Fire Emblem Three Houses: Ranking All The Golden Deer Students

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t wrote an article on here in a while. There are a number of reasons for this, but mainly I’ve just been too invested in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Yes, I know I’m about a year late to the party, but that doesn’t change the fact that Three Houses is a really good game. I recently completed my first playthrough of the game on the Verdant Wind route and it took me almost 60 hours of playtime. Despite having only just finished it, I’m already excited for my next playthrough which I plan to be Blue Lions/Azure Moon. But before I start that, I’d like to take the time to reflect on my my Verdant Wind playthrough. I don’t regret picking Claude and the Golden Deer House as my first choice and it’s going to be hard for the other two Houses to beat them after I’ve become so attached. So in this article, I’ll be going over each of the Golden Deer students and ranking them based on how much I like them as a character. Keep in mind this is just my opinion and I’m ranking them based on their personality and role in the story rather than their effectiveness as a unit. I’ll also be mentioning spoilers while talking about them so expect spoilers from here on out.

SPOILER WARNING FOR VERDANT WIND

#8 Leonie

Let me just make it clear that Leonie is not a bad character. I like every member of the Golden Deer House a lot including her. But out of all of them, Leonie made the smallest impression on me and, in my opinion, has the worst supports. Her background growing up in a small hunting village where food and other resources were often hard to come by gives her an interesting and unique perspective as a student at Garreg Mach. She’s honest, dedicated and can be nice when she wants to.

Unfortunately she’s let down by one character trait which is exaggerated to the point where it can seem like it’s her only character trait. She’s a big fan of Captain Jeralt, a famous mercenary who’s also your dad, and she will not shut up about him. In almost every main story cutscene all she talks about is how great Captain Jeralt is and how she wants to impress him. Several of her supports, most notably Byleth’s, are wasted on her obsession with Jeralt. This all comes to a head in her B Support with Byleth in which she insults you and says you don’t appreciate Jeralt enough… right after his untimely, emotional death. In her best supports she’s a nice, well-written character with a fresh outlook on the story and background of the world. In her worst supports, she’s irrationally angry and downright malicious. Leonie is a character that really deserved better.

#7 Raphael

Raphael, like many of the Golden Deer students surprised me a lot. At first he seems rather stereotypical and one dimensional, but that changes once you start watching his supports and learning more about him. While he is simplistic and straightforward in nature, he’s still a good character. His parents died in an accident leaving himself and his sister alone in the world. He isn’t smart enough to become a merchant, so he sells most of his belongings to get into the academy and train to be a knight so he can look after his sister. Apart from that, he has a love of training and food, especially meat as it makes his bulging muscles even bigger.

When he’s not talking about those things, he’s a nice, friendly and optimistic guy who isn’t too mentally inclined. His best interactions are those with Ignatz in their support and shared Paralogue. It’s revealed that they were friends when they were younger and Ignatz’s parents would have died had Raphael’s parents not taken a job in their place. Despite this, Raphael holds no grudge against Ignatz and just wants to be his friend like when they were children. It is also revealed that Lorenz’s father Count Gloucester may have had a hand in their deaths, yet Raphael decides not to jump conclusions or judge his friend. Although most of his supports aren’t anything special, he’s still fun to interact with and has some surprising touching moments throughout the story.

#6 Lysithea

Lysithea is probably the Golden Deer member that differed the most from what I expected. Upon first impressions, I thought she would be my favourite character in the Golden Deer House and she’d end up being my first S Support in the game. As you might have guessed from her positioning on this list, that didn’t end up being the case. I still like Lysithea a lot, but as part of the Golden Deer House, she was up against some pretty tough competition. I thought a lot about where to put her on this list but eventually I decided on the #6 spot.

In terms of story importance, Lysithea is one of the most important characters in the Golden Deer House, only behind Claude and maybe Hilda. As a child, Lysithea was experimented on by a group of a mysterious mages, shortening her lifespan dramatically and leaving her as the only heir of her house. This resulted in Lysithea becoming impatient and prickly but also hardworking and dedicated. Her only wish is to make her mark on the world before her short life ends and leave her parents to live out the rest of their days in peace. Thus, she entered the academy at only 15 years old, making her the youngest student in the game. Her backstory is heartbreaking and her goals are respectable. She may well have the most well-written background and motivations in the game.

