Discussion FireEmblemThreeHouses / TropesAToD

We should add to the "Actor Allusion" trope that Cassandra Lee Morris voice acts both Morgana (in Persona 5) and Sothsis (in Fire Emblem 3 Houses), which is relevant because both characters are apparently sleepy. I'd add more to further establish the connection to the 2 characters, but I have yet to play Persona 5. I just know that a lot of people made the comparison between Persona 5 and Fire Emblem 3 Houses because they both have similar game mechanics and apparently Morgana is similar to Sothsis.

I have removed the Crutch Character entry from this page, the only units who could potentially fit the trope's description being Edelgard on SS and maybe Gilbert on AM. Consequently, I have removed the Crutch Character entries from the characters' pages for every unit except Gilbert and Edelgard.

• Crutch Character: The knights and teachers serve as this for when you get them. All of them start in class tiers well beyond what you can get at that point in the game, and can carve their way through anything in their way. However, they are very limited in specializations, and often cannot reclass into anything else because of their overly focused skill sets, requiring extra effort to do so. Units like Shamir or Catherine for example will take a lot of extra work to get the Brigand class if they want Death Blow, while Manuela and Hanneman are going to be unable to promote upwards class wise because they have nothing to fit into.

This entry is incorrect for a number of reasons that I will detail:

• First, I am assuming the entry does not cover Seteth and Gilbert, since it talks about the stats of the knights when the player gets them and those two are only recruited midway through the game.
• Hanneman and Manuela do not qualify as Crutch Character, they start in intermediate classes with battle performances that are either on par with or inferior to the students, and certainly don't have the ability to cleave everything in their path like the entry says. They're more Convenient Replacement Character in the event players didn't train a mage or a healer than anything else.
• Catherine does not qualify, she retains her brave relic and the advantage of her advanced bases even after the other students have unlocked their own advanced classes, can easily be put on a pegasus to give her more mobility or can be made into a War Cleric to take advantage of her brawling boon. She never falls behind and in endgame will have a battle performance on-par with the students and even better than some. She and Shamir qualify more for Disc-One Nuke than Crutch Character.
• Shamir has the same advanced bases advantage as Catherine, and unlike Catherine doesn't even need to reclass into anything if the player doesn't want to invest in her. She starts as a Sniper and players can simply keep her in it and abuse the Sniper's master Combat Art Hunter's Volley, which combined with Shamir's adequate strength growth and the class' innate Bowfaire will let one-shot enemies throughout the entire game. She's particularly useful on both of the Black Eagles' endgames due to the maps having troublesome Demonic Spiders Falcon Knights reinforcements. Like Catherine, she's more into Disc-One Nuke territory.
• Alois does not qualify. He joins with good bases, can immediately cert into Brigand for Death Blow and will pull his weight straight away as a Warrior. He can easily be made into a Grappler or a War Master, the former eventually giving him Fierce Iron First to orko enemies and the latter Brawl Crit +20 to make him into a Critical Hit Class. He's a Convenient Replacement Character for players who didn't train a physical hitter, and he's a better one than Hanneman and Manuela to boot.

Edited by InvisibleTroper

I just did a great big edit; here are my reasons.

First, spoiler handling. The decision to spoiler the existence of Silver Snow while openly discussing Crimson Flower is exactly backwards, since SS is one of the three default routes and CF is the secret route that has to be unlocked. I also replaced a bunch of spoilers with careful wording, largely by referring to Edelgard as the Flame Emperor.

Second, example sorting. We discussed this in the forum thread, and since SS is available from the start while CF has to be unlocked, SS should be listed first, then AM, then VW, and finally CF, the secret hidden villain route.

I changed "Nabatean" to "dragon" because the dragons are consistently referred to as "dragons" or "Children of the Goddess", but never as "Nabateans".

I reworded a number of examples which were written through the lens of CF being either default or representative of the story as a whole, when it's the one route that is radically different from the others.

I removed all quotation marks surrounding those who slither in the dark because that isn't their name, it's a description.

I changed Big Bad Ensemble to Big Bad Duumvirate because the example previously described Rhea as being and equal antagonist to Edelgard and Thales, which is simply false. Rhea is only the main antagonist on the hidden secret villain route where you're working with the Flame Emperor and those who slither in the dark, while the Flame Emperor and those who slither in the dark are the antagonists on all default routes.

---

I removed these examples.

