What does it take to change the world? Does it require one to work within the established societal framework to improve living conditions? Or does it necessitate reaching out to those who are different from yourself to build new, stronger systems? What if you believe the world to be so foundationally rotten that the only logical recourse is not reformation, but total destruction of said systems? This is the dilemma presented in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and each ideology is displayed through the game’s three central lords. Dimitri of Faerghus, Claude of Leicester, and Edelgard of Adrestia all champion one of these lines of thought. While they may not seem to be diametrically opposed on the surface, the circumstances of Fodlan result in a peaceful resolution seeming far out of reach. Of these three opposing youths, one speaks to me personally more than the others. If you’ve taken so much as a cursory glance at my online presence, it should be readily apparent who I am speaking of. In this essay, I will be explaining what it is about Edelgard von Hresvelg that I personally find to be so compelling and why, over three years after FE16’s initial release, I still consider her to be one of my favorite video game characters.
Few in Fodlan can claim to be as privileged as Edelgard. Born as the heir to the Adrestian Empire, the strongest of Fodlan’s three nations, she seemingly has no worries in life. Power, wealth, and status are all readily available to her yet even that does not save her from Fodlan’s emphasis on crests. Imprisoned as a child, Edelgard and her siblings became the victims of blood experiments conducted by an elusive cult in an attempt to grant a single person two crests. Of her ten siblings, she was the only survivor. Witnessing the tortuous ruin of her family as well as the effects she suffered herself imparted lasting psychological trauma on Edelgard, but she is not the type to keel over. This experience instilled in her that something had to change, something like this can never be allowed to happen again. Her conviction in this belief was her strength. Despite all that she had endured, the one thing that kept her going during the darkest parts of her life was her vision for a brighter future. “As the rain falls on the path, I chase your shadow. I don’t feel a single drop or the ground below”.
Despite being granted access to practically anything she desires by virtue of being heir to the throne, the one thing that is out of Edelgard’s reach is time. Her lifespan has been drastically shortened by the blood experiments so if she wants to ensure that no one like her is created again, she has to work fast. We see this within the first hour of the game when a bandit who (unbeknownst to anyone else) has been hired by Edelgard attacks her and the other house leaders in a ploy to remove Dimitri and Claude from the equation. While this specific plan may have been foiled by the arrival of Jeralt and Byleth, we see multiple instances of Edelgard’s preemptive planning throughout the first twelve chapters. After Edelgard makes her plans for war apparent her classmate, Linhardt von Hevring, states that she “must have been making preparations for quite some time”. The most damning of her activities though is her allyship with Those Who Slither in the Dark, the very same group that conducted the blood experiments on her. Edelgard did not do this for no reason though, she did this because she needs them if she’s to achieve her dream. TWSITD are deeply ingrained within the Empire’s upper echelons to the point where her own uncle is their leader and if she were to make an enemy of them as well then she would be truly fighting a losing battle. As such, she chose to use them as best she could as a means to her ends even if she found them to be deplorable.. “Then you turn to me and I stop before I know and the lie upon my lips, I let it go”.
There is one thing though that Edelgard’s plans do not change, that she will have to spend a year at the officer’s academy all the while harboring the fact that she will throw the whole continent into war in just a year’s time. She meets people of all different backgrounds during her time at Garreg Mach, some coming from the common folk, some from lower noble houses, and even the heirs to the other two countries. She spent day in and day out surrounded by people who she knew would want her dead in just a few short months because of her actions but she had to press on for the sake of her new world. “Cross my heart, making vows I know will be betrayed”.
Edelgard is under no illusion that her schemes will grant her anything but more enemies. By lying through her teeth to everyone at the academy she knows she will be seen as naught but a manipulative warmonger when the time inevitably comes to put her plans into action. History is written by the victors, a fact Edelgard is well aware of. If she cooperates with a death cult and wages war on half the country just to lose in the end she knows she will not be remembered fondly. Her dreams for an equitable future will be far overshadowed by her heinous actions. “A sad girl’s pleas live only for a breath and then they fade”.
