Tag Archives: reddit

essays

A Historical Perspective on Edelgard and Political Nonviolence

Leave a comment

Edelgard’s declaration of war is often criticized by appeals for using nonviolent methods of change. This criticism most often looks like the argument that Edelgard should’ve just talked it out with Rhea and/or Dimitri. It may also manifest as the claim that Edelgard’s cause is not urgent enough to justify violence, so only nonviolent means are permissible. Now, before we get into this, I should note that I am a prima facie pacifist for the sake of disclosure.[1]

Historical Significance of Political Nonviolence

I’m not going to say it would have been impossible for nonviolent strategies to work. Everything that follows refers to probabilities, viability, and limitations, not unconditional truths. However, the nonviolent argument is ahistorical. While the philosophy of personal nonviolence is old, the philosophy of political nonviolence is modern. Here, I refer to political nonviolence as the belief that nonviolence is an effective means to effect political change. Political nonviolence could not exist until human rights, rule of law, and (to a lesser extent) democracy had become reality. It is only because these conditions are common that we can contemplate nonviolence as a political option. As George Orwell observed:

It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary.[2]

Freedom of speech, press, and assembly are prerequisite to the formation of a nonviolent movement. Rule of law is necessary so that violent opponents of nonviolent protesters cannot act with impunity – paramilitary groups, members of the government, and lone actors must all be held responsible or expected to be held responsible for attacks on nonviolent protesters. Democracy aids nonviolence since nonviolence relies on popular support, but is neither essential nor sufficient (after all, Socrates was democratically executed). Before these conditions existed, nonviolence was a philosophy of individual conduct – it was not considered a method to effect political change. Striking, protesting, and the like are not effective against someone who is willing to kill innocents in the name of preserving their power. (Just as Peasant Revolts were wildly unsuccessful, a Peasant Picket Line is a laughable concept.) It just is not possible to develop a serious philosophy of political nonviolence in the medieval political environment.

On the subject of monarchy, violence is nearly the only form of regime change. Since the monarch controls policy, policy change can only come by changing the monarch’s beliefs (usually only possible as an adviser) or by changing the monarch (assassination, coup, invasion, kidnapping, etc). For an outsider to change the monarch’s beliefs, the outsider must do more than convince the monarch. The outsider must overcome the (probably hostile) influence of the monarchy’s staff. The staff may be advisers, guards, bureaucrats, or messengers. Whatever their station, officials are unlikely to aid anti-establishment causes and are likely to resort to censorship or false reporting. Monarchs are powerful forces for the establishment, but are generally less effective vehicles of reform.

As a corollary, even if the monarch is sympathetic to an anti-establishment message, the monarch must change the moods of all their enforcers. That is an enormous challenge logistically, legally, and politically, even for a monarch. Monarchy is not prone to dramatic ideological change unless the people themselves are readied to make the same change.[3] The renaissances and ideological revolutions of the medieval era were organic. A monarch, or an aspiring agitator, could not have willed them into existence.

Nonviolence in Fodlan’s Political Environment

Now, let’s look at Edelgard’s options for peaceful change. First off, diplomacy with Rhea is a nonoption. Rhea is dogmatic, totalitarian, and does not recognize freedom of discourse. Rhea is the only single figure that could bring about change across Fodlan, but she is not in a position where she is willing to listen to a political opposition. Centuries of hegemony warp the mind and it is no wonder that she has a hard time taking any vision but hers seriously, for all other ideologues die without damaging her position. The other lords aren’t particularly promising either. Dimitri is highly unstable, even pre-timeskip, prone to blinding emotion during disagreements, and pro-establishment (though not radically so). His refusal to recognize that it is impossible for Edelgard to be behind the tragedy of Duscur is demonstrative. As for Claude, there is no particular advantage to diplomacy. Edelgard considers Rhea her adversary and Dimitri considers Edelgard her enemy. Claude being on Edelgard’s side would not move us closer to a Golden Route. Further, his own desire to conquer Fodlan, coupled with his manipulative and secretive nature make him a poor partner for Edelgard. In short, the personalities of Edelgard’s counterparts leave me with little trust in the diplomatic process.

It is also reasonable to suppose that Edelgard would be a nonparty to the political scene without a war. Edelgard’s rise to power was likely contingent on starting a war. Her main benefactors are House Hevring and House Bergliez, both of which benefit from a war. House Hevring’s main source of revenue is mining and its main duty is administration. Thus, their best method for accruing power is land, the primary form of wealth prior to industrialization. More land -> more mines/exploitable resources and more land -> more need for Hevring’s administrative role. Wartime also increases demand for mining (stone and ore for armor, weapons, and fortifications) and heightens their influence over domestic policy as competitors shift focus to external affairs. As for House Bergliez, they command the army. They have more power during wartime. They stand to benefit from the boost to attention and prestige. Even if they aren’t warhawks in particular, they are unlikely to oppose war on ideological grounds. We do not know Count Bergliez or Count Hevring to be idealistic in any sense (Count Hevring participated in the Insurrection of the Seven, after all). Since they do not care for Edelgard’s vision, the war remains as the biggest factor distinguishing her and PM Aegir. For his part, PM Aegir has shown no hawkish inclinations over the course of his rule. Therefore, if Hevring and Bergliez want a war, Edelgard is their only option.

