#zyphposts

[zyphemblem]

a lot of people seem to say that claude is just bad at hiding the fact that he's almyran. which, yeah, he's not the world's leading expert on hiding an identity, but he's not terrible. however i would like to argue that he doesn't want to keep it a secret. part of him wants so badly to share himself with others, to be open, and not be afraid of the consequences.

he only hides parts of himself out of necessity in the first place. he's not doing it out of malicious intent or anything crazy like that. and the slip ups that he does make throughout the game? i'd bet those are just little indications of him wanting to stop hiding.

there's his supports with hilda, primarily their A support with the story about the camel. while it doesn't necessarily have to been an obviously almyran story, he still chooses to specify it's from a "foreign land". i've also talked about how he makes that comment about "claude" being a common name to use as a fake name and how dumb that was to say. and yeah it was a dumb comment to make in front of the people he did, but clearly it turned out fine. my point there though is that he says things that he probably shouldn't be saying. i think that's clear. but claude also isn't the type of person to accidentally say stuff like that.

mainly i've always got the impression that claude just really wants to be himself, and rightly so. if you're attacked for your very identity your whole life, i think it's reasonable enough to be desperate enough to want to express it any way you can. even if the people around you don't realize. that's what i think claude is doing.

could he have been smarter with what he said? sure, maybe, but a grand total of two people canonically know and only one of them actually figures it out. that would be balthus, who's in a semi-similar situation anyway. byleth was just told because duh, but no one else figures it out and brings it up. sure i think linhardt totally would but intsys hates us. so they didn't give us that. but anyways. claude just wants to be himself and that's great and it's terrible that he feels like he can't.

[zyphemblem]

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 :)

[zyphemblem]

you know in 3h i feel like they should've had the students make little comments when you change their goals. i don't mean when they come up and ask you but just when you go and change them when you feel like it.

everyone would have three lines: one for if you picked at least one of their strengths, if they're both neutral skills, and one for if you picked their weaknesses. ik there'd be some complications there but that's not important shh.

what made me think about this, you ask? well i've come up with a dumb idea for a playthrough where i make all my regular magic users use weapons and vice versa. for funsies. i got to hubert and went, oh i cant put him on a pegasus but i can still make him miserable by putting him on a wyvern.

imagine. you're a professor and you tell your student who's afraid of heights to starting fighting on a wyvern. without telling him you go and changes his goals in your planner. when he finds out, he says, "assassination is never out of the question".

i just wanna hear funny little stupid things like that thats all

[zyphemblem]

ok psa for all three houses fans: as far as i know claude does not officially have any retainer other than nader. hilda is very frequently cited as a retainer for him by the fandom but this is just… not the case? maybe something gets mentioned in hopes that i don’t know about but i’m almost completely sure nothing is ever said about it in houses. i also see lorenz made his retainer sometimes which also has no backing. like sure he’s second on the roster for golden deer like hubert and dedue are but that doesn’t mean anything. at most he just self-designates himself to make sure claude doesn’t do something stupid but it’s no kind of official position. i’ve seen this so much with hilda that before i played verdant wind (the last route i played because you gotta save th best for last) i actually thought she was claude’s retainer. but no. i’m fairly sure nothing in the game even implies this, especially not with any of the golden deer. it’s just nader. please let me know if i actually did miss something somehow and i’m wrong though because hey it happens.

[zyphemblem]

you’re telling me both linhardt and claude collectively uncover the identities of all the saints just because they can but they never talk to each other a single time

in claudes paralogue he talks to and fights the windcaller. afterwards he at least draws the connection from the wind caller to the immaculate one. he knows there should’ve been something related to macuil there but dismisses the idea that byleth proposes of the wind caller being saint macuil and decides it’s a later problem. so he’s on the right track.

similarly linhardt talks to and fight the immovable in his paralogue. unlike claude though, linhardt pretty quickly catches on and realizes it’s saint indech, to the point where indech tells him to stop talking so it’s not revealed to everyone else. after the paralogue linhardt outright mentions how they fought a saint.

neither of them have supports with seteth, but they do both have supports with flayn. claude eventually figures out that seteth is actually flayn’s father and linhardt seems to suspect right from his C support with flayn that she’s actually cethleann. i’m guessing he then also figures out seteth is cichol.

so collectively these guys have figured out all four saints, and then rhea actually tells claude (and byleth) that she’s seiros. and they never speak one word to each other. ever. tell me how this makes sense. nobody else in the game figures all this out. they were literally made for each other.

…on second thought the game would probably end after like 5 chapters if they talked so maybe that’s why

[zyphemblem]

genuinely what is ingrid’s problem in her c support with claude like damn it is not that serious. it's worse than lysithea's c supports with ignatz and marianne in how angry it made me like what is going on with her and that's saying something

[zyphemblem]

There’s a side quest in part 2 of 3h that I just realized has the absolute funniest reward. It’s the one where an Almyran merchant asks for you to find something for him and you bring him the Zoltan idol or whatever it is. Your rewards for the quest are an armored bear stuffy, Almyran pine needles, and Almyra mercenaries. But apparently this is no ordinary stuffed bear. Because this is the text you get right after completing the quest:

Thanks for helping me out. Here’s your reward. It’s a stuffed Nader bear! Cute, right?! This toy is incredibly popular with Almyran children these days. Feel free to show it off, but don’t tell anyone where you got it from.

You have a stuffed bear version of Nader. I can’t believe I never actually read that before because that is one of the funniest things in this game. How you guys think Claude would respond if you gave him this? Also the fact that this is like…a regularly produced toy or something is even funnier. I thought everyone should be aware of this.

[zyphemblem]

so i was playing alois and shamir’s paralogue again last night and found something pretty interesting. if you bring claude, he has unique dialogue for it. for anyone who needs a refresher, the paralogue is basically there are pirates in derdrieu claiming to be the almyran navy. first of all claude recognizes the ships as looking almyran at the very beginning of the battle. if you have him fight the enemy commander, he calls them “two-bit miscreants” and gets mad at people like them for causing so hate against almyrans. then at the end when you’ve defeated the commander, claude says they didn’t even fight like almyrans.

so claude i hate to break it to you but you are not being subtle. like at all. also in lorenz’s paralogue if you have claude fight acheron it’s hilarious because he basically calls claude a nobody and claude just laughs at him for not knowing who he is. fun times. i love all the unique dialogue in the battles, it adds so much to the game.