• (Ambiguous Situation)

  • Another one is how much the Church is enforcing Medieval Stasis. With the release of Wave 4 DLC, information found in the Abyss Library mentions that the Church is responsible for banning many important items, specifically oil, the telescope and the printing press (as opposed to the woodblock printing that is accepted), as well as rendering autopsies taboo, effectively crippling Fódlan's ability to advance. However this isn't reflected in-game. Hilda shrugs off losing a library book like she lost a hair tie with no apparent consequences, something that would never happen if books were being hand-written; Seteth publishes children's books with no one acting like it's a rare feat; Manuela clearly has an anatomic mannequin in her office and inspected Jeralt's body after his death; Annette calculates tragicomic distances at one point; Fhirdiad goes up in flames easily at the end of Crimson Flower, and some of the battalions use gunpowder. So the information may indeed be inaccurate (as Linhardt cautions), or it may also be that these technologies were indeed banned when that book was written, but the prohibitions were later relaxed or lifted entirely. The Nintendo Dream interview later clarified the books in the library were indeed telling the truth and that Rhea and her allies were suppressing technological developments, but not out of a sense of wanting to control humans but rather a fear of the past, namely the belief that technology was progressing too quickly (as well as a reason the interview stated is secret).

The Nintendo Dream interview also clarified that the books are indeed out of date. Rhea does ban technology, but only temporarily, so that Fódlan will progress at a more measured pace.

• Anyone Can Die: Once Part II begins, any character not recruited before the timeskip that shows up as an enemy can potentially die, with the exceptions of Petra, Hubert, Hilda, and Dedue on non-Crimson Flower routes, who will retreat if defeated only to reappear later in the story as an enemy once again ^note Petra and Hubert, though they do die in later appearances or as an ally NPC ^note Dedue and Hilda, though they can die if the player is not careful. Here are the maximum body counts for each route (not counting playable characters that can fall in Classic Mode) - * denotes characters that must be killed (unless they were already recruited in many cases), while ** denotes characters that can be spared if defeated by Byleth.
  • Silver Snow: Edelgard*, Dimitri* (dies offscreen), Hubert*, Jeritza*, Ashe**^note Like in Verdant Wind, can only be spared if recruited pre-timeskip, Lorenz**^note Like in Azure Moon, can be spared if recruited pre-timeskip. Otherwise, a required kill., Gilbert* (dies offscreen), Lady Rhea^note Can survive if an A-rank with Byleth was achieved), Dedue^note Appears as an ally, and his death is very unlikely..
  • Crimson Flower: Dimitri*, Claude**^note Can also be spared by Edelgard., Dedue*, Ingrid*, Felix*, Sylvain*, Mercedes*, Ashe, Annette, Hilda, Ignatz, Leonie, Lysithea**^note Can be spared by anyone., Alois*, Shamir*, Seteth**, Flayn**, Catherine, Cyril, Gilbert, Lady Rhea*.
  • Azure Moon: Dedue^note Will die during the timeskip if his paralogue was not completed., Edelgard*, Hubert*, Ferdinand*, Bernadetta, Caspar, Linhardt, Petra, Dorothea, Lorenz**^note Can be spared if recruited pre-timeskip. Otherwise, a required kill., Raphael, Ignatz, Lysithea, Leonie, Jeritza*, Hanneman, Manuela, Hilda^note Cannot be killed by the player. Appears as an ally later on, and her death is very unlikely.. Unused data suggests Felix and Annete could have also died, but this is not possible within the game.
  • Verdant Wind: Edelgard*, Dimitri* (dies offscreen), Hubert*, Ferdinand*, Bernadetta, Caspar, Linhardt, Petra, Dorothea, Ashe**^note Can only be spared if recruited pre-timeskip, Ingrid, Felix, Mercedes, Sylvain, Jeritza*, Dedue^note Cannot be killed by the player. Appears as an ally later on, and his death is very unlikely. Lady Rhea is also heavily implied to die of her wounds offscreen from stopping the Javelin of Light after the assault on Shambhala.

This is not what the trope means.

• Book Ends:
  • During Part I, the last time you will see the Lords all together while they're still students at the Officer's Academy is at Gronder Field. At that point, they're still on amicable terms with each other. On non-Crimson Flower routes, the second and last time the three lords are together is also at Gronder Field, and by that point at least one is calling for the other's head.
  • On the Silver Snow route, the final battle of Part II is fought in the same place as the final battle of Part I: the outer wall of Garreg Mach Monastery.
  • On the Crimson Flower route:
    • The last king of Faerghus dies on the same plains where the first king of Faerghus forged the kingdom, and his defeat heralds the fall of the church and demigod who previously bested Nemesis on those very same plains to unite Fódlan under her guidance.
    • House Hresvelg's bloodline and claim to fame began by receiving the Crest of Seiros, and Seiros was responsible for setting in motion the Crest system as a part of Fódlan society. The last Hresvelg heir, Edelgard, is the one who wishes to eradicate said Crest system and may even end up killing Seiros herself.
    • The opening cinematic shows Seiros cradling the Sword of the Creator against her cheek, staining it with blood. At the end of the route, that same sword is one of two weapons that kills Seiros as the Immaculate One (the other being Edelgard's Relic axe, Aymr) by destroying her Crest Stone, causing it to leak massive amounts of green blood over her as she dies.
  • A couple on the Azure Moon route:
    • Edelgard is one of your first allies, and your last foe.
    • The second half of the Azure Moon route begins and ends with one person collapsed on the ground, another offering them a hand, and the first person rejecting it.
  • On the Verdant Wind route, the first and final boss is a leader of a group of bandits. Furthermore, said final boss is one of the first characters who appears onscreen, Nemesis.

