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How I would've written the Golden Deer Post-Timeskip


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I've recently been playing through Verdant Wind (my second Three Houses playthrough overall), and one thing I've noticed is that, for all of Claude's talk about wanting to open up Fodlan to the outside world, very little of his route is actually about that. 

I thought back to the Crimson Flower route; in it, Claude arranges for Almyran forces to save the capital from the Adrestian forces; protecting the city and making them heroes to the Alliance; ensuring they're welcomed in. It got me thinking: what if he did this before?

In every route, during the five years, Claude brought in Almyran forces to repel attack from the Adrestian Empire and/or the Fearghus Kingdom/Dukedom (depending on the route); leading to the Leicester Alliance opening up to Almyra. In routes with the battle of Gronder Field, Gronder Field becomes more of a three-way fight, as Dimitri does not approve of Almyran forces in Fodlan (as their warrior-culture clashes with his ideals). 

In Verdant Wind, Claude is careful and more willing to be less secretive thanks to Byleth. Outside of Verdant Wind, his downfall comes from him overplaying his hand: because he doesn't have the professor, he creates alliances with Sreng and Dagda to assist in "opening up" Fodlan, and this gets seen by many as Claude allying with hostile nations and letting them "invade" Fodlan.

To add to this, there would be some interesting notes on what Claude's doing from other characters as well. For just one example, Sylvain, if not recruited, will call out Claude on allying with Sreng: a nation Sylvain's family protects Fodlan from. Meanwhile, if recruited, he talks about having to interact with people from Sreng that are in Claude's army. Students from the Empire would also be against Claude for allying with Dagda. etc.  

 

What do you think?

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I do think it could be something.

I want to leave my full thoughts for after finishing AM and SS, but I don't see it for all of the nations he could contact. Dagda and Brigid in particular are too out of the way for him to connect with, thus making an alliance to the west of Adrestia hard to justify. There's also the complications of Dagda being the most recent one to attempt to invade and thus making it a bit more complicated for Claude to contact them at all. Even if he was considering doing so in VW he absolutely would have to pull back from it because it's hard enough to argue bringing an Almyran force in but Dagda could be the straw that breaks people's resolve. 

Look at it like this: it's bad enough he's like Fortinbras bringing in the Almyrans as part of his force to end the war while the other nations have enough tragedy going on. If he'd added Dagda that's Fodlan invaded from multiple directions and affecting pretty much every part of Fodlan. This would be another destabilising factor for after the war and with the state Fodlan's been in the less of that the better.

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It’d be weird to suddenly have Sreng in VW of all things much in the same way having Nemesis show up felt weird and disconnected.

The hostile invader angle is already in there, but Claude is pretty aware and wary of it: in VW it initially feels like he’s going to pull off some risky gambit that may endanger his own forces to make his dress up act more convincing, but it turns out he’s stressing out because it’ll inevitably freak people out (namely Lorenz) and he’ll have to explain himself. In CF it matters less because he’s on the ropes and needs to throw everything at Edelgard, damn the consequences... and if the Almyrans save Fodlan then it’d help his end goal anyway (hence he does it in his Byleth pairing end card).

I think you’d have to make him far more willing to be perceived as a foreign invader himself to make this convincing, and in VW I think he has the least need.

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The entire problem with Claude's route is that it suffered from being the exposition/lore dump story. Someone tried to act like it didn't matter, and that a story doesn't need themes, or even tried to act like it's something a beginner at writing would do, which is hysterically false. 

How Claude acts in each route generally mirrors how much trust and faith he puts out.

In SS, Claude has absolutely zero forms of trust, so he just runs off.

In AM, he lost everything, but he took a gamble that Dimitri can be trustworthy enough. 

In CF, he has enough trust in Edelgard to set up a situation where he can bargain with her and trust her with his secret.

-

As for your idea, I honestly think that the problem isn't even about the need to ally with other foreigners. It's just Almyra. They already had one bit where they brought in the Almyrans during Chapter 18, but what they really should have done is keep them there and actually show how the people of Fodlan feel like the Almyrans aren't actually bad. Instead, it was Almyrans showing up literally 1 chapter and then leaving. 

