Hi! I was reading about your Stygian Summer event (atill love the idea, still would make it canon if I could), and I was wondering, what inspired you to make Edward Teach a Pretender?
First of all, aw thank you! It really means a lot to know those lostbelt/event concepts and fanservant ideas stuck with people!
Secondly, a fun thing about Blackbeard is that we actually have only a vague idea of what his real name was. We know his first name was Edward, but his last name is up in the air. Potential spellings include "Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche, and Theach."
The two largely agreed upon potential names though are Edward Teach, and Edward Thatch.
Edward Teach the 2 star rider is explained as being less the actual legendary pirate blackbeard and more a representation of the eccentric tales people would tell about Blackbeard and the general greed and selfishness of piracy itself as the archetypal idea of a pirate (or at least this is the paper thin excuse given to explain why he's a sleazy NEET pervert gag character)
So if all that is Edward Teach, then there's two other identities to work with, Edward Thatch and Blackbeard.
I personally agree with what, last i checked, is a general consensus of the true Blackbeard being a Berserker or Berserker-adjacent rider, but he could also very well be Pretender class as a reflection of how he's more an identity than an individual person. So Edward Thatch would be Blackbeard the Pretender, the tyrannical lord of the seas who would light fuses in his hair just to scare someone and was as cunning as he was brutal.
....Buuuuut since this was all for a summer event idea, there is also a less serious meta reason for it! The same way Edward Teach is a sort of amalgam of piracy itself, Edward Thatch's reason for leaning towards Pretender instead of Berserker is manifesting as a representation for all the servants who got dumbed down into punchlines and/or cast by the wayside over getting a serious portrayal. This is reflected in the roster for the event, including characters like Paris, Meph, Benkei, Fergus, and of course the other 5 star of the event, Caesar.
