It's amazing to me how people will cherry-pick E33 to support the points they want to make, especially now that it's suddenly "cool" to hate on the game because they "used genAI" (they didn't and a modicum of research would tell you that).
"Sciel is a misogynistic character because her entire story revolves around her husband." Did you miss the part where Sciel, a woman, is possibly the strongest and most well-adjusted person in the entire game??
"Sophie only existed for Gustave's story." Sophie had an entire conversation with someone about how she chose not to have children and how it destroyed her relationship with him, how is that misogynistic.
"Maelle becomes over-emotional and immature in Act 3." She's a teenager who just had an extra life dumped into her head, is trying to sort out two different lives/personalities, and is dealing with her brother's death and her hand in it all over again. For her to suddenly become the wisest in the cast would've been unrealistic at best. Plus, if you automatically assume "emotional = bad", I think that says more about your biases than the writer's.
"All the women's stories revolve around male characters." And all the men's revolve around women. Renoir's NUMBER ONE CHARACTER TRAIT is that he LOVES HIS WIFE. GUSTAVE IS DEFINED BY HIS LOVE OF SOPHIE AND OF MAELLE. VERSO DIED SAVING HIS BABY SISTER.
The game. Has. Flaws. I'm not denying it. I've even expressed some complaints myself. But you don't need to isolate, cherry-pick, and simplify the game to find them. And that's not even getting into the fact that so many complaints are popping up now, when it's "cool" to dunk on the game, which only makes those critiques look even more shallow.
(And that's ALSO not even getting into the fact that some people can't separate the game from its fandom in their complaints.)
Honestly my biggest issue with Endwalker is how Fourchenault just disowns his friggin' kids in the lead-up and then everything is just kinda fine by the end of the Sharlayan part like he didn't just DISOWN HIS KIDS and also the whole "Sharlayan prejudice against literally everyone" is never really addressed either.
Unironically, if I get the time, I kinda want to write a one-shot where Fourchenault is the representative sent to talk about the whole "final days plan" to Ishgard. Except the WoL already told Aymeric about what happened and Aymeric is Upset on Alphinaud's behalf.
And so Aymeric is just increasingly passive-aggressive towards Fourchenault, who is kinda confused but assumes that it has to do with New Sharlayan just buggering off at the first sign of trouble, until Aymeric casually drops that the WoL ended the thousand-year war with the dragons, and oh, he couldn't have done it without a certain Alphinaud Leveilleur's help, so of course Ishgard is going to stand behind whatever their plan might be. He's seen them pull off the impossible before. Oh, and he's reached out to the other city-states and while they're willing to hear him out for the sake of their people, they're Not Happy in general with Sharlayan and are far more willing to side with the Scions, who have done far more to help them with their problems.
And Fourchenault realizes that maybe they've Fucked Up. And also he's disowned his son who is actually kind of a major diplomat to like... the entirety of Eorzea. Whoops.
(And it would loop around nicely with the scene where Alphinaud is calling in all the friends they've made and they make more progress on the starship in days than Sharlayan has made in weeks.)
I've been rotating thoughts and theories about the Dessendre manor fire for a couple of days now and I felt the need to organize everything we know, everything we can infer, and everything that I theorize into one long analysis post. Because it won't leave my head until I do.
Strap yourselves in and prepare for a lot of questions, not a lot of answers, and entirely too much rambling.
Alicia's Sin
Let's start with the most obvious, most repeated piece of hard knowledge - Alicia is somehow to blame.
Clea says it, Aline says it, Painted Renoir says it, Alicia herself says it, the real Renoir never says it but also never denies it. How, exactly, is what's left vague and uncertain. All we know is that Alicia disobeyed Aline and trusted the Writers, despite the stated tensions between Writers and Painters.
Why?
...I can take a guess.
Clearly, Alicia's passions lean far more towards writing than painting. The fact that the above painting is the best she could do, at twice Verso's age, with one of the most skilled Paintresses in Paris as her teacher? Yikes. Something is going on here. I've previously wondered about the possibility of her having aphantasia, but the more likely scenario is more complicated. She likely felt as though she could never measure up to the rest of her family in art, which discouraged her from really trying, which caused her to fall behind further, which caused them to push her more, and - well.