Oh, and Judith should have been playable.

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I feel like Claudes route REALLY needed some more of that sort of content to differentiate itself more. Dont get me wrong the route is plenty strong as is, but it's also beat for beat the same as SS so it's own identity feels somewhat compromised.

 

Like AM and CF feel like their own separate stories and have their own vibe. Whereas SS feels bland and VW feels like a copy paste of it with actual character interactions and development between the lines

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22 minutes ago, Grimleal Uncle said:

I feel like Claudes route REALLY needed some more of that sort of content to differentiate itself more. Dont get me wrong the route is plenty strong as is, but it's also beat for beat the same as SS so it's own identity feels somewhat compromised.

 

Like AM and CF feel like their own separate stories and have their own vibe. Whereas SS feels bland and VW feels like a copy paste of it with actual character interactions and development between the lines

Yeah. 

It sucks that most of AM and VW are built from SS as the prototype. 

From Part 1 to Part 2, VW shares a total of 21 identical chapters, if we include the Prologue, with SS.

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6 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Gronder Field becomes more of a three-way fight, as Dimitri does not approve of Almyran forces in Fodlan (as their warrior-culture clashes with his ideals). 

ya'd have to rewrite dimitri a bit to get him there. Even outside of dimitri in the throes of his madness being so hyper focused on suiciding against edelgard to ignore claude entirely, faerghus itself is a highly martial warrior culture simply one draped in the image of knighthood and one of dimitris more prominent personal goals is to repair relations with the people of duscur. He'd definitely be willing to give almyra a chance without madness impairing his decisions and with madness impairing his decisions he'd be too focused on edelgard to care who claude brought along or what politics were at play. At most I'd be willing to give you in the situation that you proposed that the kingdom loyalists who make up dimitris army MIGHT focus more on the alliance as well IF claude reached out to obtain sreng forces (which could very easily be read as a massive fuck you towards the kingdom given faerghuses own bloody history with sreng and during a five year period where claude positions the alliance as neutral in the kingdom empire conflict). However that would also require the kingdom to be so blinded with rage that they were willing to burn bridges at a point when they need allies more then anything, since on AM gilbert makes sure to emphasis how the loyalists are basically fucked unless they either retake faerghus or form an alliance with claude and leicester. and given that gilbert and rodrigue handle the minutia when dimitris in full murder hobo mode, and both of them see more value in allying with leicester or retaking faerghus, it would feel atleast a bit out of character at the very least.

 

Aside from that though, I'd argue that for claude the issues in his arc come less from lacking scale and more so in being too broad and making it even broader would spread it too thin. Have him actually sit down at a conference table and start building those bonds of trust that are required to start opening borders, given that fodlan realistically only keeps its borders closed because most of its neighbors either want it dead or invade for fun. and the game alludes to him doing that from what i recall on VW, but instead what they needed to do was actually show him at the very least start the process. and flinging in dadga and sreng would only overly complicate that process, especially given the beef and baggage that dadga has with the empire and how sreng has no central form of government to negotiate with ontop of its own beef with faerghus. focusing on almyra and actually going into detail is all ya really have to do to give claudes arc more punch. especially if during the process you start to have him branch out of his own limited and biased view on the subject. Which again VW implies but has trouble showing and putting into practice.

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Actually having a Verdant Wind sounds neat alright. Claude definitely needs something like this for Gronder to make some degree of sense.

