The casualty number of the Fodlan war

[Darkmoon6789]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

This is something I wondered for quite a while, how many people likely died during the five years of the war? Some people have claimed millions, but considering the technology level and the short duration I find that unlikely. 

I could be wrong but I would estimate somewhere around a couple of tens of thousands most. But I would like to hear if anyone has a way to figure out what is likely to be the estimated number of casualties. 

If I want to know if the war was worth the do not, I need to calculate more exact numbers. As well as a way to know at what rate the old system would claim a victims. Maybe such an exact calculation is impossible

[Water Mage]

See, the problem with war is that it not only causes death during battle. There’s also death caused by famine, since people have less food during wars, disease, wars are great way for diseases to spread, death due lack of resources, war may cause people to lose their homes and thus people die from bad weather, war can cause people to lose the member of the family that provided to them, war can cause people to lose their jobs. War also makes bandits attacks more frequent since the soldiers are busy with war. Plus enemy soldiers themselves often pillage and kill. So those death tolls you read aren’t entirely accurate. So it’s entirely possible that that during the five years of war in Fodlan, millions would have died. There’s no such thing as a good war. That’s why people give Edelgard so much shit for starting a war. The deaths caused by her war doesn’t only come from battles. Damages caused by wars can last decades.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Water Mage

[Darkmoon6789]

5 minutes ago, Water Mage said:

See, the problem with war is that it not only causes death during battle. There’s also death caused by famine, since people have less food during wars, disease, wars are great way for diseases to spread, death due lack of resources, war may cause people to lose their homes and thus people die from bad weather, war can cause people to lose the member of the family that provided to them, war can cause people to lose their jobs. War also makes bandits attacks more frequent since the soldiers are busy with war. Plus enemy soldiers themselves often pillage and kill. So those death tolls you read aren’t entirely accurate. So it’s entirely possible that that during the five years of war in Fodlan, millions would have died. There’s no such thing as a good war. That’s why people give Edelgard so much shit for starting a war. The deaths caused by her war doesn’t only come from battles. Damages caused by wars can last decades.

I think that is a bit much to blame a single individual for however. Most of it is pretty indirect and whatever actions are done by bandits is on the bandits and not Edelgard (especially as the war does not only belong to Edelgard, but also to be Agarthans). I wouldn't even have conceived of of counting all of that towards the war casualties. But it does make sense that it would have long-term consequences. One problem is that people don't even know what the population of Fodlan actually is. I guess we can assume it is similar to mediaeval Europe, but I am not sure as the continent do seem smaller. 

Maybe there is no such thing as a good war, but sometimes war is unavoidable. But this isn't necessarily what this is about. It might be also good to calculate potential damage for Rhea's negligence and how many lives that might have claimed. Because that is nearly what we are weighing the cost of the war against on a utilitarian level. Which are probably smaller but over a way larger timeframe. (Not to mention that the 66 year long war heroes would have been a complete disaster. If Edelgard's 5 year long war was bad)

It seems like Edelgard or whoever ends up running Fodlan in the future would have to do a lot of reparations to fix the damage from the war. I think it is likely Edelgard would try her best to provide relief to those in need and rebuild society, hopefully better than before. But this would be costly from a monetary standpoint. But with the advancement of technology and medicine (Rhea's bans on certain technology no longer apply.) Wouldn't this also save lives in the long run? What is the value of greater freedom on the moral scale? Number of casualties isn't everything we need to consider here. We also have quality of life being a factor. Edelgard would try their best to minimise the damage caused by the war in the aftermatch, as well as improve society over time. But it is a good question if this would be enough. If it is it is probably over a longer period of time.

I am a utilitarian so I do believe that if we can calculate more exact numbers over a long period of time, it can be objectively proven who was in the right from a utilitarian perspective. But I guess it is possible such an exact calculation is impossible. Which means that it would fall to guesswork.  

  

[Etrurian emperor]

It should be relatively low in most routes. In three out of far routes the Alliance doesn't really enter the war until Grondor while the Kingdom instantly collapses like a house of cards. There is a front to the north between Cornelia and the houses of Ingrid, Sylvain and Felix but that should be a rather small scale affair in the grand scheme of things. So the battles that take place in the five years would be between the royalist and imperial toadies in the Kingdom and perhaps Edelgard fighting the knights of Seiros wherever they appear. We also see a noticeable lack of war crimes committed by the imperial army so while civilian deaths will be there I don't think there would be a lot of deaths through the sacking or destruction of towns. However Cornelia's reign does seem pretty despotic so maybe that would increase the civilian death toll a bit. 