Without the title of Emperor, Edelgard would have little political influence, especially in foreign affairs. Even with the title, nonviolence is especially impotent on the international scale: “Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist or becomes appeasement.”[2] As a puppet or figurehead, Edelgard would have no leverage and no means beyond her own charisma. Rhea and Dimitri, her primary adversaries, are violently unstable – “the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics.”[2] Even without the violence, they are still dogmatic and closed off to Edelgard’s influence. This all combines to make diplomacy unviable.

Summary

Political nonviolence would be an anachronism in FETH.[4] Even in theory, it is out of place. Considering the particulars of Fodlan, the case for nonviolence gets even worse. The promise of a war was probably necessary for Edelgard to retake power in the Empire.

I’ve written this because <3 Edelgard, but also because it really is important to understand the history, limits, and nature of our ideals. This is a bit personal, but I’ve been troubled by the rise of ideologues throughout modern society and how they call dogma “idealism” or “faith to their principles.” And I think it’s something to watch out for/keep in mind.

[1] Prima facie pacifism “presumes that war is wrong but allows for exceptions [and] places the burden of proof upon the proponent of war: it is up to the proponent of war to prove, in a given circumstance, that war is in fact morally necessary” (Standord Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Pacifism).

[2] Reflections on Gandhi, George Orwell, 1949

[3] The Adrestian people seem readier to accept ideological change than the others. For one part, Adrestia seems to suffer from more extreme examples of the abuses that exist throughout Fodlan. For another, the Adrestian people have no common ideology that shores up these abuses. By contrast, Faerghus seems the least ready for change. Even though Faerghus’ culture is full of severe abuse, the Faerghus culture shores up these abuses. A normal participant of Faerghus culture (esp. the knightly ideal) is discouraged from criticizing the aristocracy, the religious ideologues, and the dogmatic cultural norms. Faerghus culture is self-preserving and shifts attention from itself: every character from Faerghus (excluding Felix and Jeralt to some degree) criticizes those around them or themselves for their suffering, not the systems, laws, and beliefs that cause suffering. This being the case, Faerghus may well resent many of Edelgard’s reforms in Crimson Flower, but reform is more likely to come by conquest than from within. Funnily enough, there is a real-life novel that would be perfect for the people of Faerghus, especially literary folk like Ingrid and Ashe: Don Quixote, or my preferred title, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha). Don Quixote was written specifically as a criticism of the chivalric ideal and as a parody of chivalric novels, the same ideal that plagues Faerghus. Miguel de Cervantes’ genius would probably strike a chord with many Faerghus readers.

[4] Another anachronistic idea that I see a lot is new players’ preference for the Leicester Alliance. They see Adrestia and Faerghus and, based on the fact that monarchy is bad, decide that the Alliance is preferable. Some may even mistake the Leicester Alliance as being close-ish to democracy, which, as moderns, we are supposed to prefer in all circumstances. However, the Alliance is an aristocratic oligarchy, which is one of the worst forms of government. In fact, Plato’s Republic goes out and calls it the absolute worst form of government, out of all forms it considers. It inherits almost all the foibles of monarchy and the weaknesses of democracy: indecision, corruption, excessive concentration of power, an elite class formed by blood, etc.

[Originally written 04 May 2021 for r/Edelgard]

essays

Confounding Variables: Rhea + Edelgard

Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This post began as a series of comments a while back. Seeing as the Rhea-Edelgard comparison has proven a central issue of discussion for the past weeks, I figured it was worth cleaning up this comment and making a full post out of it.

Rhea is an awful tyrant by the year 1180, but there are some important considerations to make regarding that. When I wrote about empathy and orchid children with regard to Edelgard, there is a very real possibility that the same once applied to Rhea. This post is an application of many of those same principles. I believe Rhea is very much the sort of person that Edelgard would have become had her circumstances been different. They begin in similar circumstances, of course, both being sole survivors of massacres, producing survivor’s guilt, PTSD, and all that. However, there are some significant differences that complicate our comparisons between the two. These differences may well suffice to explain the difference between Rhea and El’s outcomes:

