I know it’s become a popular pastime to hate on Gilbert (for what are admittedly fairly valid reasons for hating on a character, but bear with me here), but it’s worth taking into account that Gilbert’s someone who got smacked even harder with the ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘harmful cultural values regarding chivalric and knightly ideals’ sticks than Felix and his father did, and is acutely aware of just how badly he fucked up because of it.
Gilbert is a man whose life is defined by his failures, and he lives in a society that does not take kindly to those who fail to fulfill their vows. In the eyes of his people, failing to be with the royal family when they were set upon in Duscur is a blot on his honor that can never come out, and the only proper course of action is to spend many years, possibly the rest of his life, atoning for this failure. Annette will tell us early on that she and her mother suspected that Gilbert went to Garreg Mach after leaving Fhirdiad because of his piety. I think it may have had a lot more to do with the depths of his shame over his failure. He couldn’t bear to continue living at the site of his failure, the traumatized boy he had sworn to protect a living symbol of the vows he had sworn, and then failed to fulfill. He was pious, so the Church was a convenient site for his penance, but I don’t think his piety was the primary reason he went there. I think he was just trying to get as far away from Fhirdiad as possible, without having to swear fealty to another country.
And, of course, Gilbert couldn’t atone his failure without compounding it. He swore vows to protect Dimitri, and he abandoned him. I’ve no doubt he swore vows to his wife as well on their wedding day, and abandonment of her and their child would certainly have left him foresworn. Can’t do one thing right without doing ten things wrong.
Where the ‘harmful cultural values’ comes into play is that, after Duscur, shame was his, and he could not escape it without heaping even more shame upon himself. It seems without question that Gilbert faced severe opprobrium for failing to protect the royal family in Duscur, despite the fact that his absence suggests that the king himself thought his presence would be unnecessary, and that he may have even ordered Gilbert to stay behind in Fhirdiad. King Lambert, seeking to foster diplomatic relations with Duscur without resorting to military force or intimidation, may have felt that bringing a full complement of knights would be needlessly provocative. None of that seems to matter, though, and neither fighting for nor dying for the royal family is a black mark on Gilbert’s honor that, to many people, overshadows all else.
Well, that and his having abandoned what remained of the royal family after the massacre in Duscur. This is what society considers to have most dishonored him: failing to protect the royal family in Duscur, and abandoning his responsibilities to Dimitri afterwards. Nobody outside of Annette ever confronts him over his having abandoned his family as well; it’s a non-issue even for Dedue, who both cares for Annette and does not mince words about Gilbert’s abandonment of Dimitri having had a deleterious effect on Dimitri himself. This is what proper knightly, chivalric masculinity is: all your honor is bound up in your valor and the vows you swear to your liege lords and the reputation you forge and the reputation your liege lord forges, and unless your treatment of your family is so outstandingly awful that it can’t fail to catch other people’s attention, however you treat your wife and your children takes a distant second place in importance. If you’re good to them, it’s a feather in your cap, but if you’re not, then unless you’re outstandingly awful, most everyone just tends to look the other way.
Given that no one but Annette ever brings it up, it would seem that spousal abandonment and child abandonment in the name of knighthood is not considered outstandingly awful behavior in Faerghus.
Except that Gilbert does seem to consider it outstandingly awful, judging by his behavior. He does not contact his family because he doesn’t feel he deserves to be happy. He also doesn’t contact them because he feels his abandonment to have been unforgivable. He doesn’t want to face their recriminations or their pain. He also doesn’t want to face the thought that they might forgive him, doesn’t want to face all the work of having to rebuild his life with them from the ground up.
Gilbert is a man trapped in a cycle of guilt and self-recrimination, of reliving his failures over and over again without end. He’s like a Bad End Annette, because you can see Annette get caught up in a similar cycle of guilt and self-recrimination from time to time, notably in her support chain with Caspar. But where Annette had Caspar to reassure her that failure isn’t unforgivable, that it’s something that just happens sometimes and that the only thing to do is to move past it, Gilbert doesn’t appear to have had such support when he’s needed it.
I know that Faerghus’s conception of masculinity likely doesn’t map perfectly to any modern conception of masculinity that we might be familiar with, but we know that reputation is paramount, that losing face is considered unconscionable, and everything seems to suggest that showing true vulnerability outside of your most intimate circle (and even with them, you can only show vulnerability up to a certain point) is highly discouraged. Annette is certain that her mother would have supported Gilbert through the societal shame he endured after Duscur if he had ever confided in her, but it seems he was unable to make himself vulnerable enough to even think to lean on her. Interesting how a man like that is introduced to us as a Fortress Knight.
Only in Azure Moon, and only if you achieve Gilbert’s paired ending with Annette, can Gilbert fully break out of the cycle of guilt and self-recrimination. It’s only there where he can overcome the paralysis that keeps him from doing something that isn’t wallowing in his guilt, only there where he can actually bring himself to end his pattern of escaping one source of shame by creating another.
In all the other routes, Gilbert’s cycle of failures carries on until he is entirely consumed by them. In Silver Snow, he’s presumed dead after the Battle at Gronder. In Verdant Wind, he’s last reported carrying Dimitri’s corpse away from the battlefield, and there’s no evidence that he’s ever seen alive again. In Crimson Flower, he is complicit in the burning of Fhirdiad after Dimitri is killed in battle (one does doubt that Catherine and Cyril were able to pull that off by themselves), and while you can technically spare him, he was most likely executed for his role in the burning of the city after the battle was over if he didn’t die during that battle.
Only in Azure Moon can he break the cycle. In every other circumstance, he most likely dies consumed by it.
All this makes him fascinating to me, though it seems that few share my opinion. And I understand why people would dislike Gilbert, but never has a fandom come closer than this one to making me think that nuanced character evaluation is truly dead, because oh boy, do you guys get fixated on the one thing about Gilbert and never seem to even think about any of the rest of it.
