about some rando's thoughts about a character from a decade-old game that you're reading this at all, I kind of have to assume that you don't mind too much.
Be warned: it's a lot.
Spoilers past the jump, obviously.
There is a desire to paint Edelgard in one of two pictures. She is history's greatest monster, laying waste to untold masses for her own selfish ambition. She is the martyred warrior-saint that strove only to deliver humanity to itself. Here, the contention will be made that rather than either of these, she is a complicated figure. She become parts of both and all of neither, forged by circumstance into something more and less than the woman she otherwise might have been. She lost the ability to choose a softer path as the cause she became smothered her very humanity. She was a tragedy, in the classical sense, with an end that could only be averted by divine intervention.
To begin, consider her end. There are two route-dependent cutscenes in Fire Emblem: Three Houses where, after defeating Edelgard, she gets put down. There are others like them in the game, and what we see our Lords do in their final moments before the proverbial (and sometimes literal) axe comes down can tell us a lot about them. In Edelgard's case, the two show different sides of her, but both clearly illustrate the same character.
I'll begin with what is arguably her more extreme outcome in the Blue Lions route, where she transforms herself into a very literal monster in pursuit of success in her final battle. At the end, as she kneels broken and defeated, we see Dimitri reach the culmination of his character arc by offering her his hand rather than his blade. She smiles quietly and draws a knife, trying to kill him to the very last, and she dies as Dimitri defends himself.
From a Doylist perspective, we can understand that all of this is in service to Dimitri's narrative: she's his final boss, so she goes monster; she's his counterpart, so she mirrors his ability to overcome his zeal with the inability to overcome hers. It's all very poetic, and it's part of why the Blue Lions route, absent the larger context of the setting, feels the most complete and satisfying.
It's the Watsonian perspective, though, where we see what this tells us about Edelgard, herself. Because even though the scene is made for Dimitri, it remains entirely faithful to Edelgard's character. The greatest argument for it being a distortion is that we don't see her transform in any other route, but even that extreme measure is consistent with her characterization elsewhere if we consider that the Blue Lions route shows her at her darkest and most desperate. It's a route where she shoulders the blame for actions she had nothing to do with. That route presents a universe where Those Who Slither in the Dark go entirely unpunished and largely unnoticed. It shows us a universe where she is pushed hardest, and so she takes the most extreme measures. But none of those measures are outside of her character.
Because Edelgard is, in fact, unlike Dimitri. Edelgard truly does lack the capacity to back down, forgive, and let go. It's unclear whether she was born that way or whether she simply had the right raw material to come out that way from the crucible she and her siblings were put through by Those Who Slither, but by the time the game starts even in White Clouds, that's the Edelgard we have. It's that very inability to back down, whatever its origin, that allows her to survive what none of her siblings did. Without that property, she wouldn't have lived to enroll in the Officer's Academy. The Edelgard that tries to kill Dimitri even in defeat and even as he offers his hand is the only Edelgard there could have ever been.
This take might seem to be contradicted by the other cutscene in which she dies, but it holds up under closer scrutiny. That cutscene seems pretty clearly to have been created for Silver Snow, where she has a deep and compelling relationship with Byleth from White Clouds. After the timeskip, Silver Snow gives us a cutscene that almost explicitly says that the route's ending cutscene is destined to occur. But Silver Snow and Golden Deer are damn near the same route, and she isn't the final battle in either of them. Corners were cut in development (especially with regards to Edelgard and the Black Eagles), and it seems pretty clear that her Silver Snow death scene was reused for the very similar Golden Deer route, especially since the alternative would have been to use limited development resources to create an alternate cutscene for a route where her death is far less meaningful.
Approaching the scene as contextualized by the Silver Snow route, then, this unique case of her apparent surrender makes sense. This is an Edelgard that has a deep and strong relationship with Byleth. Even if it isn't augmented by supports (which are very likely to occur in Silver Snow, where she starts as your house leader), the narrative bakes in demonstrations. It's in the main script for White Clouds in both routes that have her as your house leader that she begins to confide in Byleth. She feels some strong connection, and Byleth gives her hope. From the Doylist perspective, this is to engage the player, but from the Watsonian perspective, it's because Byleth is essentially the first person to actually approach her from a position of nurture since her personal horrors began. And, if you want to get freaky with it, you can argue that the shared Crest of Flames allows her to feel, on some instinctive level, that Byleth possesses an inner light that might make her impossible dreams attainable (which is its own thing I'll get to later).
