#FreeMyEuden - Or, How Dragalia Itself Tried To Run an Elaborate Smear Campaign Against Euden
I think there's a small implied twist to the oft-repeated sentiment/critique of Euden about his proclivity to 'personally' set worlds on courses to ruin. This isn't just Crazy H8ters repeating these sentiments, either, as even the main campaign itself expresses this sentiment through Euden himself:
...However, from looking at Zena in particular, I think she paints a very different picture than the 'Euden -> world-ending fool' that gets communicated. And she's the one who secretly did have perhaps the most world ending of all Eudens, secretly, what with the double possession he had going on that he then used to nuke most worlds!
What does Zena have to say about the mechanisms of all the worlds she's seen go to hell?
These lines are already suspect. When put in conjunction with another line, though...
...This paints a very different picture than the usual 'Euden keeps letting himself get ~possessed~' narrative many run with as the modus operandi for why Euden is the cause of so many worlds' destruction.
Zena is especially concerned about his friends being willing to 'act for his sake'. She has seen how his kindness 'turns on him'. Together, this frames a picture not of that one bad decision, but of his friends betraying him in some way. Alternatively, I suppose one could read these lines/concerns as for his shaky mental state in part because of that 'endless well' of selflessness and kindness, if she has seen him stumble over a metaphorical cliff, but without anyone willing or able to catch or support him.
I would also like to note that the AU versions of the party we see in the last chapter, the ones Beren summons... largely have complaints that are irrelevant to Euden's actions himself.
-Elisanne is just upset that Euden's birthright was a fake, and grew disillusioned with him because of it, as she viewed this false birthright as a deliberate deception that Euden, fully cognizantly, 'named himself' as royal
-Cleo is mad Euden gave a mercy kill to Alberius, only perceiving it as 'killing Alberius' and deciding to turn her grief onto Euden
-Midgardsormr is mad at Euden because an unknown cause started another species war between human and dragon (to be fair, he also has complaints more in line with Ranzal's, and still has a bit more valid ground on the implication that Euden joins the species war on the humans' side/killed him, but part of it is still not exactly something Euden himself is doing to ruin the world)
-Ranzal holds the most direct and reasonable complaint one can attribute to a Euden himself, one that's in-line with the usual framing that all these Eudens supposedly giving themselves to the Other is what causes that many worlds' destruction.
-Alex is doing this pretty much verbatim:
No, seriously, that's her complaint:
-Luca doesn't even specify any particular event, he's just mad that his Euden wasn't 'worthy' of them, which sounds almost more egotistical than anything else even if it could have a valid backing
-Mym also spends her time more trying to convince the canon Mym to abandon her known folly of chasing Euden, with a brief note of him killing her.
In summary, of the 7 people/dragons that Beren pits against the crew to show just how bad Euden is for the multiverse.... Only TWO, 3 if I'm being generous (Mids, as if Euden had started the species war, could have just said that, but he didn't, which leads one to think that Euden was just swept up in the conflict, y'know, how most people are), have any rational dislike of Euden himself for a world ending action he committed.
The rest is all displacement, something that they actually call out, both the party in the faultier logic presented here, and in this brief exchange it surprisingly reinforces the narrative that Zena painted all those chapters ago:
But wait, there's more, as provided by Soumarhea. Much stronger proof that Euden isn't as bad as even the narrative is inclined to portray him!
Elysium, one of the most worldly characters we know of (as a singular existence across all worlds), does not and cannot specify Euden as a singular world-ending cause. In fact, he doesn't even try to call him out as a 'majority' or even a disproportionate contributor. He tells story after story of HUMANITY making bad decisions, but never once specifies that 'oh yeah see that dude over there, Euden, he's almost always behind stupid ideas that kill the world.'
No, it's always humanity this, humanity that. Take a look:
We do see Elysium give this rather strong claim:
So there may be a Alberian Royal Fam -> Game Over pipeline, but again, not even the current generation is specified. It could be Alberius' kids, it could be Aurelius' father as a known bad dude, it could be Chelle or Emile or fifty generations after the canon one, what have you not. But Elysium refuses to specify even that it's Aurelius and his clan of kids as the usual instigators.
