Edelgard Is Morally Grey, and it’s Understandable if You Don’t Agree
Fire Emblem: Three Houses relies too heavily on the player beating the entire game
Fire Emblem: Three Houses has been out on the Nintendo Switch for 10 months now, and even though I’ve beaten the game some time ago, I still can’t get the biggest controversy the game had out of my head: the moral status of one of the game’s main characters. Edelgard is morally grey, and if you haven’t played the full game as of now, this article will present the context so you don’t have to. Spoilers are incoming.
The game revolves around a four path system (Silver Snow, Crimson Flower, Azure Moon, and Verdant Wind), where the player chooses one of three paths (one of them has two outcomes), and the plot changes depending on which path is chosen. Like the name of the game implies, each path is tied to one of the three houses introduced at the beginning of the game. You play as Byleth, a young teacher looking to raise Fodlan’s next generation of officers, within Garreg Mach’s Officer Academy. Each house is tied to one of Fodlan’s three nations: Black Eagles for the Adrestian Empire, Blue Lions for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Golden Deer for the Leicester Alliance. Choosing one of the three houses pits you against the other two throughout the game in most of the routes.
Part 1 doesn’t sell Edelgard very well
When the game first released, what dominated the conversation among the fanbase was the justification of Edelgard’s actions. Not necessarily about the effectiveness of her methods, but more about how people saw her as a character. She was often characterized as a brutal tyrant, who had little regard for life and only did what she had to do to win control over Fodlan and assure the destruction of the Church of Seiros and the crest system that ran it. Not very morally grey. Aside for Crimson Flower, there’s no indication that Edelgard has a shred of decency. All four routes have very similar plots until a specific point, and up until that point, the students are hounded by a mysterious character called the Flame Emperor. This character ends up being responsible for the deaths of multiple characters, including Byleth’s father Jeralt. The fact of the matter is that during the first part of the game, Edelgard posed as the Flame Emperor and wanted everyone dead. This was to secure her plan of conquering Fodlan. Not very morally grey. She then goes on to become worse and worse, and Byleth (or their allies) kills her in every route but one.
The problem here is that despite the developer’s intentions of making a morally grey game (a claim I’ll back up soon), they made Edelgard out to be very black and white in most of it. Of the four routes, Edelgard becomes an antagonist in three of them. Since most players don’t play multiple routes, naturally it would be easy to assume that Edelgard is a thoughtless monster. Only in the route where the player sides with Edelgard, do we see her be humanized, and it’s not inherent to the storyline either. It must be unlocked by increasing the relationship between Byleth and Edelgard. I have seen multiple people claim the option just didn’t come up and that means much of the context behind character motivations remains unknown to the player. They’re locked behind specific supports that characters have with each other and Byleth.
When the player increases Byleth’s support with Edelgard to C+, we learn about what Edelgard has been through. Suddenly her hatred of crests and the crest system doesn’t seem all that crazy. Even more so that Edelgard only has a small number of years left to live before dying from the experiments as well.
Byleth joining Edelgard influences her development
This isn’t something that’s implied because Edelgard herself states this in their supports multiple times as the game progresses. After playing a route other than Crimson Flower, what Edelgard said to Byleth is undoubtedly true. She’s ruthless, sacrifices her subordinates to gain an advantage in battle, and even transforms herself into something not all that human. Yet in Crimson Flower, she does none of these things. She even berates Rhea for behaving like she would in the other routes. All of this is because Byleth is by her side. It may be difficult to see Byleth’s role in Edelgard’s emotional development since they’re mostly a silent protagonist, but the juxtaposition between how she behaves in these routes is clear that Byleth does have a strong effect on her.
The devs intended for Byleth to be a moral anchor for various side characters. Edelgard isn’t the only one that Byleth improves throughout the game. Dimitri and Rhea both have considerably better outcomes if the player is by their side. Dimitri succumbs to despair in the Azure Moon route but manages to come out of it. However, in the other routes, Dimitri does not and goes insane with revenge, doing anything he can to assure victory over Edelgard. He even starts sacrificing his friends. Rhea has a similar fate. If on the Silver Snow path, Rhea becomes assured with her mother’s reincarnation on her side and what the player sees Rhea as like in the Crimson Flower path does not occur.
The Crimson Flower route is sorely lacking
The last direct point I have for Edelgard’s nuance is that her biggest achievement in regards to being a good guy is never even shown in-game. After completing the Crimson Flower route, the game ends with several text cards detailing the aftermath of various characters. There it explains that Byleth and Edelgard takedown TWSITD, the game’s true villains. After 10 months of repeating this to people, it’s abundantly clear that many of the people who even had increased context of playing Crimson Flower did not read the text prologue.
Edelgard was indoctrinated and abused by them all her life, but thanks to Byleth’s presence, she realized that she needed to destroy one of the main sources of strife in Fodlan. As for why this didn’t happen in-game, I have two theories. The first being that the devs wanted each route to feel unique. The route goes after Nemesis and TWSITD as the finale. Having Crimson Flower do the same would feel redundant, so they cut it and had Rhea as the finale. The second being that they ran out of development time and cut Crimson Flower. It is the shortest route of the four, having 18 chapters instead of 22. It’s not necessarily true that fighting Nemesis in Crimson Flower would have been the same, so both theories are pretty valid in my opinion.
Criticizing the game’s narrative
I’d also like to address some of the retorts to this idea of Edelgard being accepted as more of a nuanced character. Mainly that the writing involving Crimson Flower doesn’t make sense and is contrived for siding with Edelgard to occur. The writing is kind of strange, yes, but it’s also true that Byleth has to increase their relationship with Edelgard for this to be available.
There’s a reason why Silver Snow is the default route for picking the Black Eagles. Byleth loses their father and is almost killed multiple times by Edelgard’s allies in part 1. It wouldn’t make sense for Byleth to remain her ally…unless there’s an established personal connection between them. I won’t call it love, because that doesn’t develop until later, but there is a certain level of affection between them that blinds Byleth from making the logical choice.
Does that make it bad writing though? On that, I don’t agree. It’s just that the game doesn’t get across Byleth’s feelings on things that well, thanks to his role as a silent protagonist. People can make the wrong decisions based on emotion. This criticism works better as a general criticism of the narrative as a whole. What Byleth goes through and how they affect others is mostly implied.
Edelgard is fine, guys
To conclude, I’m not here to make any kind of claim that Edelgard did nothing wrong, because that’s completely untrue. I just am not a fan of people judging Edelgard unfairly, especially when other beloved characters in this game also have done terrible things and seem to get no flak for it. Yes, it is understandable as to why. The devs wanted Edelgard as the antagonist, so there are more opportunities for the fanbase to see her that way, but antagonist does not mean villain.
Edelgard is a good character, and one of my favorite parts of playing the game. That includes Dimitiri and Claude. This game has stellar writing. It’s just this writing style is for completionists. Not an activity that everyone participates in.
