Sunset Over The Ocean - Submitted By @123dragonstreet

Sunset Over the Ocean - Submitted by @123dragonstreet

#e8871e #edb458 #cee7e6 #227c9d #3d405b

Rant About Gray Morality and How The Story of 3H Really Isn’t That Morally Gray

This hasn’t happened recently, but just so I can get it out there: I never want to hear “3H is about Gray Morality, all of the people have done bad things and no one’s truly right!!!” ever again for as long as I live.

Hardly any story, much less a Fire Emblem story, is about ‘Gray Morality’. It’s not a main narrative goal or a signature thing that you’d find on a review or whatever. It’s just a neat moniker for when the author decides to humanize characters or make situations less “Dragon killed king, now the prince kill dragon” and more “Territory A declares war on Dominant Territory B and invades because Territory B is imposing heavy taxes and works commoners from Territory A to exhaustion.”

Though again. Stories are hardly ever about the ‘Gray Morality’ aspect. It’s seasoning on the main meal, which is the narrative. I.E., the story wouldn’t really be about the aforementioned reasons why Territory A declares war on and invades Territory B, but it would be about the war itself. Probably about what the protagonist in that story is doing in regards to that war.

The same applies to 3H and FE stories in general. Gray Morality is used to make the story more interesting, but the narratives are never really about that.

And even if 3H’s story was about Gray Morality… I’d say it did a pretty bad job at it. Rhea and the Church did nothing to the Empire or Edelgard. Dimitri and the Kingdom did nothing to the Empire or Edelgard. Claude and the Alliance did nothing to the Empire or Edelgard. Yet Edelgard and the Empire declare war on all of them regardless.

Edelgard’s main grievances are with the nobility of her territory, with how Crests decide merit, and with the devout. The people who did terrible things to her and her family are Those Who Slither in the Dark.

She persuades some imperial nobles to join her, has a couple others put under house arrest and one other is assassinated. She has full control of the empire when she’s crowned, but instead of implementing new reforms, she decides to attack other territories because…? She knows jack shit about the Kingdom, other than how she considers House Gautier to be foolish to disinherit bandit, murderer and woman abductor talented leader Miklan. And she quite literally knows nothing about the Alliance, otherwise she would praise the Alliance for not really adhering to the “Crest = Merit” ideology, since Margrave Edmund doesn’t have a Crest yet has a prominent rank and influence. The church openly preaches not to abuse “gifts given to you by the goddess” i.e. Crests, and people do it anyway. And yet she blames the church for this. In essence, she’s blaming the preacher for saying one thing, because she believes that what the preacher said justifies a completely different topic, said topic being something the preacher is against.

She has no good reason to declare war on these three powers. Other than possibly her rampant and violent nationalism, hatred of religion/the devout, and anti-dragon racism. All of which are incredibly personal and self righteous reasons, rooted in deep prejudice and resentment. I.E. not morally gray at all.

Her political and systemic goals for the future of her Empire, along with telling people in her own territory not to rely on Crests could’ve been done when she ascended the throne. Dimitri even flat out says to her “You could’ve done something in your own territory instead of doing something like this.” She answers with a sense of entitlement, about how she believes the world is corrupt and will claim more victims and that only her way could fix things, and that only she is qualified, and she has the right to do so. And this is consistent to how she shuts down Claude in both CF and VW as well.

Those are her reasons for trying to conquer and assimilate independent territories (besides the aforementioned nationalism and stuff)? Because she feels she’s entitled to solve all the whole world’s problems herself through warfare, when no one asked her to? That’s also pretty fucking black-and-white to me.

Compared to Claude who’s basically squeaky clean in all aspects? Dimitri whose only crimes are killing his assailants in a brutal manner and being mean to his friends before he begins his recovery? Rhea who decided to propagate a false history and slow progress in order to explicitly keep the peace (since she’s experienced firsthand what out of control tech advancement can end up doing) and only killed people who were out to kill her first?

Yeah, this story is not gray in the slightest. Much less is it about Gray Morality in the first place.

I think the Edelgard/Claude are friends/compatible headcanon is partly responsible for her stans misreading the library scene in VW. The other is teacher theory. She 1. tries to assassinate him than 2. tries to dig up information that could get him removed from his inheritance- and she even states that would basically destroy the Alliance! No way she was there to find out if he was "trustworthy". She was there to blackmail him or out him. Good luck being friends with him after trying to out him.

