Fire Emblem Three Houses Thoughts - Part 4: The Narrative of Blue Lions

Hello, and welcome to the fourth part of my long series of write ups in which I share my thoughts and feelings from my initial playthroughs of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. In this part I will discuss my experiences and thoughts throughout my second playthrough.

WARNING, THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS STORY SPOILERS FOR THE BLUE LIONS AND GOLDEN DEER PATHS

To start, I will share my initial thoughts and choices I made during this playthrough.

Final Playtime - 129 hours

Difficulty – Hard & Casual, New Game+

I wanted to up the difficulty of my playthroughs as I progressed, so I went with Hard for this one. I also had the bonus of New Game+, which reduces the difficulty by saving the bonuses you gain from the saint statues. However, in my Golden Deer playthrough, I never bought the last two bonuses on the four statues, as I did not have enough renown. On this playthrough I could have. I also could have bought supports or bonuses with the renown you start off with. However, I chose not to. This was because I did not want to make the game too easy, nor recruit many students, as I thought having to kill old friends was core to the Three Houses experience.

 

House – Blue Lions

When it came to decide the order of how I would do the rest of my playthroughs, I gathered information on the remaining paths to decide. The conclusion I reached was that the Black Eagles route is the most unique of the four, while the Church route is most similar to Golden Deer. I concluded that I should save it for last since I started with Golden Deer, and that because Black Eagles was so unique, I should save it for third, when I might be feeling worn out from two playthroughs. Additionally, I was curious about Dimitri’s character given his fate in the Golden Deer path.

…but honestly, the main reason I picked Blue Lions was that I wanted to marry Mercedes. I love her so much. However, I did not want to marry her unless I did the Blue Lions path, because I reasoned that since students have a lot more supports when you do their own house, you get to know them more. Thus, for her, I picked Blue Lions.

Recruits – Caspar, Raphael, Marianne, and Hilda

Unlike my Golden Deer playthrough, I spoiled a bit and did not go in completely blind. I learned that to unlock Mercedes’ paralogue you needed Caspar, so I recruited him. Additionally, I decided that a goal of mine would be to unlock and view every support in the game (with the exception of the S supports). The characters and relationships are my favorite part of Fire Emblem, and the supports are where you really see both fleshed out, so I wanted to see them all. For this reason, since you can only have the house leaders in your house on their playthrough, I recruited the students that had supports with Dimitri: Marianne and Raphael.

….and all right, as the time skip neared I wanted to recruit Hilda, as I loved her, and wasn’t sure I’d continue using some of the Blue Lions characters. So I ended up spending renown to buy her supports and recruit her before the skip, and went against my renown rule this once.

Dancer – Annette

I wanted the dancer in all my playthroughs to be someone from the house you pick, as it felt fitting. When the time came, I spoke to all the Blue Lions’ students to get their opinions, and Annette seemed the most excited by the prospect, so I made her my dancer. It also helped that she was good with magic, which the dancer can use.

Those were my initial choices. Now, how did I find the narrative? Let’s start with my initial thoughts through the first half of the story:

A big takeaway of mine in general, was that the Blue Lions playthrough made me appreciate the world building and lore in Three Houses. Throughout the story, I was struck at how different the Blue Lions house was to Golden Deer. The students favored combat and training exercises, crests played a larger role in their lives compared to the students of Golden Deer, and more then that, loyalty and being a good knight were huge themes in the story and characters. Ingrid, Ashe, Dimitri, Dedue, and Felix were all interesting characters that revolved around the theme of knighthood, a theme which was not present in Golden Deer. Conversely, Golden Deer’s themes of interacting with foreigners like Almyra, and being skeptical of the church, were completely absent. I was floored that I got to see two stories with a different cast of characters and different themes, yet both fit into the world of Fodlan and its political structures. Of course crests would play a larger role in the Kingdom, it is run by hereditary monarchs and leaders. Blood is valued highly compared to the Alliance, in which being diplomatic and getting along with outsiders is more important. I was blown away at this, it made Fodlan feel like one of the most fleshed out and interesting worlds I’ve ever got to be a part of in a video game, I think it might even be my favorite video game world. Kudos to the developers for making such a cool and interesting world with different political units and themes, yet that all co exist together.

