Did they confirm in-universe whether Edelgard’s lifespan will be shortened as a result of the Crest experiments? It only makes sense to assume this is the case, considering what happened to Lysithea, but the story feels lesser for never going there and doing something interesting with the idea.
Did any character ever question Edelgard on her insistence of ruling over all of Fodlan as an absolute monarch, despite wishing to abolish the aristocracy’s excessive power and Rhea’s iron-fisted rule, causing some characters to question where her dedication to ending the unjust use of power ends and where her own desperation to never be vulnerable again begins? No, but the drama from that scene could have been great.
Remember that scene where Dimitri asked Edelgard “Must you continue to conquer? Continue to kill?” and Edelgard responded with “Must you continue to reconquer, and kill in retaliation?”. It’s a terrible scene because the discussion they’re having doesn’t match the world they’re in. It’s a shallow, juvenile response to a shallow, juvenile question.
Dimitri’s land was originally part of Edelgard’s country, and before that it was someone else’s country, so one could argue she is reconquering or that nobody has a right to defend their nation, but that would be a waste of time as that is unrelated to the core issue here, I’m just getting this out of the way.
Why would Dimitri, Mr “Kill every last one of them, the dead must have their tribute” himself, be so indifferent to the suffering and death of innocent people demanded by the status quo to maintain the status quo, he would become so insistent that social change must come at a pace slow enough to be comfortable for those in power, no matter how much suffering and death must be endured by those below them in status in the process? Yes, his country “is religious”, and the use of Crest weapons is important to defend their terrible starving country. But you can have Crested families with Crest weapons paid handsomely to serve the army without needing to also back that physical power with such excessive corrupting privilege and political power. Defending Rhea’s control over the nations, a tyrannical rule that has demanded so much suffering and so many sacrifices, is not something Dimitri or Claude is morally obligated to do.
Edelgard’s army contains Dorothea, a woman who drank dirty water from the gutter when she was homeless, it contains Bernadetta, a woman abused by a man who gets away with it unless someone with a greater amount of force goes out of their way to let him die or arrange to put him somewhere dangerous where his death can look normal, and probably also contains Lysithea if you’re playing correctly. Might even contain Ingrid if you want her paralogue, and you know what a Noble tried to do to her. The nobility system encourages a certain type of person to engage in a certain type of fundamentally evil behavior, and the powerless are left to suffer the consequences. Doing whatever it takes to end this system is a moral necessity.
When Edelgard says she wants to overthrow a broken system so people can be free, and Dimitri says he believes people can stand on their own, it is nonsense. This means nothing. What Dimitri’s saying might sound good on a greeting card but it is not a rational or moral argument. He chooses to believe her “extremism” is wrong and unnecessary without being able to provide an answer why. I’ve seen people try to create headcanon arguments for Dimitri based on this scene, and interpret “people can stand on their own” as some kind of “moral anarchist” argument, but he is not a Follower Of The Apocalypse. He is the Prince born into excessive privilege waging war to protect all that is his, no matter how his country may be better off upon becoming a part of the Empire once again. The story isn’t setting up a pragmatism vs moral principles argument, or a freedom versus tyranny argument, it’s desperately trying to avoid letting Dimitri lose an argument for upholding the Church’s authority over all lands including his own and turning a blind eye to how this status quo has hurt those close to him. How many Caesar’s Legion members saw the moral failings in “free” areas like Freeside and, after being influenced by propaganda from Caesar himself, came to the conclusion that violently conquering and enslaving these “dissolute addict losers” is doing them a favour, just like Caesar’s Legion did assorted “backwards weak tribes” a favour by “curing” them of their former cultures and forcing them to be a part of something “stronger” and therefore “better”? But this story doesn’t have the teeth to go there, or follow through on ideas it actually wanted to explore.
Are we meant to take this story seriously and ask if Dimitri is a colossal hypocrite for losing his marbles when he is wronged, and caring so little when others are wronged? He isn’t written this way consistently enough for it to seem intentional.
But this isn’t the only time the story does this. Remember that discussion between Edelgard and Dimitri in Azure Moon?
Dimitri: I will get straight to the point. Why did you start this war? There had to be a way to change things in your territory without the need for so many senseless casualties.
Edelgard: It may be hard to believe, but this is the way that leads to the fewest casualties in the end. Don’t you see?
Dimitri: How could I? Countless people have already lost their lives in this conflict.
Edelgard: The longer we took to revolt, the more victims this crooked world would have claimed. I weighed the victims of war against the victims of the world as it is now, and I chose the former. I believe that I have chosen the best path, the only path.
Dimitri: Even after seeing the faces of those who have suffered the ravages of war, you would still force them to throw their lives away for the future? You are obsessively devoted to this war and deaf to the screams of its victims. You cannot change the cycle of the strong dominating the weak with a method like that.