So why is she so low on the list? Well personally, I found most of Lysithea’s supports to be lacking. As the youngest student, she’s also quite childish with a fondness for sweets and a fear of ghosts. These are fine on their own, but most of her supports focus only on this aspect of her and not her other more interesting aspects. Her support with Felix, where she attempts to get Felix to eat cake and nothing else develops between them for three cutscenes is a great example of this. She doesn’t have many supports which are particularly memorable or interesting to me. In fact, her support with Ignatz is one of my least favourite in the game. Lysithea gets frustrated with Ignatz for basically no reason and more or less bullies him for two cutscenes while he just stands there and takes it. She’s a perfect example of great ideas but lacklustre execution. Like Leonie she deserved better, but she’s still a really great character regardless of her forgettable supports.

#5 Ignatz

When it comes to backstory and motivations, Ignatz is about as unremarkable as it gets. As the second son of a merchant family, his brother is set to inherit the business, leaving him to become a knight although he doesn’t really wish to. Instead he wishes to become an artist, but he accepted it as unachievable a long time ago due to his parent’s wishes and decides to keep it as a hobby. Compared to someone like Marianne or Lysithea, Ignatz has it easy. He wasn’t the victim of horrific experiments or a beastly crest. So why is he above three other people on this list?

Well, Ignatz has the exact opposite problem of Lysithea. While the ideas behind his backstory and character are nothing new and comparably uninteresting, they are executed really well in his supports and other appearances. Ignatz has some of my favourite supports in the game, his B Support with Marianne chief among them. For a while I even considered dropping Marianne as my S Support because I thought Ignatz deserved her more. Ignatz is friendly, humble and incredibly nice with a clear passion for the arts. Seeing him interact with the other Golden Deer members is entertaining and heartwarming and I can’t think of a single bad support other than his one with Lysithea. On top of that, he has one of the best voices of all the cast and hands down one of the best timeskip designs. Because of all that, I couldn’t put him any lower than this.

#4 Hilda

Out of all the Golden Deer members, I can’t think of a single one that’s more fun to have around than Hilda. She’s probably the most prominent female character in the House and is often seen interacting with Claude and Byleth in main story cutscenes. She has great chemistry with Claude in particular and they often feel like an inseparable dynamic duo that are always fun to watch. Hilda has hands down one of the most interesting personality dynamics in the game. As a noble of House Goneril, Hilda was often coddled by her father and brother and led a mostly sheltered life. This resulted in her growing up to be quite lazy and spoiled. She’s always trying to manipulate someone, especially boys, into doing her work for her. This is because her brother is regarded as one of the greatest heroes of the Alliance. She doesn’t believe she can live up to his reputation and doesn’t want to disappoint people when she can’t so she lets other people do her work for her instead.

This trait of hers is made all the more entertaining when you force her into battle. She wields huge axes like they weigh nothing and one of the strongest units in the game and arguably the strongest axe unit. Throughout my playthrough, she consistently OHKO’d enemies and tanked dozens of attacks like they were nothing, all the while chanting “Hilda! Hilda” and angrily exclaiming “You’re making me work!”. Her lackadaisical attitude and upbeat quotes are downright infectious and you’d honestly be hard pressed to find someone that doesn’t like her. Her supports are also fairly interesting and insightful into her character. When she applies herself to making accessories or helping Marianne or smashing bandit’s heads in with her axe, she actually does a surprisingly good job. It just goes to show what you can do if you put in the effort.

#3 Marianne

Marianne is my favourite female character in the Golden Deer House and the character I chose for my first S Support. Like Lysithea, Marianne has a dark history but displays it more openly than Lysithea does. She has constant bags under her eyes, avoids social interaction like the plague and thinks she’s inferior to the other students around her. For some reason she thinks she’ll bring people misfortune, so she is self-deprecating and pessimistic. The cause of this is revealed in her Paralogue. Marianne has a unique Crest known as the “Crest of the Beast”. It is the Crest of a forgotten hero known as Maurice who transformed into a monster and killed innocent people. As well as being a symbol of disaster, it is believed that those who carry the Crest become beasts and night and slaughter innocents just like Maurice. Her Paralogue, which resolves this minor plotline, was my favourite in the Golden Deer route.

During the timeskip, Marianne goes through a shocking transformation. No, she doesn’t turn into a beast. Post-Timeskip Marianne no longer has any bags, there’s no longer a shadow on her face and she overall looks far healthier. While her post-timeskip design wasn’t super different or stand out like some of the other characters, it was still surprising to me because of her change in expression and posture. Marianne claims that seeing all the death during the war made her appreciate her own life more. She’s still shy and prefers the company of animals more than humans but she has a much more optimistic outlook on life. Her supports are really good and there are barely any bad ones, but Marianne gets extra points for evolving the most after the timeskip. Despite her lack of confidence and self-worth, Marianne is an uplifting character to have around due to her character arc and it’s for that reason that she’s my favourite female character in the Golden Deer House.

