“You were free. Nobody pretended to like you. I kind of hate you for that... You were a spoiled brat who should pay for that Crest. Maybe I'll collect the debt.”
What I like about Sylvain: Many of the characters in the game wear a mask; a false, incomplete version of themselves that they present to the world. Sylvain intentionally perpetuates this vision of himself as an idiot who is the stereotypical playboy. He is irresponsible and reckless in his personal affairs (as per Felix’s complaints), and he doesn’t train as much as his housemates, leading to a reputation as a layabout who uses his good looks and wealth to attract women.
Sylvain is primarily focused on the expectations foisted onto him by virtue of being born with a Crest and how it has ruined his relationship with his brother, has toxified his views on women, and made him generally distrustful of others. He seems to intentionally pursue shallow, unfulfilling relationships because he sees women as the enemy, manipulators who only care about him due to his Crest and his wealth. We see this pattern of distrust over and over, whether justified (Hilda, Dorothea) or not (Mercedes, Byleth). His misogyny filters into his supports with almost every single female character, from his dismissive treatment of Ingrid’s issues with him to Lysithea’s “so my age isn’t the reason you ignore my wishes; it’s my gender.” He sees women not as friends or equals but as objects to play with. (Okay, fine, he sees Ingrid as his second mommy, to clean up his messes, so much better).
His backstory explains his behavior, even if it doesn’t justify it. He has an older brother, Miklan, who ends up being an opponent in the main story. Miklan is born without a Crest, which in the Gautier family is considered to be unacceptable and worthy of being disinherited. When Sylvain was born, he was elevated above his brother immediately, leading to conflict throughout Sylvain’s life because of his parents’ preference for him. His brother hated him and tried to kill him on multiple occasions. He ends up building a wall around himself, sealing off his trio of friends, his family, and obviously women who just want to use him for his Crest and money. (He and Dorothea’s support chain is very good because it explores this. Definitely worth a read if you haven’t seen it.)
Sylvain is rarely portrayed as admirable; everything in his life is driven by his deeply selfish and thoughtless behavior. Especially for a character who never does anything overtly evil and isn’t an edgelord, Sylvain is quite a bad person. He is manipulative and attention-seeking even to his closest friends (in his A+ support with Felix, he pretends to be dead to elicit sympathy from Felix!), and while I have some degree of sympathy for the difficulty he faces trusting people, he is a deeply privileged individual who faces the problem of too many people wanting to date him and his parents pampering him too much, so it is hard to fully sympathize with him. One of his more positive character traits is that he isn’t racist against Dedue, which is nice but if “not being racist” is one of your more positive character traits… that’s not great.
Also, holy shit, in his support with Felix, they reveal that they made a promise to ‘die together’. Making a promise to die together, rather than to grow old together, has to be peak Faerghus Man (I talk about what I mean by 'Faerghus Man' in my post about Dimitri.)
In the Mercedes support, we see the mask crack. This is the closest we ever see to ‘real’ Sylvain; a deeply wounded individual who craves for people to love him for who he is, not what he is. He is angry at a world that he sees as unjust, a culture that values something that you have no control over as the primary measure of your worth. In the A support, he reflects on the points in the previous paragraph; that many people have difficult lives and that his brother suffered more than he ever has for his Crest.
Sylvain’s depression is very obvious post-timeskip, although I suspect it is there all along. Most of his post-TS monastery quotes are very dark, and in VW, he alludes directly to “living like he wants to die”. I also find that his portrait and different smile post-TS makes him look less happy. He doesn’t seem to value his own life all that much and decides to live in a self-destructive, hedonistic way, and if he dies, well, what the fuck ever.
I do feel bad for him. I think that the position he is in is challenging because he struggles to discern sincerity from manipulation. I think deep down he does care for others and wants to form lasting relationships. But man oh man does he make that tough!
I feel like the three friends’ supports could have been a bit more complete and delve further into their relationships with each other, but in particular, I think Sylvain’s relationships with other characters tend to be stronger than his with the friend group. I also found his supports mildly repetitive; I understand that it is part of the point, of course, but it means that he doesn’t have as much variety in character traits shown in his supports compared to some of the other characters.
But nevertheless, this is why I like Sylvain.
Comments