Despite all this not only is her conviction unwavered, it’s strengthened. As mentioned before, she meets a lot of people during her time at the monastery. People like Lysithea and Sylvain who also suffer as a result of crests. People like Dorothea and Jeritza who are victims of Fodlan’s nobility. These experiences only further cement in Edelgard’s mind that Fodlan as it stands can not be allowed to remain unchallenged. Someone has to rise up, something has to change. Edelgard felt that she alone had the moral responsibility to be the one to reign in this new era given that she’s one of the few with the power to do so. She could be yet another in a long line of rulers who sat idly by and watched as her people suffered, but that is not a future Edelgard will allow to come to pass. “As the wind calms my thoughts I hold strong on this terrace. I feel at peace, carried away by the wind’s song”.
And so, we’re here. Edelgard declares war on the church and by proxy the kingdom, shattering Fodlan’s fragile peace. This, to me, is an incredibly powerful scene. She does not attempt to reason with the church or the kingdom because trying to reason with your oppressors is a fool’s errand. This is represented in Edlegard’s change in design after the time skip. Dawned in a blood red cape and wearing literal devil horns, Edelgard becomes the very embodiment of the demon that the church fears. You can not attain freedom while looking like a good person in the eyes of your oppressors, this is what you have to become. Taking such extreme measures was the only way to ensure a better future for humanity. People will die in this war, but people are dying as a result of those systems right now. Fodlan’s facsimile of peace is not worth the countless lives that will be lost in the time it would take for gradual reform to have any effect. Those in power could live comfortably for the rest of their lives while working on these reforms but the same cannot be said of their subjects. Such a violent outburst was the natural result of these brutal, irrational systems.
This was a choice that many struggled to understand. Those from the Alliance couldn’t reconcile with why she would go this far. People from the Church and Kingdom wanted her dead. Most notably, Edelgard’s declaration of war as well as outing herself as the Flame Emperor destroyed Dimitri. Enraged by what he perceived to be flippancy towards the bloodshed her actions will inevitably cause, he wants to violently murder Edelgard. While this may seem like an extreme reaction, it’s only natural that he would feel this way. How could he understand her gripes with the nobility and crest systems? He has no shortage of support systems available to him and unlike Edelgard he walked away from his traumatic experiences physically unscathed. While he is still a victim of both systems he has not suffered to nearly the same extent that Edelgard has so it’s understandable that he wouldn’t harbor the same hatred as her.
Throughout several encounters between the two, Dimitri always makes it a point to bring up that Edelgard’s new world will be forged in blood. “Someone must put an end to the cycle of the strong trampling the weak” Dimitri says, yet how are you to stop that cycle if you don’t gouge it at its core? Edelgard’s new dawn may be built atop a mountain of corpses but could that self same statement not be made of the Fodlan we see in 1180? It’s clear as day that Dimitri wants positive change to come to Fodlan but he lacks the backbone to make it a reality. He is admittedly able to make quite a bit of progress as evidenced by the character epilogues of the Azure Moon route but in that case he’s only able to make that progress because of the actions taken by Edelgard. Had she remained docile, everything would stay as it was.
Speaking of Azure Moon, Edelgard’s death in that route is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. After her defeat, we see Edelgard kneeling on the floor while Dimitri reaches his hand out to her. This parallels two other scenes in the game, those being the encounter between Byleth and Dimitri at the beginning of Azure Moon and Dimitri’s death in Crimson Flower.
At the beginning of Azure Moon, Dimitri was at the lowest point of his life but Byleth’s kindness was able to pull him out of that. Looking at Edelgard, having shed the hegemon husk, he saw himself. A person who had been warped beyond recognition because of the world they were born into. He extended the same hand that Byleth had once extended to him. Looking at her, Dimitri calls her El upon which Edelgard smiles. During Crimson Flower, when talking to Byleth, Edelgard gives them permission to call her “El”, a nickname whose use is reserved for those closest to her. She says that there’s no one left who calls her by that name but that’s clearly not quite true. Dimitri wants to rekindle the sibling bond that they should share but life isn’t that simple, it never is when it comes to conflict. Edelgard does not dwell on the past like Dimitri does. She looks to the future and understands that this war cannot end with everyone talking it out and working on themselves, one of them has to die. In this case, Edelgard is the abject loser and this war will not end so long as she still lives. And so, Edelgard throws a dagger into his shoulder to force his hand. This is the same dagger that Dimitri gifted Edelgard when they were children under the pretense that she uses it to carve a path forward, and by throwing it into his shoulder she is returning that sentiment. Edelgard has done her part to change the world, now it’s Dimitri’s turn.
