Characters / Verdant Moon Azure Wind Antagonists

The Savior King, the Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation Main Character Page Main Characters | Officer's Academy | Allies | Antagonists | Agarthans | Einhejar (HEAVY SPOILERS) |

Notable major antagonists in The Savior King, the Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation. For the Agarthans, go here.

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The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus

Miklan Gautier

• Adaptational Dumbass: In Three Houses, Miklan is noted to be a skilled bandit leader, suggesting a talent for leadership and tactics. In this fanfic he mostly just leads his gang by being the biggest brute around, and is noted for having been given little more than very basic training by his father.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed. While he's still murderously jealous of his younger brother, his canon self's implied kidnapping and rape of Faerghan villager women is never mentioned. Most likely this is because the chapter in which he appears was published long before the release of the DLC wave that revealed this.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When cornered by the heroes, Miklan rants at the them, dropping two main points. Neither is directly addressed at the time, and they're disregarded seemingly because it's him saying them:
  • First, that Sylvain would run Gautier territory into the ground. While Miklan himself is not exactly a sterling example of what a leader should be when it comes to anything more than commanding a bandit gang, he's not wrong that Sylvain, prior to his character development, does not take his future duties seriously and goes out of his way to anger the very people he'll need to work with once he inherits his father's position.
  • Second, that Count Galatea would never allow Ingrid to become anything more than, "some rich old man's bedwarmer". Ingrid is under immense pressure by her father to marry someone who will reverse Galatea territory's dire fortunes. It's only when the war breaks out, in which she fights against his wishes, that he begins to relent.

The Leicester Alliance

Lord Acheron

• Boom, Headshot!: Acheron meets his death via a Blaiddyd-powered javelin through the skull during the battle at the Great Bridge of Myrddin.
• Butt-Monkey: Nobody gives him any kind of respect, and we mean nobody. Byleth outright groans when remembering working with him and later calls him an idiot, Lorenz completely agrees with Byleth’s statement, Yuri and Claude do nothing but mock him, Balthus constantly pulls exasperated faces when talking about him or in his presence, Hilda treats him as a verbal punching bag and even Ashe and Bernadetta are utterly incredulous when the learn about him and witness his personality first hand. Hell, even Sothis herself utterly looks down upon Acheron!
• The Corruptible: Is easily persuaded by Edelgard to turn on the Alliance when the war starts.
• Dirty Coward: For all his bluster and posturing, he folds easily under pressure, such as when he realizes that he's inadvertantly attacked and insulted both Lady Hilda Goneril and Claude, who is the Riegan heir and therefore the next leader of the Alliance. More seriously, he betrays the Alliance when the war starts, feeling intimidated by the Empire's might. It's also implied that Edelgard promised to give him more power under her new regime.
• Dirty Old Man: As dryly pointed out by Hilda, it does not surprise her in the least that Acheron did not recognize Claude at first glance… after all, Acheron was the kind of man who would not recognize her if not for the fact that he once spent a whole afternoon staring at her breasts. Byleth was not impressed in the least after hearing Hilda say this.

Count Gloucester

• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed due to what has been revealed in Three Hopes: In this fic, the Count was the one responsible for the deaths of Godfrey Riegan and Raphael’s parents, whereas in Three Hopes it’s revealed that the Count had nothing to do with it and that it was actually those who slither in the dark who orchestrated the tragedy.
• Arranged Marriage: Used to have one with Claude's mother. Claude's mother naturally wasn't interested and absolutely loathed Gloucester that she'd rather run away to Almyra with Kirah, who is a prince at the time Tiana made her escape.
• Entitled to Have You: How Count Gloucester ultimately felt about Tiana Von Riegan as the daughter of house Riegan, who led the Alliance at the time and felt that it is within his right to have Tiana to be his wife. Tiana naturally loathed him for being like most nobles who try to suck up to her because of her position and ultimately chose to run away to Almyra.
• Foil: Is one to Count Varley, Bernadetta's father. While Count Varley openly disdains the poor, Count Gloucester hides his true feelings about them behind a mask of nobility. Lorenz has mixed feelings about his father while Bernadetta is terrified of hers. Count Gloucester is beaten by words, while Count Varley is beaten by swords.
• Hate Sink: In his brief second appearance in Chapter 85, Count Gloucester is revealed to be little more than a hypocrite and racist who is heavily implied to be hating Claude out of anger and jealousy over Claude’s mother for rejecting him and fleeing her arranged marriage. As a result, the entire chapter consists of him getting absolutely buried by multiple speeches and rebuttals from Claude’s friends when he tries to turn the Alliance against him.
• Hypocrite:
  • Accuses Claude of plotting to steal Fódlan when he himself plotted to murder Godfrey Riegan to take control of the Alliance before Claude was even born.
  • In Lorenz’s POV chapter in The Knights of Fódlan, Lorenz mentions how his father thinks very little of the people living in his lands despite saying that a nobleman’s duty is to his people.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gloucester slowly loses his cool as more and more people destroy him verbally, including his own son, and eventually ends up unable to speak due to being overcome with emotion.

