“Have you ever wondered if the only way to create a truly free world is to dispense with the goddess and the Crests?”
What I like about Edelgard: Edelgard, for better or for worse, is the lightning rod of many many Internet debates, and she will be the lightning rod of many many more. I’ve seen every view from “Edelgard did nothing wrong” to “Edelgard is basically Hitler”, and all things in between.
To examine Edelgard fully, I would like to talk first about her role as a main character and catalyst of her own story, and then her role as a major antagonist on the other routes, because we see facets of her in the other routes that are not her own.
So first I will talk about the perspective from the Black Eagles route. At first glance, she is a fairly typical overachieving and relatively mature teenage girl, with a bit of Mean Girls antagonist mixed in for good measure. She holds everyone around her to high standards, including the Perfect Silent Main character and definitely including herself. We see this theme crop up again and again in the main story. Each lord has their own unique responses and interactions with Byleth, and in Edelgard’s case, she seems quite annoyed that Byleth is sent to be the professor but doesn’t know the ropes of being a professor. I think she lets this annoyance slip occasionally, but her disdain is primarily directed at the church/Rhea rather than Byleth themselves, sending someone to do a job that they aren’t properly trained for. I can’t say I really blame Edelgard for this disdain, especially as someone who values competence. (I am reading a book about the gulag system in the Soviet Union, and it reminds me of how the Soviets assigned untrained people to do major projects such as building railways and bridges. Training people for their job is important and good!)
It is relatively quickly when you start to get the first glimpses that Edelgard is more than just a demanding imperial princess; she is 100% interested in overthrowing the system, and she lets these facts dribble through during both the Lonato and Miklan battles. In the scene after Lonato, she ruminates on the fact that she, like Lonato, is willing to drag common people into her ideological conflicts, and that “death in service of a greater cause is not a death in vain”. In the aftermath of Miklan’s, she talks admiringly of Miklan, lamenting that a talented individual had to turn to crime because his family rejected him due to his lack of Crest. She acknowledges that he went too far, but overall she reserves most of her rage for the system that has created this inequality, not Miklan himself. She ends this scene with the quote from above; a bit of heresy sprinkled in for good measure. This is the point where you really start to see that she is a radical through and through. Hubert is alarmed by the fact that she’s so open with the professor about their plans, but above all things, Edelgard wants to put her trust in other people, even though she’s been let down so many times before.
While I played Blue Lions first, I also watched Black Eagles. The tonal difference between Dimitri’s rather muted resignation in his conversations surrounding both Lonato and Miklan versus Edelgard’s contemplative in the case of Lonato and rabble-rousing, almost heretical in the case of Miklan is quite a big difference. Dimitri says the things that you think a main character would say in these circumstances, whereas Edelgard uses them as a way to bring up her overarching agenda. Everything is about the struggle, Comrade.
This focus on the struggle crops up in a lot of her early supports as she tries to figure out who is on board for the large-scale societal changes that she is planning on implementing. She quickly finds an ally in Dorothea, and while Caspar believes that “she always tries to make everything about herself”, she believes that he is on board for her dreams of egalitarianism. She finds Petra to be a competent, trustworthy ally, even if she is somewhat wary of her.
On the other hand, she finds Bernadetta incomprehensible, Linhardt useless, and Ferdinand annoying. We see flashes of irritability in all of these supports, although she does try to mask it (not very well, I’d say). Edelgard seems to be generally displeased and irritable for a majority of Part 1, although sometimes she tries to be sociable and pleasant. Often, her attempts at humor come off as stiff, like a boss trying to make jokes with their employees unsuccessfully. She even says in one of her monastery dialogues that she feels “out of place in a festive atmosphere”.
I feel like one of Three Houses’s biggest weaknesses is having a silent main, but sometimes the use of the silent main’s supports is well-executed. Edelgard’s supports give you great insight into why she is the way she is and the basis for which she has constructed her worldview. Her captors tortured her and vile experiments were performed on her, leaving her with superpowers, but also PTSD and psychological trauma. But rather than merely concocting a revenge plot to get at her captors, she sees an opportunity to make a world that is just and fair. That is free from religious dogma. Where people can rise from low means to influence the world.