  • Rhea struggles with race conflict that is almost nonexistent for El. El’s captors belong to the same ethnicity, political class, nation, race, everything, as her. Even when Edelgard deals with people of other ethnicities and class, she has no special experience to put them at odds (I’d like to think she would handle these issues well even if she did, but that’s a big IF). Despite all this, at her young age, she is already wary of ‘children of the goddess,’ though I don’t believe her wariness could be classified as bigotry. By contrast, race issues are at the fore for Rhea’s suffering. She was the victim of a racial massacre. She has felt it necessary to completely hide her racial identity (and, along with it, her true self) for centuries at least (I assume Wilhelm knew, but his story is too sparse to know why their relationship was special and if such a thing happened again. Jeralt knew Rhea was more than human, but I don’t know how deep that knowledge goes). The differences between a dragon’s umwelt and a human’s are significant (I intend to work on this idea in a later post). And she has little experience that would moderate those racial tensions. To make it even worse, Rhea also faces the threat of racial extinction. Not only is her race attacked, those attacks have been so successful to drive them to the brink of annihilation. This, I anticipate, evokes a special, existential fear. And, as messed up as the attempts to reincarnate Sothis are, they represent possibly the only option for Rhea to prevent her people’s total extinction.
  • More speculative, since the timeline is so uncertain for this portion of Fodlan history, but Rhea may have been very immature, even more than Edelgard, when the Red Canyon happened. She is a direct child of Sothis and her experience of grief is from an infantile perspective. Based on the slower maturation of dragons, Sothis’ sleep and subsequent death may have deprived Rhea of motherly affection very early in her development. If this is the case, she is not only left without a mother, which is bad enough in general, she is left without a mother to emotionally and physically nurture her, teach her virtue, and so on. Rhea partially absorbed Sothis’ vision of coexistence with humans, but her understanding is about as sophisticated as it would be if she only had access to that vision as a child. The big question here is when Rhea lost Sothis in substance. For the time after the 1st war with the Agarthans, Sothis was devoting a lot of energy to healing the scars of war, so even in peacetime Rhea wouldn’t have gotten to see as much of her mother as a child needs. If Rhea was born before the war, Sothis’ duties may well have kept them largely separated. Her experience of grief makes it feel like she’s trapped as a child. She doesn’t mourn her mother like an adult would. There’s too much dependency. Even teens have enough independence that their grief is unlikely to manifest this way. But that is something about trauma: it preserves the original emotional world as it was when the trauma occurred. Even though she can be mature, cunning, intelligent, and all that, when it comes to her mother, she still feels like a child (feel as in experience feeling, not feel as in how she appears to us). [Note 1]
  • Rhea did not have someone do for her what Byleth did for Edelgard. If she ever did, they died long before she did. Wilhelm is the only human on record who we can reasonably believe had an emotionally intimate relationship with her, and that’s not even certain. [Note 2] And, given the difference of lifespans, Rhea has far less incentive to connect to humans. And, well, there aren’t many dragons running around to fill that role, and those we know already have a relationship with Rhea that preempts such.
  • Rhea is socially awkward and relies on decorum to communicate in a normal-seeming manner (to hide her isolation, present a fixed and plausible persona to others, and bridge the racial divide). She has little ability to communicate her emotional needs, because her need for security necessitates cutting herself off from others (Edelgard exhibits this same behavior, but the dangers of exposing herself lack the racial and historical risk that Rhea faces). Very like Edelgard, Rhea does not feel she can show weakness, ever. However, she has no outlet for this. Consider the following advice request she puts in: “I am more than capable of protecting myself from ruffians, but those around me tend to worry, and so I am often denied the pleasure of a private stroll.” She is dissatisfied with any response besides “You’re too important, so I’m afraid it can’t be helped.” She yearns to connect with people, to relax, and the like, as all leaders do, and as El does, but she has a deeply internalized sense of obligation and decorum (decorum also being almost a nonissue for El).
  • The most important is longevity: Edelgard is human, Rhea is a dragon. All these issues don’t play out over months, years, or decades: we’re dealing with centuries. Any negative tendency in Rhea’s character, any deficiency in her environment, has had centuries to work themselves on her and cement themselves in her psyche. It is well known that it is easier for things to fall apart than to put them back together. We humans can kinda keep things together sometimes for 100 years, but the probability of making a serious moral lapse across centuries is much greater. And any traumatic failure or unresolved sin, instead of weighing Rhea down for 50, 80, years, does so for 800 years, which is a terrifying thought. Rhea has been without companionship and moral/emotional support for centuries. I cannot fathom how terrible a situation that is. And as if this were not enough, she may well have tried to do things better before (find a sense of belonging, try to find someone she could trust with her (racial + other) secrets, cooperate with humans, be forgiving), and been burned enough in the attempts that she gave up somewhere along the line.

In particular, Rhea, even in 1180 I believe, could set things right, but the conditions that induced her tyranny remain unchanged [Note 3]. Perhaps Seteth and Flayn could have moderated her, given more time, but things were already at a boiling point on the human side and, unfortunately, they both lack the force of character to undo a millennium of dysfunction.

We really do not know what Rhea was like in her youth. She may have been an orchid child, but she may well have not; her circumstances are sufficient to break many a psyche. She does not seem to be an empath now, but she could have been one once. She has had a lot of time to change and, given a millennium, I doubt any part of her personality would be immune to change.

Because we don’t know her starting point, we do not know whether her contemporary tyranny is more a consequence of suffering or an expression of choice. Or rather, how much each factor is responsible, because they both are. We do not know who Edelgard would be if her experience were closer to Rhea’s.

I did not write this to say that Rhea and Edelgard have no comparison. Rather, I want to delimit exactly what the issues with comparison are. Rhea and Edelgard share a lot and I believe that must be appreciated. But these confounding factors also must limit any conclusion we make regarding their relationship. I’ve focused largely on the ethical implications of these factors, but I don’t doubt that other significant implications exist.

Further, I do not write this to justify who Rhea has become, but because she represents a threat we each face: given the right circumstances, the necessary duress, I doubt any of us would not become monsters. I contemplate how gangs take kidnapped youths and subject them to mixes of drugs and torture, then force the victim themselves to torture or murder in order to break the spirit. How child soldiers are often forced to kill their own families. And the El and Rhea comparison reminds me of how perilous the escape from torture and trauma is. I want Rhea to be happy, but without some gratuitous time travel, it’s pretty hard to reach her. And that’s not necessarily her fault. And, given a thousand years, it’s hard to say Edelgard wouldn’t have ended up similarly miserable, similarly cruel. Not that Rhea’s cruelty should be viewed as a sole consequence of her circumstances. Rather, we need someone outside of ourselves to ground us, to support us, to raise us up, to keep us true to ourselves. Because, of ourselves, I doubt any of us have the strength to truly endure the hurricane of time forever.