In Crimson Flower, Edelgard is endlessly grateful to have Byleth stand beside her. In Silver Snow, she very conspicuously aches for that relationship she didn't get to have. In Crimson Flower and Silver Snow alike, Edelgard adopts Byleth as guarantor of his or her chosen path in the same way that Edelgard views herself as the guarantor of her own. In Crimson Flower, that means finally having a peer to stand beside her. In Silver Snow, where they take different paths, Edelgard repeatedly calls out how their paths are incompatible (even as she clearly wishes, deeply, that it weren't so). And we see in Silver Snow the only time she shows actual respect for another path, even if it's incompatible with her own. She treats Byleth's chosen course as a kind of worthy and understandable alternative to hers. Thus, when she kneels across from Byleth and entreats Byleth to kill her, she says she wants it to be Byleth and only Byleth that strikes her down. Byleth's path is the only one outside of her own that she respects. It's only through that respect that she is able in any way to accept that she has lost. It's only through Byleth's meaning to her that she can accept that one person bring hers to an end. And even then, to the very end, she never releases her weapon.
Edelgard is incapable of releasing her cause like Dimitri did even though we clearly see places in which she wishes she could. She smothers herself for her cause with hardly any respite because the cause must always take priority over anything else, including her own wishes. That post-timeskip cutscene in Silver Snow is one such occasion, where she obviously wishes she and her onetime professor could walk side by side, but it isn't just there. We see it all over the place.
We see it in her giving support points to Byleth when they say the things that she wishes she could say. Proud of her victory in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion when she's your house leader, she knows she needs to play nice with the other houses, so she outwardly rejects the assertion, if Byleth makes it, that the battle wasn't close. But Byleth gets support points for expressing what she feels, but couldn't express. In Crimson Flower, after killing one of Those Who Slither in the conquest of a Kingdom fortress, she is confronted by the creature wearing her uncle's skin, an ally of necessity. If Byleth expresses that he or she is satisfied with the death of that One That Slithered, Edelgard firmly protests. She has to. But Byleth gets support points for expressing what she feels but cannot say.
We see it in her supports themselves. We see her carefully navigating what she says to the allies she truly cares about while silently begging for their help. Edelgard wasn't raised an only child, and Petra is the closest thing to a sibling she has left. So when Petra says she understands that Edelgard has her own dreams and oughtn't look out for her, that Edelgard shouldn't try to shoot two birds with one arrow, Edelgard pushes back. Shooting even more birds with one arrow will be the least of what she must do, she says, and she entreats Petra to become the arrow, not a bird. In Edelgard-speak, that means, "I love you dearly even if you're a hindrance. But please, please, please, if you love me too and want to make my burden lighter, the way to do that is by pulling your own weight and fighting with me, not asking me to overlook you." But she can't say that, no matter how much she wishes she could, so she wraps it up in her secret language for the people she cherishes, but does not yet feel she can trust completely with the purpose that conquers everything she is.
But she wants to. Oh, does she want to. Every beat we see of Edelgard's story from her side shows how utterly desperate she is for the human connections her purpose denies her. She feels that she can only be truly open with Hubert and (if they stand by her and accept the purpose which would otherwise forbid such intimacy) Byleth. But she craves it. As mentioned earlier, she is endlessly grateful to a Byleth that offers her some of it, and desperately aching for it from a Byleth that chooses a path where her purpose mandates she must go without. If Petra can place being her arrow over being the Brigid bird that might stand against her, she can stay close and live more comfortably to another person she cherishes. She wishes so dearly for these connections, but always denies herself their comfort if they might interfere with her purpose. Always, the purpose smothers the person.