 

Additionally, I was struck at how much of the world and story I did not know about, despite having completed the game. Lord Arundel was a noticeable point. In Golden Deer you see him once with the Flame Emperor and then never again. In Blue Lions you get to learn who he is and what his story is, which made me wonder if there was anything else I’ve yet to learn from playing only Golden Deer. Jertiza was another one, I had completely forgotten about his character, but now with Mercedes and her paralogue, I was about to learn much about him.

Finally, the bombshell of the first half of the game was learning that Dimitri and Edelgard are related. I could not believe it, how had I never known that in my Golden Deer playthrough!? I was floored at the amount of story and lore I had missed. Again, it made me appreciate the world and how different each of the three houses was as a perspective.

Finally, during the first half of the game, I was struck at how…dark it was. In my Golden Deer playthrough I did not think much of Lonato’s rebellion or Miklan and the stolen relic you retrieve. However, both those events took place in the Blue Lions Kingdom and thus had huge ramifications for its characters. There was a new element of tragedy to these missions, and in general the kingdom seemed unable to get out of a dark shadow. That was the tragedy of Duscur, which as I progressed, I learned had traumatized and tormented most of the Blue Lions students. It all made this playthrough’s tone feel like the opposite to Golden Deer, which was more lighthearted.

No where was this contrast more apparent then in the scenes of the Flame Emperor reveal, and those of returning to Fodlan after the time skip to reunite with your students. I was shocked to see Dimitri completely lose his mind when Edelgard revealed herself and declared war. Where in Golden Deer it was a shocking and exciting twist, here it was dark and scary in how Dimitri began losing control of himself. I wondered how things would go when I returned after the skip, but I was not prepared for how dark things would get.

Unlike Claude, whom you reunite with under a bright light, a beautiful smile on his face, and in which I felt full of hope and ready to win the war, Dimitri was the opposite. You find him cold and alone, in a dark corner. He does not even recognize you. After this, in Golden Deer you search the area to find treasure or the other students before running into some thieves. In Blue Lions however, you search out for thieves in order to murder them in cold blood. Dimitri had transformed into a complete monster. It was crazy, and I was not expecting such a dark tone for the story.

Because of this, plus this being my second playthrough, I felt a desire to minimize the students I killed in this playthrough. The Golden Deer students in particular I now had a connection with, and wanted to save when possible. Thus, during the three-way battle, I used almost all my divine pulses to find the perfect way to win the battle by defeating both Edelgard and Claude, while not murdering any of the students in that battle. It made the battle memorable and a lot of fun, while also being unique to my second play of the game, in which I now cared more about the students I had to fight in this war, and wanted to avoid bloodshed whenever possible.

Speaking of, I was curious to see how the war would progress in this path, and with the knowledge of Golden Deer in mind, I lowered my expectations. Let’s go over how I found it in Blue Lions. To start, I was surprised at how similar it was to Golden Deer, all the missions leading up to and including the three-way battle were nearly identical. Furthermore, after this battle, you have two missions unique to Blue Lions, but then the rest of the missions are similar to those in Golden Deer: you take the one fort, then you have two missions to defeat Edelgard. For all the talk of the Church path being similar to Golden Deer, this one equally guilty.

However, unlike Golden Deer, you get to spend two extra missions in Fodlan, one recovering the Kingdom, and the other saving the Alliance. I liked these, and they were the sort of missions I wished were in Golden Deer. I also enjoyed that you get to see and learn more of Edelgard compared to Golden Deer. There are cutscenes with her, and Dimitri even speaks to her at one point and is able to understand her perspective.