Anyone who's read any of my other analysis posts knows that I firmly believe that this family loved each other very much and that there was no abuse or neglect happening. But obviously, they also aren't perfect - no person or family is. And if there's one other common trait in this family, it's their stubbornness, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was starting to cause friction. Her writing hobby was clearly allowed at the very least, given her personal collection of books and two typewriters, but it's doubtful that it was encouraged, especially once tensions with the Writers were rising.
This part is purely conjecture, but I've always strongly suspected that Alicia, as the youngest, was spoiled and sheltered by her parents. Her naivete, likely mixed with a sense of isolation from having no Writer friends to share her hobby with, made her uniquely vulnerable to their schemes. However. I'm not downplaying the severity of her mistake; only theorizing as to the root causes of it. Regardless of what she might have been dealing with at the time, she still made a decision that ended up causing the death of her brother, a decision she was warned against by Aline.
The Hand of the Writers
The enigmatic Writers are probably what we know least about in the entire Clair Obscur universe - we don't know who they are, why they're fighting the Painters, what their powers do, how they interacted with Alicia...
We have found out one thing - according to the artbook, Alicia was the target of the fire. Why? ...We don't know. Of the possible scenarios I've heard or thought about, two seem the most plausible:
Alicia somehow figured out or learned Writing and was seen as a threat because of it
Someone in the Writers wanted war and befriended Alicia with the intent of using her death as a catalyst
Could be either. Could be neither. We just. Don't. Know. And we barely even have enough to guess. All we can infer is that Alicia trusted someone she shouldn't and somehow caused some kind of vulnerability that could be exploited. Maybe it was political. Maybe it has to do with how their Writing works. In the end, all I can do is shrug.
The Fire
Even the event itself is shrouded in mystery. All we know is that it fell on or around December 33rd, the date on Verso's grave. And that it likely started in or near Alicia's room.
It's really, really hard to tell in the cutscene because of how dark it is, but I'm certain that Alicia's nightmare depicts the fire in her room - the pillar and the wardrobe-thing are in the same positions on either side of the door and the Eiffel Tower can be glimpsed out the window (which we see out her window in the Epilogue). This also lines up with the glimpse of the fire we see in Painted Alicia's vision.
Clearly on the right side, which is the side that the children's bedrooms are on. Should be cut and dry - and yet.
Why. In the name of all that is holy. Is Alicia's bedroom completely intact during the brief interlude and the left side of the manor closed off?!?
I get that the entire Epilogue manor is basically just a reused asset for time and budget reasons (still no clue why they felt the need to close part of it off though). I get that the entire manor was probably damaged and rebuilt from scratch (remarkably fast and remarkably accurately). I know that there's some suspension of disbelief that needs to happen. BUT WHY. WHY MUST YOU BREAK ME SO. WHY.
Alicia's Birthday
This theory posits that the fire happened specifically on Alicia's birthday, due to the prevalence of birthday imagery in one of Maelle's dreams and one of the records being titled "Alicia's Birthday Party". While I think it's an interesting theory, one with a lot of merit, I don't think the fire happened during the party if it did happen, and I have a couple of reasons for this:
If the Writers wanted to target only Alicia, setting a fire at a party would be the worst way to do so. Too many extra targets to draw ire from
If there was a party, Alicia wouldn't be in her room, where it's implied Verso saved her
Renoir was implied to not be present - highly doubtful he wouldn't have been at Alicia's birthday party
However, perhaps Alicia's mistake is related to the party. Perhaps she snuck in her Writer friend(s) and they set up something for later. Perhaps it was the evening after. The references to her birthday feel too deliberate to not hold some kind of importance.
A Couple Extra Thoughts
A few extra scattered thoughts that I couldn't fit in elsewhere:
One of the memories in the Monolith is Aline painting in the middle of a fire. While she was likely in the burning manor, I'm also torn on whether to interpret this literally - if the flames were licking at her feet, why is she painting so calmly? Or is it a representation of her being within a Canvas when it happened? Alternatively, is it a metaphor for how she constantly remembers the fire and what it took, no matter how much she tries to distract herself? I'm always hesitant to interpret the memories/dreams literally, given how they're framed more for the audience's benefit.
I wouldn't be surprised if the position of the manor library, below Clea's and close to Alicia's bedroom, was intentional. If the Writers did set up a trap, it would be easy to conceal it within a library.
