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All right, it's time to slay the elephant in the room once and for all.
Yeah, I know it's a fool's effort for me to keep bashing my head against Savior King trying to make sense of its particular brand of logic. I already read 51 chapters, which covers half the story (more than half if going by raw word count), but the damn thing is (stuck on) 106 chapters long. And since I made the far-too-late decision not to read any more of this crap, my only other viable option is to read TV Tropes spoilers, and, well...if you were as disappointed as I was after reading the academy arc and were holding out hope that the war arc would be more exciting...don't.
(WARNING: Expect a lot of disorganized rambling and ranting from yours truly beyond this point. Also, the usual content warnings regarding Savior King itself apply just as much as they did before.)
Okay, so as I said in my last SK post, I'd checked out of things after the long and stupid Battle of Garreg Mach chapters (Chapter 47-50) and the follow-up where Dimitri's character arc is fully resolved without his direct input (Chapter 51, where the author's pet OC Atra tells Dumbass-tri's surrogate dad Rodrigue her account of the Tragedy of Duscur, and Roddy investigates and they order the offscreen execution of Cornelia...and no one else), but they crown him king of Faerghus anyway because he's the only guy they've got. With those inconveniences out of the way, the story can get down to business to show off what it's really about...
...ramping up the "Bash Edelgard" machine until its power levels can't be read by Saiyan scouters.
As I read on a thread in /r/fireemblemthreehouses on this story a while back, its version of the War Phase is a vehicle for the author to vent in- and out-of-character about how much she thinks Edelgard sucks, and that has certain, shall we say, "implications" for the direction the rest of the story takes. Instead of (badly) rehashing canon (except for the parts where the non-Crest-bearing side characters get to do anything cool), the Savior King War Phase seems to quickly settle into a pattern:
And all of this focus on the author trying to "prove" how horrible Edelgard is both as a person and a video game character is the root of many of Savior King's narrative problems and the main reason for its...divisiveness? Infamy? I don't know which word to use; I can't waste time polling everyone who's ever read this story to ask for their opinions.
Speaking as a fan of all of Three Houses' main characters, Edelgard included, I understand why she's hated. Starting a war that spreads throughout the entire continent, and "borrowing" the services of the underground techno-cult who ruined your and your family's lives? Probably not the smartest of ways to get people on board with your "fight to end discrimination against people who weren't born with magic dragon blood".
In Three Houses, Dimitri and Claude agree with some of Edelgard's motives and ideals (Dimitri doesn't like that Miklan got disinherited because Sylvain was born with the Crest of Gautier and he wasn't, and Claude doesn't like that the church keeps so many secrets and has concocted this alternate history of the world that most of Fódlan has accepted as the truth simply because it comes from the church), but not with the death toll Edelgard's methods will take in order for any meaningful change to occur over time. "Those who slither in the dark" make up a small portion of the opposition forces on the non-Crimson Flower routes relative to the number of enemy Imperial soldiers you fight (with only Hubert making direct use of any Demonic Beasts on the Imperial side, as "those who slither" control most of the rest of them), so only Lysithea (whose life was upended by those dark mages the same way Edelgard's would later be) is able to definitively identify them at a glance when the three armies meet again in the rematch at Gronder Field. Their purpose within the narrative is to play the part of the "shadowy organization sowing discord around the world" and have to resort to secrecy, subterfuge, and other methods to achieve their goals.
Not so in Savior King, though! That OC I mentioned earlier was one of their number and reveals their existence to the heroes (and the Flame Emperor's involvement with them) the moment she appears a third of the way through the story. And once the Flame Emperor's identity is exposed in the Holy Tomb, no one wants to listen to anything Edelgard has to say, ever. From that day forward, she basically is one of "those who slither in the dark" to everyone.