The comment on the page says that these aren't examples.

• (Boring, but Practical)
  • Dimitri's High Lord and Great Lord classes are vanilla compared to Edelgard's Armored Lord and Emperor^note A hard stop to physical attacks while maintaining good magical bulk and having an additional point of movement over normal armored classes. and especially Claude's Wyvern Master and Barbarossa.^note Effectively the Wyvern Rider and Wyvern Lord with a preference for bows. However, the classes require zero investment on Dimitri's end to obtain, allowing him to focus on other skills if so desired, and the stats provided by the classes are more than enough to carry Dimitri through the rest of the game.

Claude and Edelgard's unique classes also require no investment to obtain.

• Byleth and the three Lords all gain a secondary skill in addition to the experience-boosting effects to their personal skills come Part II. Both Dimitri's (bestows a flat, permanent 20 point increase in Avoid as long as his HP is full) and Claude's (a permanently active Pass skill, which allows Claude to pass through enemy units regardless of what class he's currently in) squarely fall into this territory, and can even be augmented into Simple, yet Awesome depending on how the player trains them.^note Dimitri's avoid bonus can be stacked with Alert Stance/Alert Stance +, both gained by leveling Flying rank, thus allowing the player to effectively jack up his Avoid even further when on Enemy Phase. In contrast, Byleth's secondary (a flat 2-point damage increase) and Edelgard's secondary (a 4-point Resistance increase only given if Edelgard waits) are generally less than impressive by comparison.

That's not BBP.

• Casting Gag: Japanese-wise in two ways:
  • Lysithea is voiced by Aoi Yūki, a prodigy in her field (magic) who suffers a case of Your Days Are Numbered and will expire if she doesn't get a paired ending with certain characters. The voice actress also did work on Fire Emblem's rival game in the gacha department, Fate/Grand Order, as a prodigy in her own field (swordsmanship) and short-lived due to her own sickness history-wise, Okita Souji. Furthering the gag, Lysithea also has hidden talent in Swords, and changing her class into Mortal Savant evokes a close image of a Samurai/Oriental Swordsman like Okita.
  • Cornelia's voice actress is Akemi Okamura and previously within the franchise, she voiced Emmeryn, the definition of serene High Queen. Cornelia is a person of authority, nearing queen levels, but evil and manipulative, so you can say that the casting invokes 'evil Emmeryn'.

This is closer to Typecasting.

• Colon Cancer: The narration of each chapter reads this way.
  Jeralt: Part I: White Clouds: Horsebow Moon: Rumors of a Reaper.

That's not what the trope means.