Notes

[Note 1] I received some light pushback on the claim that the Zanado massacre was race-driven. Before getting into the justification, I would like to note that I am worried by some comments I’ve seen suggesting that the Agarthan’s actions here are reasonable, or that Nemesis was genuinely heroic. For the reasons that follow, it was racial. But even if it was political, the slaughter of children is unforgivable. Beyond that, the very precept is wrong. The Agarthan justification, mirrored in comments, is disturbingly similar to the anti-Semitic conspiracy, which I refuse to describe on account of its odious nature (and, if my memory does not fail me, one commenter even invoked this similarity while justifying Nemesis’ actions). I do not mean to characterize anyone as an anti-Semite, but the nature itself of this argument has left me unsettled. Yes, Nabateans had a great deal of power over human society. Yes, benevolence does not justify a program of racial supremacy. But we do not know that such a program existed, let alone that Nabateans were active participants in human society. Fidel Castro would blame imperialism for literally anything and, while the US truly has a disturbing role in Cuban history, he would use the same scapegoat to cover his own failures and evils. (Without diving too much into the political, I would point to the widespread scapegoating of immigrants and refugees as a modern and historic example, a practice which I am avidly opposed to and disgusted by.) The point is, cultural, political, and racial scapegoating is a common political ploy, regardless of whether there is any factual basis. And even where culpability does exist, it is exaggerated. And even then, it does not ever justify genocide. Nemesis and TWSITD display the tyrannical dispositions of strongmen. I believe we are wiser to assume they used the tactics of strongmen than give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Now, to the facts.

It is a racial dispute because the Nabateans were slaughtered as a race. There was no consideration of innocence, no sparing of children, no ideology that would make Zanado anything but race-based killing. The Agarthans hate dragons regardless of whether the dragon is personally responsible for the conditions they complained of. The process of slaughter was extreme and disgusting, demonstrated by a quote from the Dream Interview:

They granted humans the technology to make powerful weapons from the corpses of the citizens of Nabatea, or so was their plan that they enacted, to which they went forward with this plan using the human, Nemesis. As a result, what would happen to humans who gained power… they would want even more power, and find a dragon much stronger to beat in order to collect materials forcefully, in order to make even more powerful weapons… and so that was the cycle that was born. And that was the birth of Fodlan’s Ten Elites.

The slaughter specifically moved from the weak to the strong, for the sake of technology, not any political reason.

And regardless of whether anti-Nabatean sentiment was fair based on political circumstances of which we know little, and that from deeply biased individuals, that’s not going to mean very much to a firsthand witness of the slaughter of her entire race and civilization, innocent and guilty alike. Whenever genocide occurs, whatever political considerations may exist simultaneously are barely relevant in defining the quality of genocide. And, for all Rhea did, she never attempted to eradicate humans like the Agarthans tried to do to her.

[Note 2] We know that Rhea conferred the Crest of Seiros to Wilhelm for some reason. They had a wide-ranging alliance. While this gift may be nothing but the sort of thing that happened with Jeralt, it is a remarkable and rare event. Alas, we are left with pure speculation as to the true nature of Wilhelm and Rhea’s relationship.

[Note 3] I love stories about people realizing how awful they’ve become and fighting themselves and the world to atone so Rhea facing humans as equals and telling the public the truth because she chose to, not because she needed to, is my dream story. This would, I believe, have been the key to a golden route. I don’t think a golden route has to be a perfect, everyone-is-maximally-happy ending. We could have made meaningful choices about what the world should look like in the end, who we trusted to rule Fodlan more, or how specific issues should be handled. Heck, we coulda just had to sacrifice one of the lords if we wanna do it the easy way. But yeah, it could have been beautiful… q-q

[Final Note] I am posting at 4:10 am my time, so I apologize for any mistakes I make and will attempt to address them after some proper sleep. My hope is that such errors are minimal since around 80% of this is copypasted. I hope this reading has been worthwhile for you and may you have a wonderful, blessed day.

[Originally for r/edelgard]

essays

Bernadetta & Edelgard

Leave a comment

Bernadetta is a sweetheart, but there is something special between her and Edelgard. This post is mostly observational, rather than analytical, but I want to draw attention to these two good children.

Two components of that special relationship. 1. Crimson Flower is the only route where Bernadetta leaves her room on the regular during war phase. 2. She is one of two female Black Eagles with a shared ending with Edelgard (alongside Dorothea).

Observations on 1) The most significant implication of this is that Byleth is not the person who helps Bernadetta flower during the war phase. This stands in stark contrast to most students; Byleth is an effective, nurturing authority figure that allows many students to grow. But Byleth alone doesn’t do it for Bernie. It takes Edelgard and Byleth for Bernadetta to develop the ability to safely leave her room. (I would postulate that it is Edelgard alone or that Byleth is, at most, a catalyst while Edelgard is the main reactant. This is pretty speculative, but I note that Byleth is actually less supportive of Bernadetta than most others: other writers have observed how Byleth is the only character to willfully make light of Bernie’s suffering, in their A-support of all places.)