And no, I didn't just add that as a joke. The war basically turns SK!Edelgard into an Agarthan in all but appearance, what with the smug attitude, hyper-racism against Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn (the worst she gets with this in Three Houses is calling Rhea a "beast" after witnessing her transformation into the Immaculate One on Crimson Flower, and mocking Seteth and Flayn for being "children of the goddess" and vowing not to hand control of Fódlan over to them on Verdant Wind and Silver Snow), and extensive use of highly advanced Agarthan technology (throwing everything from Demonic Beasts to Titanus and "javelins of light" at the heroes, which she uses to destroy Arianrhod and Fort Merceus, reportedly out of authorial frustration of Edelgard not immediately fingering "those who slither" as the ones who bombed Arianrhod on CF).
When all of Edelgard's efforts predictably fail (because the "good guys" are just that powerful), Thales (the game and story's "Big Bad" figure) gets fed up and forcibly ejects her from the plot, preceded by a speech where he calls her a failure on every level (and culminating in him and his goons enslaving and torturing her before throwing her mutated body to the wolves where - you guessed it - she gets pwned with zero effort). In this speech, he accidentally tells on himself, blaming Edelgard for not killing off Byleth before she awakened to her true power, and for squandering the huge numbers and technology advantage he and his soldiers provided her.
The first problem I have with this is that there's no way any attempted assassination plot on an Officers Academy teacher, goddess' vessel or not, would work with so many knights and soldiers patrolling the monastery every hour. Thales himself proved that during the big Demonic Beast attack in the old chapel (the one where Jeralt dies and Atra describes to everyone his so-called "heroic sacrifice" after the fact). The second is the idea of Thales letting any non-Agarthan use any of their war machines. Well, I suppose he had to since Cornelia, one of the only two other Agarthan generals who knows how to operate the Titanus, was killed off and brushed aside, so he had to resort to Plan E. What I'm saying is that all of Edelgard's war failures are as much on him as they are on her, even though the author desperately wants me to believe that he and his goons are vastly more powerful and intelligent than they are in canon. Don't even get me started on how Atra, a mere former foot soldier--and a teenage former foot soldier, at that!--knows about all of his weapons, all of his generals, all of their secrets, and how to counter most of them (Remire would say hello, but they're probably still burying all their dead out of all the men and women she didn't give any Agarthan rage toxin antidote to before Dimitri smashed their heads into the walls of their own homes).
You know that issue about "fighting against Crest discrimination" I brought up earlier? It's never addressed in Savior King except for when the "good guys" think Edelgard is just using that as an excuse to murder untold numbers of people and turn the wreckage over to her Agarthan puppetmasters. Hell, when Lysithea relates her tragic backstory to Rhea, the only part of it that gets through to them is that there were "slithery ones" in their midst and they failed to do anything to suppress them. No epiphany about how "maybe it was a mistake to praise Crests as blessings from the goddess when anyone who knew how to do blood transfusions could bestow one" or anything, because that would run counter to the other characters showing off the effects of their Crests in every battle scene.
And just when I thought the author couldn't make me hate her interpretation of Claude any more, in Chapter 71, he tears into Rhea (who I guess found her way back to the "good guys" after disappearing on them 20 chapters ago even though she didn't need to) for perpetuating the church's "foreigners as second-class citizens" doctrine by hammering her with mixed messages ("Why don't you just tell everyone Agartha destroyed the world in the past?", "Not all Agarthans are evil! Just look at Atra!", "A nurse tried to suffocate me when I was a kid, and it's all your fault!") Yeah, I get that Claude thinks Edelgard would have done better to air her grievances in a public forum instead of starting a war, but does every time he wants to argue something in his favor have to make him sound so condescending?
And while the story goes all-in on making Edelgard, Hubert, and the Imperial nobility out to be as scummy as possible (the few Black Eagles students who join their side - Ferdinand, Petra, and Caspar - all end up turning against them), you know which villains aren't portrayed as completely irredeemable monsters?
The Ten Elites.