As for how it parallels Dimitri’s death, it displays the stark difference in worldview between the two. Dimitri clung to the hope that Edelgard could be saved, that his last living family member would survive this war whereas when the roles are reversed we see the extent to which Edelgard had accepted that her path would be one soaked in blood. This doesn’t mean that this was an emotionless kill for Edelgard, though. Dimitri’s last words are “to the fires of eternity with you… El…”. As discussed earlier, this nickname is one of great personal meaning to Edelgard. Part of the tragedy of her character is how she has to kill her last remaining family if she’s to create a new world. She’s hoping that in recreating Fodlan she will construct a society in which nothing like this will ever happen again.
While Edelgard doesn’t take quite as prominent a role in the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, her actions in those stories still give us some insight into her character. During her death in these routes, she asks Byleth to put an end to her because “people across this land are killing each other”. At this point in the story, Edelgard has lost and her continued struggle would only serve to prolong the conflict so she decides to allow her death to come swiftly. If you are willing to kill for something then you must be willing to die for it as well and the possibility of her death is something that Edelgard had long since made her peace with. Afterwards we see that she made arrangements to ensure that the wider world would learn of TWSITD so that they may take them out in her stead. This shows us that she wants the best for humanity regardless if she comes out on top.
Edelgard’s relationship with Claude is far less textured than with Dimitri but it’s still worth noting. During their encounter in Verdant Wind Edelgard tells Claude that while his ideals may closely align with her own, she is not comfortable with allowing someone who can not understand the extent of the people’s suffering to take the reins. Claude has absolutely suffered greatly because of his lineage but his experiences are not as conducive to the ruler needed if Fodlan is to change. He doesn’t have nearly as intimate an understanding of how the crest and nobility systems affect both the common folk and nobility.
Claude’s seemingly biggest issue with Edelgard (and just about everyone in Fodlan for that matter) is their close mindedness. Claude’s ideal future is one in which borders are practically non-existent and people of all different backgrounds can coexist peacefully. His big problem though is that he simply isn’t knowledgeable enough on Fodlan’s history to understand how to make that dream a reality. Edelgard understands specifically that if she wants to induce large-scale societal change then TWSITD and the upper echelons of the church are what need to be eliminated first and foremost. Claude, by contrast, doesn’t even know TWSITD exist until much later in the game and due to their extensive rewriting of history he’s unable to pin down how the church negatively affects people as well. We see him start to connect the dots during the academy phase but, through no fault of his own, he still falls short. I will admit that part of the reason that Claude seems like a comparatively lackluster character is because he got stuck with a route that’s a carbon copy of another, but I don’t think discussing meta elements like that would be relevant to the purposes of this review.
The last major player within FE16’s story that Edelgard has a significant connection to is Rhea. The two actually have a lot in common. They had ten siblings who were unjustly murdered, they both rose to power in a war that was meant to extract revenge on those who harmed them, and they both went to great lengths to ensure that none would have to suffer as they had. The thing that sets them apart though is their faith in humanity. Rhea was terrified at the prospect of something like the Zanado Massacre happening again and as such chose to place herself as a figure of authority so that she may intervene should the need arise. On the other hand, we see through her endings that as soon as Edelgard constructed her new world, she stepped down from her position of power. She has faith that humanity can be allowed self-jurisdiction and as such it would be wrong for her to rule over them as Rhea once did. This is encapsulated by the theme that plays during the final moments of Crimson Flower, titled “A World for Humanity”.
Throughout these three routes, we see Edelgard as a stalwart emperor who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. While this is true, Crimson Flower shines a different, much more human light on her. We see how she interacts with her friends and how she just exists beyond this persona of the Flame Emperor. One of my favorite scenes in the whole game is the A rank support between Ferdinand and Edelgard. Ferdie brings up his concern that the class divide will remain strong post-war due to the disparity in education. The two then work together and basically come up with the idea of public education. While some may find it concerning that Edelgard seemingly hadn’t accounted for this, what this shows is that her revolution is not meant to fix every problem in the world in one fell swoop, instead it is meant to lay the groundwork so that such developments can be made in the first place. We see through this support just how much Edelgard needs her friends to support her and pick up the slack where she can’t.
We also see through various supports and interactions that Edelgard really is just a normal girl underneath the mask. She feels emotions, she feels a connection to the people she’s fighting for, and she feels a deep love for those she depends on. Even people who she doesn’t mesh well with like Linhardt or Bernadetta are still people she wants to take into account so she can ensure a comfortable life for all in her new world. Through her interactions with some of the more devout characters, mainly Manuela, we see how she’s going to great extents to ensure that none will be left behind even if they are ideologically opposed to her.