The Adrestian Empire

Edelgard von Hresvelg

• 0% Approval Rating: As the war drags on, Edelgard's approval rating drops dangerously low; her civilian subjects riot in the streets, many of her soldiers do nothing to stop them, and all she has left are a few hardline loyalists and the Agarthans who plan to dispose of her once she outlives her usefulness.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Canon Edelgard is skilled at winning others to her side, is very efficient at playing her myriad foes against each other to keep them from focusing on her, deflects suspicion during her time at Garreg Mach and wins power back from the people who took it from her father, is a talented tactician, and ultimately gets the last laugh three times out of four when she and the Agarthans come to blows (winning a shadow war directly in Crimson Flower and posthumously setting Byleth loose on them in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind). Fanfic Edelgard mostly relies on brute force to get what she wants, her tactics consist of just charging her enemies, she willingly and stubbornly divides her forces while the Empire is being actively invaded, and she relies on threats and empty promises of power to convince others to join her side.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Canon Edelgard never disregards Dimitri as an out-and-out madman as she does in this fic, nor did she consider him naive, guileless, or stupid, and in canon she never disparages Claude for being mixed-race. She also doesn't privately insult her advisers as cowards, nor does she refuse good advice because it's something she doesn't want to hear.
• Adaptational Villainy: Canon Edelgard explicitly had no idea that the Agarthans possess Javelins of Light before they're first used. Fanfic Edelgard both knows about them and orders them used for the war effort. She also tricks her citizens into becoming Demonic Beasts, while in canon it's never explained where and how she obtained subjects to create the beasts from.
• Adaptational Wimp: Canon Edelgard is a skilled combatant, able to fight Byleth to a draw. Fanfic Edelgard gets utterly dominated every time she tries to fight the heroes in open combat. During the battle of Enbarr in particular, she suffers multiple beat downs in rapid succession and is forced to constantly retreat or hide behind her soldiers.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: With all three of the main leads:
  • Edelgard and Claude have a cordial relationship in canon and both agree that they share similar ideals, particularly a disdain toward the Church of Seiros. In this story, Edelgard loathes Claude as her chief obstacle, while Claude is the most openly contemptuous of her actions out of the three leads.
  • Canonically, Edelgard regards Dimitri with respect and pity, considering him one of Thales's victims and lamenting that being born in such a tumultous age prevented him from becoming the good king he could have been. Here, she openly and viciously scorns him as a simple-minded madman.
  • In Three Houses, the sometimes positive, sometimes antagonistic relationship between Edelgard and Byleth has enormous influence on the story, particularly in Crimson Flower and Silver Snow. Here, they barely interact with or think about one another.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything that she did, Claude still spares her some pity when she finally dies, noting that she only became what she was because of Thales. Dimitri is outright horrified.
• And I Must Scream: Chapter 80 is an interlude showing her imprisonment at the hands of the Agarthans, where for much of the chapter she's trapped by some sort of headgear that essentially acts as a muzzle. Several times she's nauseous enough to vomit—including during a truly sickening beating by an enraged Odesse—but she's forced to choke it back down because it has nowhere to go. She's finally free to speak by the end of the chapter...when she's Strapped to an Operating Table and about to be prepped for transfiguration into the Hegemon Husk, and she's sedated before she can have any release.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: After chapter 51, Edelgard starts getting the odd interlude every now and then from her point of view. They also count as Villain Episodes.
• Big Bad Wannabe: She thinks that she's The Chessmaster who is using Agartha to her own ends, and that she's a noble revolutionary who is reclaiming stolen land for her kingdom and 'saving' humanity from the Nabateans. Edelgard does succeed in starting a war of reunification, but her ruthlessness alienates her fellow students, her use of Dirty Business and demonic beasts turn her people against her to the point of open revolt, Maximus Varley, who she released under the assumption she could control him, attacks Hrym and slaughters hundreds of her own people, and she repeatedly underestimates Claude and Dimitri even as they invade deeper and deeper into Adrestia. Finally, despite thinking that she's The Starscream to Thales, she's actually just an Unwitting Pawn whose actions have only served Agartha's goal of destroying Fódlan.