If you are interested in reading more about Edelgard’s manifestation of PTSD, I found this post extremely insightful. Edelgard's PTSD-how Three Houses sensitively portrays living with a mental health condition. It helped me understand better the more subtle aspects of her character, such as her irritability and her inability to remember an important event that crops up in the game.
Edelgard really REALLY dislikes the Church of Seiros, which crops up over and over throughout the game. We see her radical heresy shine through in Chapter 5 in her dialogue with Gilbert and later Byleth. I think she sees religion as a crutch for people to capitulate in tradition authority and sees how faith in a goddess leads people to live unfulfilling lives, only serving a singular goal of worshipping a goddess. In her Azure Moon Chapter 21 dialogue and in her Crimson Flower ending, she talks people should depend on one another and have faith in their own strength instead of blind obedience to a goddess. It is a profoundly humanist stance, which gives agency to people, as opposed to the Church of Seiros, which saddles people with worship of a deity.
I think Edelgard resonates really strongly to those of us who have left religion by working through these same problems and coming up with the same solutions. I have often contemplated the amount of total time people have spent worshipping and praying a god that most likely does not exist, and how even if this god did exist, would they have created humanity with the sole purpose of worshipping and exalting them? I think for those of us who have left religion, she presents The Argument; that humanity does not need religion or superstition to dictate our lives, and that we can be happy and love one another without god. A common tactic to attack atheism is to discuss the pointlessness of existence, to which I say “leaving the world a better place for your fellow man is a good enough point for me”. (Of course, in the context of Three Houses, we know that, at one time, there was a goddess, unlike in our world. Edelgard does not deny the existence of the goddess, but she sees the modern interpretation of the goddess as a way for an immortal race of dragons to rule over the continent, which is… largely accurate.)
We see her get into a philosophical discussion with a person of faith, Manuela, about the function of faith in Manuela’s life. After understanding Manuela’s point of view, that spiritual guidance helps her feel a sense of purpose in her life, Edelgard re-evaluates her universal distaste for religion, seeing it as having a utilitarian purpose in Manuela’s life. Manuela compares her own religious values with hero worship and tells Edelgard “you’re the reason some people get up in the morning”. Edelgard finds this embarrassing but otherwise the point is well taken. She still overall sees religion and faith as hindrances to intelligent discussion, as she alludes to in her own paralogue. Despite being from countries besides Fodlan, she sees Almyrans and Dagdans as more natural allies to her than the people of Faerghus, because of the latter are devoted to the Church of Seiros.
Edelgard catalyzes most of the events that happen in the first part of the game; she collaborates with Those Who Slither in the Dark to cause chaos in the Church, although she hates them and find their methods extremely distasteful. She walks a thin line between her morality and her desire to start trouble for the church because, as the not-so-subtle-name implies (thanks Hubert), TWSD are pretty much baby-eating assholes. In her estimation, though, using them as tools to crack the church’s 1000 year reign over Fodlan is an important part of her plans, even if she plans to take them out afterwards. Even very early, we see tension between the Flame Emperor and the others. After the battle at Remire, Edelgard asks Byleth if “maybe one day the Flame Emperor will appear to you without his mask, and you can decide what to believe”.
One really interesting scene before the big reveal in Chapter 11 is after Jeralt dies, in Chapter 10. The three lords all have very different reactions to Byleth’s sorrow; Dimitri meets her with equal sadness, Claude with insatiable curiosity (and mild insensitivity), and Edelgard with advice that she carried with her during the Worst of Times, which is basically keep moving forward, because the world isn’t going to wait for you. Many people dislike her in this scene because she’s a ‘bitch’. But this is how she dealt with her massive trauma – conceal, don’t feel, throw all of the pain into the darkness and KEEP MOVING. To not keep moving would be to dishonor her dead family. She asks you if you are going to stay stuck in the past or think of the future that is fast approaching. Of course, she knows what is coming.
