"I still do like Edelgard" You sure don't show it much lol.

SSSSSSSTOP LMAO

MY LONGASS ANSWER GOT ATE SO the tl;dr ver. of what I was GOING to say before Tumblr said nah: I do like Edelgard’s character, but the writing that tends to surround it dilutes how good she could have been. Edelgard’s character, as is, for the most part, I have no issues with as a villainous character and in fact can find myself enjoying pretty easily, but the game has too many moments that try to force the player to feel bad about her - not because of who she is as a character, but because sometimes other characters (most of whom having little to no connection with Edelgard) say she totally isn’t all bad and really more like us than it seems, and Edelgard is now totally not all bad and really more like us than it seems. 

Which isn’t true. Most of the cast wouldn’t wage war on an overall peaceful continent. Most of the cast wouldn’t outright admit pointblank to being willing to sacrifice the lives of those under their care to achieve some “greater cause” - in fact the other two lords of the game outright and explicitly reject that notion. Most of the cast isn’t willing to kill their friends if they try to stop them from committing horrible, morally reprehensible crimes such as grave-robbing... well, any resting place, really. Most of the cast aren’t willing to use the people under their care as meat shields to hide behind as they hole themselves away in the safety of their nice fancy throne room. Most of the cast aren’t willing to specifically order one of their supposed friends to man a ballista on a hill that is specifically rigged to be set on fire should any enemy try to take it. Most of the cast aren’t willing to use Demonic Beasts as tools. Most of the cast isn’t willing to hide and work with a sect of murderous people set on killing everyone who isn’t them in order to use their cool technology (which includes Demonic Beasts). 

Along with all of the other things Edelgard does that nearly no one else is willing to do due to the horrific nature of the action in question. But the game never addresses these actions in full at any point. The closest we come to accountability being put on Edelgard is, again, AM, and it does an overall fine job at it, but even that route doesn’t acknowledge the true depths of all that Edelgard has done - notice how even AM never brings up the use of Demonic Beasts, which has absolutely no moral justification, just like no other route brings it up, because it’s objectively bad that she’s willing to use them and so it cannot be brought up ever.

And. Just. Byleth. Holy shit, among all the characters that Byleth drags down, Edelgard is the biggest fuckin’ victim. She becomes this lil’ baby back bitch who can’t stand to attack her pwecious teacher who she weally wikes to draw and she has such a big cwush on them and she needs them to get ~softened~ but omg they saw her dwawing!! //>~<// So embbawwasing!! And oh nyo!! >m< Scawy wats!! But Edelgard just sounds adorable when she screams, right guys? You can say it twice, that’s how cute it is! Not a creep move to make at all!

Byleth makes Edelgard a complete and utter embarrassment. Edelgard needs Byleth, Edelgard’s weak to Byleth, Edelgard’s so soft to Byleth - which is all a good thing, apparently! 

Like, you see what I mean? A lot of my faults with Edelgard aren’t actually with Edelgard - she’s a villain, and so I view her actions through a villainous lens, and in doing so I think she’s fine, for the most part. More than fine, really! She, as her base character with very minimal changes, can make a damn good villain if allowed! But it’s the game having so many moments that try to remind you that she’s this good girly who just does fucked up things sometimes, in the same way that Dimitri and Claude are good boyos who just do fucked up things sometimes, and in doing so they end up severely downplaying just how bad she is... which in turn ends up having a large, laaaarge portion of the fandom either deliberately downplaying her actions/overplaying Dimitri and Claude’s (and Rhea’s oh boy Rhea’s) actions or just deadass not acknowledging the actions in the first place in order to make her stand with the other good guys of the game.

That, primarily, is what shits in my cereal about Edelgard. I really really really want to like her route, for example, because of the idea of “overt tones = Protagonist good, undertones = Protagonist bad” being so appealing to me, but it’s ruined by the knowledge I have that the game actually will try to make Edelgard better than she is. Is CF supposed to be this propaganda route that tricks the player into seeing Edelgard as the good guy via the nice words and the powerful protagonist, or is it supposed to be something that’s actually, genuinely trying to make Edelgard a good guy by, this time, deliberately hiding her actions and now straight up changing the story to erase some of her more egregious ones (mainly what she does with Dimitri)? I wanna say the former! But the narrative ends up muckin’ up that idea, if that is what they were going for.