• Break the Haughty: Edelgard is hit hard by this in chapter 73. After seeing both the Immaculate One and the Immovable tearing through the Titanus and Demonic Beasts that were meant to be her trump cards, almost being killed twice - first by Glenn, then at the end of a Curb-Stomp Battle with Lysithea and Sylvain who both tell her how self-serving and immoral her decisions have been, learning about Claude's status as the Prince of Almyra (meaning her invasion of the Alliance would have likely ended in disaster and bloodshed even if everything had gone as planned), she enters the castle to find Thales and Myson calmly having a discussion and planning to pull their troops out. When she attempts to confront him and force the issue, Thales summons Angel Lamine, who hits her with Bolting and almost kills her.
• Broken Pedestal: Becomes this to Dorothea, Linhardt and virtually everybody acquainted with her during their times in the academy in light of her declaration of war. As the war goes on, the other Black Eagles (sans Hubert) who had initially joined her cause eventually started to see Edelgard in the same light as she starts to commit even more amoral and ruthless actions to win the war and promptly defect to Byleth, Claude, and Dimitri's side, one by one.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Turns out, being a warmongering Young Conqueror is a lot more problematic and difficult that the game would have you believe, and her whole Character Arc in the series is a painful reminder about the harsh realities of war.
  • In order to provide funding for her armies, Edelgard has to raises taxes, which puts a strain on the economy.
  • Most of the food gets sent to the army, while the rest is rationed among civilians, which causes famine in many cities.
  • As Edelgard finds herself facing one defeat after the other, she resorts to even more desperate and immoral acts to try to eke out a victory.
  • The constant defeats cause the citizens to have doubts about the war and begin protesting in Enbarr. When Edelgard tries to quell the protest, the citizens see through her lies and half truths, which leads to a couple of bricks being thrown at her. One brick grazes her shoulder, and after she dodges the other one, one of her guards kills the protester who threw it, which sparks a riot in her own capital city.
  • Finally, despite her plans to be The Starscream, she has far less power against Thales than she thinks. She's so blatant about her intention to betray him that Thales had plans to remove her regardless of if she'd won the war or not, and despite being in the heart of her powerbase when she confronts him, he easily reduces her back to a powerless prisoner and plans to strip her of her free will via Geas to ensure she serves the role he'd groomed her for.
• Defiant Captive: She tries her best against Odesse in chapter 80, but to say that it did not go her way is a major understatement.
• Divide and Conquer: In Chapter 55, Byleth deduces that after failing to prevent the Kingdom and Alliance from teaming up, Edelgard's objective is to drive a wedge between the two by using Gloucester (who doesn't bite) and Acheron (who does) to kill Dimitri and Rodrigue and make it look like the Alliance intended to backstab the Kingdom from the beginning.
• Et Tu, Brute?: She's shocked and dumbfounded by Petra's "betrayal", and wonders if Caspar or Ferdinand will turn on her next. She's indeed dumbfounded in chapter 72 when she sees Ferdinand among the rebels and arguing her peaceful surrender.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Edelgard is a ruthless extremist willing to plunge Fódlan into war to fix its societal issues, but she is utterly devastated to learn Hubert is dead.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Edelgard is willing to do almost anything to reunite Fódlan, but even she sees releasing Count Varley to the front lines as an absolute Godzilla Threshold and is horrified to discover the Agarthans' transhuman project. However, this doesn't stop her from making use of the resurrected Elites, or from unleashing Count Varley to stop her people from rioting.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Edelgard is struck with a mundane version of this in regards to their dealings with Count Varley. She orders him to subdue the rioters in Hrym banking on Ferdinand to keep him from going too far, not realizing that he will simply usurp Ferdinand's authority and start killing everyone.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Lysithea and Sylvain's opinion of her, remarking that they too have suffered because of both Crests and the Agarthans but have not resorted to the measures she has, not the least of which being siding with the Agarthans themselves.
• Godzilla Threshold: As the opening stages of the war turn into several crushing defeats for Adrestia, Edelgard notes she is getting desperate enough to let Count Varley out of prison to help turn the tide even though "blood, slaughter and ruin would follow him should he be put at the head of an army against foes who were encroaching on what he considered 'his land'". By Chapter 68, she has actually crossed that line and sent him to subdue the rioters, with predictably bloody results.