To wrap this back to what I said in the opening paragraph, the reason I love Edelgard is that she’s uncompromising in her ideals and willing to take action against violent, oppressive systems. She believes that an ideal future is one where humans are under no obligation to follow the will of a god or king and can instead choose their own way of life. Though in truth, the real reason that I love Edelgard so much is that I am very, very homosexual.
Few in Fodlan can claim to be as privileged as Edelgard. Born as the heir to the Adrestian Empire, the strongest of Fodlan’s three nations, she seemingly has no worries in life. Power, wealth, and status are all readily available to her yet even that does not save her from Fodlan’s emphasis on crests. Imprisoned as a child, Edelgard and her siblings became the victims of blood experiments conducted by an elusive cult in an attempt to grant a single person two crests. Of her ten siblings, she was the only survivor. Witnessing the tortuous ruin of her family as well as the effects she suffered herself imparted lasting psychological trauma on Edelgard, but she is not the type to keel over. This experience instilled in her that something had to change, something like this can never be allowed to happen again. Her conviction in this belief was her strength. Despite all that she had endured, the one thing that kept her going during the darkest parts of her life was her vision for a brighter future. “As the rain falls on the path, I chase your shadow. I don’t feel a single drop or the ground below”.
Despite being granted access to practically anything she desires by virtue of being heir to the throne, the one thing that is out of Edelgard’s reach is time. Her lifespan has been drastically shortened by the blood experiments so if she wants to ensure that no one like her is created again, she has to work fast. We see this within the first hour of the game when a bandit who (unbeknownst to anyone else) has been hired by Edelgard attacks her and the other house leaders in a ploy to remove Dimitri and Claude from the equation. While this specific plan may have been foiled by the arrival of Jeralt and Byleth, we see multiple instances of Edelgard’s preemptive planning throughout the first twelve chapters. After Edelgard makes her plans for war apparent her classmate, Linhardt von Hevring, states that she “must have been making preparations for quite some time”. The most damning of her activities though is her allyship with Those Who Slither in the Dark, the very same group that conducted the blood experiments on her. Edelgard did not do this for no reason though, she did this because she needs them if she’s to achieve her dream. TWSITD are deeply ingrained within the Empire’s upper echelons to the point where her own uncle is their leader and if she were to make an enemy of them as well then she would be truly fighting a losing battle. As such, she chose to use them as best she could as a means to her ends even if she found them to be deplorable.. “Then you turn to me and I stop before I know and the lie upon my lips, I let it go”.
There is one thing though that Edelgard’s plans do not change, that she will have to spend a year at the officer’s academy all the while harboring the fact that she will throw the whole continent into war in just a year’s time. She meets people of all different backgrounds during her time at Garreg Mach, some coming from the common folk, some from lower noble houses, and even the heirs to the other two countries. She spent day in and day out surrounded by people who she knew would want her dead in just a few short months because of her actions but she had to press on for the sake of her new world. “Cross my heart, making vows I know will be betrayed”.
Edelgard is under no illusion that her schemes will grant her anything but more enemies. By lying through her teeth to everyone at the academy she knows she will be seen as naught but a manipulative warmonger when the time inevitably comes to put her plans into action. History is written by the victors, a fact Edelgard is well aware of. If she cooperates with a death cult and wages war on half the country just to lose in the end she knows she will not be remembered fondly. Her dreams for an equitable future will be far overshadowed by her heinous actions. “A sad girl’s pleas live only for a breath and then they fade”.
Despite all this not only is her conviction unwavered, it’s strengthened. As mentioned before, she meets a lot of people during her time at the monastery. People like Lysithea and Sylvain who also suffer as a result of crests. People like Dorothea and Jeritza who are victims of Fodlan’s nobility. These experiences only further cement in Edelgard’s mind that Fodlan as it stands can not be allowed to remain unchallenged. Someone has to rise up, something has to change. Edelgard felt that she alone had the moral responsibility to be the one to reign in this new era given that she’s one of the few with the power to do so. She could be yet another in a long line of rulers who sat idly by and watched as her people suffered, but that is not a future Edelgard will allow to come to pass. “As the wind calms my thoughts I hold strong on this terrace. I feel at peace, carried away by the wind’s song”.
