While Azure Moon doesn’t examine some of the themes around religion much compared to the other routes, I wanted to touch on a couple of its main themes, which are fatalism/chivalry and loyalty to one’s belief system / country / king / etc.
Because of the disproportionate emphasis placed on patriarchal ideals of chivalry imposed by their social structure, the male nobility in the game (Dimitri, Felix, Rodrigue, Gilbert) are the ones who are affected by it the most, although Ingrid also, to some extent, has internalized some of these cultural ideas (as has Catherine, for that matter, whose obsession with loyalty to Rhea is very Faerghusian, for all that she isn’t as important in the Faerghus metaplot.). Sylvain has largely chosen to reject pretty much everything about his culture and is largely not part of this discussion, although you can see how it shapes his cynical, depressive worldview. That’s an essay for another day.
The core plot event that happens before the game starts is the Tragedy of Duscur. A lot of the characters’ lives are affected by this event, and it carries a long shadow through the story because of its rippling effect.
Felix:
“My brother was doing his job. My father is the real problem. When my brother's armor was brought back to the castle, do you know what he said? "He died like a true knight." Chivalry begets the worship and glorification of death. Am I alone in finding that grotesque?”
There’s a Felix-related paralogue where we get some early insight into why Felix behaves the way he does. You meet Rodrigue, Felix’s father, and he talks about his son Glenn dying in this tragedy. Rodrigue clearly believes that dying for your country is honorable and that it is better that Glenn die than live and live with the shame of being a sworn knight who did not protect the people who he was guarding. It is clear that Rodrigue loved his son deeply but he has internalized this part of his culture. Felix believes that his father/country’s ideology is bullshit and remains bitter at anyone who implies that death is preferable to being alive and living with the shame of being dishonorable. He has this nasty line in that scene. “I guess if I died, you’d say the same about me. That I died with ‘honor’, fighting for my country.”
Felix is considered to be a bit of a cultural outsider on this front and this is the core of why he pushes people away, especially his friends. He ends up reconciling with Sylvain because they are both outsiders to their culture, but he and Ingrid’s bonds are always a little strained because of the tension related to Glenn. Ingrid always glorifies the death of Glenn as some sort of chivalrous act and she wants to be like him. Felix accepts this eventually but his relationship with her is never great. He is hostile to both Dimitri, who he sees as part of the violent culture he cannot escape, and Dedue, who he sees as blindly loyal to said culture.
Dedue:
Dedue is an interesting case because he was not born in Faerghus, unlike the rest of the characters I am talking about, but he wants to be a good retainer to Dimitri, so he absorbs some of the values. However, we see that he thinks “Faerghus is abhorrent” [Dimitri B support) and that he thinks that Gilbert’s bullshit is “mere self-indulgence”. He adopts parts of the culture, like his loyalty to Dimitri’s cause, but not others, such as Gilbert’s behavior.
I think his reasons for doing what he does are a bit different. He is not loyal to Faerghus but he wants to do what’s best for Dimitri, as well as see his own dream of revitalizing Duscur. Everything that he does should be viewed from that lens, or the lens of self-preservation to survive in a culture that is hostile to him.
Gilbert:
Gilbert is a former royal knight who feels, rightly or wrongly, that his responsibility was to protect the royal family and he failed. He abandons his family and goes to the monastery to atone for his sins. He is very very weird. His support with Annette is the most awkward, painful support in the game (okay, hold that thought…) as he completely misses the point and fails to explain why he abandoned his family. He just constantly fails to listen to his loved ones about the things that matter; we want you around! We don’t care if you failed as a knight! We love you! Gilbert, I guess you could say, is what Rodrigue was talking about when he says that it was better for his son to be dead. Gilbert is depressed and basically can’t seem to shake his malaise and sorrow long enough to see that those around him love him.