• Heel–Face Turn: Edelgard gets one in a side story following what occurs after her death, where she is on her journey to being a face by reincarnation in the world of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776.
• Heel Realization: Edelgard spends most of the second half of Chapter 80 realizing she was nothing more than a power-crazed tyrant who only ever cared about herself.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • The whole war is a long, painful and constant one for her. The war only lasts for a few months, the heroic forces led by Byleth, Dimitri, and Claude don't suffer a single meaningful loss, and the only ground she's able to gain in western Faerghus is swiftly undone when Almyra intervenes on the heroes' side.
  • The Battle of Enbarr exemplifies this like nothing else. Between the sheer numerical superiority of the combined Alliance-Kingdom-Church forces, having obtained information on Enbarr's defenses from captured Agarthans, and the participation of both The Immaculate One and the Immovable, the Imperial army quickly crumbles. Not only that, but during said battle there's the Edelgard vs. Sylvain and Lysithea fight. The two avoid or block her every attack, refute her attempts at garnering their sympathy, and verbally dress her down. In the end she's grievously injured by Lysithea and is almost finished off by Sylvain before Hubert teleports her to safety.
• Hypocrite: Edelgard accuses the Church of altering the truth to suit her own ends in the exact same breath she lies her ass off about who really destroyed Fort Merceus.
• I Am the Noun: In one of the Edelgard interludes, she says, "I am the revenge of the my murdered siblings upon the world that sacrificed them, of the people mistreated and stomped on by the 'Crest bearing nobility!'"
• Ignored Epiphany: Her thoughts indicate that several of the heroes' dressing-downs are getting to her more than she cares to admit, but she keeps pushing forward regardless.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Her final fate, in chapter 93. Stripped of her free will and forced into the Hegemon Husk, she battles the students before being attacked by Maurice, and the two fall several stories through the floors of Shambhala before she's impaled on the Viskam spire.
• Internal Reveal: Chapter 80 has Edelgard discover Dimitri was her long-forgotten stepbrother.
• I Reject Your Reality: Edelgard claims to be more open minded than any aristocrat before her, but in her interludes this quirk rapidly spirals out into a refusal to acknowledge that Byleth, Claude and Dimitri are winning the war, or that they have justifiable grievances against her that aren't rooted in 'propping up Fódlan's current circumstances'. Even when Renata Fraldarius spells out her lack of clarity and self-serving narrative, she refuses to consider taking Blaiddyd's advice to flee, refusing to abandon her sense of righteousness or her belief that she's Fódlan's savior.
• It's All About Me: There's a subtle but tangible undercurrent to Edelgard's interludes; for all that she talks about improving her people's lives, she only thinks about that in terms of her ideals and her beliefs, by using her experiences and none others.
• Karmic Death: Contrary to every route in the original game, she dies in chapter 93 with no dignity or grandeur. Instead, she suffers the fate of every citizen who was forcibly turned into a Demonic Beast—her will stripped from her, her voice lost, and her body destroyed. Like her nameless citizens whom she carelessly sacrificed, her only real purpose was to be Thales's disposable pawn.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Edelgard is portrayed as knowing nothing while playing the "I know more than you sheeple" card. It is consistently shown that Edelgard bought off and believed the lies that the Agarthans had told her and claims to have the high ground when compared to everyone else. She was also under the impression that the people she tried to reach out to (such as Sylvain, Lysithea and Byleth) would understand and support her when they knew the truth; in reality, her ruthlessness had alienated them.
• Loving a Shadow: Chapter 73 reveals that she’s just as much in love with Byleth as in canon and is absolutely broken when Thales offhandedly mentions that Byleth is in a relationship with both Claude and Dimitri.
• Moral Myopia: Calls Rhea/Seiros a "beast" who is controlling people and lying to them, despite the fact that Edelgard herself does the exact same thing.
• Never My Fault: In Edelgard's mind, everything that goes wrong with her plans for Fódlan is either Sothis' fault, Thales' fault, or Claude's fault.
• The Poorly Chosen One: Twice over, in the opinion of the Agarthans. Both Marian and much later Thales himself consider her a terrible champion against the dragons in hindsight. Marian point-blank tells Dimitri that she personally believes he would be much better suited for the role than Edelgard and in chapter 73 Thales himself openly admits that Claude would have been a much better champion for the Agarthans to have than Edelgard, bluntly stating: "I choose poorly; I should have waited until he stepped into Fódlan and whisked him away, made him our chosen dragon slayer. He has more guile in one finger than she possessed in her entire body".