How Edelstans interpret the library scene baffles me so much, like it’s very clearly another instance of someone not trusting Claude and trying to find out his secrets, it’s the game actually trying to show that Claude’s circumstances are strange to others and that he has to deal with random bitches questioning him outta nowhere (she literally butts into his conversation with Byleth just to question him and does so when it looks like he’s about to spill some beans about himself) and like you said on Edelgard’s end it was damn sure her trying to kick him out the running when her assassination plan doesn’t pan out, but APPARENTLY either 1) Claude was the one completely in the wrong for not answering personal questions from this near stranger and he was partially to blame for the war starting for not giving his trust to, again, this near stranger who randomly started to interrogate him and/or 2) he tried to get her to SwEAr FeALty to him and it ACTUALLY shows that HE’S a villain, not Edelgard

Here’s all that Edelgard does before and after that scene regarding Claude that we as players who’ve played the entire route know:

try to have him fucking killed

tell him that his random presence was the only thing keeping the Alliance afloat

call him a fool in the Holy Tomb when he calls her out for trying to steal the Crest Stones (look at that friendship they have!)

tell him to his face that she needs to kill him to achieve her righteous dream (her words, not mine)

But nah, we’re supposed to believe that this specific moment was where Edelgard was trying to reach out a hand in friendship, which apparently involves reminding the person you’re trying to befriend of the shit situation their nation was in and is still trying to recover from. Something something Teach Theory something something Claude’s the real imperialist/villain something something Edelgard suffered alone cuz no one helped her. Right.

Someone shouts, “best childhood friends-to-lovers ship”

Like, what more do you want? For her to be tossed into a deep dark cell with rats to bring her story to a full traumatic circle? For her to executed when she's permanently has the mind of a child and has literally no idea WHY she's about to be executed?

I'll circle around to that second suggestion in a bit, but for now:

What "more" do I want? What exactly did I - or anyone - get, in the first place?

got long lol under the cut it goes

We have the victims of war blaming themselves for daring to fight back against their violent aggressor, we have those same victims either praise their aggressor for their ~reforms~ or mindlessly believe what they say with no proof, we have the story going out of its way to show the violent aggressor of a needless war to be a good leader because ~look at how bad it gets if they're NOT the one leading~ (looking straight at you AG), we have the aggressor gain a NEW mindless fan squeeing over their every action for specifically this game when they already had two characters who in some way were doing that already (Hubert and Dorothea) - oh gee, there's just so much woe that Edelgard has to go through, as the story, plot, and characters all castrate themselves trying to make her look better, amiright?

Edelgard faces zero repercussions in this game as a result of her enacting war against the Church and Kingdom for their crimes of *checks notes* doing nothing. The Church outright helps her in her efforts to get rid of the corrupt nobles of Enbarr, doing exactly what she requested of them to do down to the letter, and she still declares war on them, forces them out of their home, and chases them down to the Kingdom and goes to war with it for daring to house people who are being wrongly and violently persecuted for no reason.

You suggest her being tossed in a dungeon as if that's some sort of unjust, cruel thing, but frankly I don't care at that point whether the poor uwu warmonger shits herself in fear over rats because of the violent and cruel actions she chose to enact independently of anyone's influence. These circumstances are ridiculously different from when she was an actual innocent child being forcefully experimented on; she's the direct reason countless innocent people have either lost their families, friends, homes, livelihoods, and/or lives. To say she should go without any form of punishment - and harsh punishment at that - just because she has a fear of rats and there might be rats in the jailcell she gets thrown in is laughable. Tough shit, she shouldn't have murdered thousands in a needless war for power if she didn't want to get thrown in jail, and I have no sympathy for her in that regard.

Even in the supposed "bad end" version of the routes, Edelgard gets off hilariously easy. Who do you lose in AG? Rodrigue, a full-on playable character that you could've put actual effort into making into an extremely good/reliable unit, as well as the father/father-figure of Felix and Dimitri and someone whose presence is immensely felt throughout all of AG. Who do you lose in GW? Judith, someone who, while (criminally) not a playable unit, is still someone with a huge presence in the story of GW, and who is deeply connected to Claude on a personal level. Meanwhile on SB you lose fuckin' Randolph, a joe-schmoe nobody whose only purpose in any regard whatsoever is to die and who has literally zero connection to anyone except his similarly joe-schmoe nobody sister. Dimitri loses someone he saw as a father and who he heavily relied on to get through deeply traumatic events, Claude loses the one person he actually actively wanted to reveal being an Almyran prince to (before she put two and two together first, that is), and Edelgard loses... someone who's basically a named NPC for all the investment - personal or otherwise - he's been given.