#2 Lorenz

Like Lysithea, Lorenz also surprised me greatly. Originally I thought he was the least likeable character in the Golden Deer House and he was the only one that didn’t appeal to me. At first he seems like a typical rich, snooty noble. But as I started watching his supports, I started to like him more and more until he became my second favourite Golden Deer character and probably one of my favourite characters of all time. Haircuts aside, he’s an extremely well-written character with a unique set of ideals that differs greatly from your typical rich douchebag character.

Lorenz is vain and full of himself. He believes that he is above petty commoner tasks such as sharpening weapons and cares deeply about his status. However, this comes not from petty desires or shallow snobbery, it comes from his sense of duty. Lorenz doesn’t believe the life of a commoner is worth nothing, in fact, he values the lives of everyone and goes out of his way to care for his friends, commoner or otherwise. He doesn’t believe he’s above responsibilities or the law, he simply feels that nobles and commoners have different duties and roles to play. Out of all the Golden Deer students, Lorenz probably takes his responsibilities the most seriously. In his support with Leonie, it is revealed that he was involved in hiring the mercenaries that saved Leonie’s village from poachers and set her on her path to becoming a mercenary herself. Lorenz’s status isn’t just for show, he feels strongly that he has a responsibility to protect and help the general populace in his position of power. During the Golden Deer story, he is even willing to go against his father and criticise him for being narrow-minded and self-serving.

On top of that, he is more than willing to admit when he’s wrong. Lorenz has a fierce rivalry with Claude and dislikes how lax and laid back he is. In their support he is initially hostile, but after a heated debate about politics within the Alliance in their B support, he acknowledges his mistakes and begins to accept and respect Claude as a leader. In his support with Leonie, he eventually admits that nobles and commoners don’t always need to play their designated roles so rigidly. His support with Marianne is one of my favourites in the game. He initially thinks Marianne and her look needs more ‘polish’ but eventually comes to accept her for who she is and acknowledges her inner beauty in a touching scene. Out of all the characters I got to know in my first 50+ hour playthrough, I’d say Lorenz has developed the most out of all of them, which is why he gets the #2 spot on this list.

#1 Claude

Maybe it’s cliché that the House Leader gets the #1 spot on this list, but I’d be more worried if he didn’t. As the protagonist of the Verdant Wind route, he gets a lot more interactions, development and moments than the rest of the Golden Deer cast, which makes it hard for anyone else to stand up to him. While Lorenz and Marianne did come close, I loved Claude so much that I couldn’t not put him at the top spot of this list. So, what exactly makes The Golden Schemer so great?

Before the game even came out, Claude already had the reputation of the ‘meme’ pick. Many were quick to point out that he was upside down on the game’s box art and thus began the joke that Claude was ‘Australian’. This combined with his laid back and less serious attitude compared to the other two House Leaders made people disregard him pretty quickly. But when I finally got around to playing Three Houses, Claude was the Houses Leader that appealed to me the most. He appears careless on the surface, but right away it’s clear there’s more to him. After much consideration, I chose him for my first playthrough of the game and suffice to say, I don’t regret my choice.

You quickly learn that Claude is somewhat of an outsider despite being one of the leaders of the Alliance. He has a mixed heritage and experienced discrimination on both sides of the border between the Alliance and Almyra. This made him into somewhat of a schemer and he is more willing to result to underhanded tactics than Dimitri or Edelgard. His dream is to tear down the borders and unify Fodlan and the rest of the world in the hopes of finally achieving peace and putting a stop to discrimination. It’s a lofty ambition and one that he goes through many struggles to achieve. Although he’d prefer to avoid it, Claude comes to accept the inevitability of war in achieving his goal. Following the timeskip, one of his critical hit quotes goes from “Don’t hold this against me okay?” to “Hold a grudge if you must.” and many of his other quotes post-timeskip are far darker and more cynical than they were pre-timeskip. Although he doesn’t openly show it as much as the other House Leaders, the grief of war does take a toll on him.

One of the aspects I enjoy the most about him though is his unique stance on religion. While he isn’t much of a believer in the Church of Seiros, he does believe in fate and often ponders the idea of a God and what it actually means in his support with Byleth. He doesn’t believe in the traditional idea of a God but he does admit that there are forces beyond his control that could be given the moniker. Claude is a complex character that isn’t afraid to speak his mind and surprised me many times throughout my playthrough. Over time, Claude starts to become a friend and a companion and I was sad to see him go once I finished Verdant Wind. His supports are interesting, his backstory and personality is great and he’s just fun to interact with both on and off the battlefield and that’s why he’s my favourite Golden Deer character.