At first, the Elites are resurrected by "those who slither" to fight for them alongside the Imperial army (because Edelgard sucks), but it turns out that some of them wanted to turn against Nemesis after learning of the horrors of the Red Canyon massacre (and yet it still didn't stop them from using the Relics he crafted for them because...?) and are only still fighting against the "good guys" due to brainwashing. That's right...the henchmen of a man who almost singlehandedly slaughtered an entire race of mystical dragons and fashioned their bones into weapons, then cut a bloody swath across Fódlan, necessitating Saint Seiros to team up with the other surviving Saints and the head of the nascent Adrestian Empire to stop them, and are indirectly responsible for why Sylvain, Mercedes, Edelgard, Lysithea, Marianne, and Hapi's lives are so fucked up in the present...are the only antagonists the heroes or the author treat with any level of dignity.
I think that's what angers me the most about Savior King. It's not (just) the bad spelling and grammar, the characters being twisted into grotesque parodies of themselves, the story “borrowing” from past Fire Emblem games to add plot points that don't make sense in the context of Three Houses, or the plot taking frequent breaks for soapbox lecturing. It's the ideas this story puts forth that 1) Crests really are the be-all, end-all measure of a person's worth, 2) the powers that be are always right and can/should not be challenged, and 3) solving complex crises is as simple as arresting and/or killing the main conspirator while ignoring their accomplices and hoping the problem will resolve itself. These things are generally what the game's narrative is against, especially #1 and #3.
(WARNING: Expect a lot of disorganized rambling and ranting from yours truly beyond this point. Also, the usual content warnings regarding Savior King itself apply just as much as they did before.)
Okay, so as I said in my last SK post, I'd checked out of things after the long and stupid Battle of Garreg Mach chapters (Chapter 47-50) and the follow-up where Dimitri's character arc is fully resolved without his direct input (Chapter 51, where the author's pet OC Atra tells Dumbass-tri's surrogate dad Rodrigue her account of the Tragedy of Duscur, and Roddy investigates and they order the offscreen execution of Cornelia...and no one else), but they crown him king of Faerghus anyway because he's the only guy they've got. With those inconveniences out of the way, the story can get down to business to show off what it's really about...
...ramping up the "Bash Edelgard" machine until its power levels can't be read by Saiyan scouters.
As I read on a thread in /r/fireemblemthreehouses on this story a while back, its version of the War Phase is a vehicle for the author to vent in- and out-of-character about how much she thinks Edelgard sucks, and that has certain, shall we say, "implications" for the direction the rest of the story takes. Instead of (badly) rehashing canon (except for the parts where the non-Crest-bearing side characters get to do anything cool), the Savior King War Phase seems to quickly settle into a pattern:
- The Empire does something evil or prepares to do something evil.
- The "good guys" (I'm using that as a blanket term for the Kingdom, Alliance and Church of Seiros to save time, sarcasm quotes included) learn about the plot and easily find a way to subvert it.
- The "good guys", using their knowledge of the plot of the moment (and slowly snowballing military strength), walk all over the Imperial army. This usually ends with one of the protagonists giving a speech to the villain of the arc saying how evil they (and more importantly, Edelgard) are before humiliating and/or viciously killing them.
- Random NPCs cheer on the "good guys" for beating the mustache-twirlingly evil "bad guys".
- The author posts a note at the end of the chapter denouncing something about Edelgard or her story route she doesn't like, usually with some important context missing.
And all of this focus on the author trying to "prove" how horrible Edelgard is both as a person and a video game character is the root of many of Savior King's narrative problems and the main reason for its...divisiveness? Infamy? I don't know which word to use; I can't waste time polling everyone who's ever read this story to ask for their opinions.
Speaking as a fan of all of Three Houses' main characters, Edelgard included, I understand why she's hated. Starting a war that spreads throughout the entire continent, and "borrowing" the services of the underground techno-cult who ruined your and your family's lives? Probably not the smartest of ways to get people on board with your "fight to end discrimination against people who weren't born with magic dragon blood".