Crimson Flower seems the more bloody route. Rather then Edelgard instantly destroying the Kingdom and the Knights of Seiros being rather weak its a five year long deadlock. Fearghus is still around and the Knights of Seiros seem far stronger then they are in the other route. That means five years of warfare between Edelgard and Rhea/Dimitri which can quickly get very bloody. 

[haarhaarhaar]

5 hours ago, Darkmoon6789 said:

I am a utilitarian so I do believe that if we can calculate more exact numbers over a long period of time, it can be objectively proven who was in the right from a utilitarian perspective. But I guess it is possible such an exact calculation is impossible. Which means that it would fall to guesswork.

That's a rough way to deal with both of their characters. We know little about society in the previous 1000 years under Rhea, and even less about the society Edelgard makes. Counting up the deaths resulting from their actions and their inaction (whether that's people they killed personally, ordered to have killed, were murdered on their behalf, tangential secondary deaths etc etc) is a pretty reductive way to deal with either of them, and a worse way to try and weigh who was better. Primarily, there's no reasonable way of counting either of those things - but even if they were, and you were gonna count secondary deaths, with the inevitable result that Rhea's hands come out bloodier (cause she's been alive and in charge through several wars, not to mention for over 1000 years as opposed to Edelgard's 20 plus an ending card), I don't think that that's how you rank Edelgard better than Rhea on a moral scale.

By all means, take issue with the society that formed under Rhea (which is her responsibility, even if it wasn't originally her fault), her tyranny, her lies and her lack of mercy. That can be more than enough to make her worse than Edelgard in someone's book. But saying one person was responsible for, like, 100 deaths compared to another person being responsible for 300 deaths, even if it were true and the numbers were exact, simply doesn't do justice to any person's life. And you won't get exact numbers from any investigation because it seems like you'd have to include butterfly effect deaths anyway. 

[omegaxis1]

Exact numbers aren't really possible, but If we wanna go by the the dialogue and things that can be inferred on, Crimson Flower would suffer the least amount of casualties among soldiers and civilians.

1) No Gronder Field battle, which is canonically a bloody battlefield for all three sides with severe casualties. 

2) No Dukedom, where it is confirmed that Cornelia makes many civilians suffer and even refugees as well. This also results in the Faerghus basically going into a civil war with the remaining noble houses loyal to Faerghus opposing the Dukedom.

3) There's definitely some form of civil war in the Alliance going on, as the Empire strongarmed House Gloucester into aiding them and having violent discord spread in the Alliance, hence why it is remarked that the Alliance has been fractured, while Claude is trying to put up the act that the Alliance is still united. 

4) By Claude's own statement, the Alliance is mostly unscathed. And before that, the Alliance has been left out of the war and was in a purely diplomatic debate by Claude. 

[Etrurian emperor]

10 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

2) No Dukedom, where it is confirmed that Cornelia makes many civilians suffer and even refugees as well. This also results in the Faerghus basically going into a civil war with the remaining noble houses loyal to Faerghus opposing the Dukedom.

I think the Dukedom might actually be the least bloody outcome. Not pleasant but less bloody. This is because the events that created the Dukedom knocks Faerghus out of the war almost entirely for much of the five years. Hobo Dimitri can't raise huge armies to engage Edelgard while he's on the run and with most of the Kingdom conquered. In Crimson Flower Faerghus is whole and united for five years, five years in which it can raise huge armies to clash with Edelgard. There's warfare between the northern loyalists and Cornelia but that's likely far less bloody then the whole Empire and Kingdom beating each other senseless for five long years. In Verdant Wind Fearghus even manages to sit out the war in almost its entirety if you discount one Rowe army or the force raised by Dimitri. 

 

[omegaxis1]

Just now, Etrurian emperor said:

I think the Dukedom might actually be the least bloody outcome. Not pleasant but less bloody. This is because the events that created the Dukedom knocks Faerghus out of the war almost entirely for much of the five years. Hobo Dimitri can't raise huge armies to engage Edelgard while he's on the run and with most of the Kingdom conquered. In Crimson Flower Faerghus is whole and united for five years, five years in which it can raise huge armies to clash with Edelgard. There's warfare between the northern loyalists and Cornelia but that's likely far less bloody then the whole Empire and Kingdom beating each other senseless for five long years. In Verdant Wind Fearghus even manages to sit out the war in almost its entirety if you discount one Rowe army or the force raised by Dimitri. 

The Dukedom actually raised the bloodshed because now the civilians are killed much more often and suffer. Cornelia's rulership is basically an Agarthan running things. And fighting against the remaining loyalists actually means a full out civil war in the conflict. So it's still very much a war happening. And then you have to wipe out the Dukedom forces in the story, given how you fight against them in Chapter 14 of every non-CF route, along with the violent conflicts made when the civilians begin a rebellion against the Dukedom as well. 

