Spoilers for Crimson Flower within, and light spoilers otherwise.
I decided to tackle an oldie but a goodie for Ciatokins mainstay topics. If you know me, you know that I am interested in how women as a whole are portrayed in games.
What I think Three Houses does well on this front is that its story is fundamentally centered on two women: Edelgard and Rhea. Above all other characters, these characters are essential to the story and undeletable in a way that no one else is, not even the male protagonists Dimitri and Claude. Edelgard is a person of action and she is the one who precipitates the events that make the second half of the game what it is, and Rhea is the fundamental cause for what Edelgard does. Regardless of if you see them as heroes or villains or something in between, without these two, the game would not resemble what it is now. I find that having the two most important characters, the big plot drivers, as women in JRPGs is very rare.
Edelgard in particular is a character who has personality traits that are fairly male coded in the structure of many forms of media. She is strong-willed, ambitious, and has a vision for the future that she is really willing to do anything to achieve. She believes that her lofty goals and ambitions for the world are worth fighting for, even at the cost of her humanity. She has accepted that history may see her as a villain, but she is willing to pay the price. She is driven more by a goal for the world at large than personal advancement, and is willing to do everything to achieve it.Shehe fits into an array of morally grey, hyper driven characters from various games I’ve played who are almost exclusively male. She is methodical, logical, and presents her cases, especially in her own supports and interactions with her allies. She sees the church as a rotting institution of oppression, greed, and tyranny and she wants to -destroy- it and build a better world in its place. These ambitions and strong feelings about the world at large are often only ones that men are allowed to have, at least as fervently as Edelgard does.
While I think the role that she plays in the story is male-coded, she espouses rampantly left-wing ideology, and there is a sense of catharsis in her extreme measures to deal with a corrupt, authoritarian regime, especially in the age of Trump. Because her character work, along with her placement on the LBGTQ+ spectrum (more on that later), she evokes strong emotions in a group of people who tend to enjoy the crushing of traditional gender roles, which makes the choice of Edelgard as female a rational choice on the part of the writers. Still, in a series that tends toward being too conservative and traditional with its gender roles, Edelgard is a breath of fresh air. While she does have to share the spotlight with the two male leads, she feels elevated above both in importance, and not because she is a plucky underdog (sorry Eirika, I still love you too!).
Also, can we throw the ‘girl pose’ with the hands demurely on the chest in the trash forever?
One interesting part of Edelgard is that she grapples with being strong versus being vulnerable, which feels like a more feminine character arc, especially for a female ruler, but it is often not a story told about a protagonist ruler. There are some subtleties about the way the story navigates the character; she is a (relatively) petite woman, thin and 5’2”, but she stands proudly and strong and projects herself in a way that often makes you not notice her small stature. I think the game goes through pains to ensure that Hubert never feels like he is trying to dominate her or usurp her authority in any way, and he often blends in the background of their scenes together, which feels like a very deliberate scene direction choice. He is her sub-ordinate and that is all he desires to be. The female ruler who is considered ‘out of her league’ by her male peers has already been tread before even in this series (hi Elincia) and is a pretty common trope, so the fact that the game doesn’t dwell on this issue is rather refreshing.
Rhea is a bit more traditional in design, but she makes up for it by being a tyrant who does crazy science experiments to try to resurrect god. She feels like a much more realistic, less baby-eating version of the evil pope, and that is, again, way more often than not, a male’s role. I think her methods of control (more subtle) as well as her general sense of tranquility that she brings are both more feminine traits, which partially contribute to her being more sympathetic than your average evil pope (along with her tragic backstory, of course). She is powerful and domineering and in general just as ruthless as your average evil pope.
Of course, I don’t think women need to play roles traditionally occupied by men to be valid. Lysithea feels like female students that all teachers have seen before; driven, interested in knowledge, high-achieving, and perpetually annoyed with the distractions around her. She is ruthless and cutting. I love her line to Sylvain “Ah, so it isn't my age that's to blame for you breezing over my wishes. It's my gender.” She can smell bullshit from a mile away and isn’t afraid to tell you about it. Hilda is a full tilt manipulator; flirting is the first step in her playbook, but unlike many of these other characters who are often portrayed as kind of stupid outside of their flirting skills, she is smart and cunning and can manipulate on other levels (see Marianne, Lorenz). One of the interesting things about her and Claude is that they are the gendered mirrors of each other; he is intellectually manipulative but struggles to be empathic and doesn’t always understand how people tick emotionally, whereas Hilda has no interest in politics but can navigate feelings and emotions very well.