What more do I want? Literally anything, because right now I have nothing.

But regarding the mind-of-a-child thing.

Given Hopes' obsessive need to relieve Edelgard of any actual responsibility for her actions - how it's Dimitri that started a war with the Empire and how that's bad, how it's Claude who invaded the Empire and how that's bad, while Edelgard is always given the benefit of the doubt despite being the actual aggressor unlike the other two who only fight back against her (at first anyway, in Clyde's case), things like that - her mind being reduced to that of a child's is almost fuckin' poetic, because that's pretty much how the game itself treats her. She's a child making a mess of the kitchen but she meant well and that's all that really matters - it's every else's fault for not walking over the mess well enough! It’s sadly very fitting that the game that treats her with the softest, silkiest kid gloves imaginable ends up literally reducing her to a child in the one route where the player never sides with her.

Because now she “shouldn’t” be punished! Isn’t she going through enough, the poor little dear? It’s just like you mention nonnie; she’s already just gone the absolute ordeal of *checks notes* being put in a situation where she literally can’t be held liable for her horrific, cruel actions she committed before she was Lobotogard. Now any attempt from anyone to do anything to Edelgard regarding the actions she chose to make independent of anyone else will be seen as being “too mean,” because now she’s in a state where she can’t understand the wrongs of what she’s done - she doesn’t even think she’s done them! Her mind is reverted to the time she was lil’ ol’ El with her crush Dee and isn’t that just so sad? Feel bad for Edelgard, not for her victims that she forced into war.

Because, like, think about it. Why was Edelgard lobotomized, instead of just defeated/jailed/executed? Why was mind-control + mind-reversion dark magic pulled out of Hopes’ ass to make Edelgard completely unable to be liable for her actions? In a game where Rhea and Claude can die and TWS can be completely wiped out, showing that Hopes doesn’t really care that much about keeping other main important characters on the table? Why not just simply have Edelgard imprisoned - not even killed, not even executed, just placed in prison for omega murder? Even Claude, for as mindlessly the Deer eventually follow him once Clyde switcheroos with him in GW’s Part 2, gets some form of pushback from them initially (...for inconveniencing Edelgard by killing Randolph + other Imperial generals and not for fucking over Faerghus, that is, but it’s still anything), and like I said, he can actually die for doing certain things (...that certain thing being betraying Edelgard on SB’s bad end, but again, it’s literally anything), which is much more than can be said for Edelgard.

Because honestly, I think it’s because the game really didn’t want her to actually face the consequences of her actions. The only thing that happens to her is her being in a state that sad to see... for others. For Edelgard herself, she’s just a confused kid - she’s not living with the guilt of her actions, she’s not facing any real justice for what she’s done, there’s no acknowledgement on her end - or even any ability to acknowledge - all that she’s done. And for fuck’s sake, she wasn’t even put in this state because of the bad shit she did; she was put in this state because she was helping Dimitri fight Thales. This isn’t a result of her killing who knows how many people for a war that’s literal only purpose was to expand her influence over all of Fodlan, in her own words even in this game - she got this standing up against the real bad guy, which definitely isn’t her. Nothing like the loss of a loved one, or dying yourself, and nothing that results directly from her killing innocent people to expand her power. 

So basically what I want is for the aggressor of a needless war that’s killing innocent people to face any actual consequence for doing the shit she does, for other characters who are literally being victimized by her to stop going on about how “well maybe she’s not that bad” when she’s ruining their and their people’s lives, and for the game to not place her in a state where it’s almost completely impossible for anyone to make her hold her accountable for her actions. Considering the shit she still does in this game, I really don’t think I’m asking for much here

"if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around" yes you would. if you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. to love someone is to turn around. to love someone is to look at them. whichever version of the myth — he hears her stumble, he can't hear her at all, he thinks he's been tricked — he turns around because he loves her. that's why it's a tragedy. because he loves her enough to save her. because he loves her so much he can't save her. because he will always, always turn around. "if i was orpheus i would simply —" you wouldn't be orpheus. you wouldn't be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. be serious