Discussion FireEmblemThreeHouses / TropesSToZ

Part Four of my series of big giant Three Houses edits.

Spoiler handling: It is exactly backwards to openly discuss Crimson Flower while spoilering the very existence of Silver Snow. Furthermore, Silver Snow is the default Black Eagles route, whereas Crimson Flower is the bonus route that requires unlocking; heck, as the Screw Destiny example points out, Edelgard herself says CF is a path you aren't meant to take. To this end, I have de-spoiler-tagged all references to Silver Snow, and reordered examples to SS, AM, VW, CF. I also changed all references to the "Church route", because there is no Church route.

In a few cases, I rewrote spoiler-ridden examples to be spoiler-free by referring to Edelgard as the Flame Emperor.

I have removed all quotation marks around "those who slither in the dark", because that is a description, not a name.

I have also replaced all instances of "Nabateans" with "Children of the Goddess", because the Children of the Goddess are consistently referred to as Children of the Goddess, but are never once called Nabateans.

Examples I removed and reasons:

• Single Line of Descent: Zigzagged. Crest bloodlines have been thinning recently, to the point where noble family lines descended from the 10 Elites or the Four Saints often have to try multiple times to get even a single Crest bearer per generation. Those bearers are treated as valuable commodities for their families for multiple reasons. Some families, like Ingrid's, have even had to deal with multiple generations failing to manifest a Crest (she being the first in her family to manifest one in two generations). On the other hand, some bearers of the same Crest such as Hanneman and Bernadetta (Crest of Indech) are not visibly related to one another. Similarly, Marianne is implied to have also been an aversion since she's only the latest person to have the crest of The Beast. Finally, Edelgard's Crest of Flames and Lysithea's Crest of Gloucester were artificially transplanted into them after their births.

This just feels like an aversion.

• (Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration)

  • Cyril is illiterate, as a support with Lysithea reveals. As such, his notes to the advice box are drawings.

This is just story, not gameplay.

• In chapter 4, you're introduced to the Death Knight. Your characters tell you that you should not approach him. One look at his stats and you can see why.

Um... what does this have to do with the trope?

• Many regarding the Church route:
  • As a side effect of losing your lord and their retainer, not only they take with them whatever equipment they might've had before, you also lose one of your deployment slots permanently for every story chapter going onwards (sans for the Final Battle). This is particularly noticeable once you get to the route's version of Chapter 13 "Reunion at Dawn" where, unlike in Azure Moon Verdant Wind, you also happen to get one reinforcement less.
  • Clearing the first chapter of Part II changes the emblem the save file previously used for the Crest of Flames' banner moving onward, which is a side effect of Byleth and the remaining Black Eagles switching their allegiance to the Church of Seiros' Resistance Army.
  • After reclaiming the Bridge of Myrddin, for plot-related reasons, Byleth and their army aren't able to take part in the upcoming battle at Gronder Field, which on the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes leads to the chapter "Blood of the Eagle and Lion". As such, the game skips the upcoming month (Lone Moon) and the story resumes on the Great Tree Moon instead.

These are either all gameplay or all story, not both.

• Tangled Family Tree:
  • Byleth's family relation is quite complicated. Their father Jeralt doesn't mention any blood-relatives but due to Rhea giving him her blood, he's in a way related to her as mother/son or at least a blood-kin. Then Rhea is the mother/creator of Byleth's mother, Sitri, who was supposed to be the vessel for Sothis, which makes Rhea Byleth's grandmother on both sides of the family. That also makes Seteth/Cichol, Macuil and Indech their granduncles and Flayn/Cethleann their second-cousin. Then, because Sothis merged with Byleth into a single being, that would make our protagonist their own great-grandmother, "mother" to their grandmother Rhea and "grandmother" to their parents, Jeralt and Sitri. And if you believe that Sitri is a clone of Sothis instead of also having human blood in her veins, then Byleth can also be counted as Rhea's sibling and their parents' uncle/aunt.
  • All crest-bearers are descended from the 10 Elites and with the nature of dragon blood in this setting, those 10 warriors are related to the dragons whose blood they consumed. That means all characters with crests are (very) distantly related to Byleth/Sothis. With the Cindered Shadow DLC, it's implied that Aubin, one of the Four Apostles, was the one who gave Yuri his crest which makes Yuri another cousin to Byleth.
  • A more mundane example: The founders of House Riegan, the leading House of the Leicester Alliance, were of a cadet branch of the Blaiddyd Family (the Royal Family of Faerghus), hence Claude and Dimitri are distantly related to one another. Claude is also distantly related to both Judith and Ingrid, as one of the Abyss Library's books features an account of the feud that led to one of the potential heirs of House Daphnel splitting off to create House Galatea. The account was made by one Claudia von Riegan, who expressed the desire to marry the younger Daphnel brother who stayed behind, and denounced the founder of House Galatea as a monster.
  • After Dimitri does some digging regarding the Tragedy of Duscur, he learns that he has a maternal step-sister in Edelgard. Patricia, the second wife of King Lambert and stepmother of Dimitri, was originally Anselma, one of the wives of Emperor Ionius and the mother of Edelgard. Shortly after Edelgard's birth, Anselma was exiled from the Empire due to a "political scandal" that made her seek asylum in Fhirdiad. After meeting her, Lambert fell in Love at First Sight, and Anselma changed her name to Patricia when they were wed, her true identity known only to a select few. Unfortunately, after the Insurrection of the Seven took place and both Arundel or Edelgard arrived in Fhirdiad seeking asylum in secret as well, she was unable to met or even know of their arrival at first due to Cornelia doing her best to keep them apart, tricking her into thinking it was Lambert the one keeping her from her daughter, and using it to goad her into instigating the Tragedy of Duscur. Sadly, this revelation does nothing to curb Dimitri's bloodlust, and Edelgard herself never learns she has a step-brother.

The first one is just not true. The blood stuff makes for a symbolic family, not an actual family; Rhea is no more related to Byleth than Frankenstein is to his ghoul.

The others aren't tangled at all. Characters share distant ancestors, imagine that.

From Unreliable Expositor:

Interestingly, the fact Wilhelm believed the conflict was based on human vs dragon supremacy implies that the only thing Seiros disclosed to him was her Immaculate One form, which makes sense given than In-Universe, it is widely believed the great white dragon sent by the goddess that aided Seiros and the Adrestian Empire's campaign against Nemesis's forces are completely different characters rather than the one and the same.

Maybe it's just me, but the whole thing about human vs dragon supremacy was framed as Edelgard's biased inference, not as truth.

Regarding the Tangled Family Tree entries, does anyone else think they could stand for some serious reworking? The game itself as far as I know never regards those the dragons gave blood to as their family, let alone people who stole dragon blood. Flayn in particular is explicit that she has no children. Seteth does call the people Rhea gave her blood and crest stone fragments to her "family" but he does so in a manner that suggests they are pseudo-family, something Rhea tried to make to soothe her loneliness, and he uses "family" for lack of a better term. Rhea states Sitri looked to her "as if" she were her mother, but Rhea herself evidently did not see it that way.

One also has to keep in mind that we don't actually know how closely related Seteth and Flayn are to Rhea, since the game never specifies that Seteth is Rhea's sibling and indeed there is a fair amount of evidence he is from a later generation born to other Nabatea.