The game, unlike many fantasy settings, discards the idea of a nominally egalitarian society, and embraces that it exists in a patriarchal culture. But unlike in most fantasy media, where patriarchal culture is used as an excuse to focus solely on the lives and doings of men, the game gives itself space to examine the effects of patriarchal societies on women. The women of Faerghus - Ingrid, Annette, and Mercedes — all endure the residual effects of the male dominated culture that they grew up in. Ingrid has a pretty simple character concept; a woman who wants to be a knight in a world where women are used as bargaining chips for marriage. When I was in Grade 6, I read ‘The Lioness Quartet’ by Tamora Pierce about a girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to become a knight, and she goes through trials and tribulations as she tries to disguise her identity, and later grapples with misogyny as a result of being the ‘girl knight’. Ingrid takes a different path and chooses to live the way she wants and by her own rules, rather than trying to pretend she is something that she’s not. The interesting thing about Ingrid is that she is very innately law-abiding and lives strictly by the codes of conduct; she is very stiff and formal compared to most of the other characters in the game, but she is fiercely determined to break through the ceiling and to become a knight. She has trouble expressing how she feels about her father’s meddling to her male friends, who either don’t care about the plight of women like Sylvain or will use it to get under her skin like Felix (he tells her to ‘get a husband’ in response to her talking about wanting to be a knight). In the case of Dimitri, he tries his best to uplift her and to see her as an equal but does not fully comprehend the extent to which the pressure from her father affects her life. And she has trouble confiding in him because of the complicated relationship between lord and knight, which is the lens in which she views their relationship, and perhaps subconsciously because she believes he may think the things her father thinks, even if he won’t express them. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think Dimitri feels this way. I get the feeling Dimitri respects the hell out of Ingrid and is angry with himself when he treats her badly.)
On the other hand, she finds a female friend that she can confide in: Mercie. Both she and Mercedes are used as bargaining chips by their respective fathers for marriage, but both are fiercely independent and try their best to navigate a misogynist world. They are not face-stepping bitches like Lysithea and Edelgard or punch-throwing sasslords like Dorothea, but they are both strong in their own way. And god both are good at cutting through bullshit. Mercedes comes off as very feminine; she is very understated in her often pointed but subtle insults at some of the more insufferable men in the cast, namely Lorenz and Sylvain, and she gently mocks Ferdinand for being a bit of a twit. I think Mercie is a character that I didn’t appreciate at first glance but there are a lot of subtleties to her character that makes her more enjoyable than I thought. Mercie is quite adaptable and has a flexible view of morality, which comes primarily from her troubled backstory and being related to a serial killer. (And I should mention that, while her ties to said serial killer are a part of who she is, she is not solely defined by those ties.)
Annette seems to have not been used as a bargaining chip by her uncle because of her Crest; whether it be due to age, respect for Annette’s father, or the lack of desperation that the Galatea family has due to financial concerns, she is not really in the conversation as a bargaining chip for marriage. I can’t definitively say that Annette’s relationship with her father should be viewed negatively from a feminist lens, but he definitely elevated his feelings (I need penance!) over the feelings of his female family members. I wonder if Gilbert abandoning his wife and daughter would have been done if he had a son instead? (And if Gilbert were a woman who abandoned her children, I feel like she would be looked upon with more scorn. But let’s not get into that.) I’m not as satisfied with Annette on this front; she is strong and independent, but she does have the rather irritating female character trait of tripping, which I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who actually likes this trope. Oh well.