• Properly Paranoid: Edelgard is portrayed as paranoid and distrusting when she questions the nature of Claude's sudden and easy friendship with Dimitri. Setting aside the fact that their coalition does end up ruining all of her plans, Claude works hard to present himself as an untrusting schemer, and Dimitri, while cordial and polite, is a closed individual, even among his fellow Lions. It's only natural that she would suspect these two suddenly having such a strong friendship, given their statuses as heir apparent to the other two countries of Fódlan.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Edelgard's apprehension about Claude's sudden and easy friendship with Dimitri turns out to be spot-on, as they do end up ruining all of her plans together. However, in the biggest case of Irony, she was one who started the war which made said coalition possible. Their friendship and budding romantic relationship had nothing to with her and they were not planning to ally against her before the war started, because in their relationship she was a complete non-issue. Both Dimitri and Claude going against her turned out to be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy due to her actions.
• Smug Snake: Edelgard is extremely arrogant and overconfident, thinking she's The Starscream to the Agarthans when in reality, she's just the Agarthans' dupe from start to finish.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: In chapter 80, being prepped for her transfiguration under Agarthan imprisonment.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Edelgard's opinion of her war council, remarking in her head that she's close to just firing them all and leaving only Hubert and Hanneman. Which becomes darkly ironic in Chapter 73, considering that Thales himself considers her something of a Leeroy Jenkins incapable of knowing when it's best to retreat and Odesse openly scorns her for her failures.
• This Means War!: Once it's revealed that Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, Byleth realizes that her attack on the Holy Tomb is an act of war and that they have to be ready for a full conflict with the Empire. Sure enough, the formal declaration comes the next chapter.
• Underestimating Badassery: Throughout their school year together, Edelgard expresses bemusement at both Claude and Dimitri's personalities. She's confident she can sweep them aside once she starts the war, believing Dimitri to be too naïve and guileless to make a good king and Claude to be an overconfident schemer who's in way over his head. She also dismisses the idea that they would work together. After they inflict multiple crushing defeats on her without any significant losses, she re-evaluates her opinion on Claude, but persists in dismissing Dimitri as reliant on Claude and Byleth rather than a significant player in his own right - even after her own people start speaking favorably of him right before rioting against her.
• Unwitting Pawn: Despite fancying herself The Starscream, by chapter 73 it becomes plain that in reality, Edelgard was nothing but a tool that Thales used to destabilize Fódlan and kill as many people as possible to achieve his plan to take the surface for Shambhala. When she attempts to confront him, he merely has Lamine blast her into submission and takes her prisoner again as they retreat, leaving Adrestia to the United Army.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Dimitri's flashbacks in chapter 70 strongly indicates that Edelgard was this. She was fierce but kind, encouraging him to stand up for himself, playing with him and fussing over an injured kitten, making their current relationship all the more tragic.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Edelgard in chapter 73 gets this as the truth sinks in to her that she is nothing but an Unwitting Pawn and all of her plans have been crushed. A particularly jarring moment, as Edelgard suffers defeat with grace in Three Houses.
  • She's broken down even further in chapter 80, when she's taken prisoner by the Agarthans and learns that Hubert—the one person she trusted to always be at her side—is dead. The chapter is one long breakdown for her, culminating in a young Agarthan boy telling her how her mother really died and that Dimitri is her stepbrother—all while matter-of-factly stating that he's prepping her to be "transfigured" and deployed at a moment's notice, implicitly as the Hegemon Husk. It's while this happens that she realizes what characters have been trying to convince her of for the whole story—that she's fighting the wrong enemy, that she's not as powerful as she thinks she is, and that everything she's done has only destroyed the home she wished to save.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: An Agarthan civilian and former apprentice to Cornelia informs Edelgard that she doesn't want to know what happened to Anselma. When she persists, it's revealed she was duped into thinking the Tragedy of Duscur would be nothing more than a simple ruckus; when she saw her second husband decapitated, she fled into a nearby forest, tripped, and died of internal bleeding.