And so, we’re here. Edelgard declares war on the church and by proxy the kingdom, shattering Fodlan’s fragile peace. This, to me, is an incredibly powerful scene. She does not attempt to reason with the church or the kingdom because trying to reason with your oppressors is a fool’s errand. This is represented in Edlegard’s change in design after the time skip. Dawned in a blood red cape and wearing literal devil horns, Edelgard becomes the very embodiment of the demon that the church fears. You can not attain freedom while looking like a good person in the eyes of your oppressors, this is what you have to become. Taking such extreme measures was the only way to ensure a better future for humanity. People will die in this war, but people are dying as a result of those systems right now. Fodlan’s facsimile of peace is not worth the countless lives that will be lost in the time it would take for gradual reform to have any effect. Those in power could live comfortably for the rest of their lives while working on these reforms but the same cannot be said of their subjects. Such a violent outburst was the natural result of these brutal, irrational systems.
This was a choice that many struggled to understand. Those from the Alliance couldn’t reconcile with why she would go this far. People from the Church and Kingdom wanted her dead. Most notably, Edelgard’s declaration of war as well as outing herself as the Flame Emperor destroyed Dimitri. Enraged by what he perceived to be flippancy towards the bloodshed her actions will inevitably cause, he wants to violently murder Edelgard. While this may seem like an extreme reaction, it’s only natural that he would feel this way. How could he understand her gripes with the nobility and crest systems? He has no shortage of support systems available to him and unlike Edelgard he walked away from his traumatic experiences physically unscathed. While he is still a victim of both systems he has not suffered to nearly the same extent that Edelgard has so it’s understandable that he wouldn’t harbor the same hatred as her.
Throughout several encounters between the two, Dimitri always makes it a point to bring up that Edelgard’s new world will be forged in blood. “Someone must put an end to the cycle of the strong trampling the weak” Dimitri says, yet how are you to stop that cycle if you don’t gouge it at its core? Edelgard’s new dawn may be built atop a mountain of corpses but could that self same statement not be made of the Fodlan we see in 1180? It’s clear as day that Dimitri wants positive change to come to Fodlan but he lacks the backbone to make it a reality. He is admittedly able to make quite a bit of progress as evidenced by the character epilogues of the Azure Moon route but in that case he’s only able to make that progress because of the actions taken by Edelgard. Had she remained docile, everything would stay as it was.
Speaking of Azure Moon, Edelgard’s death in that route is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. After her defeat, we see Edelgard kneeling on the floor while Dimitri reaches his hand out to her. This parallels two other scenes in the game, those being the encounter between Byleth and Dimitri at the beginning of Azure Moon and Dimitri’s death in Crimson Flower.
At the beginning of Azure Moon, Dimitri was at the lowest point of his life but Byleth’s kindness was able to pull him out of that. Looking at Edelgard, having shed the hegemon husk, he saw himself. A person who had been warped beyond recognition because of the world they were born into. He extended the same hand that Byleth had once extended to him. Looking at her, Dimitri calls her El upon which Edelgard smiles. During Crimson Flower, when talking to Byleth, Edelgard gives them permission to call her “El”, a nickname whose use is reserved for those closest to her. She says that there’s no one left who calls her by that name but that’s clearly not quite true. Dimitri wants to rekindle the sibling bond that they should share but life isn’t that simple, it never is when it comes to conflict. Edelgard does not dwell on the past like Dimitri does. She looks to the future and understands that this war cannot end with everyone talking it out and working on themselves, one of them has to die. In this case, Edelgard is the abject loser and this war will not end so long as she still lives. And so, Edelgard throws a dagger into his shoulder to force his hand. This is the same dagger that Dimitri gifted Edelgard when they were children under the pretense that she uses it to carve a path forward, and by throwing it into his shoulder she is returning that sentiment. Edelgard has done her part to change the world, now it’s Dimitri’s turn.
As for how it parallels Dimitri’s death, it displays the stark difference in worldview between the two. Dimitri clung to the hope that Edelgard could be saved, that his last living family member would survive this war whereas when the roles are reversed we see the extent to which Edelgard had accepted that her path would be one soaked in blood. This doesn’t mean that this was an emotionless kill for Edelgard, though. Dimitri’s last words are “to the fires of eternity with you… El…”. As discussed earlier, this nickname is one of great personal meaning to Edelgard. Part of the tragedy of her character is how she has to kill her last remaining family if she’s to create a new world. She’s hoping that in recreating Fodlan she will construct a society in which nothing like this will ever happen again.