Dimitri:
Dimitri is loses both of his parents in the Tragedy of Duscur and is the focal character of the Azure Moon story. After the death of his family, he carries trauma and depression with him, but because he feels that it is his duty to play the part of the noble prince, he goes to the academy (although he also is there to search for the killer of his family to exact revenge on them). He is legitimately shy and straight-laced and extremely serious, but he hides a lot of personal problems behind a mask. He cares VERY deeply for those around him and is always concerned about the well-being of the other kids. Despite his very poor relationship with Felix, they have similar views on chivalry and the value of throwing away your life for your king and country. (Although Dimitri’s views on throwing away your own life…)
As Part 1 goes on, the player begins to realize that Dimitri has some rather unpleasant tendencies. There is an incident two years ago in which Felix and Dimitri fight in a battle together and Dimitri goes wild with bloodlust, slaughtering those who he believed were responsible for the death of his family. He starts to show these same boar-like (to quote Felix) traits as you go on, and when Edelgard reveals herself as the Flame Emperor, he goes mad. While the Flame Emperor’s mask literally breaks, Dimitri’s mask figuratively breaks.
(I want to incidentally note that Edelgard was not responsible for the death of Dimitri’s family, but Dimitri believes that she was. He is not very rational around this subject.)
This folds into the second theme, which is loyalty to your king and country as a virtue.
So Part 2 starts and Dimitri has just totally gone mad, completely overcome by grief and anger and hatred, taking these positive emotions of compassion and love and twisting them into something horrifying. He slaughters any imperial soldiers / bandits who come near the monastery, living like some kind of fairy tale monster preying on his enemies, killing them cruelly and violently. For five chapters you essentially spend listening to him rant about chasing ghosts and reveling in his blood-fueled desire for vengeance, unable to see anything except that one solitary goal. He seems to see no value in his own life at all and has very little regard for the lives of his friends and country who need him. I won’t get into the specifics of the variety of horrible things he does, but was a hard few chapters to get through.
So you might ask… why the heck do people follow this guy? Because of Crest-based aristocracy and loyalty to one’s liege being particularly entrenched in Faerghus’s culture, both Gilbert and Rodrigue seek out Dimitri, hoping he is still alive so he can rally their cause and take back their capital, even going so far as to retrieve his legendary weapon. Instead, Dimitri insists on rushing in and murder Edelgard at the cost of whatever it takes. It is hard to watch those scenes; you sigh at Gilbert’s complete inability to challenge Dimitri on his madness because of his extreme loyalty to the crown (and his generally passive, depressive nature). Every single conversation with Gilbert outside of Dimitri’s presence is Gilbert lamenting what a terrible job he did in raising Dimitri and how foolish his behavior is. There is a sense in the BL that -no one- will challenge the future king on his actions and they just all live in this suspended feeling of horror as they watch their hopes of liberating their country go down in flames.
When he appears, Rodrigue is more willing to take action and more directly challenges Dimitri, but even he refuses to truly pick that fight. Rodrigue isn’t as influenced by his deference to Dimitri’s royalty due to his own high position, but because they are losing the war against the empire, they see that their only hope is the heir to the throne coming back and rallying the troops for a victory, but… they can’t force him to do the right thing or what they want. As a result, the two older men are at an impasse about how to help Dimitri. They both seem to bear a great deal of shame about their broken mess of a prince, since they both helped raise him.
After Dimitri comes down from his rage, we wrap back around to this first theme. Dimitri believes that he is unworthy of happiness and even life, and this is a belief that pervades a lot of his supports. You can definitely see Gilbert’s influence in Dimitri; they both carry these chains of their past around them, and won’t let themselves heal. Gilbert/Dimitri support is simultaneously the most frustrating and one of the most interesting supports in the game, as they participate in their fatalism / loyalty / depression / self-hatred together. (After this support, I declared that Byleth would ban Gilbert from the royal household.) Annette tells Dimitri that she also pretty much has to move into the castle because he’s far too much like her dad and she wants to make sure he smiles and doesn’t end up a sad, guilt-ridden mess of a human like Gilbert. In some of his other supports, such as Dedue and Mercedes’s, you can see his friends being disgusted at his self-hate; they see the good things about Dimitri that he cannot see himself.
The last thing I wanted to leave with is a quote that I think encapsulates one of the main themes of the entire game; that everyone has good and bad inside of them at the same time and that is not a contradiction.
Felix: Sometimes you have an animal's face, contorted with anger and bloodlust. At other times, a man's, with a friendly smile. Which is your true face?
Dimitri: Do not waste your breath on questions with such obvious answers. They are both the real me.