10 hours ago, NobodiePichu said:

ya'd have to rewrite dimitri a bit to get him there. Even outside of dimitri in the throes of his madness being so hyper focused on suiciding against edelgard to ignore claude entirely, faerghus itself is a highly martial warrior culture simply one draped in the image of knighthood and one of dimitris more prominent personal goals is to repair relations with the people of duscur. He'd definitely be willing to give almyra a chance without madness impairing his decisions and with madness impairing his decisions he'd be too focused on edelgard to care who claude brought along or what politics were at play. At most I'd be willing to give you in the situation that you proposed that the kingdom loyalists who make up dimitris army MIGHT focus more on the alliance as well IF claude reached out to obtain sreng forces (which could very easily be read as a massive fuck you towards the kingdom given faerghuses own bloody history with sreng and during a five year period where claude positions the alliance as neutral in the kingdom empire conflict). However that would also require the kingdom to be so blinded with rage that they were willing to burn bridges at a point when they need allies more then anything, since on AM gilbert makes sure to emphasis how the loyalists are basically fucked unless they either retake faerghus or form an alliance with claude and leicester. and given that gilbert and rodrigue handle the minutia when dimitris in full murder hobo mode, and both of them see more value in allying with leicester or retaking faerghus, it would feel atleast a bit out of character at the very least.

 

Aside from that though, I'd argue that for claude the issues in his arc come less from lacking scale and more so in being too broad and making it even broader would spread it too thin. Have him actually sit down at a conference table and start building those bonds of trust that are required to start opening borders, given that fodlan realistically only keeps its borders closed because most of its neighbors either want it dead or invade for fun. and the game alludes to him doing that from what i recall on VW, but instead what they needed to do was actually show him at the very least start the process. and flinging in dadga and sreng would only overly complicate that process, especially given the beef and baggage that dadga has with the empire and how sreng has no central form of government to negotiate with ontop of its own beef with faerghus. focusing on almyra and actually going into detail is all ya really have to do to give claudes arc more punch. especially if during the process you start to have him branch out of his own limited and biased view on the subject. Which again VW implies but has trouble showing and putting into practice.

I don't really see why Dimitri would be any more eager to open up to Almyria than any other character. They both might have brown skin, but Duscur is an entirely different kettle of fish to Almyra. Duscar is a part of Fodlan and not an existential threat to Fodlan's existence as Almyra threatens to be. It's like treating the Jews and the Russians the same way circa World War II. They're similar to the extent that they're the "other", but that's where the only similarities lie. Beyond that they've very different.

Edited by Jotari
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17 hours ago, Dayni said:

I want to leave my full thoughts for after finishing AM and SS, but I don't see it for all of the nations he could contact. Dagda and Brigid in particular are too out of the way for him to connect with, thus making an alliance to the west of Adrestia hard to justify. There's also the complications of Dagda being the most recent one to attempt to invade and thus making it a bit more complicated for Claude to contact them at all. Even if he was considering doing so in VW he absolutely would have to pull back from it because it's hard enough to argue bringing an Almyran force in but Dagda could be the straw that breaks people's resolve. 

The idea is that he would've made the alliances during the five years, and only after succeeding in bringing in Almyran forces. Sreng isn't that far off; just a quick ship ride north of the Alliance. Dagda would be far, but sending some messengers still shouldn't be too difficult. 

 

12 hours ago, Crysta said:

How would you change the SS setup, or what would you put in place of it?

Good question (I'm guessing that you mean how I would change the parts of Verdant Wind that are copied from Silver Snow). I'm not sure yet. 

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Honestly I kind of think a route split could work better in the  Golden Deer than Black Eagles. That route split would be once you get back from the timeskip deciding which other faction you want to ally with.  The alliance seems like it is willing to work with either other faction without too much issues. But I fear the main reason that it didn't happen is they were resolved to keep the other lords out of the routes as much as possible.  In both other routes Claude could take a bigger ally route but he was held back from doing so probably out of fear of having any story have two lords together (as in alliance wise) at all costs.  And once that is done they can go back to having a unique GD specific path with dealing with TWSID while having the other allied faction protect there homeland off screen while the Deer take care of the main threat.

 

Edit: And I think Claude taking the place of the namless Imperial troops that attack the Fedlarus lands in the last couple of chapters of CF would be a way to let him stay in the story somewhat without overtaking Edelgard in CF.  Likewise have Claude fight the areas that are taken over the areas of the empire that are attacked by other nameless Kingdom forces in AM does the same in AM. The focal point is still on the other lords of the route.

Edited by vikingsfan92
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