Observations on 2) Bernadetta sticks out among the women who have endings with Edelgard. Dorothea and Manuela are connected with El through the Opera, their political interests, and personalities. Lysithea and El share a drive and twin crests. The lovely and genius lady of Nuvelle are both meritocratic, ambitious, and driven. Bernadetta lacks each and every one of these qualities.

3) As a final note, Bernadetta and Edelgard are victims of similar abuses: grooming. Their grooming runs in opposite directions. Those Who Slither needed Edelgard to be a powerful, efficacious leader and warrior. Count Varley sought to make Bernadetta a doll. But both Edelgard and Bernadetta were intended to be puppets under the control of men. Additionally, both had absent but benevolent mothers (Patricia’s case being well-known, while Bernadetta’s mother was apparently employed in Enbarr, away from home).

Unpacking all this:

Bernadetta and Edelgard engage in a peculiar, mutually beneficial relationship. From their C-support, Bernadetta reveals she looks to Edelgard as a model of fearlessness. Edelgard also displays unusual openness with Bernie (confessing her fear of the sea). In B-support, Edelgard proves very understanding of Bernadetta’s condition, helping her feel more grounded and being patient with Bernadetta’s rapid regresses to panic (I love the lines: Bernie: Then, may I please scream now? Edie: By all means. But please try to make it a fairly quiet one). By A-support, Edelgard is able to calmly navigate Bernadetta’s distress episodes and soothe her.

Edelgard understands (at least in abstract) the difficulty Bernadetta faces. Before Edelgard understands how to handle the conversations, she focuses on understanding exactly what Bernadetta is trying to communicate and reinforce what she herself intends to communicate. Edelgard addresses the barrier in communication directly and seeks to understand the barrier itself, rather than focusing on the outbursts or confusion the barrier produces. By taking Bernadetta as she is and working through their communication problems, Edelgard shows implicit respect and value for Bernadetta that other characters do not. Bernadetta values authority figures that make her feel safe, as evidenced by her relationships with Seteth, Alois, and her deceased uncle. Edelgard comfortably acts as an authority figure that Bernadetta naturally cares for and respects, even trusts (to the degree that she can with her persecution complex; she may still panic, but she trusts Edelgard more than her fears when Edelgard asks her to reevaluate things).

Conversely, Bernadetta is able to teach Edelgard a lot in terms of down-to-earth emotion. I’ve written before about how Edelgard is an empath, but it must be understood that being an empath does not mean you actually understand others’ emotions. An empath mirrors the emotions they believe the other is experiencing, not what the other is experiencing in truth. The empath may rely on assumptions about and exaggerations of others’ feelings. Bernadetta forces Edelgard to slow down her emotional processing and rely on communication more than practice. Edelgard specifically mentions that her experience with Bernie has helped her manage her anger in their A-support. But their shared ending suggests that this goes deeper:

“[Edelgard] demanded that Bernadetta counsel her in governing Fódlan. It is said that the emperor made this choice to keep herself from being too detached, and that Bernadetta was all too happy to provide a more emotional perspective now and again. “

Edelgard grounds Bernadetta during attacks from her mental illness, but Bernadetta also grounds Edelgard in terms of emotions. Bernadetta is very caring, something Count Varley didn’t snuff out of her. Bernadetta’s graveside manner exemplifies this. Pre-timeskip, Bernadetta leaves her room precisely once: to comfort Byleth after Jeralt’s death. She also invites Alois to visit her uncle’s grave, because Alois reminds her of him and to show Alois her trust and affection. This interaction also shows how Bernadetta has completed her mourning process for her uncle and has a healthy understanding of the loss. Contrast with Edelgard’s difficulty handling mourning with Byleth at Jeralt’s death (we’ve discussed on this sub how Edelgard’s handling of Byleth’s grief is not cruel, but they are indubitably hard to understand). Edelgard doesn’t address the past very much and, for her, mourning will not end until her fight is done. That perspective is important, but not infallible. It chills her emotions, even as it propels her fight. Bernadetta is perhaps the only person besides Byleth that directly counteracts the chilling effect of Edelgard’s trauma on her emotions. Byleth, like Bernadetta, has communication issues and emotional difficulty, but is caring and genuinely wants to help others. Bernadetta does for Edelgard in a subordinate position what Byleth does for Edelgard in a superior position. This is something of incredible value for Edelgard. Edelgard understands a lot about Bernadetta, but Bernadetta also understands Edelgard.

Bernadetta is, in short, a complement to Edelgard. Their grooming allows them to cover each other’s weaknesses but also appreciate how the other struggles with their weaknesses. I would describe them as symmetric: symmetric halves are different from each other in all the ways that matter and, at the same time, they are the same in all the ways that matter. Their A-support ends with them both contemplating a flower soon-to-bloom, waiting for that moment when its true colors show. In truth, Edelgard is not the only crimson flower, chasing the sun no matter where it goes.

[Originally for r/edelgard]

blog

FETH: Abyss & the State of Exception

Leave a comment

I see people wonder why the Church of Seiros would tolerate Abyss, especially the presence of criminals and religious dissidents. The answer to this one is relatively simple: Abyss is what is called a State of Exception.