I’ve already talked quite a bit about Chapter 11 and ‘the decision’ in my politics post, but Edelgard’s assumption during this sequence is that Byleth’s loyalty to the Church of Seiros, as one of its members, outweighs their loyalty to Edelgard. In Chapter 1, we see Edelgard’s disappointment that Byleth has been recruited as a faculty at the Academy; she seems to consider Byleth out of her reach once that happens. She, after all, is trying to upend and overthrow an entrenched power structure. You can debate how much the game convinces you that should take her side, and I’ve already made my case here, but she is surprised, but very happy, when you take her side over Rhea, and immediately you delve into her plans and ideas for the future and her justification for her revolution — her war to rid the continent of longstanding tyranny and anti-logic.
She struggles more than Hubert with the implications of starting a war. She contemplates that — on her command, people will die, both her own countrymen and her enemies. Again, I spilled many words in my Political Ideology and Three Houses rant to why I believe her revolution is justified and well founded; the world as it is is ruled by irrationality, primarily by blood superiority and religious principles. She believes that by doing something now, by enduring pain now, you build a world that isn’t based on violence and birthright, which will lead to overall less death over a long period of time. Of course, this bakes in the assumption that a world that is more rational and less violent is actually built. We see examples in our own history of examples of when this is right and when this is wrong, but overall I think our world is a better place for having overthrown feudal systems. She sends out her manifesto to the different lords of the Alliance and the Kingdom, hoping to garner their favor and decrease the amount of bloodshed that is coming.
Of course, she has a Messiah complex because she believes she is the only person with the power and resources to reshape the world. We see this crop up in her attitude, her supports, and her relief at the ability to share her immense burden with Byleth. The secrets she has to keep while at the academy weigh heavily on her, and while Hubert is a great confidant and staunch ally, he is absolutely terrible emotional support, as his primary goal is to push her and make sure that the plan goes exactly as it is supposed to. She knows that he’s right and reasonable and that hard work has to be done to make this dream a reality, but goddammit, wouldn’t it be nice to just -enjoy life- for five fucking seconds?
Her decision to incorporate TWSD in her plans is one of the moral conundrums that she faces in her quest, but ultimately she decides to use their power for as long as they are useful and then rid of them. Was ridding the world of the church’s strong influence worth incorporating these monsters into her plans? She believes that using them is necessary for winning the war against the church, and I will infer that she knows what she’s talking about. However, they do commit war crimes during their alliance with her, and that is something that she bears heavily on her. We see in our own history people allying with distasteful, even evil people. I am reminded of the West's cooperation with Stalin during and after WWII; by sending the exiled Cossacks back to Russia, we gave them a death sentence. We allied with one mass murderer to rid ourselves of another. (And of course Stalin considered the West the same way!) In order to fully comprehend the calculus behind her decision, I think I would want a little more information than the game gave.
Post-timeskip, we see a more relaxed Edelgard, despite being in the midst of a major war. In her supports, we see a change in her behavior toward the previously mentioned Ferdinand, Linhardt, and Bernadetta, because she is trying to not just be irritable and understand them all a bit better. In her Ferdinand support, they discuss the possibility of using universal education as a way to even the playing field for commoners in her search for an egalitarian society, and she learns to see past his goofiness and realize that he, too, cares deeply for his country and the people who live in it, whereas before she saw him as an obstacle and a dolt. In her Bernie support, she doesn’t really understand Bernie, but she at least learns to accept her with all of her eccentricities; she explains to Bernie that having her as a friend has made her less prone to anger and more understanding. They both talk about how you can trust plants on sight, unlike people. Yikes!
And she figures out a way to make Linhardt useful by utilizing his talents. Her supports with Dorothea reflect their shared values; both want to deconstruct the existing power structures and replace them with ones that value fairness and justice.
She is very fond of Byleth post-timeskip, and I speculate that it’s because Byleth taking her side helped renew her faith in humanity and made her feel loved. Not just needed for the cause, which is how Hubert makes her feel, but loved as a human being. She finds it reaffirming and life altering that someone cares enough about her to stick their neck out for her and will oppose the goddess and 1000 years of history because they believe in her cause. Edelgard responds to this with a mixture of adoration, love, and appreciation, and we see this reflected in the scene where we find Edelgard painting a picture of Byleth. (I don’t think it is clear that that is what she’s doing, the first time I watched it, but once it is confirmed it certainly makes sense.) Edelgard has always had to be this perfect, Messiah-like leader who shows no flaws, and she is ashamed to be seen doing something that she is not good at. I have seen people claim that her behavior is unrealistic, as if people with trauma and who start wars can’t also be profoundly human, but I think it is deeply humanizing and symbolizes her journey away from trauma.