Where was Clea when this happened? Was she also out, like Renoir? Or was it easier for her to escape because her bedroom is closer to the door? If Aline was in the fire, was Clea the one who saved her, while Verso went to save Alicia?
Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, if I ever get my hands on you -
I think it says a lot that there are very few things that triggered some kind of memory response in Maelle and one of them was Sirène. Her mother dancing. If that doesn't indicate a close bond between them pre-fire then I don't know what else it could possibly mean.
I need to talk about how infantilized Maellicia is by much of the fandom for a moment because it bothers me and feels like an extension of the hatred that the internet just has towards teenage girls.
Point the first: Maelle is sixteen, but is a very mature sixteen, probably because she's lived two-thirds of her expected lifespan. Her choice to help orphans at the Gommage speaks to that. She was mature enough that they trusted her to join an Expedition twice her age, and even if she had more difficulty handling things then Lune or Sciel, both of them are women who have already had to deal with immense loss even before the Expedition. Maelle only really had Gustave; of course she was going to take his loss badly.
Point the second: Alicia is at least sixteen, likely a bit older? As Clea says, not a child, but not fully grown. But sixteen is not as immature as people like to think it is, especially with siblings who are older.
Point the third: Maellicia's lived to sixteen twice. I'd argue this doesn't give her the same maturity as a 32-year-old, given she lived her childhood twice, but probably something closer to early-mid twenties. She's very much capable of making her own choices.
Point the fourth: Maellicia has been through hell. Twice. Her clinging to the Canvas isn't the choice of a scared, spoiled child who doesn't want to lose her playground; it's a traumatized, scarred woman who doesn't want to lose the family she has made there.
I've seen her treated as a child a lot in this fandom; treated as being unable to make meaningful choices or overlooking her agency or just writing her more like a twelve-year-old than a sixteen-year-old who's had to grow up far too quickly twice over. And I'm begging people to stop looking at her as just a teenage girl and putting their preconceived notions of what a teenage girl is over who she actually is as a character.
She's fragile at times, she's weak, she's vulnerable, she grieves; but she was also strong enough to face down both Renoirs, courageous enough to stand up to the Paintress, and mature enough to extend both compassion toward pAlicia and acceptance of her choices.
I love how E33 doesn't shy away from showing the repercussions of a heroic sacrifice while also refusing to demonize the concept.
So many stories like to go, "Oh, this person sacrificed themselves and it's sad but now everything is better for everyone!" And it kind of downplays the very real good they could've done by staying alive and sort of glorifies the idea that you can fix things by just not being around anymore. Which is sad.
Gustave and Verso both died to save their sister, and that's never not treated as a noble sacrifice or something they shouldn't have done. But we also see the cracks it leaves in the Dessendres. The grief that Maelle had to carry. The possible happy ending we could have gotten. The hollow left behind.
Y'know what really bothers me about the "Aline was abusive/neglectful" interpretation that I see so often? Not only does it distill a complex situation into a flat, black/white situation where Aline is incapable of changing as a person (she's neglectful now, she must've been neglectful then), but it also reduces some of the tragedy of the entire situation.
Is it not so much more painful for Aline to love her daughters with the same love she had for her Verso, but to have it so fractured by what happened? To have that fierce love turned to hollow absence by grief and pain? To hide away from the daughter she loves so much because she can't bear to see both the reminder of Verso's loss and the permanent marks left on that daughter?
Can you imagine a mother who loves her daughter as much as Renoir does waking up and learning that her single-minded grief has now cost her that daughter? That in chasing the ghost of her son, she's pushed Alicia to the same fate? That she must now live a life where one child died painfully, another withers away slowly, and the last turns herself into a weapon to hunt down those responsible?
I 100% believe that Clea urged her sister into the Canvas because she was afraid of leaving her in the house alone.
Alicia is scarred, in pain, unable to speak, and in the deepest depths of despair because she is (in part) responsible for the death of her brother and the fracture of her family. Clea had already lost one sibling to the fire, she wasn't about to lose another to suicide.
Which ends up being its own cruel irony considering the endings. Either she loses her sister to the Canvas (which she seems fine with, probably because she knows Alicia is happier there and she gets a full life in it) or her sister now carries even more survivor's guilt, struck down again after catching a glimpse of freedom.
