What are your thoughts on the BE relationship to trauma and mental illness?
There’s so many places you can go with this lol. I will say I’m gonna stray away from using actual mental illness diagnoses because idk enough about that so I’ll more so focus on just generally unhealthy mental habits/patterns. Also for the less traumatized characters I’ll just talk about general struggles so I can have something to say. And sorry this’ll end up being long lol.
Edelgard: Her trauma has been discussed to hell and back so I’m not sure I have much unique to say in regards to her. Obviously her trauma is largely what motivates her throughout the story, she doesn’t want anyone to suffer how she did. Edelgard is also someone who longs for familial connection. She had all her siblings stolen from her at a young age and I think that’s part of why it’s so meaningful to her when all the Black Eagles stay in CF. She starts to view them as the family she never had (or more accurately the family she had but lost) and she was fully prepared to lose her ‘family’ a second time after her rebellion against the church. But this family stays! And that’s part of why she needs to succeed, she can’t have her new family die for her the way her siblings did. She also struggles to trust people. She’s used to being alone and besides Hubert has not really had a true ally since the experiments. And we see this in her early interactions with Byleth. She desperately wants Byleth on her side, and keeps trying to subtly reach out her hand but whenever Byleth probes farther, she dismisses it (such as after the red canyon when she hints that another people inhabited that space earlier, or after Byleth gets the sword if the creator and she’s like “you could definitely take on the knights if seiros with that” and when Byleth asks what she means she instantly backtracks and pretends she never said anything). She’s also a character who’s pretty good at masking. On the surface, she doesn’t seem heavily traumatized. She’s a pragmatic and confident leader.
Hubert: Tbh I’m not the most knowledgeable person on Hubert lore but I do think he has some left over trauma from Edelgard suddenly disappearing and coming back heavily traumatized. I think this is a part of why he tends to put up a wall between people. Then, once he finally views someone as a friend, he tends to be a bit protective over them in his own Hubert way (like trying to force Lysithea to eat her vegetables). I think there’s a part of him that feel like he could’ve done more to protect Edelgard and maybe then everything would be different. I also feel like one of his post time skip advice box entries kind of touch on this topic. He talks about fearing “zealots and grudges of the living” and his preferred answer is one where Byleth says reality “is most frightening.” Hubert is someone who primarily works in the darkness, he is someone who is constantly exposed to the worst of humanity and this impacts the way he is able to view reality. He also makes a comment in his tea time discussion about how most people who talk to him become “bored and depressed.” This shows how he expects most people to have negative view of him and because of this, he tends to lean into this evil persona. We do see, though, that Hubert has issues with this persona he’s felt the need to take on.
Ferdinand: I think Ferdinand is someone who is deeply in denial about a lot of how his life sucked. Now I wouldn’t really describe Ferdie before the story as traumatized, in fact I think if you asked him he would say his life is pretty great. But I do think he had a pretty bad home situation. I think growing up his dad treated him as a super special little boy contributing to his large ego, but his dad also placed heavy pressure on him to be the best at everything, hence why Ferdinand is so desperate to beat Edelgard (or at least part of the reason). Also idk where this came from, but I always had the head canon that Duke Aegir is the type of man to really look down on his wife and view her as disposable and I think to distract from her depressing life she ended up doting on and really babying Ferdinand making him feel even more special. Ferdinand’s actually trauma comes around the time skip when his dad is arrested and he’s stripped of his noble title. Until then, Ferdinand very heavily defined his identity by his nobility so losing this forced him to completely reconsider who he was as a person.
Linhardt: I don’t think Linhardt is a traumatized person (at least pre time skip, everyone’s traumatized post time skip I mean they literally fought in a war). I think one of his main struggles as a kid was his dad being too strict. He doesn’t like when people have high expectations of him and in his ideal world he would just do what he wants when he wants, and his dad would not allow this. This is a large factor in what caused Linhardt’s demand avoidance. I also think Linhardt is one of the characters who has a harder time adjusting to life at the academy where he consistently has to go to combat. We see in his dialogue after his first kill he is very disturbed by death and he is overall one of the most pacifist characters.
Caspar: This is another character I don’t see as really being traumatized. He does have an unhealthy tendency to feel guilt for his family’s action, which we see explored in his Petra support, but ya know he’s a pretty well adjusted guy.
Dorothea: Now we get back to characters who do have traumatic backstories. Dorothea is someone who has experienced rejection from the moment she was born (from her own father) and this is something that has had a significant impact on her self worth. She has a hard time believing other people could care deeply for her and deflects a lot of her insecurities with her flirty nature. This also causes her to accept being treated poorly as we see in her Caspar support where she talks about going on dates with “tolerable” men and seems to think that’s normal. It’s also heavily implied that she had a lot of bad experiences with noble men once she became a diva and I think this caused her to have a sort of reflexive distrust towards a lot of noble men and she can often be callous and cold towards them. Also the obvious thing that she grew up in poverty and is afraid of being in the same situation so she spends her time looking for a way (or person) to help her get a more secure future.
Petra: This game really does not give Petra the attention she deserved and because of this her trauma and its impacts are pretty under developed compared to other characters. She was taken as a political hostage as a young child and surrounded by racist nobles who looked down on her. Petra is aware that Adrestians view her people as inferior to them and she is desperate to prove them wrong. Because of this she is one of the most ambitious characters in the game, always trying to learn new skills and improve herself. She also knows that she is likely one of the few people from Brigid many Adrestians would interact with so she knows she can make a difference in shaping Adrestians’ perspective towards Brigid. Because of this, she is in a position where she has to constantly play the game and act like she’s happy to be there and is respectful of every noble because if she makes them mad she can risk Brigid’s safety. Furthermore, I believe she has a very complex relationship with Edelgard due to this. Edelgard is the heir/leader of the country that oppresses her country. Even if she doesn’t hold ill will against Edelgard personally, she knows Edelgard has the power to decide what happens to Brigid so I can’t see there not being tension between the two. Petra also feels the need to prove that she is Edelgard’s equal as that would, in a way, also prove that Brigid is Adresta’s equal.
Bernadetta: Saving the most obviously traumatized (and probably most poorly handled) character for last. I’m not gonna lie, I was kinda dreading this because I don’t like how Bernie’s trauma was handled and because of that I don’t particularly enjoy discussing it. But I’ll do my best. Bernadetta was taught by her father her whole life that her sole worth laid in her ability to be a good wife, that there was no value in her as an individual. Because of this, she has a hard time believing people could actually like Bernie the person (such as in her supports with Dorothea and Edelgard). Furthermore, she is so used to rejection that she feels like it would be easier to just hide in her bedroom and not face the world than risk being abused again.