In Three Houses, Dimitri and Claude agree with some of Edelgard's motives and ideals (Dimitri doesn't like that Miklan got disinherited because Sylvain was born with the Crest of Gautier and he wasn't, and Claude doesn't like that the church keeps so many secrets and has concocted this alternate history of the world that most of Fódlan has accepted as the truth simply because it comes from the church), but not with the death toll Edelgard's methods will take in order for any meaningful change to occur over time. "Those who slither in the dark" make up a small portion of the opposition forces on the non-Crimson Flower routes relative to the number of enemy Imperial soldiers you fight (with only Hubert making direct use of any Demonic Beasts on the Imperial side, as "those who slither" control most of the rest of them), so only Lysithea (whose life was upended by those dark mages the same way Edelgard's would later be) is able to definitively identify them at a glance when the three armies meet again in the rematch at Gronder Field. Their purpose within the narrative is to play the part of the "shadowy organization sowing discord around the world" and have to resort to secrecy, subterfuge, and other methods to achieve their goals.
Not so in Savior King, though! That OC I mentioned earlier was one of their number and reveals their existence to the heroes (and the Flame Emperor's involvement with them) the moment she appears a third of the way through the story. And once the Flame Emperor's identity is exposed in the Holy Tomb, no one wants to listen to anything Edelgard has to say, ever. From that day forward, she basically is one of "those who slither in the dark" to everyone.
And no, I didn't just add that as a joke. The war basically turns SK!Edelgard into an Agarthan in all but appearance, what with the smug attitude, hyper-racism against Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn (the worst she gets with this in Three Houses is calling Rhea a "beast" after witnessing her transformation into the Immaculate One on Crimson Flower, and mocking Seteth and Flayn for being "children of the goddess" and vowing not to hand control of Fódlan over to them on Verdant Wind and Silver Snow), and extensive use of highly advanced Agarthan technology (throwing everything from Demonic Beasts to Titanus and "javelins of light" at the heroes, which she uses to destroy Arianrhod and Fort Merceus, reportedly out of authorial frustration of Edelgard not immediately fingering "those who slither" as the ones who bombed Arianrhod on CF).
When all of Edelgard's efforts predictably fail (because the "good guys" are just that powerful), Thales (the game and story's "Big Bad" figure) gets fed up and forcibly ejects her from the plot, preceded by a speech where he calls her a failure on every level (and culminating in him and his goons enslaving and torturing her before throwing her mutated body to the wolves where - you guessed it - she gets pwned with zero effort). In this speech, he accidentally tells on himself, blaming Edelgard for not killing off Byleth before she awakened to her true power, and for squandering the huge numbers and technology advantage he and his soldiers provided her.
The first problem I have with this is that there's no way any attempted assassination plot on an Officers Academy teacher, goddess' vessel or not, would work with so many knights and soldiers patrolling the monastery every hour. Thales himself proved that during the big Demonic Beast attack in the old chapel (the one where Jeralt dies and Atra describes to everyone his so-called "heroic sacrifice" after the fact). The second is the idea of Thales letting any non-Agarthan use any of their war machines. Well, I suppose he had to since Cornelia, one of the only two other Agarthan generals who knows how to operate the Titanus, was killed off and brushed aside, so he had to resort to Plan E. What I'm saying is that all of Edelgard's war failures are as much on him as they are on her, even though the author desperately wants me to believe that he and his goons are vastly more powerful and intelligent than they are in canon. Don't even get me started on how Atra, a mere former foot soldier--and a teenage former foot soldier, at that!--knows about all of his weapons, all of his generals, all of their secrets, and how to counter most of them (Remire would say hello, but they're probably still burying all their dead out of all the men and women she didn't give any Agarthan rage toxin antidote to before Dimitri smashed their heads into the walls of their own homes).