Hubert von Vestra

• Angrish: One could very strongly argue that Shut Up, Hannibal! moments are his metaphorical Achilles' Heel as both times he's given one, first by Marianne and later by Bernadetta, he's left spluttering in rage and without any logical defense to their words. For all of the wordplay he enjoys dishing when giving smug lectures, Hubert really cannot counter whenever someone has a logical point.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: His death due to being stabbed by an Obsidian Dagger is described as being excruciatingly painful.
  To his horror, he started to see the veins in the child skin were turning black, his body jerking sharply and his eyes rolled up into his head. Glancing at Hubert was something even worse; the blood dripping from his side wound sizzled when it hit the ground; the smell of rotting flesh hit his nose as bubbling blood began to drip out of his nose and mouth and eyes, and the once sneering, eternally composed Lord Vestra was thrashing in agony, his screams bubbling because of the blood in his throat.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Feels this way towards Bernadetta, as she chooses to side with the Church instead of her homeland.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Marianne calls out Hubert for his hypocrisy, saying that he's just like the "weak people" relying on their goddess, with the only difference being that he's blindly faithful to Edelgard instead of Sothis. Hubert doesn't take this well
• Only Friend: He's the only person genuinely loyal to Edelgard - everyone else is either using her for their own ends or abandons her once they discover the lengths she is willing to go to to change Fódlan.
• Undying Loyalty: To Edelgard.

Maximus Varley

• Adaptation Name Change: Due to the fic being written before the release of Warriors: Three Hopes confirmed his given name to be Grégoire, he is named Maximus here.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Due to the fic being written before the release of Warriors: Three Hopes, which portrayed him as a snivelling Dirty Coward, he is portrayed as a violent General Ripper here.
• General Ripper: Described by Edelgard as such.
  Edelgard: [E]ven in small matters, the man had no concept of collateral damage. Blood, slaughter and ruin would follow him should he be put at the head of an army against foes who were encroaching on what he considered 'his land'.
• Godzilla Threshold: How he is treated by Edelgard due to his General Ripper status and his own personality. As the opening stages of the war turn into several crushing defeats for Adrestia, Edelgard notes she is getting desperate enough to let him out of prison to help turn the tide even though "blood, slaughter and ruin would follow him should he be put at the head of an army against foes who were encroaching on what he considered 'his land'". By Chapter 68, she has actually crossed that line and sent him to subdue the rioters, with predictably bloody results.
• Hate Sink: Maximus Varley doesn't get a lot of screen time, but he spends every sentence he gets being as loathsome as possible. Not only did he tie Bernadetta to a chair and lock her in the attic to 'teach her to be quiet', he's repeatedly implied to have been physically abusive as well; on top of that, he even turns protecting her into a Kick the Dog moment - after catching Yuri as a would be assassin, he didn't tell Bernadetta that - instead, he has a maid take her to a window and force her to watch his men beat Yuri nearly to death to ensure she wouldn't 'disgrace him' by 'slumming it with commoners' again. Maximus holds commoners in such deep contempt that, when Edelgard reluctantly lets him out of house arrest in order to suppress the riots that have sprung up against her, Maximus leads the army to slaughter people armed with stones and bricks and their bare hands. When Ferdinand attempts to countermand his violent orders at Hrym, Maximus attacks and usurps him before ordering the city to be razed as punishment for defying the Emperor. When Felix confronts him in a duel, Maximus is unrepentant, claiming "when animals snap at their masters, it's prudent to cull the herd".
• Overzealous Underling: Edelgard orders Count Varley to suppress a civilian riot in Hrym. He promptly usurps Ferdinand's authority and orders the rioters to be put to the sword. The civilians are forced to turn to the heroes for salvation, and the whole incident fractures the Empire's already deteriorating morale.
• Persona Non Grata: In Chapter 69, Felix declares his intent to ensure Count Varley can never return to Fódlan after his defeat.
• The Sociopath: Easily the most morally disgusting and reprehensible general of Adrestia under the command of Edelgard that is not Agarthan. A chillingly brutal and monstrous Abusive Parent towards his daughter? Check. An abhorrent classist asshole who treats the common people with absolute disdain, a horrifying amount of Lack of Empathy and considers their life to be utterly inconsequential to him? Check. A disturbing General Ripper that viciously and without any kind of mercy tries to subjugate those that he considers traitors to his country even if they are innocent civilians? Check. Someone who is so brutal about his jingoism that he considers any non-Adrestian to be inherently lesser than himself? The man is easily one of the most outright evil characters in the whole story and it’s no surprise that even those on his side consider him to be a monster.