A state of exception exists when a government deliberately creates an area of lawlessness, or more exactly, a place where the law is not applied in the same way as it has been historically/elsewhere. The people living within a state of exception live within exceptions to the law. Governments may have any number of motives to establish a state of exception. Bad motives include how a state of exception allows the government to violate its own laws/use more violence than normal. Lawlessness can also be useful if members of the government have black market or other unethical interests (one of Aelfric’s motivations). Better reasons for a state of exception may be to respond to a crisis (states of emergency are sometimes states of exception) or to establish a refuge for people who cannot exist in normal society (Aelfric’s initial motivation and a reason to allow Abyss to survive post-Aelfric).

The theory of states of exception is largely developed by Giorgio Agamben. He points to Nazi Germany and Guantanamo Bay as real-life examples. I was exposed to the concept by Jason de León’s book The Land of Open Graves, where he argues that the US-Mexico border is a state of exception.

The key to a state of exception is that the condition of lawlessness is a deliberate creation of the state itself. This makes it different from a region where the law is absent or has lost control (as often occurs in border regions, colonies, and the like). Looking at Abyss, the specific principles in suspense are: the supremacy of the aristocracy, the supremacy of the church, and general penal law. The aristocracy and church do not assert their power over the Abyssians (the aristocracy cannot assert its power, while the church can assert its power if it so desires, but generally does not).

Other examples in Fire Emblem include the various nations seized by cults (Nohr under Iago, Plegia, Rigel under the Duma cult). Nonexamples include western and southwestern Zofia (overrun by pirates and bandits, not government-created), the Ylisse side of the Ylisse-Plegia border before the Shepherds stabilize the region (the instability is created by an enemy state, not the state itself), and Ylisse in Lucina’s timeline (assuming Grima did not somehow become the head of state and legally enforce his destruction). Valla strikes me more as a failed state rather than a state of exception (it definitely has some state of exception kind of stuff going on, but we don’t really see if Vallan law has survived in any way past whatever Anankos orders in the moment).

[Originally for r/fireemblem]

blog

Fates: Ethnic and Ideological Conflict

Leave a comment

As things stand, Fire Emblem Fates (FEF hereafter, because saying FEF aloud is cute) is the ugly duckling of modern Fire Emblem. In the wake of Three Houses, it is easy to see it as an aberration whose main value is making FETH possible (and I would definitely say we should appreciate how FETH would not be near so beautiful if not for FEF). It is true that FEF is, in many ways, incomplete and the writing… we can still mourn those poor souls who chose Corrin X Azura before Revelations revelated certain revelations. But, as Borges observed, even though every writer judges each other for what is accomplished, every writer wishes to be judged according to what they hinted at (Como todo escritor, medía las virtudes de los otros por lo ejecutado por ellos y pedía que los otros lo midieran por lo que vislumbraba. – The Secret Miracle). FEF is deeply flawed, yes, but you can really get a sense of some brilliant ideas that the writers did not have the chance to explain or develop, whether or not they intended to do so.

I submit that FEF puts forward themes largely absent in its counterparts. FEF depicts meaningful ethnic conflict and ideological schisms as they are experienced by the participants. By contrast, Fodlán’s diversity exists mostly by implication. FETH’s cast is a cross-section of the elite, who are nearly ethnically homogenous, with token representation of the different minorities. The key countries all share their history. The wars within Fodlán are not particularly ethnic, besides the Agarthan perspective. Awakening’s cast draws from 2 continents and many ethnicities, but Awakening generally does not focus on characters’ or regions’ pasts. Shadows of Valentia has a similar setup to FEF, but is all-around simpler.

Ethnicity is a conjunction of history, nationality, race, religion, ideology, and culture. Ethnicities form however people choose to group themselves together. FEF is focused on two ethnicities: Nohrians and Hoshidans. These ethnicities are historically, politically, culturally, religiously, and ideologically in conflict (race, sadly, is underexplored, although there is racial differentiation between the two parties). Hoshidans see themselves as productive, successful beneficiaries of bountiful land, with a hospitable culture and benevolent approach to foreigners. Nohrian self-image is less pleasant; their identity is permeated with desperation for resources and the closeness to conflict and death that comes from living in an infertile, hostile environment. Nohrians experience more violence and poverty than Hoshidans, but they are also quicker to help and forgive people on the wrong side of life (evidenced by how Hoshidan retainers are largely hereditary, while the Nohrian retainers are often people rescued from desperate circumstances or pardoned and converted to productive activity). These two groups are merely centralizers in a broader swirl of interacting races and ethnicities, fighting to maintain their identities against the influence of their neighbors. These smaller groups take positions of neutrality, appeasement, revolt, and alliance to survive, with varying success.

The different histories, identities, and values of FEF’s nameless continent are in a constant clash. Consider how the members of the different tribes (Rinkah, Felicia, Flora <3, Hayato) present themselves while living in Hoshido or Nohr. They tend to affix themselves to their cultures’ values, more so than they would if they were among their own people, perhaps. When members of an ethnicity are isolated, they often seek to represent their peoples and values well. This can make them play into stereotypes and is especially difficult when they try to follow cultural norms that weren’t designed for life among foreigners (e.g., Rinkah and the law of isolation).