While Edelgard doesn’t take quite as prominent a role in the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, her actions in those stories still give us some insight into her character. During her death in these routes, she asks Byleth to put an end to her because “people across this land are killing each other”. At this point in the story, Edelgard has lost and her continued struggle would only serve to prolong the conflict so she decides to allow her death to come swiftly. If you are willing to kill for something then you must be willing to die for it as well and the possibility of her death is something that Edelgard had long since made her peace with. Afterwards we see that she made arrangements to ensure that the wider world would learn of TWSITD so that they may take them out in her stead. This shows us that she wants the best for humanity regardless if she comes out on top.
Edelgard’s relationship with Claude is far less textured than with Dimitri but it’s still worth noting. During their encounter in Verdant Wind Edelgard tells Claude that while his ideals may closely align with her own, she is not comfortable with allowing someone who can not understand the extent of the people’s suffering to take the reins. Claude has absolutely suffered greatly because of his lineage but his experiences are not as conducive to the ruler needed if Fodlan is to change. He doesn’t have nearly as intimate an understanding of how the crest and nobility systems affect both the common folk and nobility.
Claude’s seemingly biggest issue with Edelgard (and just about everyone in Fodlan for that matter) is their close mindedness. Claude’s ideal future is one in which borders are practically non-existent and people of all different backgrounds can coexist peacefully. His big problem though is that he simply isn’t knowledgeable enough on Fodlan’s history to understand how to make that dream a reality. Edelgard understands specifically that if she wants to induce large-scale societal change then TWSITD and the upper echelons of the church are what need to be eliminated first and foremost. Claude, by contrast, doesn’t even know TWSITD exist until much later in the game and due to their extensive rewriting of history he’s unable to pin down how the church negatively affects people as well. We see him start to connect the dots during the academy phase but, through no fault of his own, he still falls short. I will admit that part of the reason that Claude seems like a comparatively lackluster character is because he got stuck with a route that’s a carbon copy of another, but I don’t think discussing meta elements like that would be relevant to the purposes of this review.
The last major player within FE16’s story that Edelgard has a significant connection to is Rhea. The two actually have a lot in common. They had ten siblings who were unjustly murdered, they both rose to power in a war that was meant to extract revenge on those who harmed them, and they both went to great lengths to ensure that none would have to suffer as they had. The thing that sets them apart though is their faith in humanity. Rhea was terrified at the prospect of something like the Zanado Massacre happening again and as such chose to place herself as a figure of authority so that she may intervene should the need arise. On the other hand, we see through her endings that as soon as Edelgard constructed her new world, she stepped down from her position of power. She has faith that humanity can be allowed self-jurisdiction and as such it would be wrong for her to rule over them as Rhea once did. This is encapsulated by the theme that plays during the final moments of Crimson Flower, titled “A World for Humanity”.
Throughout these three routes, we see Edelgard as a stalwart emperor who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. While this is true, Crimson Flower shines a different, much more human light on her. We see how she interacts with her friends and how she just exists beyond this persona of the Flame Emperor. One of my favorite scenes in the whole game is the A rank support between Ferdinand and Edelgard. Ferdie brings up his concern that the class divide will remain strong post-war due to the disparity in education. The two then work together and basically come up with the idea of public education. While some may find it concerning that Edelgard seemingly hadn’t accounted for this, what this shows is that her revolution is not meant to fix every problem in the world in one fell swoop, instead it is meant to lay the groundwork so that such developments can be made in the first place. We see through this support just how much Edelgard needs her friends to support her and pick up the slack where she can’t.
We also see through various supports and interactions that Edelgard really is just a normal girl underneath the mask. She feels emotions, she feels a connection to the people she’s fighting for, and she feels a deep love for those she depends on. Even people who she doesn’t mesh well with like Linhardt or Bernadetta are still people she wants to take into account so she can ensure a comfortable life for all in her new world. Through her interactions with some of the more devout characters, mainly Manuela, we see how she’s going to great extents to ensure that none will be left behind even if they are ideologically opposed to her.
To wrap this back to what I said in the opening paragraph, the reason I love Edelgard is that she’s uncompromising in her ideals and willing to take action against violent, oppressive systems. She believes that an ideal future is one where humans are under no obligation to follow the will of a god or king and can instead choose their own way of life. Though in truth, the real reason that I love Edelgard so much is that I am very, very homosexual.