This alone would be tragic. That shows it isn't selfishness or greed that drives her, and it is already a tragedy. This very human woman with very human needs, feelings, and sympathies is driven to lay waste to anything and everything in the way of a purpose that offers her nothing in return. The only reward for all the horror and death is the fulfillment of a purpose that dearly costs and nowise benefits the one pursuing it. That alone would be tragic, but the greater tragedy is the inevitability of it all.
Edelgard is what the world made her. She was a raw material exceptional enough to survive a crucible that could only create one thing. Whoever and whatever else she ever might have been, in the broad strokes, was scoured away and replaced with the Edelgard we got. The only person the world permitted her to be is the one she became: devoted to her purpose to the point of being incapable of ceasing to do everything in her power in its pursuit. Could she do anything else, after what they made of her, surely she would not have chosen an impossible path to walk.
And it was an impossibility. Edelgard openly acknowledges it herself, that her goals are impossible, even as she insists she will achieve them regardless. She would never have started down a path towards something so unreachable if she had the capacity to do otherwise. Her dream was always impossible, but it never mattered. It couldn't matter.
However clever and powerful Edelgard might have been, it's only with the support of a great divine power to make her impossible dream possible that she can ever reach a different end than we see for her in the other routes. It's only with a great divine power willing to turn against its own kind (and its own self, given how Crimson Flower sears Sothis' divinity from Byleth at the end) to support her that she might see her dreams realized rather than herself torn apart in their pursuit. It's only through Byleth that any of the sacrifice, from Edelgard's own to all the suffering wrought across the continent, can be given meaning. Elsewise, it would always be for nothing even as Edelgard lacked the capacity ever to stop.
This interpretation is certainly not the only one. The claims made are not irrefutable. Part of this is the unfortunate reality that we never got to see the entire picture of this woman. In three routes, she is an enemy, written in the spare strokes necessary to establish the kind of threat she presents and how it interacts with the characters we're actually following. The only route she has to show herself for what she is, meanwhile, is rightly and overwhelmingly regarded to be unfinished.
Edelgard's is the shortest route, missing important staple moments from all other routes. Hers is a route that reduces the culmination of its own narrative to a sentence or two in the epilogue of a victory that marks its natural halfway point. Hers is a route that establishes her as having more reason to hate Those Who Slither than anyone and shows her actively planning to exterminate them once Rhea has been dealt with, but never includes the maps present elsewhere in which they can actually be fought. One imagines that, if the route was not finished in smaller ways, it would have been too much to demand a second cutscene where anything but Rhea resolves Those Who Slither.
As it stands, there are only the fragmentary pieces we have by which an understanding of her can be cobbled together, absent some of the most important beats of the story her route clearly wants to tell. Given those pieces, however, what has been presented here seems the most likely case for what we might have seen were her story completed.
Ultimately, Edelgard did a great deal wrong. And if she could do it all again after any of her defeats, she would. She would raze the entire continent to the earth if it moved in the direction of even one human being standing in the ashes of the dominions she'd done it all to destroy. She would do all those terrible things with regret and a broken heart and an incredible burden, but she would never do it with mercy.
But she wasn't a monster. She was an extraordinary woman, likely a heroine-in-the-making, who was forced — both literally and figuratively — into a twisted shape by a world that cared nothing for her any more than the humanity she represented. She was an antiheroine with the "anti" thrust forcibly upon her. She fought with every moment and every fiber of her being to do the right thing in the only way the world ever taught her how: with everything she had, at any cost, no matter what.
All, absent Byleth, for nothing. She is a tragedy for whom, absent divine intervention, there was never any other end possible than to die at the foot of her throne after tearing the continent apart in a futile bid for a dream that could never be.
rip to the guy who posted his very expensive yixing teapot to r/tea, only for the comments to be not compliments on his taste as he expected, but instead GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY and I SHOULD CALL HER. he then crossposted it to r/gongfutea, which is ordinarily more dignified and self-serious, but was it? was it?? of course not, because this is reddit, and this was the teapot
Two dudes in my group chat have been playing league & slowly but surely have shifted from saying "wanna play league of legends" to "wanna play some geego legends". At this point their average post is just @ing the other and going "geegogagand?" and I feel insane