He isn’t engaging with Edelgard’s argument. He shames her for sacrifices she and her people consensually made to overthrow tyranny while also shaming her for not continuing to sacrifice under tyranny. The status quo demands constant sacrifice. Overthrowing that status quo demands sacrifice and people are willing to fight for it, even die for it. For a better country, for a better tomorrow, for their people, for their offspring, for the future. Edelgard isn’t press-ganging people onto war boats in the night and forcing them to die where they stand miles from home or start serving the navy. Edelgard isn’t sending the secret police to the homes of draft-dodgers. Edelgard and her people know what they’re fighting for and what they’re fighting against. Edelgard didn’t force Bernadetta to take part in Operation Burning Bernie. Edelgard is not an amoral cynical power-obsessed tyrant playing the “Game of Thrones” like a monster out of the naive belief that every betrayal of principles and people and every sacrifice and loss will be worth it once she stands atop the world as one who can forcefully make the world a better place and end the cycle of violence and break the wheel. Edelgard is a revolutionary and the writers couldn’t be arsed to give Dimitri a coherent argument against social reforms that are necessary and justified and were very successful and beneficial for society and humanity in our own world. Flawed characters can make flawed arguments, but the writers don’t want Dimitri to be a flawed character who meaningfully overcomes these flaws. Byleth’s influence doesn’t consistently help his chosen House Leader overcome their personal flaws to be the best version of themselves, sometimes things just arbitrarily happen based on what route you’re on. The writers want Azure Moon’s climax to feel like a victory, Dimitri’s victory over his demons thanks to your help, even though you sided with someone naturally far closer to the villain role than Edelgard. Edelgard risks all she has for a better world, Dimitri risks all he has to protect what’s his. Dimitri is written like the writers want to tell a story of a “Good” Lord pushed too far into the darkness by giving him “too much” pain, only to pull back in time to keep him marketable if he doesn’t die alone offscreen on the routes where more important things are happening.
Dimitri inheriting the crown, his birthright, and ruling over his terrible country the best he can with the power available to him under Rhea’s control will not do anything to change the cycle of the privileged abusing and dominating the “weak” across all of Fodlan outside of unrealistic fanfiction where everything can be solved with sufficient use of sufficient power by the protagonists offscreen instantly, because Mr “KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM- I mean social progress must be slow and gradual enough to be comfortable for those in power as they give up power and privilege slowly and willingly and under no threat of violent rebellion for rebellion is illegal and illegality is bad, the lawmakers said so” isn’t a sufficiently principled ruler to be mentioned in the same breath as Edelgard, and he has no intelligent peaceful solutions for the problems Edelgard wishes to solve as soon as possible with violent coercive force. Dimitri is not the Followers Of The Apocalypse, and Edelgard is not the NCR or Caesar’s Legion, and neither of them are Mr House. And if the writers didn’t want to think through the ideas their games touch upon, why bother writing them when AI generating another Fire Emblem Engage-like plot would have been faster? If the authors acknowledged what Dimitri is, the story could have gone to interesting places with it.
The authors want as many people as possible in the target audience to feel like they backed the right side when they played the game once and then argued about it on twitter for half a decade or never spoke or thought about it again and moved on to the next game in their backlog, even though you were forced to choose what side to support and what parts of the world to see and ignore long before you knew anything meaningful about the nations and their history. I’m not alone when I say this… When I first played Fire Emblem 3 Houses I sided with Edelgard because her house had the cutest girls. Could you imagine being a citizen of Fodlan, reading about the brutal horrific war your parents fought in, turning the page, and seeing it go over the legendary God-King Byleth’s backstory and motivation, praise his devotion to our glorious Empress Edelgard, demonize Rhea’s attempts to make him sit on the Sothisification Throne without knowing what he was doing, and then reveal not only was he as impossibly politically ignorant as someone who never played or heard of 3 Houses teleported from our world to theirs on the day he chose to side with Edelgard over the other houses, while thinking he was just deciding which house to teach and not who he would back during a war, he sided with her simply because her house had the cutest girls? This game really should have made you spend time with each of the three houses, learning everything needed to make an informed decision about what kind of Byleth you want to be and whose manifesto for improving this horrific world you agree with, setting up a Branch Of Fate-type moment at the end when you decide who to side with during Act 2. Then the authors could give you bad endings for siding with the wrong people without having to worry about people playing blind and accidentally softlocking themselves into bad endings.
Writers, for the love of God, don’t start moral or political debates in your work if you aren’t sure how the protagonist wins them in the end but you want to pretend he wins anyway. He can lose them at first and win when he’s grown, or he can lose the whole time if you want to go somewhere unusual, maybe make a point about his incomplete arc or complicated questions with no easy answers. Pretending he won when he didn’t makes discussing the work with people who think he did win feel as pointless as discussing the work with people who think “Edelgard is literally Hitler and she killed her family for power” somehow. If you aren’t sure how the protagonist can take a principled rational stance against the villain’s stated or actual goals, just cheat and make the villain a madly cackling kitten-kicking hypocritical monster using people’s dissatisfaction with real issues solely for personal advancement. You know, like when Benderism was forgotten because Amon turned out to be a bender, or when the question of the Blarg’s homeworld became irrelevant once Chairman Drek revealed he’s doing it for money. Okay, sure, sometimes revealing the villain was actually just a villain so his argument doesn’t have to be engaged with doesn’t turn out well, but this “fake argument” stuff with Dimitri is worse. For countless years, humanity has been writing stories about destroying secret organizations out to control the world, and overthrowing evil tyrants who think everything would be better off under the micromanagement and propaganda of their iron-fisted rule, and slaying cruel or mindless giant dragons who just want to accumulate more or protect what’s currently theirs (most or all of which is stolen). People have won these arguments before, Dimitri should have ripped them off instead of pretending his moral objection to the violence of Edelgard’s revolution against a violent world matters.