You know that issue about "fighting against Crest discrimination" I brought up earlier? It's never addressed in Savior King except for when the "good guys" think Edelgard is just using that as an excuse to murder untold numbers of people and turn the wreckage over to her Agarthan puppetmasters. Hell, when Lysithea relates her tragic backstory to Rhea, the only part of it that gets through to them is that there were "slithery ones" in their midst and they failed to do anything to suppress them. No epiphany about how "maybe it was a mistake to praise Crests as blessings from the goddess when anyone who knew how to do blood transfusions could bestow one" or anything, because that would run counter to the other characters showing off the effects of their Crests in every battle scene.
And just when I thought the author couldn't make me hate her interpretation of Claude any more, in Chapter 71, he tears into Rhea (who I guess found her way back to the "good guys" after disappearing on them 20 chapters ago even though she didn't need to) for perpetuating the church's "foreigners as second-class citizens" doctrine by hammering her with mixed messages ("Why don't you just tell everyone Agartha destroyed the world in the past?", "Not all Agarthans are evil! Just look at Atra!", "A nurse tried to suffocate me when I was a kid, and it's all your fault!") Yeah, I get that Claude thinks Edelgard would have done better to air her grievances in a public forum instead of starting a war, but does every time he wants to argue something in his favor have to make him sound so condescending?
And while the story goes all-in on making Edelgard, Hubert, and the Imperial nobility out to be as scummy as possible (the few Black Eagles students who join their side - Ferdinand, Petra, and Caspar - all end up turning against them), you know which villains aren't portrayed as completely irredeemable monsters?
The Ten Elites.
At first, the Elites are resurrected by "those who slither" to fight for them alongside the Imperial army (because Edelgard sucks), but it turns out that some of them wanted to turn against Nemesis after learning of the horrors of the Red Canyon massacre (and yet it still didn't stop them from using the Relics he crafted for them because...?) and are only still fighting against the "good guys" due to brainwashing. That's right...the henchmen of a man who almost singlehandedly slaughtered an entire race of mystical dragons and fashioned their bones into weapons, then cut a bloody swath across Fódlan, necessitating Saint Seiros to team up with the other surviving Saints and the head of the nascent Adrestian Empire to stop them, and are indirectly responsible for why Sylvain, Mercedes, Edelgard, Lysithea, Marianne, and Hapi's lives are so fucked up in the present...are the only antagonists the heroes or the author treat with any level of dignity.
I think that's what angers me the most about Savior King. It's not (just) the bad spelling and grammar, the characters being twisted into grotesque parodies of themselves, the story “borrowing” from past Fire Emblem games to add plot points that don't make sense in the context of Three Houses, or the plot taking frequent breaks for soapbox lecturing. It's the ideas this story puts forth that 1) Crests really are the be-all, end-all measure of a person's worth, 2) the powers that be are always right and can/should not be challenged, and 3) solving complex crises is as simple as arresting and/or killing the main conspirator while ignoring their accomplices and hoping the problem will resolve itself. These things are generally what the game's narrative is against, especially #1 and #3.
Anyway, I've devoted far more time than is necessary on this thing, and I can't think of even one aspect I'd recommend from it, even in a “so bad it's good” sense. I suppose this is the cost of seeking out new and weird stories to read… In this case, I wound up diving into a stinker so foul that its stench has lingered with me for more than a year, and it's going to take a lot of soap to wash off.
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That little girl is Reyna, and the other little girl is a combination of the actual Three Houses writers and other Three Houses fans. The writers didn't do what she wanted so she's forcing the fans to watch her play out a 106-chapter long tantrum.
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Meanwhile, the writers who got kicked out of the playhouse couldn't care less because it's their game and they can write it however they want.
The other girl is free to disagree, but since she is no longer allowed to live rent-free in my head, I'm kicking her and those stupid dolls out, and then I'm changing the locks.