Add in, again, Gronder Field, where if you don't side with Dimitri, you basically wipe out most of the remaining Faerghus loyalists that united under Dimitri. 

In CF, Faerghus isn't actually whole. Hubert even noted that the western portion of Faerghus already joined the Empire, and Faerghus is not actually united in opposing the Empire either.

Quote

Hubert: Allow me to brief you on the details of our situation. The Empire firmly controls the western portion of Faerghus. However, the central and eastern regions continue to put up heavy resistance. The strongholds in these regions are Arianrhod, the Fortress City, and Fhirdiah, the Kingdom Capital. We cannot control Faerghus until we've taken both of these cities. As for the Alliance, Houses Gloucester and Ordelia seem predisposed to capitulate with us. However, due to interference from Houses Reigan and Gonreil, we have yet to secure their cooperation. Claude obviously hopes to keep the Alliance whole through diplomacy. But because we have had to focus our efforts against the church until now, our forces have yet to meet his. We have only recently begun to take the fight to Alliance territory.

-

Hubert: Understood. As for the Kingdom... As we theorized, it is not entirely united. If we defeat the royal family of House Blaiddyd and a handful of other notable houses, it should fall under our control quite easily. Those we must target include the houses Fraldarius, Galatea, Gautier, and Charon.

It's also noted in the narration that Dimitri and Rhea has been working to raise an army to oppose the Empire, but the war has been at a stalemate between the two nations. 

[Darkmoon6789]

2 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

The Dukedom actually raised the bloodshed because now the civilians are killed much more often and suffer. Cornelia's rulership is basically an Agarthan running things. And fighting against the remaining loyalists actually means a full out civil war in the conflict. So it's still very much a war happening. And then you have to wipe out the Dukedom forces in the story, given how you fight against them in Chapter 14 of every non-CF route, along with the violent conflicts made when the civilians begin a rebellion against the Dukedom as well. 

Add in, again, Gronder Field, where if you don't side with Dimitri, you basically wipe out most of the remaining Faerghus loyalists that united under Dimitri. 

In CF, Faerghus isn't actually whole. Hubert even noted that the western portion of Faerghus already joined the Empire, and Faerghus is not actually united in opposing the Empire either.

It's also noted in the narration that Dimitri and Rhea has been working to raise an army to oppose the Empire, but the war has been at a stalemate between the two nations. 

I don't think any region controlled by the Agarthans would be great for the people, I would even hesitate to consider the Dukedom part of the Empire, I guess it is technically part of that other Empire controlled from the shadows by those who slither in the dark. But Cornelia is not truly a friend of Edelgard. Nor would I attribute anything she does to her. Is Edelgard responsible for Remire village just because she was unable to stop it?. 

It is hard to figure out which path leads to least suffering, but Crimson Flower would be my guess. Maybe not everyone wants to accept that, but you do have a good point about it, probably being the least disastrous. This is of course if we make the assumption that the war is inevitable and the only possible outcomes are the endings of the game. But based on the information I have I do think Byleth joining Edelgard is the utilitarian right decision. 

I have wish people could provide me with some actual numbers for probable casualties. If there is a way to calculate probable damages. We can actually determine more easily if the war was worth it or not. But to do that. We also need to know how things would have likely gone. If the war didn't happen and how much suffering that would cause.

[haarhaarhaar]

8 hours ago, Darkmoon6789 said:

It is hard to figure out which path leads to least suffering, but Crimson Flower would be my guess. Maybe not everyone wants to accept that, but you do have a good point about it, probably being the least disastrous. This is of course if we make the assumption that the war is inevitable and the only possible outcomes are the endings of the game. But based on the information I have I do think Byleth joining Edelgard is the utilitarian right decision. 

I have wish people could provide me with some actual numbers for probable casualties. If there is a way to calculate probable damages. We can actually determine more easily if the war was worth it or not. But to do that. We also need to know how things would have likely gone. If the war didn't happen and how much suffering that would cause.

Hmm yeah I think we might just be on different sides of this too. Not so much the idea that CF causes fewer deaths than other routes (which is perfectly possible in theory), but the idea that you could quantify how much suffering different routes lead to, and as a result you could somehow measure or weigh up whether any of them were 'worth it'. I just don't think it's reasonable to want to figure that out by asking this question, or any question. Be subjective about it, sure, but even if there were some magic figures that you could come to for the number of dead on every route, doesn't mean you've managed to summarise the suffering each route has caused or that you'd be right about which route was the 'right decision'.