Speaking broadly, both Hoshidan and Nohrian perspectives have their merits. Hoshidans are conflict-averse and do well in those circumstances. However, much of their value system survives only in fair weather. In battle, they struggle to empathize with the enemy or behave magnanimously (worst exemplified when Ryoma denies safe passage to the Nohrians for a medical mission to save Elise. It is true he had no duty to aid the enemy, but being a good person in wartime is not a question of one’s duty). Hoshidans do not take the needs of Nohrians seriously. Even in peacetime, Hoshidans are content to ignore international conditions as they prosper. In contrast, Nohrian culture isn’t very aspirational, in good times or in bad. They are good at coexisting with people of different beliefs and behaviors, but they are too cautious in rebuking and combating corruption (this reaching a boiling point at the time of Fates).

Nohr’s internal ethnic struggle merits extra study. Nohr’s historical religion reveres the Dusk Dragon, but Nohr’s current crisis is based in a radical new religion taking root. The religious component is underplayed in the game, but the brilliant manga Nibelung’s Crown emphasizes this point (https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/86wgz0/fe14_fire_emblem_fates_nibelungs_crown_volume_i/?ref=share&ref_source=link). It’s important to remember that the primary method to effect change in monarchies is violence, to force a regime change, or control the monarch. Iago, the ideological leader and prime beneficiary of the Anankos Cult’s rise, provokes a violent, internal struggle for the religious and political control of the kingdom. (Radicalization could have been a sufficient explanation for Garon’s change in behavior from negligent but benign to corrupt and exploitative. Alas, Revelations decided to make him secretly an undead puppet instead.) A heretic, in medieval society, is a social contagion and unredeemable. They were considered to be a form of terrorist who brought destruction through ideas, rather than violence. This is the circumstances Nohrian society faces: the acceptable social behaviors become narrower and narrower and tolerance for disagreement disappears as a new, radical orthodoxy replaces the old semiliberal order.

Throughout all these conflicts, Fates does something interesting: we almost never take a step back. The characters are active participants, without the benefits of hindsight. They are too proximate to the issues to analyze themselves in an archaeological sense. They have to make decisions and justify their decisions in the moment. They do not understand what is happening as it happens. Objectively, many of the heroes are bigots, rash, cruel, intolerant. Subjectively, there’s almost nothing that would make them realize that. And so, they continue in their errors. And while games like FETH, where the characters understand better what they are doing, are brilliant, there is value and shades of reality in how FEF’s cast is so much more caught up in the moment, in their histories, identities, and ethnicities.

This is about all I have to say on the subject for now, but I wrote this because I want to talk about Fates in a positive light. Even if the games are imperfect, they are hated more than they deserve. The story, for all its faults, does things that the other modern FE games do not. And, on account of the hate, there’s beautiful analysis that remains undone. Fates is not just a steppingstone towards better, later games. When it comes to FEF, there’s a lot to love.

[Originally for r/fireemblem]

essays

Edelgard as an Empath

3 Comments

I want to emphasize one of Edelgard’s motivations. The discussion often arises as to why she started a war instead of opting for a slower approach towards reform, like Claude (although him starting a war later certainly was a possibility). Edelgard’s urgency is often attributed to her shortened lifespan. After all, Lysithea specifically cites her shortened lifespan as a huge driver. While that is important, she is also powerfully and explicitly motivated by empathy: the desire that no one should suffer as she has.

Edelgard is an empath, someone who instinctively feels through empathy (rather than empathy being a chosen or deliberate mode of feeling). Empathy allows her to reciprocate kindness, softness, and intimacy easily. Unlike many depictions of empathy, however, we also get the other side. Empathy, exposed to trauma and suffering, produces rage and profound pain. Edelgard has suffered a great deal on her own account, but she also carries the suffering of those around her. Even as her own torture fades into the past, she is constantly exposed to new sources of pain. Conversely, no one, except CF Byleth, connects her with benign sources of empathetic emotion.

For some elaboration, human development studies identify a class of child like Edelgard, sometimes called “orchid children.” Most children can do ok in a wide variety of circumstances. They may not thrive without special nurture, but they will be ok. Orchid children are defined by the fact that they are highly sensitive. This elevated sensitivity gives them orchid-like characteristics. If they are nurtured carefully, they are able to become brilliant, kind, and genuinely unusual. However, if they are not deliberately nurtured, they wither. Sensitive children, often empaths, hurt much more from the absence of nurture. They have incredible difficulty becoming well-adjusted or overcoming trauma. It goes without saying that Edelgard has not been well-nurtured and we see that. Until she receives nurture, she is almost unable to express her true emotions and intentions, ask for help or support, or trust others.

Edelgard is proximate to the suffering that the Church, aristocracy, and TWS cause, having lost much of herself and her loved ones to them. Proximity is an important concept in all humanitarian efforts, but it impacts empaths more extremely. Edelgard knows that the longer she waits, the longer these organizations continue to victimize innocents and the further away her wish to end such things moves. The longer she waits, the more tempting her own privilege to ignore continued oppression becomes. (Quoting Edge of Dawn: “As I live out / Each peaceful day / Deep in my soul / Oh, I know I can’t stay” and “Open the door / And walk away / Never give in / To the call of yesterday”). Even if human suffering weren’t reinforced by her direct experiences, she would know empathetically know that the form of suffering she endured continues.

