Anon with the "GW not bad for Faerghus" ask. I couldn't read your full response bc your other blog is private but yes, there are people who say that the Kingdom is not in a bad position. Mostly those who think Claude's "scheme" will force Edelgard to end the war bc he could ally with the "still strong" Kingdom to crush her if she didn't, and that GW is some kind of "golden ending" for the three nations. Some even argue that Claude freed Faerghus/Dimitri from the Church's chains - or whatever.

I don't know if you saw my post where I mentioned you should be able to read it now, but if you didn't you should still be able to. I think I switched off the setting for that because I didn't realize it would prevent you from seeing the whole ask. :o

That's wild to hear though that people think the Kingdom isn’t in a bad position. They've lost a lot of military power regardless of whether or not they lose influence. Like I mentioned in the previous ask, it's basically up to Claude whether or not they retain their influence (regardless of what Petra wants in GW or what she thinks she knows about Fodlan lol). If they do, they still have no military might. If Sreng invades they're fucked if Claude doesn't treat them like a vassal state of Leicester and help them under the pretext that Faerghus is now part of Leicester.

In other words, they’re at best a vassal state and otherwise left alone, and at worst they’re left to rot.

Technically, Claude could try to get them to help him fight against the Empire, sure, but they won’t have the military might to help him very much, and like I mentioned in the last ask, the chances of it working are slim. Gautier won’t help and I can say that with pretty much full certainty, and if Gautier won’t help then Fraldarius probably won’t either (remember, it’s Felix who makes the final decisions now and not Rodrigue, so if Felix sees Sylvain is still upset about his father and won’t help the Alliance because of what they did, Felix won’t help them either. Felix is extremely emotional about his friends - especially his childhood friends. If you fuck with them then he’s going to fuck with you).

So now, Claude can either decide to try to force them to help, which would invoke another fight between him and Faerghus and cause more deaths, or he’ll just have to accept that he’s not getting help/a lot of help from Faerghus (I detailed it more in the other ask, so hopefully you can access the rest of it now!).

Post GW, Faerghus won’t be helping anyone in a war, I can tell you that. It’d take everything they had to keep Sreng out and to fix any damages from the Alliance’s attack. Even if Claude called on them, they just... couldn’t help.

Unfortunately even in GW they imply that Dimitri is “freed” of the Church, so of course most people take that at face value and don’t look any deeper than what’s told to them. Dimitri isn’t really free or not free of the Church. He was never in a situation where he was being controlled by them. They’re on friendly terms, but that’s really it. Rhea doesn’t tell Dimitri what to do or how to run Faerghus. It’s just that the people there are very devout because of their good relations with the Church and because Rhea helps Faerghus when they need help. It’s give and take for them just like any political situation. Faerghus isn’t in a bad position because they’re around. They’ve only really benefitted from the Church if anything, because Rhea doesn’t personally involve herself with their political decisions.

The whole “we have to free Dimitri from them” thing sounded more to me like Claude needing to find something “good” to hang onto to excuse himself for making those choices. As it was he was grasping at straws to justify their invasion to begin with. He already didn’t have a good pretext for attacking them. Saying “we’re freeing you” is like... his lowkey way of saying he needs to make himself feel better about it, because Dimitri didn’t need his or anyone’s help to begin with. If they were left alone, Faerghus would’ve been fine. Edelgard in GW is struggling on both sides of the war, so if Faerghus hadn’t been attacked by the Alliance, I can guarantee the Empire would’ve just lost.

Really, if Claude teamed up with the Kingdom in the first place and took down the Empire, they would’ve spared themselves more lives and bloodshed in the long run. Claude caused even more battles to happen and got more innocent people killed. I think by the end of the game he did figure out that he made the wrong decisions, but by then it was too late and he couldn’t take back what he did so he needed to find ways to justify all of it to himself.

I just wish they actually came out and said that though instead of running around it in circles while trying to make us believe he actually believes that the Kingdom was just better off without the Church. They weren’t doing badly with the Church involved or not involved. It was the invasion that hurt them. If Claude skipped around Fhirdiad and killed Rhea, regardless of plot or context or anything, just like, imagine he didn’t invade Faerghus and they just passed through and killed Rhea, then Faerghus’ situation might get a little more complicated for inheritance, but I think just with Dimitri’s temperament that they’d be able to stave off any legitimacy issues pretty quick. That is, people liked him in power so the populace would still be in favor of having him as king whether the Church was there or not. Rodrigue was well liked, so he’d be a perfect public figure to calm down any potential anxiety and worry with the loss of the Church. They could’ve actually made it without the Church, but it was mostly the invasion that really hurt the country and dug them into a hole for the future.