One random monastery dialogue from Edelgard in Crimson Flower reveals a lot about the way she thinks. She says that she doesn’t understand why the Alliance has to fight against her; they are going to lose, and lives will be lost, so why don’t they just surrender? This is, of course, both logical and ridiculously imperious, which fits perfectly with her general worldview. One of the other really interesting scenes in CF for Edelgard is the scene where she lies about the nukes that destroyed Arianrod, using it as a way to galvanize her side against Rhea, while also hiding the prominence of the slitherers. (I don’t think the nukes are a very effective plot point in general, but this is the only use of them in the story that is of any real interest.) This isn’t really a nice thing to do, but it’s effective, and that is what she cares about more than anything else.
At the end of the day, her beef is primarily with Rhea and the Church of Seiros, and she feels bad to have to fight both Claude and Dimitri. In Claude’s case, if you finish the fight with her, you will be given an option to spare him, and he goes back to Almyra. Although she is somewhat uncomfortable with such a scheming man being left alive, she ends up being merciful because they are basically on the same side, even if they have different approaches on solving the problem. Dimitri, on the other hand, has allied himself and tied his fate with Rhea, who has taken refuge in his kingdom. He is less reform-minded than Claude and is chiefly interested in his pursuit of revenge against Edelgard for her perceived sins, and his primary goal is to eliminate her. Edelgard ends up killing Dimitri, saying that he would have made a good king in a peaceful era, and she mourns his death. When confronted about crying for Dimitri, she responds with “The Edelgard who sheds tears died long ago.”Despite her bluster, it is clear that she still has feelings for Dimitri and laments that he was caught in Arundel’s schemes to sow chaos in Faerghus.
Ultimately, though, Rhea is her real target, and she has no time for the sycophants and brainwashed who follow her. When Rhea ends up burning Fhirdiad to the ground in response to the imperial army’s advance, this only proves Edelgard’s dislike of Rhea true. Edelgard ends her boss conversation with Rhea with “I never betrayed you. I didn’t believe in you from the start!” After the battle, you see the quote, again reflecting her humanist ideology: “When humanity stands strong and people reach out for each other…there’s no need for gods.” The era of dragons is over and Edelgard’s dream comes into fruition.
And yet in her S support, we still see her struggle with the concept of being loved and valued by another human being for who she is, not what she is.
“Maybe it is self-righteousness, but it doesn’t matter. Someone has to take action and put a stop to this world’s endless, blood-stained history!” Despite claims to the contrary, Edelgard outside of her own route is consistent with her behavior in her own route. I already cited a consistent humanist ideology from both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon above, but even her core ideology is the same. She will do anything to win, in all routes, all of the time. Much like how in Crimson Flower we see Rhea transform from ‘benevolent’ ruler to raging monster when the cards are down, we see Edelgard in her moments of desperation. Unlike Rhea, she values human life and does not burn down her capital city (yes, I’ve seen this claimed as a point against her), but nor does she want to be around if she does not win. In many ways she sees her life to exist solely for the purpose of achieving her goals, and without that, she does not desire to be around and have to endure more suffering than she already has. Claude (in VW) and Dimitri (in AM) both try to spare her, but ultimately she dies on her own terms.
In all of the routes, the war seems to have moved surprisingly little during the five years of the timeskip, although moreso in AM/VW/SS due to Cornelia’s coup of the western parts of Faerghus. Also, her reason for keeping Rhea alive in those routes is a source of speculation and mystery. To be honest, I’m not really sure, but it is certainly more evidence that she isn’t just a mad tyrant or madwoman. Why she transforms into Hegemon Edelgard (which I guess is her ‘trump card’ and the only real evidence of this large power she possesses that is referenced at other points) is a mystery and likely just related to gameplay rather than plot, although you can argue she had extra time to prepare it, and it’s a way to show that in action. Incidentally, Hubert actually doesn’t approve of her plan to transform, as we see in AM Chapter 19. In this case, we see him protest against this idea because he does care about her, he’s just bad at showing it.