• Crapsack World: Mixed in with Crapsaccharine World. Sure, Fódlan is in relative peace (it having been centuries since the last large-scale war in the continent), but the keyword is "relative," as each nation has its own problems that have gotten much worse in recent years.
  • In the Empire, the corrupt nobles conducted a coup after the Emperor tried to centralize power and stopped an insurrection in Hrym territory due to this. Afterwards, once the empire's regent got involved with the coup, the emperor's children were captured and experimented upon with the intention of implanting crests in them in order to create a "perfect Emperor", from which only one heir survived the process "relatively unscathed". Said nobility also commits several other abuses to get Crests in their bloodlines, like marrying women with crests and making them bear children non-stop at the expense of their health. Also, the Empire was invaded by Dagda and Brigid just 5 years before the events of the story, which led to the extinction of some noble houses like House Ochs and House Nuvelle, the latter which was left to die by the corrupt nobility for refusing to take part in the previous insurrection alongside them.
  • The Kingdom suffered a horrific regicide several years before the story began, which led to great unrest and violence within the Kingdom as people rioted and certain nobles attempted to seize greater power. In retaliation, the Kingdom army committed a genocide on the innocent natives of the Duscur region who were framed for the regicide, despite the protests of the Kingdom's own crown prince, and the Duscur survivors face intense discrimination in addition to having lost their homeland. Not to mention food shortages, brutal winters, and a barren land make life hard for the people of the Kingdom, and the nobles are also obsessed with Crests in their bloodlines in order to defend themselves against invaders from Sreng, but this has led to a tendency (or in rare cases a requirement) for the first-born to lose their inheritance if they lack a Crest and a younger sibling doesn't (such as in the case of Miklan).
  • The Alliance looks relatively stable, but their leading nobles are constantly squabbling, and the common people can suffer the consequences of their infighting, such as Raphael's parents, who were collateral damage in what amounted to a political assassination. House Ordelia was also implicated with the empire's insurrection due to providing aid to the Hrym territory, which led to most of their key people being killed and replaced with imperial staff, as well as their children getting experimented upon by implanting them with crests, from which only one heir made it out alive at the expense of her health and life expectancy.
  • The Church contributes in some ways to Fódlan's stagnant status quo. Despite their good intentions of keeping the continent in harmony and preaching against many of the abuses of power the nobles practice (as well as attempting to teach acceptance and equality in the monastery), the fact their teachings claim the Crests were originally gifts from the goddess due to Rhea's manipulation of her followers and distortion of history effectively promotes the various versions of the Crest caste system and abuses mentioned above. The tenets of the Church preaching against interactions with outside nations has also led to widespread isolationism and prejudice, and other branches of the Church like the Southern and Western Churches have enacted rebellions and instigated chaos.
  • Last but not least is those who slither in the dark deliberately taking advantage of these events and/or outright causing them in some cases, with the intention to destabilize and eventually genocide all the people of Fódlan so they may rule the continent as they once did in the ancient past.
  • There is also the fact that there are so many small-scale conflicts, such as with noble rebellions and bandit attacks, that most armies are stretched thin, and the Monastery is forced to send each class on monthly military expeditions (it's noted by NPCs that the amount and severity of fighting the students are having to do during the year Byleth teaches is unheard of and showcases how precarious a state Fódlan is in presently). It's clear that the narration really did mean relative harmony.

Merely having tragic situations and bad stuff happen does not a crapsack world make. Three Houses is darker in many ways than previous games in the series, but it's still overall lighthearted and fun.

• (Darker and Edgier)
  • The game's particular brand of darkness avoids the gratuity and over-the-top nature of a typical Dark Fantasy setting, instead opting for a disturbingly grounded and subtle kind of darkness, rooted firmly in its love of Grey-and-Gray Morality and real-world subtext. Previous games such as Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn tackled themes like Fantastic Racism and religion, but in the end, much of the blame still lay firmly with Hate Sink characters such as the Begnion Senate. In Three Houses, almost all evil is man-made, with the entirely sympathetic main cast with its flaws, mistakes, and miscommunications to be held responsible. The existence of human-on-human racism and xenophobia is acknowledged in all routes and made one of the central themes of Verdant Wind. The Crimson Flower and Silver Snow routes deal heavily with questions of religion, classism, and political extremism in a rather ambivalent way, avoiding one-dimensional Corrupt Church and Knight Templar stereotypes. Several characters, such as Dimitri, suffer from realistic mental illnesses which are not magically cured through Epiphany Therapy, don’t turn them into cackling villains, and are not treated as a mere quirk for Comic Relief. The series's traditionally idealized depiction of aristocracy is scaled back; not only do many of the noble characters have the dysfunctional, troubled, and/or violent family backgrounds that historically were common among the nobility, but the very validity of a hereditary nobility is called into question, particularly on the Crimson Flower route. Even the one definitively evil group responsible for much of the conflict, "those who slither in the dark," are motivated by the same ideals, such as revenge and independence from the divine, that motivate the rest of the factions; their primary distinguishing quirk (aside from their Magitek) is their complete lack of ethical boundaries, empathy, or compunction — something the game doesn't even pretend to try to rationalize or make sympathetic.
  • At its core, the conflict between Edelgard and Dimitri is that of a warmongering emperor and the young noble who wants to stop them… except the emperor has suffered through devastating trauma and has very good reasons to want to upend the status quo, and the young noble has also suffered devastating trauma, takes the emperor's betrayal very personally, and almost completely snaps from the pressure to become a bloodthirsty butcher. Depending on which route you pick, one of them may lighten up and become more heroic, but only one.

Rambling natter.

• Disc-One Final Dungeon: More like Disc 2 Final Dungeon, but on the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes, the invasion of the Adrestian Empire’s capital, Enbarr, is set up as the route's final mission, only for the story to continue as a new threat needs to be taken care of right after. This is averted in the case of Azure Moon, because Edelgard is the Final Boss and the story wraps up with her defeat.

That's not what the trope means.

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