In particular, we have Edelgard, Lysithea, Annette, Dedue, Monika, and Tomas as direct victims of TWS, Ashe’s family and Hapi as direct victims of the Church, and Felix, Ingrid, Dorothea, Miklan, Mercedes, Jeritza, and Raphael as direct victims of the aristocracy. That so many people from the Officers Academy are victims speaks volumes about how much oppression must necessarily affect the poor classes. We see only a sliver, but we know that the body count is increasingly rapidly.

Every year Edelgard delays, she knows there are more children whose hair is bleached white. More families are broken. Edelgard is an empathetic character: she absorbs the suffering of those around her. It can make her soft and kind, if she has the right support, but to experience so much pain, to be conscious of ongoing evil, also makes one hard. Empathy, without positive contributions, in a world full of cruelty and suffering, is genuine torture. It has been observed in sociology that intense empathy can produce decision paralysis in some cases or, in others, such intense emotional identification with one party that the empath stops sensing the emotion of another group, usually due to rage.

I have focused on empathy as it works on her decision to declare war, but it operates throughout her character. Before I sign off, consider how she insists on equality in the house, how she mothers her peers, her emotional struggles in routes besides CF, why her relationship with Hubert doesn’t stabilize her, and, of course, her whole relationship with Byleth.

[Originally written 14 Feb 2020 for r/Edelgard]

blog

Ace Combat 7: On Singularities (for the curious)

Leave a comment

Mr. North uses the term singularity within the context of dynamical systems. A mathematical field, a singularity is a point that determines the behavior of the points around it. (Within the field and related areas, singularities may be called attractors, nodes, fixed/periodic points, sinks/sources/saddle points/centers.) Since Mr. North is a systems analyst who uses predictive models, it is all too natural for him to use the term singularity. When creating a prediction based on a system model, only two things matter: the singularities of the system and where we start. Singularities completely control the outcomes of their systems. We only care about the starting point because it determines which singularity we will be governed by.

When two singularities compete for a single space, different areas of space will fall into one or the other singularity’s influence. On the boundary, there may be rather erratic and unpredictable behavior. In this case, mission completion and the fate of individual pilots, Oured, etc. are near the boundary. Since we can’t be totally sure which side of the boundary each item will actually fall, we cannot predict their ultimate fate. Mission success means enough key points fall into Trigger’s region, while failure is the same but with Torres.

If Trigger is the only singularity, Osean victory is guaranteed. If Torres is the only singularity, he will win. The difficulty is in their interaction and, since Alex didn’t have much data to study how the two singularities would interact while in the same space, it’s only natural for the AI to deny the request.

Now, through most of DLC missions 1-3, the term could be replaced with any phrase meaning [something influential]. However, Alex’s justification for keeping Trigger alive points directly to Trigger’s effect on battlefields, which are dreadfully complicated systems (and, if Trigger weren’t a supernatural pilot with even more supernatural weapons carrying capacity, filled with countless and unknown singularities). Despite all the competing influences in Trigger’s battles, he always increases survival rate. Nothing short of a singularity is that consistent. Beyond Alex, at the very end of mission 3, Mr. North speaks in strongly dynamical terms: Torres brought those in his orbit to destruction, while Trigger brings those around him into security (which Alex emphasizes: Stick with trigger, and you’ll make it). Singularities don’t just influence those around them, singularities determine their fate.

Some interesting references:

Depiction of how changing a single parameter in a system can cause the number of singularities to go from 1 to infinity: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B9780128158388000091-f09-14-9780128158388.jpg?_

Relevant wikipedia article. I’d point you to the image that provides a nice rundown of singularity classifications in 2 dimensions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_theory

Chaos (in the mathematical sense) is a result of an infinite number of singularities operating over a space. Weather prediction happens to be a chaotic system, which is why weather estimates only go out 10 days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system

When chaos exists, if our initial measurements/evaluation of the situation is not perfectly correct, then our predictions will be wrong no matter how small the error, as demonstrated in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xu-9D4ahVU

[Originally for r/acecombat]

blog

Historical period comparisons in FETH 

Leave a comment

I’ve seen a number of people refer to FETH as a medieval game, but it’s probably most similar to a mid-Renaissance experience. It’s definitely not medieval: the role of literacy, existence of learning institutions, prevalence of chivalric tales, the appearance of durable religious schisms/reformers/separatists, and somewhat mature sciences (esp. medicine, math, crests) are all Renaissance, esp. Renaissance features.

The late Renaissance/Enlightenment don’t fit on a philosophical level: no pseudoreligious scientism, no concepts of human rights/social contract, insufficiently developed literature (novels, broader literacy), and exclusively aristocratic forms of government.

Early Renaissance doesn’t fit since it is a period of knowledge rediscovery, translation of ancient and foreign texts, and restoration of philosophies and sciences. Nothing in the history of Fodlan even suggests an Early Renaissance period would be required, since what history we have doesn’t mention a period of knowledge loss and the disorganization of civilization (that is, a medieval period). If anything, the longevity of the Empire makes such a period unlikely.

There might be good comparisons to the Islamic Golden Age, since that predates the Renaissance and shares a lot of qualities, but I don’t really know that much about it. And for that matter, my background is in Spanish-American and mathematical history, so it’s not like I’m entirely sure my recollection of Renaissance history is correct.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Any thoughts?

Added: One thing missing is firearms, but early firearms wouldn’t have been able to compete with magic, so it’s quite plausible that the technology would never be developed.

[Originally posted on Aug. 19, 2019 for r/fireemblem]