There are three scenes; one in all the non-CF routes, one in AM, and one in SS (and VW, but it doesn’t make as much sense there) that are really worth talking about from her antagonist perspective. After Chapter 11, there is a scene where she rallies the troops into war, presenting her case that Rhea is corrupt and self-serving. I really liked the scene that replaced in CF, but this version is really good too. Again, she presents her case. Her scene with Dimitri in Chapter 21 AM is as clear as anything in the game about her motives and her ideology, presenting the war as the only way to bring justice to a wretched, unfair world. And lastly, in SS, we see the scene after the fight with her where she is dying, and tells Byleth that she wanted to walk with her. This is a reflection of the previous statements about CF about how Edelgard felt so good about Byleth taking her side that she becomes infatuated with them because she needed someone to love and to love her back.
There are many, many bad takes about Edelgard on the Internet and addressing every single one of them might cause the heat death of the universe, but one particular one seems to stick; that’s she’s a fascist. (Cue https://youtu.be/SNciSjBTkGA “Your favorite ship is Edeleth if you’ve gotten into five Internet arguments about how Edelgard is not a fascist”.) Fascism has a few key tenets; traditionalism, ultra-authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, and blood purity. Edelgard is anti-establishment and traditional authority, and believes in pretty much the opposite of the blood purity that is literally one of the societal problems that she’s trying to fix, so those two claims are relatively easy to deflect, and those are the two that defines someone as fascist, so I think this argument is over. But is she ultra-authoritarian? She talks about wanting to delegate tasks to competent people and she seems to have a place for transitioning out of power, although the endings are not clear on when that really happens, if ever. I would describe her as more authoritarian than not, but ultra- seems a bit extreme. She is patriotic and believes that the Empire under her rule is fighting for good, but does her identity as a imperial citizen trump everything? Considering her admiration for other cultures, as referenced above, I would say no. Again, she is patriotic, but ultra-nationalist? No way. I feel like this is a claim put forth by people who don’t realize that fascism is not the only model of authoritarianism (or more likely just people who are trying to get under other people’s skin).
I would personally describe her as a bit Napoleon, a bit Lenin, and a bit of the modern anti-religion left thrown into a blender. She is progressive, ambitious, controlling, and believes that the ends of a better world justify the means. We see her progressive stances over and over again, through her supports and dialogue with a variety of different characters. Whether you are buying what she is selling or not, she is complex and drives the game’s story in a way that no one else does. To classify her as simply ‘evil’ because she is a conqueror misses the point (as does classifying Rhea is purely evil).
Overall, Three Houses makes its female protagonist the center of the story, its most discussed and analyzed and dissected and loved and hated, and sometimes its main villain. It is a really bold move that I would have never expected from a series that so often features black and white characters and binary morality, and is often not very brave. They go all in with her, and whether you think she’s perfectly justified and the next coming or an evil harpy who loves starting wars and drinking the blood of baby unicorns, the history of gaming is better for having her in it.
For her post-timeskip design, she is wielding a giant axe, dressed all in red with a devil horned crown. I remember reading some of the previous information on Three Houses and seeing that design and going “Whoa!” Her design evokes a bit of a Lucifer feel, as do a few other things surrounding her, such as her rebellion against god and the fact that her theme song is “The Edge of Dawn” (Lucifer is referred to as “the son of dawn” in the Bible). She transforms from a somewhat generic, pretty anime girl to a stately but badass warrior woman in this new design, and I love it. One of the subtle things about Edelgard is how she projects herself as very competent, always seeming in control despite being the smallest person in the room. She is bold, fierce, and doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Her supports are almost universally high quality. My favorites include: Dorothea, Caspar, Byleth, Hubert, Bernie, Lysithea, Manuela, Hanneman. I really like how so many of them talk about political and religious philosophy, and how she wants to be open-minded to the way other people think.
And this is why I love Edelgard.
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