Crest of flames: a burden or a blessing?

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Crest of flames: a burden or a blessing?
My ideal ending for fe3h is Edelgard and Claude teaming up. Here is Edelgard and Claude as they draft a peace treaty between Fodlan and Almyra after the war. I love these two so much. I am so normal about it. Honestly, it's a tragedy that these two can't work together bc they r a power duo with similar dreams. I guess the whole point of fe3h is paths that never cross tho(see that reference my fellow fans?)
Some fe3h memes. I hyperfixated again...
Sylvain Jose Gautier you will never beat the depression allegations if you keep saying shit like this
FE3H - Dear Teach, Chapter 4
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I've been super into Fe3h for a few months now. I have about 260 hours on the game currently. My favorite route by far has been Verdant Wind!
I've been itching for an excuse to draw fanart and I finally found one.
my favorite thing about the golden deer (and vw by extension) is their group dynamic and how much more informal their relationship with claude is. i would say the main theme of verdant wind is unity, because of how important it is.
right off the bat claude introduces his class as less difficult as the others. and while they’re certainly chaotic, he has good reason for saying that. their relationships with claude feel much more like regular friendships than with edelgard and dimitri. even sylvain and ingrid, who’ve been friends with dimitri for years, still use his title when talking to him. so do most of the other blions. felix still calls him a prince, even if it's the boar prince. they all treat dimitri very respectfully as well, obviously keeping in mind his position. obviously felix is the exception. here but that's not super important. in the beagles, none of them use edelgards title (except hubert) but she very clearly has authority over the rest of them. this is especially prominent in cf post-timeskip where the only person who actively questions what she’s doing to her face is ferdinand (that i can remember). and that’s ferdinand so of course he’s going to.
compare that to the deer. if memory serves, i don’t think there’s a single time in the game where claude is referred to with his title by someone. you would never know he was leading the alliance if the game didn’t explicitly tell you. unlike edelgard and dimitri, people are also willing to question him. of course lorenz does it throughout the entire game, but so do hilda and judith. judith is especially notable considering she’s a noble very much under claude.
through cf and am, almost everything is done by edelgard and hubert and dimitri respectively. dedue, gilbert, and rodrigue all have some plot importance but not an extreme amount. everyone else is just kinda there. vw on the other hand gives some of them actually important roles. hilda comes up with the idea for getting into fort merceus. ignatz is the one who tells the guards reinforcements are coming, which is what gets them in. and while less important, shamir is apparently the one who made all the disguises for fort merceus. nader casually brings in the almyran army because claude decided to be safe and ask for help. lysithea later on tells claude and byleth stuff about twsitd. the other houses do not get this kind of involvement from people other than the leaders. now you could say thats just bad writing but i think it makes sense.
even the names of each house leaders' theme goes into this. edelgard's is the leader's path. the only person mentioned is her. she's their leader. dimitri's is the king of lions. of course he's the king, and while the blions are there too, it's more to establish his power over them. claude's on the other hand, is golden deer and crescent moon. crescent moon is a pretty indirect way of referring to claude, and it's not even put first. just another way how the unity of the golden deer is proven to be more important than just claude on his own. the music itself is very different as well. golden deer and crescent moon is significantly more relaxed than the other two.
i just think the contrast between vw and the other routes in this regard is neat and all :)
Propaganda I'm never falling for is the idea that Nemesis makes better sense in SS than VW, or that Rhea should originally been Claude's boss like in GW. It's honestly the biggest sign that a lot of y'all never really understood or even tried to understand Verdant Wind.
Verdant Wind is literally centered around the actual origin of Fodlan's bloodstained history. The biggest justification for VW even takes a lot from SS is because a lot of the things that SS has also involves the Agarthans, Edelgard being their second Nemesis for the Nabateans' end, the fact that Rhea is charitably not the actual problem who makes Fodlan a worser place, etc.
Hence why:
- Claude's intrusive curiosity over others and the truth behind Fodlan is relevant
- Claude's certain interactions switch from him blaming Rhea and the Seiros tenets for the world's borders to denying it when Lorenz brings it up when he announces his dream
- Claude full-on concluding with Cyril that he doesn't have to make Rhea his enemy
- Claude letting Byleth succeed in the role Rhea appointed them
- Claude having a whole paralogue centered around Maculi and special dialogue with Indech
- Claude experiencing / learning more about the Agarthans, their plots and why they're the real people behind Fodlan's suffering and bloodstained history and bringing them down (this similarity with SS is arguably the most necessary, concluding it directly leads to Nemesis' resurrection, which is double vital for Mr. "I wanna know Fodlan's problems" to know more than anyone else)
- why Claude is literally the only lord gets to know that Nemesis is the man behind the genocidal slaughter and why he and Byleth become the second coming of Seiros and finish him for good in the same plains he was killed
Like, VW and SS definitely have problems, but Nemesis being VW-exclusive is just not one of them, it takes an active misunderstanding or ignorance regarding both routes to still argue Nemesis or even, Rhea's SS final boss should have been swapped.
Silver Snow is about transitioning from Beagles dealing with Edelgard's betrayal and war, Byleth's origins, and Rhea's bittersweet fate regarding her feelings towards Byleth and Sothis that can lead to either a merciful death, an isolating seclusion or salvation and peace.
Verdant Wind is about Claude growing from his past assumptions about Rhea, learning about her and the many circumstances that truly shaped the world, and the actual monsters responsible.
6 years, and people are still either misunderstanding or ignorant to the fact that Nemesis / Agartha being Claude's true enemies is immensely fitting for his character.
This round of illiteracy is arguably as bad as people never clocked that Silver Snow was NEVER the church route, but legitimately the first Black Eagles route (SS' appeal literally started with "what if your lord betrayed you?), just because Edelgard or Hubert are opponents, it doesn't mean it wasn't largely Beagles-centric.
Then again, people still think that Byleth choosing to oppose and kill Edelgard wasnt a choice, when the whole SS / CF split is literally a choice between Byleth either opposing Edelgard for her betrayal or allying with Edelgard in her betrayal. BOTH WERE ALWAYS CHOICES, the same way Silver Snow and Crimson Flower are BOTH BLACK EAGLES ROUTES.