Dorothea is one of the cast stars for a variety of reasons; she is outspoken, independent, funny, self-loathing, beautiful, and deeply skeptical of any bullshit that men have to sell. She gets along beautifully with women in a display of female solidarity that feels much more realistic and resonant from my experiences. Fiction often likes to portray women as tearing each other down, but Dorothea lifts other women (Edie, Petra, Manuela) up, while having no patience for mansplaining (Linhardt, Ferdinand), gross men who see women as objects (Sylvain, Lorenz), and men who see her as nothing but a vapid gold-digger (Felix, Sylvain). She is intelligent and can trade barbs with the best of them; we see this in her supports with Sylvain, Felix, and Hubert. And her struggles are rooted in an aristocratic system which sees women as useful primarily for their sexual value and beauty, not their brains or kindness or anything else. The game doesn’t come right out and say it, but it is implied that both Manuela and Dorothea train in sword fighting for the purpose of fending off potential sexual assaults during their time in the opera. None of this ‘women are the same as men’ rawr girl power stuff. Women are strong and powerful and diverse, but they are not ‘the same’ as men. Dorothea cannot be switched in for an identical male character. It just doesn’t really work.
Petra is a woman who comes from a warrior culture which seems to emphasize combat prowess in all of its peoples, regardless of gender. While we don’t see much of Brigid, it seems to be more egalitarian than Fodlan, and she reflects this in her values. She is very philosophical about death and brings a unique perspective to a society which is both xenophobic and misogynist. Much like many of the game’s other female characters, she doesn’t fall into traditional gender norms and her frankness is, again, often a trait associated with male characters. I have wanted to use this descriptor so many times in this essay but I will use it here; Petra is fierce and unrelenting and holds firmly to her core values, while still keeping a feminine core; she loves braiding her hair and bonding with her female allies.
Bernadetta brings an alternate perspective to the story that no other character else does; the crippling anxiety and trauma that persistent abuse can bring, in her case perpetuated on her because of her inability or lack of desire to conform to ‘good wife material’. This is a very real and very pervasive idea that is drilled into many young girls; it is something I’ve both experienced and heard from other people, often only after digging deep or confessing my own feelings in the subject. The expectation to be ‘good wife material’, i.e., submissive and under heel, drives Bernadetta to severe anxiety, and we see that she is recovering from the trauma of her abuse after the timeskip.
Catherine and Leonie and Shamir also fall into the category of strong women who live for their own values, although I don’t have as much to say about those characters as I do about the others. Catherine and Leonie fall a bit more into a traditional tomboy trope, although I will give a shoutout to Leonie for owning the hell out of Felix for being a misogynist asshole to her. Shamir is closer to Petra in sentiment but less well-developed. There are also women who fall into a bit more traditional female roles, such as Manuela, Marianne, and Flayn, but stereotypes/tropes are fine if you represent a wider array of female personality types and experiences rather than making those stereotypes your sole means for representing an entire gender.
The game falters in a few places from a feminist front. One thing that stood out to me is how few of the older generation characters in the game are women and how few characters speak about being significantly affected by their mothers, compared to the many characters who have complex (often bad) relationships with their fathers. While they put a great deal of effort into representing the full spectrum in their playable cast, the non-playable cast aside from Rhea are largely male, although I will mention Judith in VW as well, who is reasonably important (although less important than Rodrigue in AM). Most of the influencers of character backstories are also male, mostly the fathers and brothers of the respective characters. Claude, Dimitri/Edelgard, and Dedue are about the only characters who talk about their mother figures in any meaningful way (Mercie/Bernie/Dorothea/Annette all mention their mothers in passing, but are influenced less by their mothers than their fathers by a lot).
But overall, I think the game did an excellent job of having complex and diverse female representation. It is not afraid to tell stories about women specifically in the context of their oppression, but it does not let those women be defined by their oppression. Not every woman in the story is oppressed on the basis of gender (Edelgard would literally stomp on you if you tried shit with her), but it is a unifying theme among several of the women in the story. I think it is a power move from a social justice perspective to not make an egalitarian world, but nor is the theme of ‘girl power!’ so shoved down your throat that you feel like you are being talked down to.
Part 2 is going to be my attempt to look at Three Houses through the lens of intersectional feminism; I will be discussing the representation of women of color and LBGTQ+ women, as well as a discussion of body diversity/body positivity in the context of the series as a whole. I will talk about both what I think was done well and what I think can be done better in the future.
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