The strangest part of these scenes to me, is that they were the exact scenes I wanted in Golden Deer, and if anything struck me as scenes that should have been there. As I said in my Golden Deer write up, Claude and the Alliance seemed like characters that would forge alliances with anyone they can, like Dimitri does with the Alliance in Blue Lions. Claude also struck me as someone who would spare Edelgard and want to know her perspective, especially since the true enemy wasn’t even her, but the shadow people. Yet all of these were in the Blue Lions path instead. I found it odd.

When it came to my main issue with the narrative of Golden Deer, that being the story feeling rushed, I found the same true of Blue Lions. While I was more tolerable of it due to the knowledge that it would be short, I found the shortness hurt Blue Lions more then it did Golden Deer, and my overall ability to enjoy its story. This was because unlike Golden Deer, Blue Lions has a character arc that is central to its story: Dimitri’s arc. It is meant to be an epic arc about a dark lost king finding himself, growing as a person and becoming a just king to lead the people. However…it did not work for me at all.

In Golden Deer, I complained that despite there being five years of war with no end, suddenly when Byleth returns the war ends in less then a year, as you unite the Alliance in one battle, take one fort to get to the Empire capital, and beat the shadow peoples in two battles. But in Blue Lions, I could not believe that Dimitri had been thrown into darkness for five whole years, completely lost himself, and then in only a few months, a few battles, his character does a 180 and becomes a good just king? Granted, I did think it was done as well as it could have, and that Dedue’s return and Rodrigue’s death made sense as events to change him. However, my immersion was broken by how quickly Dimitri became a good king when he had been lost and bent on revenge and madness for almost his whole life. It destroyed my perception of him and the entire end of the Blue Lions’ story. With Golden Deer, while the story felt rushed and like it didn’t make sense, at least Claude and his students made sense and I enjoyed seeing where their characters went. With Blue Lions however, while it felt a little less rushed since you spend more time battling Edelgard, having the story depend on a main character, whose arc felt rushed to the point of making no sense, that really hurt.

I think however, my issues with the Blue Lions story run deeper then that. It is not just the story, it is the themes I took issue with. When I talked of the story of Golden Deer, with its themes of different people reaching across borders and understanding the church, I felt a personal connection that made it easy to emphasize with them. I after all have traveled the world and met many foreigners and researched different cultures and immigrants. I also greatly enjoyed that on my first playthrough, I was just as skeptical of the church of seiros as Claude was. Yet just like him, as I got to know it and got to know people who liked the church and were effected by it, people like Cyril, Marianne, Mercedes, and the Knights of Seiros, I came to like the Church just like Claude, and appreciate what they brought to Fodlan and its peoples. Compare that with Blue Lions, in which its main themes were dealing with a difficult past and being a just, loyal, and noble knight/king. I don’t have a personal connection with these themes, I can’t think of dark events in my past that I have struggled to deal with, or at least to a large degree, and in general I preferred the lighter tone of Golden Deer to Blue Lions’ dark one. I also am not someone who values knighthood, it is a masculine ideal of strength that I do not like as someone who is not masculine at all (see my love and connection with Ignatz). I also do not like its romanticizing of the relationship between the poor struggling people and its supposedly just king who protects them, as I've always seen that relationship as exploitative and problematic.

This lack of connection extended to the Blue Lions’ story, Dimitri, and its students. While I had a great time with them overall, I was unable to connect with the Blue Lions students on the same level I had Golden Deer, and perhaps what surprised me most about my Blue Lions playthrough, is that I was not expecting to miss the Golden Deer cast and story as much as I did, but ironically, after Blue Lions I have a more positive view of Golden Deer’s story and characters.

But that is what is so cool and interesting about this game and why I love it. Each house has their own themes and perspectives, and getting to learn them makes the world of Fodlan and its people feel real, because you learn that in the great conflicts of the day, there is no right answer, no black and white simple way to deal with things. I would not say the Blue Lions or Golden Deer way is objectively better, they are simply different. I loved that I got to see the Blue Lions perspective, and I do feel like I understand them more. However, getting to play the other house, see what it is like to not be Golden Deer, has given me more appreciation for it, and made me so happy that I chose them first, because one thing I am now sure of more then ever, is that I am and always will be a Golden Deer student.