It's not like he has any reason to pull his punches here, either. He wants to win, and stop Nedrick and Euden. If his words could have dissuaded one, two, three of their party from following Euden's lead and made the fight easier for him, the easiest thing in the world would have been to say that Euden is the cause of ending worlds, and that they are making a terrible mistake.
In conclusion, between some of the most world-traveling characters we know, neither actually call out Euden as the person that causes all these problems.
Why is this the case, then? What has contributed to the notion that Euden is some world-wrecking fiend that so many believe?
Well, to that, we have to turn to... sampling!
Welcome to over-representation 101... and cherry-picking bias.
First up, overrepresentation.
As we know, there are an impossible number of worlds in Dragalia. This is the 'population', the entire group of worlds. Every single one, however many millions or billions or so on there are.
Next, if we want to study the causes of the worlds' ends, we can't count every single world! That would take too long. So we sample it, taking data from some to try to approximate the true numbers.
In the context of Dragalia, the 'sample' is the worlds' endings that we are exposed to, the data that we, the players, are given.
What were some of the world-ending scenarios in our sample, then?
-Zena's is tied to her Euden
-Audric's might be contradictory (that's a can of worms for another day) but is initially seemingly tied to Euden
Hm. Between these major characters' worlds sticking in the mind, the canon ch.14 close call, and finally the ch.26 crew of the AU party beating up on Euden verbally, it's no wonder many assume that Euden is a major part in many worlds' destruction. However, this seems like it might not actually be the case.
Even if we look at some of the other worlds, we see...
-Leonidas as the unambiguous world ender in Harle's world, no Euden involvement to speak of
-Gala Zethia's world ended because they lost to the Progenitor at ch.23,
That's already an equal amount of worlds where Euden is not at fault. What about the ch.26 AU party, though, doesn't that add 3 more to the tally of Euden?
Well... yes, but that's where we introduce that little 'bias' part of it. Beren is specifically summoning versions of the party who have died, and died angry at Euden. He was trying to break their bonds by cherry-picking (another statistical issue) the worlds where Euden is more likely to be a problem, at least the sort that makes 'good' people like the party mad at him.
This further contributes to that overrepresentation problem: the worlds' endings we see may well be a 'majority' of Euden's... we have evidence to suggest that it was a flawed sample to start, making it look like Euden is a higher cause of worlds than he actually is per those with a wider 'sample' of knowledge, like Elysium.
That's why Elysium has no particular grudge against Euden, nor is Zena overly hesitant about everything Euden does in case he's going down a familiar bad path, because they both have greater awareness that Euden is not necessarily personally inclined to cause a world Game Over screen.
Let me frame it a one last way, just in case.9
Essentially, if we were to use Royal Family Math, and I'm surveying the royal fam on the prevalence of wyrmscale, and I only ask Phares and Nedrick, my results would be 100%. Wow, how scary, 100% of the family has this terrifying terminal illness!
...But they don't. The ones with wyrmscale (25% of the actual natural children) are overrepresented in my sampling. 100% of the fam doesn't have wyrmscale, but my selection made it look like it.
The same thing is happening with Euden: Euden is a cause of several worlds' end. Euden is also never implicated as a major or notable cause disproportionate to either his family or the multiverse at large.
But with the game favoring exposure to scenes where Euden is addressed as a cause of a world's end, it make it look to the player that he is a greater problem than he actually is!
In brief, to quote soumarhea:
The narrative may have wanted to put #BlameEuden on trending, but from Elysium's recounts alone, the narrative is very unreliable on that front. Elysium blames Possibility, and Euden was catching strays. The narrative was just hell-bent on making Euden the scapegoat.
Finally, this ties into that quote at the very start: Euden himself, already inclined to assume fault and self-denigrate, has been exposed to that same biased sample, and has accepted these results as legitimate. He hears about Euden getting possessed and Euden betraying and Euden doing all these things... so he assumes that to be the case across the worlds and repeats it.
So the actual numbers - the ones that suggest it's more broadly humanity, with a subset of royal family-induced problems and a dash of perhaps his friends betraying him, - go unnoticed and under-recognized.
This all amounts to what feels like a smear campaign, as I realized and assembled these facts. As it is, even Dragalia's writers seemed inclined to frame Euden as a bigger problem than he actually is. Sure, maybe he's a higher odd than the average Joe, but he's not exceptional, and I figured now is the time to say it:
#FreeMyEuden from the faulty statistics Dragalia presented us!
